407: Starting The World’s Fastest Growing Backyard Game With Greg Meade Of CrossNet

00:00
You’re listening to the My Wife Could Her Job podcast, the place where I bring on successful bootstrap business owners and delve deeply into the strategies they use to grow their businesses. Now on my podcast, I try to get a diverse set of entrepreneurs who sell physical products online. So today I have my friend Greg Mead on the show. Now, Greg is the founder of CrossNetGame.com, which is a super cool mixture of four square and volleyball. Now I have a set, my kids love it, and in this episode, we’re gonna learn how to launch a successful brand new game to the market.

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But before we begin, I want to thank Postscript for sponsoring this episode. Postscript is my SMS or text messaging provider that I use for e-commerce and it’s crushing it for me. I never thought that people would want marketing text messages, but it works. In fact, my tiny SMS list is performing on par with my email list, which is easily 10x bigger. Anyway, Postscript specializes in text message marketing for e-commerce and you can segment your audience just like email. It’s an inexpensive solution, converts like crazy, and you can try it for free over at postscript.io slash Steve.

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That’s P-O-S-T-S-E-I-P-T dot I-O slash Steve. I also want to thank Klaviyo, who is also a sponsor of the show. Always excited to talk about Klaviyo because they’re the email marketing platform that I use for my store and it depend on them for over 30 % of my revenue. Now you’re probably wondering why Klaviyo and not another provider. Well Klaviyo is the only email platform out there that is specifically built for e-commerce stores and here’s why it’s so powerful. Klaviyo can track every single customer who’s shopped in your store and exactly what they bought. So let’s say I want to send out an email to everyone who purchased a red handkerchief in the last week.

01:28
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01:53
The Profitable Audience Podcast covers all things related to content creation and building an audience. No topic is off the table and we tell like how it is in a raw and entertaining way. So be sure to check out the Profitable Audience Podcast on your favorite podcast app. Now onto the show.

02:14
Welcome to the My Wife, Could or Jot podcast. Today I’m thrilled to have Gregory Mead on the show. Now, Greg is the founder of crossnetgame.com, which is a cool game that is a mixture of four square and volleyball. And the way I encountered Greg was pretty random. I actually first heard of Crossnet when my buddy John McDonald did a conversion critique of his website at an event that I attended. And then when I saw this critique, I was actually intrigued by the game. So I looked it up and my kids,

02:43
are hugely excited about volleyball they play. So I thought about getting this for them as a birthday gift. And then finally, a student in my class, Julia, told me that she had a cousin that would make a great interview and it just happened to be Greg, the founder of Crossnet. So Greg has managed to invent a brand new game.

03:07
That is a combination of volleyball and four square. And today we are going to delve deeply into his backstory to see how he created this successful game and business. And with that, welcome to the show, Greg. How are you doing today, Doing well. Thanks for having me. Yeah, man. Hey, so first off, what is your background and how did you get the idea for this cross net game? Yeah, I guess my background since college is kind of being an entrepreneur, just trying to sell apps and like have people download stuff and doing some Amazon stuff.

03:36
And then the back story of the game is after college ended, my partner, Mike, he was an engineer. He graduated from Northeastern in Boston. was, he was building like robots and stuff. He’s like, Hey, let’s make something together. So he came over one night. We put on ESPN. We were just watching it all day, all day, the same repeats and just coming up with ideas of games to make. We eventually had like 50 ideas on a piece of paper. We crossed them all off until there was two left. Um, and it was a wall charger speaker.

04:05
and then a four square volleyball game. And we went with the four square volleyball game for sure. We went to Walmart the next day, we heated them up. We tied them up against my mom’s shed, a tree, some tape, some scissors. It was a pretty janky prototype, but we had fun with it with our friends. We invited them over and then boom, the rest was history pretty much. That’s interesting. So how did you come up with those two completely random products? I mean, I think the objective of that day when I was with Mike, was like,

04:35
let’s make a product where we can make money, right? But I think we ended up rolling with the sports concept because we grew up playing sports with each other, against each other, and we love sports. So we’re very fortunate. A game in the sports realm fell into our laps and we rolled with it. So I got to say that I think you guys, of the two products, mean, they’re both pretty hard to sell, but I would say starting a completely new game from scratch and getting people educated and to adopt it is

05:06
So a couple questions. So one, how long did it take you to just come up with the game? It sounded like you threw up the prototype in a day. Yeah, I mean that same day we were trying to make the rules, right? So we like brought it back to original force where we bounce it on the floor. So we were kind of taking those rules. Like if you get out, you’re eliminated, you go to the back of the line. And then we incorporated the 11, played 11, win by two. That’s how we play pick up basketball. That’s how volleyball is played. Sometimes I think.

05:33
I’m not a big volleyball fan. Okay, but so let me just describe the game. You can tell me if I’m wrong. So it’s like four score in volleyball and you kind of get up to the king spot, which is the four spot. And that’s how you score points only when you’re in the four spot. And when someone in the four spot loses, they go back or anyone loses, they go back to the first square, just like four square, right? Old school. Okay. So you come up with this game and it was just you and your buddy. How did you guys even play it? Well, we invited friends over so we had a good.

