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Product Launch Rebel
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Kandungan disediakan oleh John Benzick. Semua kandungan podcast termasuk episod, grafik dan perihalan podcast dimuat naik dan disediakan terus oleh John Benzick atau rakan kongsi platform podcast mereka. Jika anda percaya seseorang menggunakan karya berhak cipta anda tanpa kebenaran anda, anda boleh mengikuti proses yang digariskan di sini https://ms.player.fm/legal.
Get crucial product-launch advice from the most rebellious entrepreneurs on earth -- so you can double your launch speed at half the cost. Triple your confidence by learning how to identify a product idea, create demand and grow revenues. Hear captivating stories about overcoming self-doubt and denying naysayers. Hosted by John Benzick of Venture Superfly.
…
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56 episod
Tandakan semua sebagai (belum) dimainkan
Manage series 2910000
Kandungan disediakan oleh John Benzick. Semua kandungan podcast termasuk episod, grafik dan perihalan podcast dimuat naik dan disediakan terus oleh John Benzick atau rakan kongsi platform podcast mereka. Jika anda percaya seseorang menggunakan karya berhak cipta anda tanpa kebenaran anda, anda boleh mengikuti proses yang digariskan di sini https://ms.player.fm/legal.
Get crucial product-launch advice from the most rebellious entrepreneurs on earth -- so you can double your launch speed at half the cost. Triple your confidence by learning how to identify a product idea, create demand and grow revenues. Hear captivating stories about overcoming self-doubt and denying naysayers. Hosted by John Benzick of Venture Superfly.
…
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Product Launch Rebel
1 Ep. 056: On Becoming a Sales Virtuoso -- The Mickeli Bedore Interview 44:15
44:15
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44:15Let's face it, many aspiring entrepreneurs are held back by a fear of selling. In this episode, I interview sales luminary, Mickeli Bedore, where he provides insider tips on strengthening your sales skills, establishing the right mindset and overcoming rejection. Additionally, he reveals the story about when a key person underestimated him when he was a teenager, which drove him to become a sought-after keynote speaker and a sales superstar in some of the world's biggest companies, such as IBM, Verizon and Oracle. Leave a Rating & Review in iTunes for the Product Launch Rebel Podcast Top Takeaways from this Episode: (1) Acquiring and nurturing "emotional intelligence" is an important quality for a successful sales person. (2) To be successful at something, it's important to develop an appreciation for something. Appreciation helps to drive learning, which leads to success. (3) Curiosity is at the root of any successful sales person. The best marketers and sales professionals are driven by a perpetual interest in others' situations and needs. (4) Introverts can be very successful sales people, because of their heightened ability to listen, demonstrate empathy and thoughtfully solve problems. (5) The fear of rejection in sales can be diminished by (a) knowing that we all experience rejection in various ways, (b) by understanding that a "no" isn't necessarily bad and (c) by investigating the "why" behind the "no." Transcript : Transcript coming soon!…
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Product Launch Rebel
Today's episode highlights the fascinating topic of luck. It explores important questions such as: (1) Do you believe in luck? (2) Have you experienced luck in your life, career or startup? (3) What role does luck play, if any, in a startup? (4) Can luck be created for oneself, or do some people just have more luck than others? Leave a Rating & Review in iTunes for the Product Launch Rebel Podcast Top Takeaways from this Episode: (1) Simply being alive and healthy is, itself, the great foundation of luck. We take much of life and its resources for granted -- and there's so much luck available to us, regardless of our weaknesses or starting point. (2) You have the power to increase your luck in a very simple way. Simply, you can do it by setting a goal. When you set a goal and move towards it, it’s a proven principal that the world delivers more luck to you. Transcript : John Benzick : Greetings, everyone, John Benzick here, welcome once again to the Product Launch Rebel podcast. As always, if you like the podcast, share it with others and post a review on Apple Podcasts. You know, the other day, I was asked to speak on an entrepreneurship panel on the topic of luck and how it relates, if at all, to the notion of successfully starting a business. It was a fascinating topic, so I thought I’d extend the conversation to you guys. During that panel, we were asked questions such as: Do you believe in luck? Have you experienced luck in starting your business? What role does luck play, if any, in a startup? Can luck be created for oneself, or do some people just have more luck than others? As I considered these questions, I expressed that, when intersecting with hard work and perseverence, and luck can be, and often is, a factor in successful startups. Not all of the panel participants felt the same, but Consider that there’s a spectrum of situations that can occur for entrepreneurs; On one end of the spectrum, unprepared or disadvantaged entrepreneurs can succeed with their startups, sometimes wildly, when they are in the right place at the right time for their product to be accepted by the market. A startup can succeed in spite of an entrepreneur’s or even a product’s imperfections. On the other end of the spectrum, we’ve seen very experienced and highly skilled entrepreneurs that have outright failed in their startups, when the hidden market conditions surrounding them conspire against them. Now, of course, one of the key elements of whether or not a startup succeeds is the leader of the startup. But what I’m saying here is that there’s another key driver, and often a more powerful one, which is market timing – which often includes the key element of luck. Not always, but often, the entrepreneur has to be somewhat lucky to correctly time the demand of the market. Even if one is slightly too early, or slightly too late, it could effect their survival. So, despite the level of entrepreneurial skill and persistence, sometimes, luck plays a huge factor. As an example, I read a lot of rock-n-roll biographies, and what I often see is that a lot of famous musicians, especially those from pre-internet days, when they look back at their careers, they claim that luck has played a key role in that success. They were in the right place at the right time when they were discovered, or by pure accident, they were centered in a confluence of trends, bringing them a tidal wave of success, despite their artistic weaknesses. Another example, in business, is if an industry is consolidating, either on the buyer side, or the manufacturer side. Industry maturity and consolidation (i.e. market timing) can have a huge impact on the luck, or success, of a startup. A quick example of this would be the ski and snowboard industry, where the number of retailers have declined dramatically over the years, and the number of retail buyers for those stores have declined accordingly. So these retail store buyers are buying fewer ski brands. So, a new startup trying to sell to these buyers has a harder time getting in the door and proving itself. And to summarize the point on market timing, to some extent, market timing is related to luck. It’s hard for an entrepreneur to know when the timing is right. To be sure, there are ways to test the market, cheaply and quickly, but you can never know with complete certainty. But let’s get back to the broader topic of luck, and that panel that I was on – especially in relation to panelists who felt that luck had little or no role in their success which, to me, was surprising that they felt that way. And to me, there’s a more important thing to consider: As I was listening to the other panelists talk about luck, I realized that the miracle of simply being born healthy, into this world, a world of abundance, particularly in the United States, in this period of history, was extraordinarily lucky, extraordinarily lucky. In other words, luck is all around us, depending on your attitude, gratitude and perspective. Especially since the audience that I was talking to was educated, most of which were born into middle-class families, where food and education and opportunity was at arms length, or even somewhat taken for granted. This is an audience that, more often than not, went on to college, started careers, had access to technology, etc. You know, sometimes we have to step back and take inventory about how lucky we are, how grateful we can be and what we’ve had access to (even if we perceive we don’t have as much as others). There is such richness, related to life in general, including for startups. Sometimes we can become blind, our senses comatose, to the abundance and the true miracles of, and luck, in our lives. Hey, listen, I understand that many people in the U.S. have significantly less than others, and have been exposed to obstacles beyond their control but, by and large, even those individuals, with the right attitude and drive, can create more luck than they think they can. As I think about it, my Dad is a great example of this, which is based on the idea that, even starting with zero, luck is, or the resources for luck, are available: My dad was born on a poor farm where his mom had a debilitating mental illness, and his father was an alcoholic, spending time in jail, and generally not available to the family. My dad hung around the wrong crowd, was once kicked out of high school, never went to college and – to make a long story short, ultimately succeeded financially beyond his wildest dreams in starting and selling two companies. His journey, from less-than-zero to abundance, transformed his life for the better. Incidentally, even with all of his hard work and starting from zero, he has also claimed that luck played a big part in his success. The overall point here is that, in the grand scheme of things, life itself, is truly a miracle, which is to say, luck. This clarity can elude us when we’re healthy and grinding things out day-by-day; but for those that are confronting the final moments of their lives, through illness or whatever, that clarity about the miracle of life is luminous. I mean, think about the resources around you, things that 100+ years ago people would’ve died for: indoor plumbing; clean, accessible water; on-demand digital global communication; indoor heating and air-conditioning; gosh . . . grocery stores plump full of endless options of just the cereal aisle, 20, 40 or 100 options, how many do you need!? So, point is, bringing this back to aspiring entrepreneurs, there is so much, what I would call, luck, out there. If you’re breathing, you’re lucky. If you’re breathing, you’re at a lucky starting point! Hey, I’ve got one other item I’d like to share on how merely being healthy and alive, makes you, foundationally, lucky, and at a useful starting point. The other day, I was watching a news segment about a boy, in middle-school I think it was. He was healthy, but he was born without being able to see color. He could only see in black in white. Seeing in black and white wasn’t unusual for him, because it was all he ever knew. But one day, his classmates surprised him with a wonderful gift, and this was recorded on video. What we saw was his classmates giving him a pair of high-tech glasses that allowed the boy to see color. Before you know it, we see the boy breaking down and weeping from the joy of seeing color for the very first time. In other words – to him – simply seeing color was a miracle. To him, seeing color was a lucky thing to have. So my question for those of you listening to this podcast is, when you wake up every day, open your eyes and see in color, do you get joyfully overwhelmed at how lucky you feel because you can see in color? Are you grateful that you can see color? You aren’t, right?! It’s because it’s become all too familiar. But, really, seeing in color, and many other small things that we now take for granted, are miraculous and therefore, I believe, chock full of luck. Okay, I’ll wrap this up by summarizing two points: (1) Just being alive and healthy is, itself, the great foundation of luck. To highlight this point, imagine looking at the earth from a distance, in outer space, and seeing earth’s richness of life in a broader context, where beyond earth, in dark space, there IS no life – no trees, no grass, no mountains, no air, no lakes, no rivers, no animals, no humans, no friends, no mothers and fathers – just blank lifelessness. Looking at earth from space puts the great fortune of life in perspective. Because to be BORN, and to be a part of this thing called life, is unique and treasurable because, hey, the chances of you, the podcast listener, stepping foot on the earth, for even 10 minutes, that was by pure chance, if you really think about it. But chances are you, now, take that for granted. Whether you live for 2 years, 8 years, 53 years or 107 years, you had the fortunate opportunity to witness, get a good glimpse of life, including all its human-related imperfections. Summary point number two: (2) Importantly, you have the power to increase your luck, beyond that luck foundation, in a very simple way, which is: and this is a simple secret: you can increase your luck by . . . setting a goal. When you set a goal and move towards it, it’s a proven principal that the world delivers more luck to you. When you share your goal with others, some will introduce you to resources that will have luck attached to them – which will advance you. Whether your goal is to find a new job, launch a product, or improve your fitness, you’ll be introduced to people, articles, books, podcasts, etc., where you’ll stumble across chunks of good fortune. So, kick around these thoughts for a bit and, by all means, let me know what you think; I’m super curious. Thanks for listening. (Oh, and if you like the podcast, please, share it on social media, leave a review on Apple podcasts and subscribe to Product Launch Rebel on your favorite podcast channel, or email me through the VentureSuperfly.com website.) Talk with you later.…
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Product Launch Rebel
1 Ep. 054: On Launching a Snowboard Outerwear Company — The Mike West Interview 56:26
56:26
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56:26Hear how Mike West, the founder of 686 Outerwear, launched his snowboard brand just out of college, with no formal design experience. Listen as Mike describes his past mistakes as a “blessing in disguise.” Hear him express the importance of curiosity, listening, and remaining humble, as an entrepreneur. Additionally, Mike encourages aspiring entrepreneurs to not wait for the perfect time to start a business. Leave a Rating & Review in iTunes for the Product Launch Rebel Podcast Top Takeaways from this Episode: (1) To become an entrepreneur, put yourself out there and take a chance; be prepared but don’t aim for perfection. (2) It helps to be a regular customer for the types of products that you’ll sell as an entrepreneur. This helps you understand the needs and desires of your customer base. (3) Starting out, you can do a lot with a little. You don’t need much staff to start a clothing business. Much of what you do can be outsourced to other suppliers and freelancers. (4) Counterintuitively, business challenges and mistakes can be blessings in disguise. Transcript: John Benzick : Oh man, in this terrific episode I interview Mike West, the founder of 686, The Technical Snowboard Outerwear Company. And one of my favorite parts in the interview was when Mike emphasized a key decision point of entrepreneurship, which is the importance of not waiting for the perfect time to start a business, and learning to be comfortable, or courageous enough, to just get started and to take the leap. Mike West : Putting yourself out there, and maybe going out and learning it firsthand is okay. You will never be ready and everything set to go. You have to be ready but you won’t have everything perfect. I would have never been able to be where I’m at without taking a chance. And you will give excuses to yourself about why you can’t do it, but if you want to try it, try it. And if you don’t, it’s fine. It’s not for everyone, believe me. There’s so much pressure right now to be that guy. You don’t need to. But give it a try if you want to. John Benzick : Greetings product launch rebels and welcome to the Product Launch Rebel Podcast, brought to you by venturesuperfly.com, where we help double your entrepreneurial courage, even if you’re in a sea of self-doubt. Please visit the Venture Superfly website and check out the contact page to join our mailing list. John Benzick : Today I’m stoked to interview Mike West, the founder and CEO of 686 Outerwear for snowboarders. He started the brand just out of college with no formal design experience. When you go into many outdoor retailers across the country, you’ll see 686 prominently displayed. In fact, our family is a happy customer of 686. All of my three step kids, even Nadia and Pierce, wear 686 when they’re riding on the slopes, keeping them warm and dry and stylish to boot. John Benzick : Mike also launched Matix Clothing, which is a lifestyle apparel brand stemming from the skateboard and surf culture of Southern California. Mike is a partner in North America’s largest action sports and outdoor warehouse fulfillment center called NRI Distriubtion, where they help distribute leading brands like Electric Eyewear, SurfTech, Outdoor Research, Black Diamond and many others. John Benzick : And finally, later this year, Mike is planning to launch a new direct to consumer apparel brand called Westwell, which will play in the larger menswear and soon womenswear markets. Stay tuned for that. Mike’s a really creative force, that’s for sure. John Benzick : Without further ado, let’s say high to Mike West. Mike, thanks for being here and welcome to the Product Launch Rebel Podcast. Mike West : Thanks, John. Thanks for having me. When you list all those things up, I don’t really realize that things are on my plate, but it’s been a great ride. Whatever I can do to kind of tell my story, I’m pretty stoked to do that. John Benzick : And I listed the abridged version. You’ve got a lot more things going on, I know that. That’s for sure. John Benzick : So Mike, there are three segments in this podcast. The first is called Give Me The Basics, which helps set the context about your companies for our listeners. The second segment is called Let’s Get Personal, where we get into some of the more personal topics about what it’s like to start a business. And the final part is what I call Tell Me How, where we’ll get to the heart of the matter, on issues that aspiring entrepreneurs want to know now, to help move them forward. John Benzick : Mike, what do you think? Are you ready for some questions? Mike West : Let’s do it. John Benzick : Fantastic. All right, here we go. The Back-story of Mike’s Entrepreneurial Journey John Benzick : Mike, let’s start at the beginning. Tell us the story. How did you originally come up with the idea to start 686? Mike West : I think a lot of my ventures and just what I do is really based upon the feeling, the gut feeling, and kind of being the customer myself, right? Back in the day, I grew up in Southern California, my whole culture was based upon skateboarding. Street skateboarding, it was this kind of movement close to Southern California and Venice Beach particularly, where just this uprising like angst and kind of all the things about what we couldn’t do, into just this form of expression in the skateboard. Mike West : I grew up kind of as a sponsored skateboarder. You know, back then, you weren’t looked in the way that you were looked today. People were like, “All those guys on the side, what are they doing? They’re creating trouble.” For me, I was a shy kid. That was my way of actually getting my expression out, so that eventually led me to meeting people, and being in this kind of artist kind of creative culture. That was a part of the mid ’80s, and I transferred that to snowboarding in the local mountains, and became instructor there. Just did that while going to school at the same time. Mike West : That was my foundation of just finding myself, and my hobbies, and things I was just really passionate about. That’s how it all started before I actually started quote unquote business, which I do today. John Benzick : Right. And you started with the outerwear component pretty quickly, right? You didn’t just start with T-shirts or things like that. Mike West : Yeah, more or less, initially I just spoke about it is I didn’t initially have any design experience. I hadn’t gone to school, I learned from someone. What I did, I guess understood, and when you’re young, you really didn’t understand exactly those sets because you didn’t have the tools you have today. You know how to assert eyeing something. When you have an eye like, “I like that, I don’t like that,” and I learned how to maybe communicate that on more of a formatted process. Mike West : When I was going to school, the few things changed me in terms of hey, the instructor told me, “You could actually do something for a career and in aspects you like to do.” It’s something as simple as that today is really hard to understand. You go to a prestigious school back then, you pay a lot of money, and you have to essentially do what maybe your parents were expecting you to do, which is become a professional. That was not necessarily my mindset back then. Mike West : I learned the things I liked to do, which is basically back then was moving, being in the mountains, and thought about how I can center myself around that, and I thought about creating something, and I just did it by a speaker, and he told me to do this and do that. I got into … I actually did create a hat, a beanie, a T-shirt and a pair of jeans first. The second year I went to creating technical apparel because I realized that you can only get so far in protecting yourself from a T-shirt and a hat when you’re in the mountains. How 686 Clothing Got Early Traction John Benzick : Mike, talk a little bit about what was so unique about 686 when you started it. Apparel is such a tough industry. How did you cut through the clutter early on amongst so many outerwear and clothing brands that were out there? Mike West : The interesting thing is we have so much transparency nowadays. Back then, you only knew what was in your little proximity of not even watching your phone, and handling phone. It’s more what you knew locally. I think that’s something that I knew really first-hand because I was the customer. I was really passionate about doing this, and I wanted to hear what people wanted. The first step is let me make something let me get the response directly right then and there and it kind of steamrolled. Mike West : Back then it’s like, “Okay, wow you made something. I like it. Where did you get I?” and you kind of grassroots kind of grow a marketing that way. Then it kind of builts. Back then, the competitive landscape was different. The technical landscape was different. I think when I speak to some people, it’s the right place and the right time, it was the right time in terms of the industry was growing, which I didn’t know. It was mainly by larger companies, but they all started in a similar way. I came from a authentic point of view from where I was, what I was about meaning the city meets the mountain point of view where my initially concept was you can actually use this here and there, meaning you can use it in the streets and in the mountains. It’s very versatile where people kind of appreciate that. It was more this street style. Not high tech, very low tech, but very street oriented. That was kind of my point of view that continued throughout. Mike West : Was that one of my successful points? I think it was one of them, but it was really the right time and the right place with a point of view that made the difference. John Benzick : Just for some context to our listeners, how many products did you have on the outerwear side when you started producing outerwear, meaning that second or third year, did you have two or three jackets and a pair of pants? Did you have more than that? Did you start with less than that? Mike West : Yeah, it was really specific, meaning I made it for myself and my friends. I had a T-shirt, a hat, a beanie, a pair of jeans, and then the outerwear was only an anorak jacket which was really a poor cut boxy 90s cut, which is actually back in today, and this wide pair of shell pants that you just really back then, you just protect yourself from getting wet. It didn’t really protect yourself from being cold. That was the first step. Mike West : Then the next one really was the game changer, I could say, in the brand over the 26+ years is…you know I took a trip outside Southern California to Banff in British Columbia. It was a realism factor that I realized it’s not 40 degrees out and sunny all the time, it was really, really frigid in all aspects. I go, “Wow, you really need to actually have some sort of insulation than pure shell.” I actually got a pair of sweats, put in my pants, and I put my shell over it. I put some Velcro on it and sewed Velcro on my waist pant. Mike West : And they go, “Wow, I can actually wear a pair of sweats and keeps me warm. And then after that, I can actually take my sweatpants and then wear my sweatpants as I’m lounger.” And that really created the next concept which is known today, which is our smarty collection is it’s a convertible three in one system here. And we were really the first ones to create this kind of branded three in one experience. There was another company, Columbia, you know that had that. But it was totally not in my realm. I didn’t know about them back in the day. So I we created this new feature called Smarty which is zip out zip in technology of interchangeable liners, which people related that to all that was a Kleenex or coke moment where like, if you take your liner out, they referred to us as Smarty, which was, you know, very learned later on, it’s a very powerful thing when people can associate not your brand, but other people’s products to what your name is. John Benzick : And with that three in one