06:03
More than four people, yeah. then they all loved it? We all loved it. We were out there all day until someone down and then we eventually got the rules down pretty solid. All right, that’s awesome. So you have this prototype that’s like, I’m imagining this like duct tape two nets together from Walmart. How do you manufacture such a thing? Like where do even go to get that built? And it sounds expensive too to get built. Yeah, it was pretty pricey. It still is. But, Alibaba.

06:32
You go to Alibaba websites like that, that have factories. And then you just message the people at those factories and you ask, hey, can you make this for me? So we searched, literally searched volleyball net manufacturer, right? On Alibaba and started messaging every single factory and said, hey, can you combine these two? Right? Essentially. And we got a few hits and then we made some good relationships. So walk me through that. So you just go up to them and you say, hey, I want to like weld two volleyball nets together.

07:01
Yeah. So obviously Mike’s an engineer. So he’s got like all the CAD blueprints and all the nerdy stuff. So we send them that, right? It’s like, hey, this is what we need. Can you do it? Yes or no. And then some of them would say no. Some would say yes. And then you take, you obviously take the best people that say yes and you put them against each other and try to get the best price and quality. So did you have CAD drawings before you approached the vendors? Yes. Okay. And then just walk me through these steps. Cause these are the interesting steps that the listeners like to hear. So

07:29
You went up to them with the thing and then you got a, did you get a sample made? Yeah, numerous samples throughout our first year. It took pretty much a whole entire year to get the final prototype we were happy with to start the launch. Even that prototype sucked. Did you end up ever having to go over there and visit the factory? Not me. Mike did. He’s gone two or three times now. He’s gotten some like a car accident over there too. So I don’t know if he wants to go back.

07:57
Wait, so okay, so did that happen more in the beginning or later on during production? Well, the first year Mike went over, then the second year he went over, and then COVID hit. So then we haven’t been back since. So we’d usually go over at least a few times a year, if possible. I would have been there by now, but COVID messed everything up. Yeah, because I have a buddy who made baby strollers. for something, and I classify your product like that. It’s got a bunch of moving parts, different materials, metal, know, fabric, everything.

08:25
he ended up having to fly over there just because like little quality issues here and there, or even with like the little parts that are involved, all kept getting messed up as he was building his prototype. How many iterations did it take for you guys to get to your final design? Oh man, a ton, a ton. I don’t know the top off top of my head, probably five or 10 at least. or 10, okay. Yeah, every time we get it, it’d be like, oh, this pole is good, but the net stinks, Then the net gets back.

08:55
it’s good. And then the polls messed up or something. Yeah, a lot of moving parts. took, like I said, it took about a year to finally get that nice prototype. And then how much money did you invest just to kind of get started before production? Yeah. So me and my partner, Mike, and my brother, other partner, Chris, we all took out all of our money. was about 30 to 40 grand and dumped it all into inventory. And then once we sold that, we took all that money and then reinvested it all back into inventory again in marketing.

09:23
and just kept doing that for years. All right. So let me ask you this. Did you have like, did you know the game was going to be a hit before you invested that 40 grand? Absolutely. Oh, you did. Okay. How did you do that? I just knew it personally. Oh, you just knew it personally. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. But I guess before that 40 grand purchase, went to a beach right in there against at Rhode Island, where we grew up going, we brought a sample and we went to go just play me, Mike, Chris, and like two of our other friends just to go play and have fun.

09:53
we love the game. We didn’t end up playing it because 40 teenage kids got in line and asked to play instead of us. So that’s how we knew it was a smash for sure. Oh, okay. All right. So was it just like that one incident or were there multiple incidents? It happens every time. It still happens to random customers. I feel like every time you set it up at a popular spot, people will ask to take photos, jump in, play. yeah, at one time was a big moment for us.

10:22
because that was pre-launch and we’re like, wow, this is it. All right, sweet. Okay. So that’s how you validated that it was going to work. And then what was your first order like? Cause I imagine making these things is pretty pricey. Yeah. I think we only, I think it was like 300 units. Okay. That’s not too bad. And it held us over for a little while. It got us through summer and then we the reorder and then, you know, wait months.

10:49
Yeah, actually, how long was the production? So it took you about a year to just produce the product into something that you were happy with, right? Yeah. And then so you order 300 units. And then how do you sell those first 300 units? Twitter word of mouth. Twitter. Okay, well, let’s talk about Twitter real quick. How did you when I think of Twitter, I think of using Twitter for like beta business services or software like I don’t usually think of like sports equipment.

11:18
Yeah, lot of people don’t know is Twitter is used to be big. You just have a bunch of meme parody pages. Me and my network. That’s how we blew up as entrepreneurs, I guess, back in the day. We’d run like these these meme accounts and just get millions of impressions a day and we’d sell them, buy ads with them. And we did that. That was when Crossnet started. And then Jack Dorsey removed all the accounts. So Twitter got we lost all our accounts. But why did he do that? Oh, just politics.