concept, did that really differentiate you among retail buyers at the time? Did that really sort of get you the traction that you needed? Mike West : Absolutely. I think that you know, like, if anyone starts something, you know that when they asking, “Hey, you know, what do you want to do?” Well, I want to make clothing, “What do you want to sell to?” I want to sell to everyone. You really need to really have a point of view and really have a certain niche in terms of who you want. And that’s what we did is we go, “Hey, this came from a really first person point of view in terms how we discovered this, why related to it.” and then this perceived value of going well, you can actually do more, more than one specific thing, was really powerful. Mike West : And then also we concentrated strictly on pants, not jackets, we didn’t do jackets so many, many years later. So and today, you know, quarter of a century plus later, we’re the leader and no one else does in pants, you know. So that really kind of blossom our company to do other things while we really own one thing. John Benzick : That is really a great little piece to the story. How many employees did you have perhaps in that first year or two? And how many do you have now just for context? Mike West : You know, when people ask that, they kind of have an assumption towards that is, but back in the day, I mean, you had me and a friend, right? And then my first employee but those… when you do that you’re really searching for people you feel like you can trust. not really have the best biggest skill set back then. And then you do everything right? And today, they’re still here. The one that’s been made for almost the same time and he’s still here, he’s the president and I have a couple others been here for over 20 years. And, you know, we all kind of grew up in this realm, and we all really hone our skill set. We have about 20 something people right now. But we’re really tight meaning, you know, we were really efficient. And we do quite a bit for the assumption of people how big we are, but we’re not that big at all. John Benzick : Sure, you can outsource a lot of that stuff nowadays, everything’s so fluid and, and that really helps out as well. And when I started my outerwear company, I was the one employee for a good few years, and we were getting into REI and a lot of semi large retail chains regionally across the US and you can do a lot with a little, especially the more efficient and effective you can get over time over each season. Mike West : Absolutely. Being Honest, Showing Humility and Being Forgiven John Benzick : Mike, most entrepreneurs go into business with a set of assumptions. And many of those assumptions proved to be different from what they expected, thereby making them scramble to make changes in order to survive. If you can think back to the early days, regarding your company’s uniqueness in those early days, did your original assumption about that uniqueness prove motivating to consumers? Or did you discover a different product selling proposition after being in business for a while and getting some customer feedback? Mike West : You know, it’s a little bit of both. We like I said before, we have our point of view, which, you know, in our space, it’s people love this kind of like authentic storytelling, you know process. And I think that, you know, when you’re doing in the early 90s, not knowing what people are really thinking and having this long lead time, you just did it really honest, you know, and I had a lot of humility going, “It’s okay, you can tell your story, you can tell people what you’re doing.” So it was this how it was, I think people began to trust us, by the way of just going, you know, I were at the same level, you’re not coming to me, somewhere else, you’re coming to me just like anyone wanted. And I think that’s a big part of how we were relative to a lot of our customers. Mike West : And, and as we are today, you know, I think we didn’t have any like, we shouldn’t do that, because that’s going to happen. We kind of just did it and in another day, we were forgiven a lot. I had some really great products. And I see that products are actually still used today. But we made a lot of mistakes, too. So that process was forgiven because it was somewhat accepted back then because it wasn’t an quick, you know, the aspect of today and yesterday completely different. Right? It’s completely different. The Personal Side of Entrepreneurship John Benzick : Sure. Mike, let’s get personal on a few topics. Many aspiring entrepreneurs don’t know what they don’t know. I certainly...…
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Product Launch Rebel
1 Ep. 053: On Launching a Smartphone Accessory Brand — The David Barnett Interview 32:07
32:07
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32:07Hear how David Barnett, the founder of PopSockets, evolved from philosophy professor to entrepreneur, and quickly grew his smartphone accessory company to 40 million units sold in his fourth year. Listen as he describes how employing “the power of reason” became a key to his success. Learn how his early product assumptions changed based on customer feedback — thereby leading to crucial new product and marketing strategies. Additionally, hear how he overcame early manufacturing challenges to finally achieve massive success. Leave a Rating & Review in iTunes for the Product Launch Rebel Podcast Top Takeaways from this Episode : (1) Don’t defer to the norm. Don’t defer to what most companies do. Don’t defer to general rules of thumb about how to start a business. Think through every problem on your own. Weigh the pros and cons and reason through it. It will bring you success. (2) We have an amazing opportunity here in the United States that most people in the rest of the world just don’t have — opportunities to start our own business. (3) Do not quit your job or quit school to become an entrepreneur, unless you have good reason to think your idea will be successful. Transcript: John Benzick : You know, one of the great things about my role interviewing entrepreneurs is that I get to hear so many diverse perspectives and advice on how to best launch a business; and as a result you’ll learn that there’s just not one or two or even three ways to succeed as an entrepreneur. There are many ways, many different ways to succeed. But the challenging part is that the advice I hear from one entrepreneur for example, can very often conflict with another entrepreneur’s point of view on a particular topic. And so it’s interesting to hear in this interview with David Barnett, the founder of Pop Sockets, how he uses the power of reason to sort through the noise and advice that he gets when he needs to make effective, crucial decisions. As a new entrepreneur who’s struggling to find his way. David Barnett : They’ve actually learned that the power of clear thinking, I just have more and more confidence that people should not be deferring to the norm. Don’t defer to what most companies do. Don’t defer to what, what’s normal out there in business. Don’t defer to general rules of thumb about how to start a business. Think through every problem on your own, you know, weigh the pros and cons, really reason through it. It will bring you success. So it’s helped a lot that I paid no attention to someone’s background or when somebody says I’m an authority on this. To me, I didn’t even hear that until they give an actual reason for making a decision one way or another, it’s not going to have any impact on me. So the power of reason, I guess, is quite powerful and in business. John Benzick : Today I’m interviewing David Barnett. He’s the founder and CEO of pop sockets. If you don’t know about Pop Sockets, the offer very clever smartphone accessories. My family has been using them for an a of years now and I’ve had my own custom made venture superfly branded Pop Socket as well, which is super cool. David officially started pop sockets in 2014 and now in 2018 he has sold over 40 million pop sockets worldwide. 40 million. This will be a terrific interview to learn about David’s journey as a new entrepreneur, especially since his previous career, at least on paper, was drastically unrelated to his new trajectory as a business owner. To learn more about his company, visit pop sockets.com David, thanks for being here and welcome to the Product Launch Rebel podcast. David Barnett : Thanks John. It’s super cool to be here. John Benzick : Oh, I’m super excited. So David, there are three segments in this podcast. The first is called, give me the basics, which helps set the context about your company for our listeners. The second part is called let’s get personal or we get into some of the more personal topics about what it’s like to start a business. And the final part is what I call tell me how well we get to the heart of the matter on issues that aspiring entrepreneurs want to know now to help them move forward. David, what do you think? Are you ready for some questions? David Barnett : I’m ready. Hit me. John Benzick : All right, fantastic. Here we go. David, tell us the story. How did you originally come up with the idea to start Pop Sockets? David Barnett : Sure, in 2010 when I was a philosophy professor at the University of Colorado, I was tired of pulling my headset out of my pocket and having it be tangled. So my ear buds that I would use every time I made a phone call on my iPhone three back then, they were always tangled and out of frustration one day when I pulled them out, tangle that just hopped in my car and drove down to the nearest Joann Fabric in Boulder to look for a solution. So I walked around the aisles and eventually settled on a couple of really small buttons and a couple of really big buttons about one and a half inch diameter, the big ones. So the small ones separated the big ones from the backside of my phone. And then I used those two giant buttons to wrap my, my earbuds around the backside of my phone to keep them from tangling. John Benzick : That’s really cool. Were these just regular apparel clothing buttons? David Barnett : Yes, they were giant apparel clothing buttons. So if you can imagine the iPhone three is, was just tiny compared to today’s phones. So these, these buttons cover the entire backside of the phone, the two buttons together. And I like how you said, that’s very cool. You’re the only one who would say that, everybody around me thought it was ridiculous. So, so from there, actually that’s the transition into Pop Sockets. So from there, I just build the solution for myself. I had no intentions of commercializing it until enough friends and family made fun of me to the point where I decided to try to improve, improve this and make it have more functionality and look less ridiculous. So I went through a bunch of different mechanisms and settled on the accordion mechanism, which is the patented magic of the, the Pop Sockets. And I spent well over a year miniaturizing the, the accordions that you see in kitchen stores, like the giant funnels and bowls that collapse through that accordion mechanism. Right. Took me a long time to, to scale that down to the size of a popsocket. You can’t just shrink it. So a lot of work and then launched the business in 2014. John Benzick : Yeah, that’s amazing. How many retailer doors do you sell to now and what channels do you sell through? David Barnett : We’re in about 40,000 doors worldwide. As far as channels we are in the wireless carrier channel, so At&T, Verizon, Sprint, and other carriers. We are in a big box with Best Buy, Target and Walmart, then we’re in quite a few mid tier chains. Geez, I can’t, I can’t name them all, but for example, it’d be Tillys or Michael’s and then we’re in thousands and thousands of independent stores. So boutiques this is just domestically and we try our best to give a unique offering to each of those channels so they’re not all selling the same, the same Pop Sockets. And overseas we’re in about 45 countries in roughly similar channels. John Benzick : That is astonishing growth in such a short amount of time, especially from a guy that’s never launched a business before. David, most entrepreneurs go into business with a set of assumptions and many of those assumptions prove to be different from what they expected there by making them scramble to make changes in order to survive. Regarding pop sockets, uniqueness, did your original assumption about that uniqueness prove motivating to consumers or did you have to change your selling proposition to sort of match what they were looking for? David Barnett : So yeah, my original assumptions were false. I was lucky enough to learn early on, which is some key assumptions that were false because I was, I was still teaching at the University of Colorado, so I was able to get some early cases into their hands. The first Pop Socket product was an iPhone four case actually. Then it turned, it turned out by the fine. By the time I got to production, I think it was an iPhone five case, it had two Pop Sockets that collapsed flush with the backside of the case and it was, it was designed to make the headset, headset wrap, just perfect at the cost of a perfect grip or a perfect stand. And I noticed pretty quickly that while all my students said they’d love to wrap their headset around these every day when I put them in their hands, that’s not what they were doing. David Barnett : They made me, one of them was actually using it for the headset wrap, but they were all using it for the grip and the grips were not in the ideal place. One was on the top and one was on the bottom. Really you want the grip toward the middle of the phone. And I learned this before I went to market. So I started tinkering with what the standalone Pop Socket that allows the consumer to put it wherever they want on their phone for the best grip location. And it’s been the real hit of the business. So had I not learned that lesson from my students, I could have launched at retail with, with the two Pop Socket cases and it probably would have flopped. And then I learned some other things in, in, you know, once we did launch, we launched slowly first in the couple independent stores, one on Pearl Street here in Boulder. David Barnett : And I would sit and watch customers interact with our display and our product. And when we originally launched, it was two of these individual pop sockets. So we sold them in pairs and it, it just didn’t make much sense to the consumer. So I’d see them go up, they look at the packaging, they’d get confused, why would they want to, wasn’t a good explanation. So we, we started selling them just individually as, as singles with a hand drawn on the packaging to let consumers know that it was a grip for a phone. So a drawing of a hand with a phone with a pop sock and on it and the sales quintupled. I mean they just went through the roof as soon as we switched and started selling singles with the right packaging. John Benzick : Amazing. So David, let’s get personal on a few topics. Did you ever aspire to be an entrepreneur or did you ever foresee that in your future back when you started this or before? David Barnett : So yes, I had thought of myself as pursuing a career as an entrepreneur as a child. Actually when I was age 10 to 16 my neighbors called me Ross Perot, he was a famous entrepreneur who ran for president a long time ago. And that was my nickname because I had so many businesses as a kid, I was always, always trying to sell something, sell a service. I’d made mixed tapes that I sold to the my peers at school, at lawn bowling businesses. I got jobs at restaurants when I was 12 and 14. Got, got the restaurants in trouble with the Labor Department for working there. So yeah, I was a hustler as a kid, so I always thought I’d be a businessman. And then I sort of got distracted by the world of ideas and academia for 15 or so years and became a professor and then got back to back to my roots as an entrepreneur. John Benzick : What planted the seed for that entrepreneurial moxie? David Barnett : Gosh, you know, I have to say, I think it’s something genetic. I think everybody has a little of it, right? Humans just like they projects, so we get bored easily. We like to complete projects. There’s something satisfying about that. And then, you know, when you look around at whatever society you’re in, you look at the opportunity for, for these projects and in the, in the United States, we’re fortunate enough to have the opportunity to be entrepreneurs. I mean an amazing opportunity here in the United States that the most people in the rest of the world just don’t have. And I think as a kid, I dunno, I noticed that that was one of the obvious opportunities as far as developing interesting, stimulating projects and, and then seeing the success from it. John Benzick : Many aspiring entrepreneurs, David don’t know what they don’t know before starting a business. They’re sort of unconsciously incompetent in certain areas, not as prepared as they thought they should be in starting a business. Before you started Pop Sockets, to what extent were your previous career skills and knowledge aligned with your task of launching this type of company? Let’s say on a scale of one to 10 10 being very aligned, how well did your previous skills and knowledge fit with your new startup? David Barnett : Oh, I’d have to say a seven or an eight. I mean, on paper it looks like a horrible match. I was a philosophy professor, so I had zero business experience. But philosophy is just clear thinking. So what more could you want going into business and being an entrepreneur, especially where you have to be able to, to learn various subject matter, you have to be able to learn finance quickly, marketing, sales, operations, supply chain, manufacturing, engineering you’ve got to figure that stuff out on your own, which is just problem solving, right? Sure. so philosophy really prepared me well for that. To be able to, to address new subject matter and master it even if I don’t master it as well as the experts, at least enough to know, you know, what kind of people I eventually need to hire. And so on. My main weakness was, was lack of actual experience with, with these topics, especially supply chain and operations and hiring, right? David Barnett : Hiring people you can think as clearly as you want, but if you don’t have experience hiring people, you don’t really know what’s out there. And, and you know what you can expect how many people that interview before you know, what’s, what the market has. You just have no idea. And so hiring was really difficult for me. The first year or two I was hiring. Well, I fortunately didn’t have the choice to hire, hire top notch people because I didn’t have the money to do it, but still I was hiring people with absolutely no experience and it made it really difficult. Moving forward, John Benzick : What’s the number one lesson you’ve learned since starting the company? David Barnett : Directly related to the last point. It’s people, people, people. So one number one lesson I’ve learned is it’s all about the people. Surround yourself with really good people for what your business is, what you need, and your chances of of success just explode. John Benzick : Do you have any regrets in behaviors or decisions early in your entrepreneurial journey? A lot of successful entrepreneurs have had regrets even though they’re successful. Have you had any of those regrets in any ways that you would have changed your behaviors or decisions in the past? David Barnett : Sure, I’ve made plenty of mistakes. It’s hard to say whether I would have changed it cause they were all learning lessons for me. And maybe they were good in the end overall because I learned a lesson and it became strong report and, and took the business in a direction that I wouldn’t otherwise have without that severe mistake. But some big mistakes I made were, Jeez, not finding a, not surrounding myself with experts early on, not immersing myself in the community here in boulder of of startups and other entrepreneurs so that I could share it, share experiences with them and learn from them. Had I done that, I think I would have avoided contracting with the wrong factories again and again, having tens of thousands of defective product again and again. All that pain I experienced could’ve been avoided had I made the right connections and develop the right relationships in the community early on. David Barnett : That’s one big mistake. And then another one was just various partnerships. A couple of partnerships I’ve made. I was too eager to enter into partnerships because I had a lack of experience and it’s really easy when somebody approaches you and says, you know, I’m an expert, just I’m going to take you under my wing and everything’s going to be okay. It’s just often not the case, right? These sorts of partnerships that entrepreneurs enter into early on because it’s much easier to say to license your product to a big company or to have some big group come in and run a sales department or a marketing department. It sounds really appealing because it takes the pressure off of off of you, but there’s, there’s risks of the risks in doing that. So I’d caution against being against jumping into any such relationship. John Benzick : We alluded to this earlier, David, but starting a business is pretty unusual and so I want to get down deep a little bit more to understand your motivations to be an entrepreneur. A lot of people just talk about starting a business, but they never actually start one. Do you think you’re a creator at heart? Do you have a need to express something that ends up being in a certain medium, in a certain way, such as the...…
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Product Launch Rebel
1 Ep. 052: On Launching a Performance Apparel Brand — The Joe Kudla Interview 46:32
46:32
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46:32Hear this new episode where John interviews entrepreneur Joe Kudla, the founder of Vuori Clothing. Listen as Joe uses fear as an opportunity to grow professionally and personally. Learn how Joe raised capital for his startup, who has influenced him the most as a business owner, and what has brought him the most joy -- and frustration -- since starting his company. Leave a Rating & Review in iTunes for the Product Launch Rebel Podcast Top Takeaways from this Episode : (1) Experiencing fear could be a way to identify where you need to grow, either personally or professionally. Let fear be a guide, not a burden. (2) Lacking experience, in your startup, can often be a curse -- but it also has its benefits. (3) It's amazing what you can accomplish when you rid yourself of ego, and trust people with their expertise. Transcript: John Benzick : In today's interview, I talk with Joe Kudla the founder of Vuori, a hot new clothing brand out of southern California. You'll hear Joe talk about his joys and frustrations of being an apparel entrepreneur along with key advice on all aspects of launching a startup. One of the key lessons revealed in the interview was how Joe uses fear to his advantage, which is in contrast to how most of us experience fear, which is unfortunately a barrier to our own personal and professional advancement. Joe Kudla : I've always enjoyed that kind of risk versus reward relationship, and I've never been afraid of taking a risk and falling on my face. And I guess if I was to say anything, it's to let fear sometimes guide you and for me, if I'm afraid of something, I'm typically drawn to it. So the idea of going out and getting in over my head or you know, taking a public speaking engagement or talking on a podcast. Sometimes it can be a little scary, but I try to use that as a beacon to know that I need to walk through that door if I want to grow as a human being, and I think that that has served me well in entrepreneurship. John Benzick : Greetings Product Launch Rebels and welcome to the Product Launch Rebel podcast brought to you by VentureSuperfly.com where we help double your entrepreneurial courage, even if you don't know what you're doing, please visit the Venture Superfly website and check out the contact page to join our mailing list. Bear with me today as I'm trying to recover from a cold. As you might hear my voice by won't let that hold me back with my excitement because today I'm interviewing Joe Kudla. He's the founder and CEO of a clothing brand called Vuori clothing based in Encinitas, California. The brand has sort of a west coast vibe, but with definite and smart technical elements. Joe Distributes his brand through leading retailers, including REI and Core Power Yoga. Additionally, Joe has an interesting background. He grew up in avid multisport athlete. He attended the University of San Diego and a model traveling the world for major fashion brands. Then was a CPA for Ernst and Young and even started and grew a successful professional staffing company. This'll be an inspiring interview to learn more about Joe's startup journey and to learn more about Joe's company, visit the Vuoriclothing.com; that's V, U, O, R, I clothing.com. In fact, Joe has kindly offered a 25% discount on any item at the company's website when you enter the Promo Code "Rebel 25" so be sure to do that as soon as possible. Hello, Joe, thanks for being here, and welcome to the Product Launch Rebel podcast. Joe Kudla : Thanks so much for having me, John. I'm excited to be on the phone. John Benzick : Oh man, I'm excited. That's for sure. So Joe, within this podcast there are three segments. The first is called, give me the basics, which helps set the context about your company for our listeners. The second part is let's get personal where we get into some of the more personal topics about what it's like to start a business. And the final part, Joe, is what I call tell me how where we'll get to the heart of the matter on issues that aspiring entrepreneurs want to know now to help them move forward. Joe, what do you think? Are you ready for some questions? Joe Kudla : Let's do it. John Benzick : All right, here we go. This'll be great. So Joe, tell us the story. How did you originally come up with the idea to start? Vuori clothing. Joe Kudla : So I started Vuori really out of identifying a personal need. You probably hear that from a lot of guests on your show. But I was a competitive athlete growing up, played primarily physical sports, grew up playing football and lacrosse and played lacrosse in college at University of San Diego and pretty much just beat up my body. I had suffered from a lot of back pain and about 10 years ago, a good