11:46
Oh, okay. So those two means I got it. Got it. But I mean, those people aren’t interested in sports though, right? Would those accounts have even helped you? Yeah. Well, they’re not just, they’re just all general niche pages, right? So the general audience will see and then we’ll eventually get some sales because I can get the impressions for very cheap. And then another cool tactic was we’d actually show up to the beach, right? So we moved, we all moved to Florida. In our first week in Florida, we were just like playing the game every day, 24 seven on the beach. And we’d show up to like, I remember we went up to like Nikki beach in South beach.

12:16
And we were, I remember vividly of people ordering that same day after we played with them. So we’d go play on Nikki beach and then we get an order from Miami beach in that area code from the kids parents, I guess. But it was really cool to see. So it was like a snowball effect in person and then online as well. And then we did have a very viral moment on Facebook. We woke up to like 10 million views on a Facebook post on this random dude’s page one day. Describe the video.

12:42
It was a Olympian video. So we had four, we sent them across and out to four Olympian athletes. um, Oh man. What’s the country with the, with the waning, I think, or one of those countries. That’s random. We got to dig into all this. So how did you even get the contact information or how’d you even think to send it to these guys? It was a while ago, but I think they hit us up. They’re like, Hey, can we get across that? And we said, yeah, sure. We’ll send you one. Um, good people. I think we still, we’re still in touch with them pretty, pretty solid right now, but yeah, they, posted it. They posted their video and then a random user took it.

13:12
like a random Facebook ad, right? He took the video and he posted, said, wow, check out this four square volleyball game. And then it blew up and we woke up to like orders, orders, orders, like what’s going on. But it was like, we found the video eventually because it was hard to find. We didn’t know where the money was coming from. And that video definitely helped us for sure. And then we took that video and we kept running ads on it. We still run ads on it to this day. Oh, and that same video and it converts still. Yeah. You’ve probably seen it. I probably have probably have seen it actually.

13:41
All right, wait, so back to Twitter. Describe to me a strategy on how you promote something on Twitter, like a physical product. Yeah, I mean, like you take a video, UGC video of people playing, you caption it, foursquare meets volleyball, and then you put a link under it and you run ads on it. You buy impressions from… Oh, you buy Twitter ads? Not through Twitter platform. Oh, you still walk me through it, sorry. Through meme pages.

14:09
So like if there’s a volleyball page like at volleyball lovers, right. And has a hundred K I’m going to buy retweets off that page. Oh, okay. Got it. Got it. So you’re paying the owner to just tweet your tweet, product in your video, retweet it. Yeah. Retweet. Right. Oh, retweet. Okay. So you have a Twitter account already. Does your Twitter account need to have a whole bunch of followers before you use this strategy or no, not at all. at all. Okay. So you created like a volleyball Twitter account and then you started paying influencers to retweet.

14:38
your stuff. Well, so we have our cross and account, right? have a cross and Twitter account. And then we’d hit up there’s people in this network where there’s they have mean pages, different style pages, different niches, different, you know, audiences, volleyball, humor, sports, right. And then we buy retweets off of those pages. Right. What’s the going rate for a retweet? Like, how do you even know how much to pay? And how do you know they’re willing to do it for you? Paid by impressions. So every hundred thousand impressions, you pay anywhere from 10 to 20 dollars.

15:09
for 100,000 impressions, that’s dirt cheap. Yeah, it is. It’s a secret sauce. Okay. All right. Wait, okay. So walk me through this. So how do you approach a Twitter account owner?

15:22
Good question. Find a meme page you like. Okay. And then DM them, ask them for their rates. Just like you’re going to buy a shout out on Instagram or something. So is this a standard practice? No, this is very underground stuff. And this is how I was able to grow, you know, across that from the beginning. So like the typical user, I actually just worked on growing my Twitter account. actually doubled it in like the last six to eight months by getting other people, but mainly my friends to just retweet my stuff. This is a similar thing.

15:52
I actually haven’t had anyone approach me to pay though. like if you just approach a random Twitter user and offered to pay, mean, does that get a pretty good hit rate? I mean, I don’t usually do that. Like just like a famous like entrepreneur dude you’re saying. Or just, you know, these meme pages, is it expected? Like are they expecting to be paid for? You know what saying? Like, oh, are. Okay. I think so. Like why would you be building a page like with 500,000 followers, right? Like you need to make money.

16:21
But this practice used to be very popular five years ago before we called the purge the people in the Twitter community. We lost all of our accounts. I can understand if it got political, but like a volleyball Twitter account. Just all types of pages, all types of mean pages, like the biggest pages back on Twitter, like five years ago, 10 years ago, there was like parody music pages. Parody like interesting.

16:48
Yeah, it’s definitely off ground. It’s unique. If you guys ever need impressions and you’re listening, just message me. Does it work still today? It depends on the product. Oh, okay. Interesting. the product. It depends on if it’s unique. It depends on the price across that. It doesn’t really work anymore for sales. Oh, doesn’t work for you guys anymore? Not anymore. No, it’s definitely changed. mind’s at it. mean, your product is unique and interesting.