friend of mine suggested that I try yoga and I did. And I ended up falling in love with the practice. It was really one of the first restorative things I'd ever done for my body. And the first question I asked after a couple months of practicing was what does a guy wear to yoga class? And at the time, there just really weren't a lot of options out there. Lulu Lemon was definitely making a push into this space. They were really focused on the female consumer and there just weren't a lot of options out there for guys like me. And so that, that was really the Aha moment was, man, there's a lot of guys practicing yoga these days and you know, the mainstream athletic brands weren't really speaking to that guy. We were wearing a lot of board shorts to go practice yoga in and they were great from some, from some standpoints, you know, they moved well, but they weren't really designed to stretch and sweat in. And so we just saw this opportunity that was kind of originally inspired by Yoga but really extended into this kind of lifestyle that we were living here in Encinitas. And that was, gosh, long time ago. John Benzick : So Joe, I think I told you that I used to own a soft goods company myself. And so I know that the clothing industry is just so really incredibly competitive. And so tell me about what's so unique about the Vuori. How did you cut through the clutter among so many apparel companies out there? Joe Kudla : I'm glad you brought that up because I'd always dreamt of being in the apparel business. I loved creating products. I love design. And so I had invested in and kind of by by default become a part of the management team of, to start up apparel companies before Vuori. And both of them were great learning experiences. But you know, I'm not doing those, those companies today. And so you can imagine how those ended. But with Vuori, you know, we really felt strongly about the needs that existed in the marketplace. If you think about what was happening in our country, people are getting more and more health conscious and yoga participation is exploding. You know, when we were doing our research before we started the brand, there were 17 million people practicing yoga in the United States and 30% of those were men. And if you compare that, that's about, you know, spread around 6 million guys. And if you compare that to the number of people that surf in the United States, there's only 2 million people that surf. And so you think about all the different surf brands out there going after those 2 million guys. We felt like this was just a wide open space. And so you know that that's where we got a lot of confidence from a market standpoint. But then when you think about specifically what we wanted to do within the category is, you know, we're from the beaches of southern California and we wanted to build product that first and foremost was built with the best quality performance materials, have a saleable product that was moisture wicking, quick drying at great stretch was built with incredible seam construction. So it would last and but the difference where I think that a lot of the brands kind of worked delivering is we wanted to build our product with an aesthetic that would effortlessly transition into everyday life and are in the women's active wear market. They call that studio to street. And so that's really kind of the force that's been propelling the active wear market on the, on the women's side of the business. But we felt like on the men's side of that, the men's side of the business that was really missing. And so we wanted to deliver on that brand promise. And I feel like we've been effective in doing that, which I think is part of the reason why we've gotten out of the gates with such a fast start. It really seems like a great idea from which to start. John Benzick : And it's great to hear that you were in the apparel business to some extent before you started your business. So you didn't go into the business sort of being blind to all of the challenges. Joe Kudla : I went in with a little, a little bit of insight. However, knowing now what I know have been through the last four years of growth at Vuori, I really didn't know much. And I think that that's a blessing and a curse in entrepreneurship having, you know, let's say I worked as a designer at Xyz company and I only saw a little corner of the page, I probably would be scared about trying to step in and and run an apparel business knowing all of the moving parts. And all of the different roles and responsibilities that it takes to execute on a successful brand. However, being a little bit naive, you know, I wasn't afraid to take that first step and kind of learn as I went. And so I had a little glimpse into the space. But having been through what I've been through, I know now that there was a lot more to it. John Benzick : Sure. And I indicated early in the introduction what types of retailers you sell to, but tell us a little bit more about the retailers that you sell to now. Joe Kudla : In a nutshell, when we first launched the business, we were focused on point of participation, which is what we call places where people use the product for its intended end use. That's yoga studios and gyms primarily. And so Core Power Yoga was an early partner of ours and we sold to a lot of independent yoga studios and gyms. But in our second year of business REI gave us a call and asked if we would want to be a part of a small 10 door test. It was a men's fitness incubator program. And we felt like we had won the lottery. We were, you know, frightened by it, but we were very excited at the same time and we participated and it turned out Vuori was one of the top performing brands in that test and they grew us from 10 doors to 70 doors. And we maintained our kind of top spot as one of the top performing men's fitness brands. And then we grew from 77 doors to all doors. And we maintain that. We have a great relationship with REI. We're doing very well there and very excited to be launching a women's business with them as well. So from a wholesale standpoint, you know, REI and Core Power, big anchors of ours but we're sold through 650 wholesale doors across the country. And one of the things that we did a little bit differently when we built our brand, you know, as we were forced to build a direct relationship with our customer, the wholesalers weren't a hundred percent sure about the men's fitness category. Men's fitness historically in our country has been dominated by big box retailers like Dick's Sporting Goods, Sports Authority, Sports Chalet, and a lot of those guys were in a race for the bottom. So the quality, you know, in that channel wasn't necessarily kind of the type of quality that we're building. Lulu Lemon came in and really changed all of that, but your wholesalers in fashion, in the outdoor industry. In Surf, they, they weren't really paying much attention to the active apparel market. And so when we launched and we came to these guys with a bunch of samples, they weren't really ready for it. So we were forced to pivot and really build a direct relationship with our customer. And I'm really grateful that that happened because now our website is our single largest point of distribution for the business and it's a really healthy place to be. And we really love our ecommerce business from a wholesale standpoint. We really positioned the product so that we could sit and be authentic within five different points of distribution. So we've got the point of participation, which I mentioned. We also sell in a lot of fashion accounts like Nordstrom for example. And then we've got the outdoor industry with REI leading the charge and a lot of outdoor specialty. And then we've got fitness, which you know, the fitness industry is, you know, we define as as like sporting goods. We also lump running specialty into that category and then we've got resort. And so with, within all of these Vuori can sit and decide to be selective and only sell to the best dealers within these five channels. And that's a really healthy place to be. It's a place that we want to be so we don't have to sign up maybe the down channel retailers for growth because we're growing our business direct and we get to be selective and pick the best partners in the wholesale channel. John Benzick : When you started out, how difficult was it to choose the type of products and the scope of products when you started and how is that product line expanded at this stage? Joe Kudla : That's a great question. You know, when we launched our first entrance to the market was through men's shorts because our feeling was if you go to a yoga class, I mean half the guys in yoga classes aren't even wearing shirts, but every guy has got a pair of shorts on at least. Hopefully, and so we looked at the men's shorts category as an opportunity to come in and do something really cool, especially with our background in surfing and you know, living this west coast beach lifestyle, we thought we could do something cool by introducing, you know, unique prints and cool colors, stories and making shorts that were really wearable that you could wear to a gym or a yoga class, but would also look great on Saturdays walking your dog or going to the farmer's market or meeting a friend for a drink at a bar. And so shorts was really our entrance to the market and that's where we put a lot of energy. And then once we got people into the brand and they loved our shorts, we had the opportunity to kind of introduce different products to them. Was that the right decision to start with the shorts? It was I mean my, I think tha I still to this day shorts represent a large percentage of our sales and I think that's where a lot of people kind of enter the brand is through our shorts. But it's really exciting for us now because now we're offering, you know, kind of this whole technical sportswear offering where you know, we have pants that you can wear on the golf or where did the office or where on your on your bike riding and riding to work in the morning. You know, we're getting into some wovens and buttoned down shirts and stuff that you wouldn't necessarily wear to the gym, but they're infused with that same performance lifestyle aesthetic that we've gotten known for sure. John Benzick : Since we're talking to a lot of aspiring entrepreneurs right now that are listening to this podcast, I like to give them sort of a context. When these companies like yours start out, how many employees did you have starting out maybe in that first six months or a year? And how many employees do you have? Joe Kudla : So there were two of us when we started. It was myself and our head of marketing who is still with us today. She's been an integral partner of mine from the beginning. And today we're just approaching 20 employees. John Benzick : That is really astonishing. Great work, Joe. Most entrepreneurs go into business with a set of assumptions and many of those assumptions prove to be different or wrong from what they expected, thereby making them scramble to make changes in order to survive. Regarding Vuori's uniqueness, that sort of yoga angle tied in with some of west coast lifestyle, did your original assumption about the uniqueness prove motivating to consumers or did you discover a slightly different selling proposition after being in business for awhile and getting some customer feedback? Joe Kudla : It's a great question. When we launched the brand, we made an assumption that we could build it or at least get out of the gates by selling to the yoga studio marketplace. There were a lot of women's brands that were launching and having a lot of success within yoga studios. And we thought, well, 30% of the audience is men's by selling in this at this point of distribution, we have a great opportunity to at least build a foundation which we can grow upon. And that assumption was unfortunately wrong. We sold into some of the better yoga studios in the country sell through was, you know, okay. It wasn't, it wasn't anything that we were ultimately super scared about, but it wasn't time. The inventory wasn't turning at a pace that it needed to in order for us to really build a sustainable business. And so we knew we had to pivot. And so at that time we were launching a b to c business. We're selling on our website. And a lot of the marketing and advertising that we were doing through social channels was really targeted towards men's yoga. The original inspiration for the brand. What we found through that experience was that men maybe don't identify as identify themselves as Yogis, like a say a woman would. And so we did a lot of testing. At one point we sent a survey out to all of the customers that had purchased from us and we asked them, what do you like about the product? What do you not like, what other brands are you wearing? What do you use the product for? You know, and what was really is we thought for sure based on all of our brand communications being targeted towards yoga and men's Yoga, we thought for sure yoga would be the number one or at least number two activity that people were using the product for. But what we found out was that yoga was like number five. Number one was running. Number two was training. I think even like walking the dog was ahead of yoga. And so we recognized early on that there was a great product market fit, but we were communicating the end use wrong. And so we made some pivots in our brand communications in our...…
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Product Launch Rebel
1 Ep. 051: On Launching a Tea Company — The Jim Lamancusa Interview 41:01
41:01
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41:01Hear this inspiring interview of Jim Lamancusa, the founder of Cusa Tea company. Listen as he describes the joys of starting the world’s first “premium instant tea” brand, along with his advice on partnering with a manufacturer, selling to retailers, proper price strategy and overcoming bouts of self doubt. Leave a Rating & Review in iTunes for the Product Launch Rebel Podcast Transcript: Transcript will be posted within 24 hours.…
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Product Launch Rebel
1 Ep. 050: On Launching an Innovative Bedding Company — The Eugene Alletto Interview 1:03:58
1:03:58
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1:03:58Hear the spectacular entrepreneur journey of Eugene Alletto, the Founder of Bedgear, a performance bedding company. Learn how overcoming the loss of his father as a teenager, in large part, drove him to eventually succeed as an innovator and business owner. Listen as he shares his wisdom on the topics of perseverance, resilience and utilizing your strengths to overcome life’s obstacles. Leave a Rating & Review in iTunes for the Product Launch Rebel Podcast Top Takeaways From This Episode: (1) You can teach yourself to not be a victim of your circumstances. Successful entrepreneurs have a key trait of not taking on a victim mentality. (2) “Being an entrepreneur is not something that you can say you are. Being an entrepreneur is something you become. I had no idea. I wasn’t born to be an entrepreneur.” (3) “Part of being an entrepreneur is learning every day. And if you’re not learning, you’re not growing personally. And if you’re not growing personally, you can’t grow professionally.” (4) If you aim your mind towards things that you’re passionate about, you can become a great learner. And learning can deliver you success. Transcript: John Benzick : This episode of Product Launch Rebel features Eugene Alletto, the founder of Bed Gear. I walked away from the interview feeling inspired by a guy who became really transformed by entrepreneurship and by following his vision of a better bedding company. This is a guy who had lost one of his parents at a very young age and at face value, didn’t have anything special to offer; not being particularly good at schoolwork, not being a great athlete, having bad skin, a bad haircut, and as he describes — lacking confidence as a young man — not being one of those “chosen ones” within his peer group. But as you will hear in this episode, you’ll see how starting a business built his confidence in not just his career, but other areas of life. A value packed episode is in store for you as you hear an entrepreneur’s story about persistence, pursuing what you’re good at and passionate about, and learning that you’re capable, and not a victim, of your poor circumstances. Eugene Alletto : Just the ability to just move on and not not get pissed off at what you’re not good at, or not get pissed off at circumstances, or not get angry when someone says no to you and blame it on somebody else is really, I think from an entrepreneur’s perspective, the people I meet that start businesses and are successful entrepreneurs and are happy are ones that are not victims and it’s really an lesson — and I think it’s something you can even teach yourself. John Benzick : Greetings, Product Launch Rebels and welcome to the Product Launch Rebel podcast brought to you by VentureSuperfly.com where we help double your entrepreneurial courage, even if you don’t know what you’re doing. Please visit the Venture Superfly website and check out the contact page to join our mailing list. Today I’m excited to interview Eugene Alletto. He’s the founder and CEO of a super cool bedding product company called Bed Gear. I met him at the massive Las Vegas Market furniture trade show and I was blown away by the smart products his company is offering, which includes some really high tech mattresses, pillows and sleep related products. In fact, as I was walking through Bed Gear’s showroom, I thought that if Nike got involved in the bedding industry, this is the type of stuff they’d be doing, Bed Gear has done a great job of applying the concept of performance to bedding, applying things like their Air Tex, Dry Tech and Vertex technologies. To learn more about Eugene’s company, visit BedGear.com. Hey Eugene, thanks for being here and welcome to the Product Launch Rebel podcast. Eugene Alletto : My pleasure and look forward to spending the rest of the next 30 or so minutes with you. John Benzick : Oh man, it’s going to be great. So Eugene, within this podcast there are three segments. The first is called give me the basics, which helps set the context about your company for our listeners. The second part is let’s get personal or we get into some of the more personal topics about what it’s like to start a business. And the final part is what I call tell me how where we’ll get to the heart of the matter on issues that aspiring entrepreneurs want to know now to help them move forward. Eugene, what do you think? Are you ready for some questions? Eugene Alletto : I am. How Bed Gear Started John Benzick : All right, fantastic. Here we go. Eugene, tell us the story. How did you originally come up with the idea to start Bed Gear. Eugene Alletto : The Bed Gear idea really morphed over time, both the name and the product assortment. The part that really is interesting is like you’ll hear in most entrepreneur stories. Solving a problem is typically what what we see as entrepreneurs. And that’s where this becomes interesting. We had a son who was suffering from allergies. He’s now 20 and this was when he was around six, seven years old. And we were told by the doctor to go to the surgical supplies store, which probably don’t exist today because of the Internet, and pick up a vinyl mattress protector to encase the mattress so that we could eliminate the dust mites from his room. While we were successful in eliminating the dust mites, however, when he would wake up, we would notice that he was waking up in a pool of sweat cause you can imagine sleeping on a piece of vinyl with our body temperature being at the level that they are, you’re going to wind up taking that heat and transferring it into moisture. Eugene Alletto : So he really had a tremendous amount of restless sleep. Even though we solved one problem, we created another. And looking around an industry that I’m aware of because of my background, I’ve been in home furnishings for many years. I realized that there was nothing being manufactured that would be breathable, yet still secure the need for reducing allergens in your bedding. And that’s really where the idea came from. It was a far cry from what it is today in terms of what we’ve discovered along this journey. However, that was the solution and the problem solving that we were looking to accomplishment when we first started with our very first product, which was a mattress protector. How Bed Gear Differentiated Itself from Other Products John Benzick : Eugene, the bedding industry is so competitive. And so tell me, what’s unique about Bed Gear and how did you cut through the clutter among so many bedding products in those early days? Eugene Alletto : Very, very difficult. In fact, the frustration for me, and I’m sure for many entrepreneurs, is just how do you get that traction? How do you get the white space or the opportunity is really the easy part. The hardest part is actually getting people to believe in your vision and see that there’s a need for this product or an idea that you may have. So what I innately did based off of my journey I’ve been on is I realized that you needed to go talk to somebody that could actually sell your idea in volume. And so I had gone to a company called Sleepy’s, which was a large bedding manufacturer retailer in the northeast. They had at the time, they had a couple of hundred stores and they did lots of business. And I was able to work directly with ownership and management there. Eugene Alletto : Both our companies were based on Long Island, New York, and I shared with them the story. I explained to them the value that this would bring to consumers. And I was able to get the product on the floor. And within a very short period of time of going to the stores and sharing that story, even with the sales associates on the floor, we were able to get some really good sell through. And I’ll tell you just to add a little piece of what you talk about in terms of clutter. What really made us unique and different was the value proposition wasn’t just the fact that we were able to have moisture wicking airflow and still maintain if you have allergies. Not Everybody has allergies. So the product became wildly successful because it was something that was health and wellness related to the customer. Eugene Alletto : The clutter that you speak about is that the category that we started in was filled with many, many people that were manufacturing products to protect the mattress. However, most people don’t even want to spend money on a mattress. The last thing they want to do is spend money protecting it. So we didn’t know this, but what we found throughout the next several years is what built our company and brand promise was that we focused more on what’s going to be good for you as a consumer, not what’s good for mattress. And most of, even to this day, most people that sell mattress protectors are there to protect the mattress. And what we build is a product that protects you but also helps you get better night and healthy nights sleeps. So it really was the sales process as much as it was the, the product itself. John Benzick : How many retailer doors do you sell to now and what types of retailers do you sell to? Eugene Alletto : So we’re currently in over 450 furniture and bedding retailers. The other big decision we made was how to distribute this product. We recognized it was really important to have a store that’s got what’s called self-guided. So going into a mass merchant where there are no salespeople, there’s no sales support, you have to navigate yourself. We chose to go to a place where consumers go to buy their mattresses and at that time have a product that would be presented to you by a professional salesperson explaining the benefits and features. And it really is what propelled us to where we now have brand awareness with, with professional athletes, to doctors, to bus drivers to firemen and policemen. So we’ve become a brand, not because of going to the mass merchants and hoping that the consumer finds it. Eugene Alletto : It was really more of a recommendation while you were purchasing a new mattress through your sales associate. So stores like a Raymour and Flanigan or Hom Furniture in Minnesota or The Brick in Canada. And now the beauty of it is we’re a global brand, we’re in multiple countries doing the same thing that we’ve done here in America. We’re in Russia, we’re in China, we just launched in Thailand. The beauty of it is as we get more into this interview, we are no longer a one product company. We are an entire assortment of products that all support the same brand promise. So we’re actually having stores being built. We have both freestanding stores in countries I just mentioned. However, here in America we now have in store galleries. So you can walk into like Nebraska Furniture Mart in Dallas or Kansas City or Omaha, Nebraska, and you’ll see a destination, a small version of what you had seen when you came into the Las Vegas showroom. Eugene Alletto : We’re in Art Van furniture. There is a hundred of those stores in the midwest or Raymour and Flanigan’s in the northeast. And so what’s interesting is what helped America start to do these types of stores, these stores within a store concept, these popups as as they’re called today, is actually our international business. When the international buyers and owners came into our showroom and they saw this incredible brand of performance around the bedding category, they said, we want this, and I thought they wanted our product, but they said, no, we want the brand. This is an iconic American brand and we want to put these in an independent stores associated with our brands throughout the country, so we’ll have over 350 stores in China within the next three years. We’re already up to 35 and only a few months, 16 in Thailand we’ll have over 300 stores in Russia. We already have I think it’s 72 to date when the American companies saw what was happening with our brand globally. That’s what finally helped me to develop this in store experience that would really differentiate both our product as well as the retailer. So it’s an amazing journey. Progressing from Few Employees to Many John Benzick : Eugene, just to give our listeners some perspective, how many employees did you have originally when you started your company, maybe in that first year, and how many employees do you have now? Eugene Alletto : There was me and I shared employees from some of the