17:12
The price point is pretty high. The price point is too high. We actually started cross net selling at one hundred dollars, which is very unique to hear. And we ended up boosting it up to hundred fifty dollars. But even at one hundred fifty dollars, I think it’s really inexpensive because I’m thinking I paid almost three hundred dollars for my volleyball set. Yeah, that’s as a volleyball lover. Right. You’re going to pay that money. But as a normal ninety, ninety five percent of our consumers are just like mom and dad’s buying for their teenage kid. Right. That doesn’t play well. And one hundred dollars is

17:42
pretty hefty, I guess. It’s right in that fine line. So Twitter’s not the best for impulse $150 purchases. Got it. Got it. So the price point maybe is probably like the impulse buy of like 50 bucks, maybe, maybe the price point for Twitter. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Dude, that’s cool. Okay. So you got your initial sales by just playing your sport, which is pretty awesome. Yeah. And then you use Twitter to just get those initial sales. And then how quickly did you sell those first 300 units? you remember, think it took the entire summer. So like,

18:12
four months, whatever that is, March to August. That’s a lot of playing cross net right there. So basically you play cross net every day. that’s pretty sweet. We did. We pretty much pulled up to a beach every day and just played. That’s awesome. Yeah. One thing I noticed on your site is that I noticed that you held a tournament and then you had some, I think those Olympians, I think you had that video on your site. How did you get influencers and then how did that tournament idea go? Cause I know I like

18:41
to attend AVP volleyball tournaments and that sort of thing. Just curious what it’s like. Yeah. So from the influencer side, it took a while for us to get respected in like the volleyball community. But once you get a few people, start, other people start seeing it and it just kind of like a snowball effect, kind of like the sales of the game as well. But it definitely took two or three years to really get, you know, respected in that volleyball community. A lot of the volleyball people didn’t like it at first or know what it was or want to be associated with it.

19:08
But once you make that one relationship, that person sends you to another person, that person sends you another person and they have a, you know, it’s a tight circle in the volleyball community. And it is actually, how do you get respected? I think having them actually play it, right? Okay. At first people like we, the first beach tournament we ever showed it up to, to like do like to try to sell as a vendor. We set the cross map. No one played for like two of the three days. The third day we’re like, no one’s going to play. We’ll just go like swim in the ocean.

19:37
So we went to go swim, we came back and then everyone was playing the game, all the volleyball athletes and there was crazy rallies and then they ended up falling in love with it. So they need to play it, you need to play it and then once you get the hang of it, understand the rules, the concept, it’s a hit for them. And now we have the doubles version out. So it’s two, one, two, one, two, one, two. So once you get that set up and they play that, they have a teammate, bumps that spike, gets intense. Yeah, actually that sounds a lot more attractive than the single player game, at least to me, at least to me.

20:06
So I love it. Sorry. Let me just regurgitate what you just said. So you set these nets up at tournaments you said at AVP tournaments. Yeah, I think the first one was an AVP tournament. Don’t quote me on that though. That’s okay. Yeah. I mean, this is kind of like a casual conversation. I know this is a long time ago, right? A while ago since you launched. yeah, it’s three years ago. But okay, so did you also just go down the AVP list and just start sending these nets to people? Yeah, pretty much like we just like go hard on Instagram. Hey, do you want a net for content? Do you want it for content? And

20:35
We lost some money doing that too. So if you’re watching your business owner and you want to like see your product, just be super cautious about who you’re, you know, making that relationship with. It was a mistake on our end financially to send all those nets. Granted, we got some good content, but you want to like genuinely send the people that have interest in your product or game or whatever it is. Yeah. So what’s your process now actually? Yeah, right now it’s pretty much only send to people that are interested. So if they reach out to us and we have like a good solid conversation,

21:04
we’ll send it to you for content, right? And then we put those people on retainers if they give us content. If we like it. Okay. So for these people, are they primarily volleyball players or you just get people who are just really into it? Yeah. So a lot last year we went crazy on volleyball players, the community, and we would have like 10 athletes on retainer, um, monthly, just making great content. But at the end of the day, we realized like, that’s awesome. We get great content, but for like,

21:33
the mom, 56 year old mom from like Nebraska, she has no idea who that volleyball player is. And she just wants her like eight year old in the yard just to tap it with his buddies. like, we don’t need spiking and stuff. the content we realized we didn’t really need the volleyball content as much as we need the mom and dad playing with the kids content. That makes a lot of sense. Cause this is still kind of niche. Cause I think we were just talking about this earlier before we even started recording. Volleyball.

22:00
in itself, like just volleyball, not cross-net. There’s not a lot of money in there. One of my acquaintances bought the AVP several years ago and it’s kind of like this money pit, even though people love the sport. And so, yeah, if you can get like just families to adopt this, that’d be amazing. Yeah, that’s the mission this year is to focus back to like our core roots of just anyone who loves this game. So let’s get it out and get that content out. There’s another game that I see a lot of people play, which is similar. I think it’s called Spikeball. I think so.

22:30
Yeah. Yeah. Oh, are they, uh, are they one of your arch competitors or something? guess so we can call it that, but no, they’re, they’re, um, it’s a great game and, uh, helps brought in the outdoor community. So they help us. We help them. Yeah. So, I mean, what you’re trying to do essentially, cause I see little kids playing that and, and, I mean, they’re not volleyball athletes. It’s the same type of thing, right? Yeah. Same concept. Um, you see more like, I would say college at kids playing that kind of game. It’s more intense when, when

22:59
closer range, it’s a hand-eye coordination for that game. But I feel like that’s a broader audience. Actually, I would agree with that because you have to, I tried it once and you actually have to be in pretty good shape to play that, so it’s intense. How do you educate people about the game? Like, I can see like putting just the net up, but like how do people even know what the rules are? How do you educate people? Yeah, that has been the hardest part to date. You can ask any of our founders that question, it’s the hardest thing.