other small businesses that I had started in home furnishings. And so it was, it went to two and then it had a four shared employees. And then we are now 240 employees. We have a factory in South Carolina, over 300,000 square feet of factory and warehousing. Now we have an office for our creative suite here in the New York area. We have a warehouse in California and we just opened up our very first international manufacturing facility, outside of Shanghai to support all of our international growth. And what’s really, really awesome is the amount of American jobs that we’ve created. However, we also have taken the American ingenuity to open up the factory to duplicate the factory in China is identical to the factory that’s in South Carolina. And we share best practices and have really become more global citizens because of Bed Gear. Working With International Distributors John Benzick : So internationally, do you work with distributors or do you go directly to the retailers in those countries? Eugene Alletto : So we start, and I highly recommend this, it’s really hard to sell a distributor and understand what they’re doing or not doing for your, your idea or your brand or your product. So I literally just got on an airplane and went and visited retailers where my product would be sold and determine what the value proposition would be. Determining where the right fit would be for us before determining how best to distribute the product. It’s always really important to know how your product is going to be sort of reviewed and expanded and understood what the, what the adjacencies are. And what I mean by adjacencies is, if your product is on the shelf, what’s to the left and the right of it so you can determine how best your products need to be priced and how they need to look. Eugene Alletto : Because a lot of times distributors of products, they do it at a defense and they’ll tie you up in these countries. However, if you understand them, the value that you bring to the country and start working with the retailers first, then you create the direction that’s best for your brand and your product. And I think one, one of the things I think would be really helpful, John, is we talked about what was it that started the business, what was the product that got me started? And I think to give the listeners a little bit more context as to, what exactly we do is really important at this point because we’re getting into so many, so many sort of growth initiatives that we’re talking about, it’s hard to understand that. Eugene Alletto : I think if it’s just purely what, you know, what we talk about in terms of a mattress protector. So would it be okay if I just gave a little bit of an overview of what you saw in Vegas in terms of product specific? John Benzick : Yes, of course. That would be great. Studying Consumer Behavior Eugene Alletto : Awesome. So after we got started with this protector and we started to see that health and wellness and the customers reacted really well to products that were gonna benefit them, we started to get into this category of where people buy mattresses and we saw a huge, huge gaping hole. So even though it was a very small step, it gave, it gave us the opportunity to kind of get your head around like, oh my God, how come nobody thought of that? And here’s the big Aha moment. Well now that we’re in, we’re embedding stores and furniture stores and we see people laying on their backs with their legs crossed and their heads on these giant fluffy velveteen pillows that were supplied by the bedding manufacturers, recognizing that there was no process to buy mattresses. Eugene Alletto : People just jumping from one bed to the next, over and over again on their backs. And what we started to see and when talking to the salespeople, it was really about price and comfort and it was very hard for people to navigate this sort of assortment of 50 to 75 mattresses that all essentially are white rectangles. With that in mind, we know that when people leave the bedding store, they were given like free pillows. Well, when I looked at the pillow, I realized, wait a minute, some of these not only are the pillows garbage and you know, seven, $8 Walmart like pillows. However, the pillow is an important piece too. I know how I sleep and I wouldn’t want to just have some random average pillow when I’m going to spend a thousand or 2000 or $500 on a mattress because the pillow is an intricate part to the overall sleep and comfort.…
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Product Launch Rebel
1 Ep. 049: On Launching an Innovative Pet Product Company — The Ken Goldman Interview 43:57
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43:57Hear the fascinating story of how Ken Goldman launched his dog gear company, Stunt Puppy. Learn how he started producing dog leashes and collars by hand, and how he utilized his professional marketing experience to grow the brand. Listen as he describes his number one lesson since starting Stunt Puppy, and who has most influenced him in his career. Hear why he chose to produce his products in the United States, and what has frustrated him the most as an entrepreneur. Leave a Rating & Review in iTunes for the Product Launch Rebel Podcast Transcript John: Greetings Product Launch Rebels, and welcome to the Product Launch Rebel podcast, brought to you by Venturesuperfly.com, where we help double your entrepreneurial courage, even if you don’t know what you’re doing. Please visit the Venture Superfly website and check out the contact page to join our mailing list. Today we’ll be learning about the pet product industry, which should be a lot of fun. I’m interviewing Ken Goldman. He’s the founder of a unique brand of dog gear called Stunt Puppy. It offers products such as collars and leashes that are designed and made in the United States, right here in Minnesota. The company designs products with cues from the rugged camping and climbing gear industry, so they are extra durable. Seems pretty smart and cool. Ken’s products are available at StuntPuppy.com, as well as through many retailers across the United States. To learn more about his company, visit StuntPuppy.com. Hello, Ken. Thanks for being here, and welcome to the Product Launch Rebel podcast. Ken: Oh, it’s great to be here. Thanks for the invitation. John: Absolutely. This is going to be a lot of fun. Thanks for your time. Ken, within this podcast there are three segments. The first is called “give me the basics,” which helps set the context about your company for our listeners. The second part is called “let’s get personal” where we get into some of the more personal topics about what it’s like to start a business. The final part is what I call “tell me how” where we’ll get to the heart of the matter on issues that aspiring entrepreneurs want to know now to help them move forward. What do you think, Ken, are you ready for some questions? Ken: I’m ready and I’m hoping you’re gonna tell me how at the end. John: Fantastic, here we go! 02:29 — Ken, tell us the story. How did you originally come up with the idea to start Stunt Puppy? Ken: It probably sounds cliché but it definitely was not on purpose. My dog Bauer and I, he was a golden retriever and we were a therapy team so we spent a lot of time in hospitals moving out and about and I wanted some gear that helped us move around the hospital easier and more fluidly. And that combined with the fact that I know how to sew, combined with the fact that I love gear, uh, it just all kinda came together. I went down to my basement and started making stuff for he and I. So we were, it’s definitely a happy accident. Um, then layer on top of that, I have another company that’s a marketing agency and we kind of looked at it and said, hey, we could build a brand around that. So that was 11 years ago. 03:31 — John: Yeah. That’s very interesting. And tell me about your sewing background. How did you get into that? Ken: Definitely not on purpose. My mom, who still sews to this day, she’s a big quilter and so I was the youngest of three and just kind of hanging around so I stepped in a lot of pins and needles growing up and their fabric swatches all over the place and so I just wanted in on that. So I learned how to sell early and you know, I learned a sewing machine wasn’t something strange to me and I always kind of had one. It’s not that I was making myself clothes or anything, but I wasn’t afraid of a sewing machine. So when I got to the point where like, hey, I want to do this, I just pulled out the machine and, and went for it. John: Yeah, it’s interesting. It’s interesting that you were a sewer before that. I remember when I started my snowboard and ski clothing brand, I was not as sewer but I really sort of got interested in it, but I never took the time to do that. So I’m sort of fascinated by that. Ken: Something just really cool about sewing in general. I mean it goes along with Legos and putting things together and I’m actually doing a week long sewing workshop in a couple months to kind of build out that skill even more for prototyping. John: Yeah, very interesting. It’s so neat to make stuff. 04:56 — Ken, the pet product industry is just so competitive. So tell me what’s so unique about Stunt Puppy. Ken: I will, but give me a minute because I want to talk a little bit about when people talk about the pet industry and how giant it is. And of course I should have the number off the top of my head, it’s like $70 billion, I think. And so when people look at a business and that, you know, they get really excited but it’s, it is so fragmented. One, I mean, first of all it’s not all dogs, right? Um, and there are more cats than dogs, just FYI. And then, so let’s slice off, get to just dogs and then you get to, well there’s specific kinds of owners and dogs that were relevant to which are basically active dogs and active owners, and there’s nothing against non active dogs and non active owners. And I define that as people who take their dog outside of the house. Um, and this is a long way of getting to the answer your question, but essentially we try to really narrow our focus and build off our position. So if we just focused on these active dogs, active owners, which is really a small slice of that big market, and then within that market, try to focus on the ones in a more urban setting and really trying to build a brand around those people and speak to those people. So that’s number one, how we stand out. Number two, and this kind of dovetails into that, we’re not trying to be everything to everybody and so it’s OK to build things only for some of the segment. Another separate element of our unique character is that we are made in the US. Um, we feel really strongly about it and so we really try to, it’s about making the stuff ourselves, number one and building jobs in our own community and just basically building stuff that is as good, if not better than anything we’d use for ourselves, like our human gears, so to speak. 07:15 — John: What type of retailers do you sell to? Ken: We focus on independent running store retailers because we focus on the running industry, but that doesn’t mean we’re not in pet stores. We are in some or even in some bike shops and things like that. But our, our effort and focus is in the running channel. And then interestingly enough we have, we have two distributors, one is in South Korea and the others in Japan. Our South Korean distributor is focused purely in pet. So we’re much more of a fashion brand there, which I mean everything is different there. And how we’re perceived there is different and it’s pretty cool because they didn’t ask us to change any of our gear. They’re just seen in a different light. And then in Japan we’re definitely seen as an outdoor brand. So along with selling gear, like outdoor, wearables for people and climbing gear, et Cetera. 08:19 — John: What types of products do you offer now? Ken: The majority of our products, our leashes and collars with some special functionality, we also have a harness that is only about a year and a half old. That is has been received very well. It was five years in the making and later this year we are doing a joint venture with another company out of New Zealand and we’re bringing in a full line of outerwear. John: That will be really neat and complicate your product mix a bit and to manage. Ken: Very much so in a couple of different ways. One, OK, where are we making these things? Cause now I’m going to go back on what I said about made in USA. We will make the majority of that in the US, but there are a few things that need to be made in specific places because it’s the best place to make them. For instance, a dog flotation jacket we make in the best flotation jacket factory in the world. That factory is in China. There is a Merino jacket that we will continue to make in New Zealand because that’s where the wool is and it makes the most sense in terms of footprint, but probably everything else of their stuff will come to the US and get manufactured here. 09:45 — John: How many employees do you have now , and just give us some perspective, I think you started 11, 12 years ago. Give us also a look back into those early months. And given that we’re talking to aspiring entrepreneurs here, gives us a sense for how many employees you had during that first year, let’s say. Ken: Well first year it was just me. It was literally making everything like with my own two hands and everything, so we’re a little different or I’m a little different in that I also own a marketing agency, so they’re a big piece of the effort. So right now 11 years in Stump Puppy has three full time employees but a full time marketing agency behind it. So it, and I can’t separate the two, so we’re more than three people, but there’s three people full time. 10:48 — John: Sure. How did you choose the name? Ken: You know, it’s actually not a very interesting story. So many people ask me that. I wanted something where we get own the URL. I wanted something that was, that felt good to say that something that would be memorable and that’s really all there is to it. I wanted something that, you know, in terms of design, we could work with it in terms of letters and letter shapes. There’s a lot of dog gear out there that isn’t branded. You know, bottom line is I wanted something that kind of at least expressed active and people would remember. 11:29 — John: Say, Ken, most entrepreneurs go into business with a set of assumptions and many of those assumptions proved to be different from what they expected, thereby making them scramble to make changes in order to survive. Regarding Stunt Puppy’s uniqueness, did your original assumption about that prove motivating to consumers or did you discover a different selling proposition after being in business for awhile? Ken: You know, I, I think the thing that changed from the beginning or that was emphasized more after we got going is that we should, I immediately thought, oh, this is going to need to scale wide and we’re going to need to, the line is going to have to be really wide. But as time went on, it was almost the opposite. So like, you know, what, if we just focus narrowly, like talk about people who run with their dogs, that’s something we can own, we can be authentic in and talk about it and produce better product so that it was almost like a reverse epiphany there. Um, the other one is I never would have thought how long it would take to develop some product, like the harness was literally five years and it wasn’t five years of constant working on it, but it was oh, we’re throwing that away. Oh, that’s no good. And every time we thought we had it, then it’s like, ah. Um, and there some of that was in the end realizing that there is no silver bullet, um, that maybe we just need to say, OK, this is what we’re going after. And it’s not going to be the perfect thing for everybody, but it’s going to get a nice, good, majority of the people looking for it. 13:17 — John: So Ken, let’s get personal on a few topics. Many aspiring entrepreneurs don’t know what they don’t know before starting a business, they’re sort of unconsciously incompetent in certain areas and they’re not as fully prepared as they thought they would be or should be in starting a business. If and especially, I’d love to get this answer from you, especially that the fact that you are a marketing guy. Before you started Stunt Puppy, to what extent were your previous career skills and your knowledge in line with the task of launching a pet product? Let’s say on a scale of one to 10, 10 being very aligned, how did your previous skills and knowledge fit with your new startup? Ken: Well the marketing skills I felt really good about and even more specifically the brand skills, like in terms of building a brand, so I’m, you know, like sevens and eights there, but in terms of product development or manufacturing or quality assurance, I had no idea what I was doing. I was completely making it up. 14:36 — John: How about sales? Ken: That’s a great question. And so often marketing gets lumped with sales and they’re so different. I had sold marketing services but never sold products into retail or distributors. So that was, yeah, I was completely green and probably good that I didn’t know what I didn’t know cause it’s, it’s a little daunting; I mean, trade shows sitting in a trade show booth for three days. There’s nothing that can prepare you for that. 15:05 — John: How much better of a marketing guy are you now? Since starting Stunt Puppy and having sort of that real life honest, authentic exposure to all the elements of the marketing mix now including product development and, and all the functions of a business. Ken: I think a lot. I’m definitely more tolerant of a marketing guy now. I, for instance, if somebody can have this great idea for a product extension or something like that here and on paper it’s like, Oh yeah, that is a good idea. But there’s all those other things like what does that do to the SKUs and how does that reflect, how do get into stores that already have the associated product. And so just kind of feeling that pain. Um, even down to like how many UPCs are we going to be sitting over or regenerating UPCs or recycling them things that as just a pure marketer, if you’re working with a client, if they said something like that, you’d be like, oh, that’s ridiculous. Like, get over it. Let’s move on. I’m definitely getting more of that full picture or yeah. 16:19 — John: Ken, what’s the number one lesson you’ve learned since starting your company? Ken: Stick to your positioning and don’t try to be something you’re not. Authenticity, people, they smell it. It’s amazing. I mean some of the feedback we get there, we have one comment we get, something about our attention to detail and you can really tell that these people really care about dogs. I would never write that marketing copy, but it’s 100 percent true. I mean from the way we turn a seam over on the inside of a collar that nobody would know, but it’s more expensive and takes longer to do, but we know that that is a more comfortable feeling on the inside of a collar for a dog. I mean, that’s it. You know, our, our tagline built from the dog up is that we really believe in that. Like that’s where we’re starting. 17:16 — John: Yeah. Ken, many entrepreneurs, including very successful ones have regrets in doing things incorrectly early in their entrepreneurial journey. And I think those regrets can reveal valuable lessons to aspiring entrepreneurs. Since you started Stunt Puppy, would you have approached the business differently if you could go back and do it over again? Ken: Wow. I mean we’ve definitely made mistakes and continue to make mistakes. Like I’m sitting on hang tags that are deficient because I jumped into the project too fast and they don’t hold the product up, but I don’t know if I would’ve done anything different because unless we do something and fail, we’re not learning. And that sounds so cheesy, but I mean I guess I could think of if I would’ve gone another way in the beginning. I mostly think around the money side. Like if I would have brought in a bunch of other people and the money and maybe I’d be regretting that now, but I didn’t so I can’t complain there now. Definitely bumps in the road and different turns and tosses and tumbles, but that’s, I mean, it’s the journey. Um, and at the end of the day we’re working with people who are crazy about their dogs and that’s a pretty amazing audience. 18:44 — John: Yeah. It seems that 99 out of a hundred people can just talk about starting a business, but they never star one. It’s all show and no go in a way and starting a business is special and pretty unusual. What motivates a person like you, Ken Goldman, to stop just talking about launching a business and actually go out and start a pet product company. Ken: You know, it’s just something I could really sink my teeth into and feel good about. It just hit all the right buttons in terms of, Oh, I’m working with my hands, I’m creating something, a building a brand. At the end of the day it’s with dogs that, I mean, it’s rare that we run into people who don’t have a good connection to dogs and if they don’t then we just, we’re not really talking to them in the first place. Uh, and some of it, you know, like I said in the beginning it was an accident and you know, I have this other agency that, you know, in some ways was a crutch in terms of, uh, you know, monetarily I didn’t have to worry about completely making it with this one thing, but I also had a lot of other people saying you can’t do two things. You can’t do both. You need to pick one or the other. And I don’t think that’s true. You can do two things and it’s, it’s not a perfect world,…
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1 Ep. 048: On Launching an Innovative Baked Goods Company — The Michael Tierney Interview 40:12
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40:12Learn how young Michael Tierney, the founder of Mikey’s Muffins, launched his company and, within three short years, is selling through major grocery retailers. Hear how he gets motivated, mostly, by failure. Listen as he describes what he’s most proud of along his entrepreneur journey, and what frustrates him the most as a business owner. Learn his advice on raising capital and the importance of surrounding yourself with good people in order to grow. Leave a Rating & Review in iTunes for the Product Launch Rebel Podcast…
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1 Ep. 047: On Launching Justin’s Nut Butter — The Justin Gold Interview 54:02
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54:02Hear this exciting interview with Justin Gold, the founder of Justin’s Nut Butter. Listen as he describes overcoming a deluge of obstacles in starting and growing his company. Learn where he discovered his entrepreneurial drive, how he raised money and why he still doesn’t know what he’s good at — despite his tremendous startup success. Leave a Rating & Review in iTunes for the Product Launch Rebel Podcast…
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Product Launch Rebel
1 Ep. 046: On Launching a Healthy Food and Beverage Brand — The Rita Katona Interview 33:58
33:58
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33:58Hear how Rita Katona followed her passion to launch a healthy food and beverage company called So Good Brands, Inc. Listen as she shares her inspiration to start the company, and her biggest joy as an entrepreneur. Learn Rita’s biggest challenge of managing multiple business models as well as “getting it all done” on a daily basis. Hear her advice on pitching your product to retailers and surrounding yourself with personal and professional supporters. Leave a Rating & Review in iTunes for the Product Launch Rebel Podcast…
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Product Launch Rebel
1 Ep. 45: On Launching an Adventure Travel Clothing Brand — The Ryan Hitzel Interview 46:18
46:18
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46:18Hear the amazing startup story of the wildly successful Roark Revival apparel brand, founded by Ryan Hitzel. Learn how he channeled his experience as an adventure traveler and surfer, as a creative director in advertising, and as an employee at Volcom clothing, to become an apparel entrepreneur. Listen as he describes his top frustrations as a business owner, and how he overcomes his occasional feelings of self doubt. Hear him describe how key people have influenced him, and how entrepreneurship has changed him. Leave a Rating & Review in iTunes for the Product Launch Rebel Podcast…
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Product Launch Rebel
1 Ep. 044: How to Unleash Imagination and Create New Products — The Barry Kudrowitz Interview 33:06
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33:06Hear how Barry Kudrowitz, a leading authority on design, innovation and new product development, helps people to think more creatively and unleash their imagination to create new products. Leave a Rating & Review in iTunes for the Product Launch Rebel Podcast
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Product Launch Rebel
1 Ep. 043: The Launch and Growth of Pure Cycles — The Michael Fishman Interview 41:15
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41:15Hear the exciting story of how three childhood buddies launched their own bicycle brand, in college. Learn how they first bootstrapped the business with their own startup capital. Listen to Michael Fishman, Pure Cycles co-founder (and our interview guest), describe how he would approach his startup differently if he could do it over again. Hear his core motivations to become an entrepreneur, and how he found his entrepreneurial moxie. Leave a Rating & Review in iTunes for the Product Launch Rebel Podcast…
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Product Launch Rebel
1 Ep. 042: On Launching a Domestic Bike Manufacturing Company — The Zak Pashak Interview 45:00
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45:00Hear how this young Canadian serial entrepreneur moved to Detroit, USA, to start the largest US-based bicycle manufacturer, Detroit Bikes. Learn what drove him to start a bike company (it wasn’t primarily about bikes) and the personal and professional obstacles that he faced in his quest. Listen as he describes how starting Detroit Bikes helped build his confidence and taught him key lessons about entrepreneurship. Leave a Rating & Review in iTunes for the Product Launch Rebel Podcast…
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