23:29
It just takes time. It could take time. But when the user starts playing, you’re going to get a real book, you’re going to get assembly, you’re going to get the QR code to scan and you’re going to see the gameplay, right? We’re going give you videos. We’re going to walk you through the steps. I mean, it’s not to you by, I mean, just, yeah. Yeah. So right now pre-buy, right? If somebody goes sees out at a beach and they go play with a random person, there’s going be a QR code, hopefully on the net soon and you can scan it and then you can see the role.

23:57
But education is going to take time. Like I want 10 years from now, want, you a random mom, dad, kid to walk past that cross net and know the rules of cross net, similar to, we know how to play soccer. We know how to play football, basketball, you know? So that’s, that’s definitely a learning curve. It’s difficult though. It just education through the game. And once you purchase it, learn the rules and, really hone into those rules and stick to it. Can we talk about like the revenue streams? Is like your revenue stream, like only the net?

24:26
or are you selling other things, services or anything like that? We have the Crossnet, we have the Crossnet doubles add-on, which is the longer extended net for two on two on two on two. And then we have a pool model. I don’t know if you saw that, it’s our H2O I did, yeah. Did that just come out? Yeah, it came out last year. We dropped like 2000 of them. Then we sold out really fast. This year we’re excited to relaunch it with a new, better improved net. So the pool model will do well this year. And then we have some other cool.

24:54
you know, games coming out this year, cross net pickleball, hopefully, which is exciting. Wait, walk me through that. So it’s like a four thing and then you it’s like, just pickleball. It’s literally the way it sounds. Yeah, square. Okay. Ingenious. Okay. And then I guess that probably doesn’t work with tennis as well. Now tennis is a little too bouncy. yeah, I love it. Crossnet soccer to coming out in about 15 days.

25:22
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26:20
And if you tell Steve that I sent you, you’ll get a hundred dollar discount. That’s E-M-E-R-G-E-C-O-U-N-S-E-L dot com. Now back to the show. This is my next question then. So how do you protect this IP? mean, can anyone with just two nets put this together and clone your stuff? Legally, no. We have a patent. A lot of people like to breach that patent. So we’ll

26:49
So you, I mean, it costs money to fight these. Have you had to, the fact that people are copying you means it’s super popular already. So have you spent a lot of money like beating back those clones? Not too much money yet. We have a good legal team on our side this year and we’re going to go bonkers with legal and try to get our market share back. But at the end of the day, you have copycats and people are copying you, means you’re doing well and the product is successful.

27:18
do everything we can to educate our cross that being the foundation. Even if someone goes and picks up a knockoff from Target or wherever, you’re still playing cross then. So let me ask you this. So outside of just selling the physical products, do you have any other plans to… I noticed you held… I saw on your website that you held a tournament and I think before we got on, you said that was actually really tough.

27:45
What are the plans to just proliferate the brand so that no one can really knock you off easily, right? Yeah, mean, tournaments wise, right? It’s it’s a whole different ball game. You don’t want to rush into that. I know we were speaking about it earlier before we got on rushing into like creating a sport is is a bad idea, I think, unless the sports are already known, you know how to play it. Right. So this is a brand new thing, brand new concept. It’s similar to volleyball, but people don’t understand the rules like we were just talking about. So.

28:13
The best idea is just to sell the units, get the game out there, let people love it, enjoy it, play it with their friends, meet up with other people, create tournaments of themselves smaller. And then it’ll just grow and grow and grow. We tried to jump into like any ESPN tournament, which looked really cool, right? It was actually, it looked really cool. It was amazing. The best rallies I’ve ever seen, but we had to like kind of force people to come down to go play for money. Right. And there was a $10,000 grand prize. It just wasn’t organic and we want it to be natural. So.

28:43
Oh, I didn’t realize there was prize. Okay. So you gave out prize money and then do people have to pay to enter? Um, no. No. Okay. Amazing. Okay. Yeah. was a good way. that cool footage. mean, that was the first video I watched actually. It lended a lot of credibility. Yeah, absolutely. And that’s why we did it. Yeah. At the end of the day, we knew it was going to be tough, but it’s great, you know, for content.

29:06
So you mentioned there have been phases in your business. So I imagine year one was getting the game out the door and getting it made and that sort of thing. And then you said year two was volleyball influencers, right? Last year was volleyball influencers. The second year was also light volleyball. Light volleyball. And then this year is just getting families and it being popular. So walk me through your strategy for this year. So how do you actually find these families?

29:33
A lot of them come naturally, right? Like we’ll get DMs throughout the day, just like, Hey, I love your game. I love the content. Um, and then we’ll, know, we have, we have a good marketing team and we hone in on them and see if the engagement’s good. If the communication is good, if they’re just trying to like bullshit you for a free product, right? Yeah. We really, we’re really good at that now. We know how to scope it out. Um, so that’s for the info side, we do that. And then, like I said, selling the game and just going back to our core roots of getting people out and playing, like just go play, go play, go play and people, you know, see this content.

30:03
Naturally. Interesting. Okay. And then what, what are your primary revenue drivers? Are you running ads? Yeah, we run Google ads, Facebook ads, TikTok ads. Facebook obviously has taken a toll on the entire world in the last, what is it? Six months, eight months. It’s been a nightmare. So Facebook’s definitely getting harder. we’re, we’re primarily wholesale right now, actually. Interesting. Okay. Yeah. So are you in a lot of sto-

30:33
I think I saw you were on in Dix and a whole bunch of sporting stores. How does that process work? Like how do you even approach like a huge retailer like Dix? Yeah, I mean like LinkedIn DMs, honestly. Okay, walk me through that. How does that work? Yeah, so literally just find a buyer like go so type you got the store right if you’re selling a food product right you have a food product and it’s it’s a natural food product and you want to go in Whole Foods. Go to go to type in Whole Foods on LinkedIn.

31:04
Go to people, connect with them all, don’t message them, wait a few days, then message them. So it doesn’t seem like you’re thirsty and then say, Hey, this is blah, blah, blah from blah, blah. I have a cool product. We’ll offer for whole foods, get their hands on it. Something natural like that. And if they respond, you know, have that conversation for us. It’s a bit easier, I would say compared to a food or a drink, less competition. And it’s a brand new product that, you know, these stores need.

31:33
Dix needs new innovative games, Walmart needs new stuff in their aisles. So granted, would say crossnet is a little easier to pitch in the sports niche than another drink coming into the Whole Foods. But LinkedIn, LinkedIn, Chris, our partner brother, has done a great job of that. And we still do it. We just got another wholesale deal yesterday just from literally a LinkedIn outreach. That’s cool. So how did the wholesale arrangements typically work? Is it on consignment? Or do they buy units from you, like upfront?

32:03
Yeah, they they purchase they place POs and then we have net 60 terms and net 90 terms. Maybe 90 terms. Yeah, yeah, sucks. Wow. Okay. Yeah. So the people listening like these net terms means that they don’t have to pay you until after 90 days for products. I guess that’s I mean, they have control, right? I mean, these are large retailers. So yeah, can’t argue with them. Can’t argue with them. So so just based on the sales, they’ll order more as needed.

32:31
Yeah, in the, you know, the sell the rate in the season. Summer they purchase for summer now, right? So they’re prepping summer orders to go into Dix and all these stores. So are they buying like huge quantities? Yeah, yes. So stores and stuff. So you have to float that money then right? Yeah, long time. Yeah, we’ve been using our personal money to purchase POs for the last four years, which kind of a mistake, I guess we finally just got PO financing.

33:00
I was going to ask you, like, you raised any money for this? Because this is I mean, these nets aren’t cheap. Yeah, no, we haven’t we haven’t sold any equity yet. We’ve finally just took a appeal finance out, which is, you know, nice. Probably should have done that a few years ago. So for the listeners who don’t know what that is, can you just kind of describe how that works? Yeah. So we get money up front from a lender bank. There’s different types of, you know, avenues you can go through and they front you the money for the inventory and then you just pay back interest on top of that. So say we’re spending

33:30
We need $100,000. They let us borrow it and we pay back $125,000. Yeah. So, uh, do you have to show them a PO? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. For most of them. Yeah. There’s actually a whole, for anyone listening, there’s actually a whole bunch of services out there now that just based on your, I don’t know you have a Shopify store, but they can just take your Shopify. They linked to your bank account and they see what your sales have been. They’ll just give you a loan that way. Um, I’m sure you guys looked into all these things. We’ve had a circus, you know,

33:59
people who are and not freaking out. yeah, but we do have to show the POs primarily for the majority of them, especially if they’re large orders. Like we just have a huge order from Sam’s Club this year. Nice. Which we’re super excited for, but it costs a lot to make. Yeah. Yeah. So when you sell these on your own website, are you not allowed to make the price on your website cheaper than the retailer? Yeah, we have to honor the retailer.

34:26
keep the price similar. can do discounts and have our own sales. But it’s unethical to do that. Yeah. Are you guys on Amazon? Yeah, we are. Okay. So this is considered like an oversized product also, right? And then you have to… Yeah. It’s pretty oversized. It’s like 20 pounds. We have pallets. How’s the Amazon channel been for you guys? Amazon’s great. Amazon is the best. If you have a product that fits Amazon well, make sure you’re…

34:55
Your content on Amazon is good. Your images, your text, your font, Amazon’s great. It’s primarily, should be majority of your DTC numbers if it’s Amazon. Do you guys do a lot of email marketing for, okay. Yeah. Email is unreal for us. think we’re at like right now 25, 30 % of our revenue from DTC is email.

35:20
Shout out Chase Diamond and the Boundless Labs team. he’s speaking at Seller Summit. Cool. That’s awesome. Yeah. Oh, you guys. Oh, okay. So maybe that’s why they use you as an example at Geek Out then. Oh yeah. Geek Out. Yeah. Shackleford. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then you guys did use John McDonald, right? The good. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Same crowd. Same crowd. Oh, that’s funny. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So

35:46
Email marketing though, like it seems like someone would just buy this product once and not buy again, right? So do you, is email for repeat business or what is it for? Yeah, it is. It’s tough with, know, we don’t have clothing. We’re not dropping new drops every Friday, but it’s tough. So the email marketing is great to capture, make that sale. And then we have to educate the consumer. Like we were talking about earlier, it’s like how to play. So we send them informational stuff. We send them discounts. Maybe they can sell it to their friend. We’ll give them money.

36:14
Um, we have new product, like when we drop a pickleball, the person that has a cross-up Bible is going to most likely be interested in the pickleball too, if they love the cross them. So we upsell those as well. Uh, I see. So to get them on though, you have to educate them first. So what’s their incentive to get on your list in the first place? We switch it all the time, but when you go to our website, there’s a good, there’s going to be a pop-up for a discount, a chance to win a bundle. Uh, a lot of things we switch it, we test, AB test a lot. And then when you go to close it, we’ll have an exit and tenant pop-up as well.

36:44
which, you know, we’ll have for a 10 % discount, whatever. Do you sell accessories as well? Like the actual balls and like, yeah, Right now we have a cool partnership with Wilson for optics ball, which is like the famous ball in the space. So we have a Wilson ball and we have another partnership coming out hopefully this year with another ball that I cannot mention right now. Okay. All right. So it seems like there’s actually a bunch of opportunities for upsells, like in terms of

37:15
Yeah, it’s, we’re working on it. Um, it’s tough though. can’t just roll out 10 things at one time. Right. So that’s true. Yeah. Are you guys doing any other forms of marketing like a SMS messenger, all those things? Yeah. SMS, Google. Why does Google work for you guys? Cause people aren’t searching for, for cross. I guess you can bid on your own brand, but outside of that. Well, we definitely have to use Google just because our competitors too. So like when you type force work, like

37:44
The person that doesn’t know what our game is called, they’re going to type in four square volleyball, four-way volleyball. We don’t want competitors popping up, so we have to own that market share. Got it. So these are just like… The fact that people are even searching for these is impressive, actually. Yeah. But there can’t be a lot of search volume, I would imagine, right? The conversion rate on those keywords must be super high.

38:07
Yeah, I would have to double check that but it’s fun. not too high, I’m sure. But like that person that walks past at the beach and is too scared to go ask someone what that is, they’re just gonna go Google like four way net, right? And we want to pop up. Walk me through your TikTok stuff. Are you guys making TikToks right now? Yeah, we are. We started off really well last year. We grew like 20k, 25k in like a few months, which is good for us, I think.

38:34
And then now we’re, kind of got stagnant. We’ve got verified. I’m not sure if verified slowed us down because we can’t use trending sounds made it more difficult. So be aware if you want to get verified and tick tock, make sure you’re making the right call. So talk to your rep. But yeah, it’s been, it’s been challenging this year so far. Obviously everyone’s like tick tock, tick tock, tick tock blow up. And it is, that’s true. Like everyone should be focusing on tick tock, not Instagram. Instagram algorithm sucks right now. Tick tock’s algorithm is good.

39:02
But right now we kind of got stagnant and we came out with this cool idea where we’re to kind of have like a series of like, have this, we have this college kid, name is Mason, Mason Briggs. I don’t know if you’ve heard of him. He’s pretty, pretty well known in the college space and he’s going to make some cool videos with just random people. Like he’ll be setting a cross now up at the beach and like Long Beach. And he’ll be like, Hey, play me with your friend for a transfer $100 similar to the videos you see, you probably see on like TikTok scrolling. Yeah. Yeah. So we’re to put some like stories behind it.

39:30
comical stuff behind it and try to get those viral and get some more followers from them. Have TikTok ads been working for you guys? We have done them slightly, right? Hasn’t shown too much promise right now. Okay. Yeah. Like I said, we have a high price product compared to the TikTok products that do well. I know products that have high price points that have no one on TikTok.

39:57
We’re also seasonality too. So it’s March right now. That’s true. It’s getting warmer. So we’re going to wait another month and then crank it up. So I’m sure it will do well. I guess on the flip side though, the high price point does make advertising a little easier in terms of ROI, right? Yes, it does. It’s the same concept though. I think if the product’s $50 and you got to spend 20 instead of 70, right? It’s, it does though. You get, you get a little more room. I was thinking like,

40:24
for you guys, like just getting the lead and then educating them on your email list and that sort of thing, getting them excited. The numbers could probably work pretty well, I would imagine. Yeah, it certainly does. It certainly does. And for something like us, it takes a lot, you know, it take a consumer eight times to purchase it, right? So getting them on the list is very, very important. And that’s why I shout out Chase all the time, because he does a great job with our team working. Yeah. what’s the Facebook ad situation with you guys right now? Because I know, like I talked to a lot of people, obviously.

40:54
Um, and it’s, it’s a, it’s kind of like still a shell of its former self for a lot of people. Yeah. I mean, it’s tough. The Facebook, like our CPAs just went through the roof, right? Like we spent $40 to get a customer, which is cool for us. Now it’s like 80 and we’re kind of like honing back and just being smart and strategic. We don’t want to be wasting money. Right. Um, and also for us, it’s way more challenging than the normal DTC brand because we’re in.

41:23
every retail store in America besides Target. So it’s like, where does that spend go? And it’s very hard to attribute. We try our best to have a good Murr or Roas, but it’s very hard. Yeah, it’s almost like, and I’m just speaking out of my butt right now, but it’s almost like you need a critical mass, right? And then it’ll just sell itself. So retail shops and just making sure people get their hands on and getting people excited about it. It’s like a real long-term play actually. Yeah, it’s definitely a legacy.

41:51
product we call it. It’s going to be around for years and years, decades. once it gets to the mass, it’ll naturally flow and people will be. And then people will just advertise for you, right? I mean, yeah. They do that now. You know, it’s set up in someone’s front yard and you drive past, you break your neck, almost crash your car and you’re looking at the cross there, right? So you know what it is and you see it. Yeah. No, it’s really cool. mean, it’s like super challenging. I have friends who sell board games and that’s like super challenging because, yours is

42:22
it’s arguably harder, right? Actually, no, it might be easier because you can physically see these people play. Yeah, I would say it’s easier. Yeah, I think it’s easier. Yeah. Yeah, it’s easier. But it’s still tough, And your of goods is higher too. So yeah, it makes it more scary for us just like, right, like, right financially, definitely. Yeah. Yeah. So let me ask you this. And for the people listening out there, if you were to start all over again, would you have chosen such a hard product as your first

42:51
stab into, is this your first stab into e-commerce or? No, I’ve owned two other companies. yeah, okay, okay. So you were a veteran. this is my first like baby though, like I’ve really had passion for love it. And I don’t think I would change the thing. Absolutely not. Right. Oh, I was expecting you to say that, but for someone like, uh, who’s just starting out, you wouldn’t recommend them try to start an entirely new game, right? Or, or would you?

43:18
Well, I wouldn’t recommend anyone to start a sport because then you’re competing with me and you’re going to have trouble. um, well, doesn’t have to be volleyball. mean, just kidding. No, definitely start to be innovative, man. Like be innovative, do something new, unique. I’m, personally sick of seeing the same, you know, juices, the, the canned good, like the same stuff. It’s, it’s on repeat and they do well and then they die and then they, know, another one pops up, but be innovative, uh, make something that’s going to last and, you know, turn people’s heads.

43:47
Yeah, Greg, you know what I’m sick of? I’m sick of all the cheap stuff that people just knock off and just throw online. Like the TikTok ads are like the worst actually. Yeah, I try to stay off TikTok. Yeah. Because it’s just all junk when you when you get it and it’s cheap, which is why it works, I guess. But it’s actually refreshing to see someone take on something challenging and something as cool as crossnet. And my kids are super into volleyball. I’m gonna get them a set. And I guess the only issue is

44:17
getting four people, like my wife doesn’t play, so I’d have to get like a fourth. Yeah, that’s the tough part sometimes. You’re like, oh, I got three people and it’s like, ah man, I need one more. So that’s the pain point across that, but I don’t know, you get more social. You’re right, I gotta make new friends, Greg, that’s exactly what it is. But man, hey, this is really cool, thanks lot for coming on. Where can people pick up a set? Where can they find you if they wanna find out what the rules are? I know we didn’t really talk about the rules that much, but where can they find more?

44:46
head over to crossnetgame.com. can type crossnet and Google will pop up. Literally click the link. We’ll have rules on the website. You can check it out. You can purchase from there. You can purchase from Sheels, Dix, Walmart, Academy Sports, and a bunch of others. And avoid the knockoffs because chances are the workmanship is not nearly as good as the real thing. That’s true. All right. Take care, Greg. Wait a minute, man. Nice talking to you.

45:13
Hope you enjoyed that episode. Now after listening to Greg, I hope you appreciate how difficult it is to launch a brand new game to the market. But he’s managed to create an amazingly fun game that’s catching on like wildfire. For more information about this episode, go to mywifecoderjob.com slash episode 408. And once again, I want to thank Postcode, which is my SMS marketing platform of choice for e-commerce. With a few clicks of a button, you can easily segment and send targeted text messages to your client base. SMS is the next big own marketing platform.

45:40
and can sign up for free over at postscript.io slash Steve. That’s P-O-S-T-S-E-R-I-P-T dot I-O slash Steve. I also want to thank Klaviyo, which is my email marketing platform of choice for eCommerce merchants. You can easily put together automated flows like an abandoned card sequence, a post purchase flow, a win back campaign, basically all these sequences that will make you money on autopilot. So head on over to mywifecoderjob.com slash K-L-A-V-I-Y-O. Once again, that’s mywifecoderjob.com slash K-L-A-V-I-Y-O.

46:08
Now we talk about how to use these tools in my blog, and if you are interested in starting your own ecommerce store, head on over to mywifecoderjob.com and sign up for my free 6 day mini course. Just type in your email and I’ll send you the course right away. Thanks for listening.