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Welcome to the My Wife Quit Her Job podcast. We will teach you how to create a business that suits your lifestyle so you can spend more time with your family and focus on doing the things that you love. Here is your host Steve Chou.

Steve: Welcome to the My Wife Quit Her Job podcast. Today I’m thrilled to have a very special guest on the show Mike Crowley. Now Mike is the founder and CEO of 94fifty.com which is a company that creates freakishly smart sensor basketballs. Now here’s how they work, embedded in each 94fifty ball are a bunch of sensors that are programmed to measure things that you can’t really see with the human eye. So things like how the ball spins, how it leaves your hand, how you dribble, and then along with a phone app it helps you train to become a better basketball player.

Now since this is an audio podcast and I can’t really adequately express in words how cool these basketballs are, I’m going to link up to the demo video in the show notes so you can check it out yourself. Now mike is actually the first person that I’ve had on the show that has had a successful kick starter campaign, and he managed to raise over $130,000 in 30 days. Now before we start I just want to let the listeners know that I’m currently in negotiations with Mike to make this technology exclusive to Asians, so that we can have more Jeremy Lin in the NBA, and with that welcome to show Mike. How are you doing today?

Mike: Good Steve thanks for having me.

Steve: So can you give us the quick background story, tell us how you came up with the idea for 94fifty?

Mike: Well sure the– I’m from Indiana, so that’s the very first and probably most important thing. We’ve known to play the game a little bit in that state, and like many others it’s the one sport that I had a passion for since probably I was one or two. So that I was predispositioned to basketball and I knew the game very well. I’ve been taught the game by many great coaches, but over the last maybe 10 or 15 years you can see that there was this shift in the way that players were learning not just this game but just sports in general.

The younger athletes because they had been so exposed to not only the internet, but mobile devices and the instantaneous nature of information and expectation for results, you could see that there is a difference in the way that they were learning, or their the need for learning particularly very complex motions that are boring to practice. So we took that basic concept. How can we address that need? We talked to a lot of coaches, players, parents and there’s clearly a need for it and develop something that worked in the exact same way that people were used to.

So it had to be invisible from a tech standpoint but gave this experience to the player where they could get that instant feedback about whether or not they are doing something right. So that we could turn any parent whether they knew anything about the game and they were pretty elite coach, and then gave that 24 hour access to hey if I want to get better and I want to see an improvement in my confidence on the court or in other case in other sports that they can have access to it in an affordable way. So that’s really the evidence for where the business started and then from there to try to build that product into that initial vision was really the challenge, but that I came– started in Indiana and then carried right through to the modern day tech world.

Steve: And you played in college as well, right?

Mike: I did yeah, I played at St. Joseph’s college division two school in Indiana so…

Steve: Okay.

Mike: I’ve got my feel all the way through college ranks.

Steve: Yeah and did you– have you coached at all before or is this just a passion of yours in general?

Mike: You know I haven’t coached at the team level. I went into the business world after school and stayed there, but I’ve trained many-many kids over the years hundreds and hundreds, how to play, how to shoot. So I have a pretty good feel for what it takes to be a trainer, but no I did not have any formal coaching.

Steve: Okay and I thought I just ask you know are you a technical guy at all?

Mike: I only pretend to be one on podcasts like this, no I’ve got a business background, I just surround myself with a lot of very smart technical people.

Steve: Okay.

Mike: And it makes a great combination for the business.

Steve: Yes I was going to ask you something. So I’m a hardware engineer with a background into software and I’m fairly confident that I could take a reasonable stab at creating the guts of a sensor ball with some algorithm help, but to create a product like this requires a combination of everything including mechanical design hardware design, as well as you I design. So how does one kind of execute on such a complicated product from the beginning, so how did you get started with def process and assemble the team?

Mike: Yeah so we you know the company when I founded it we started with the really difficult part at the time with how do you build algorithms that can recognize that something is happening with the sensor. A motion sensor can’t see it just senses motion. So how do you build those programs and say the sensors know or can recognize that something has happened and it’s reliable and accurate. So that was my co founder Kevin King, he had his PhD in that area for sports sensor development and algorithms…

Steve: Okay.

Mike: But from that then you had to go out and find somebody who is very good at assimilating all of that technology into a full system. You know a product and it just so happens that one of the guys I grew up with my little town in Indiana who was my college roommate was one of the world’s best people doing it. He started you know working on internet stuff back in the early 90s and has done some amazing simulations of technology over the years. And he was working for Accenture bringing Bluetooth products out to market.

We brought him into the company a few years ago and said help us do this with Bluetooth and you know hardware and algorithms and everything else that goes with it, because there are a bunch, it’s very complex. And from that project management experience with the right technical people behind it, you can start to pull together what the guts of it look like. But then at the end of it the real key is to have a really good understanding of your customer and the experiences that you want them to have. Because the tech is just the enabling piece but you’ve got to be able to deliver it in a way that people can understand information they are getting.

It’s more than just getting a number to somebody. You have to say here is your number and here’s what you have to do about it to get better, and that’s the real piece that I think we’ve innovated with this that drove the tech requirements, because we wanted to have this experience that as soon as the ball is taken out of the box people can understand right away that it’s different and responsive and it’s there, you know it’s there for them and it’s very accurate. And that was really the whole key to it to bring it together and bring it to life.

Steve: So in terms of your initial team who were your core people and what were their competencies when you were putting together the team?

Mike: Yeah so we have obviously project management from the tech side. So you have to understand all of the technologies and how to manage that, and then we have the PhD level algorithm hardware assimilator which is the co founder Kevin King. Then we have a lot of embedded system engineers, mechanical engineers, those types of people that can also be multidimensional, but then focus on specific areas of turning this you know all these things to very reliable systems– embedded systems that go into a product. So that when somebody uses it they aren’t going to break and it’s going to turn on every time, and you know all the little things that count to that customer experience.

Steve: So in terms of so you live in you said Massachusetts Indiana, was it you grew up in Indiana. Outside of your core team, how did you actually find the engineers and the staff? Like we live out in Silicon Valley and there’s a lot of those embedded system guys out here, but out there I’d imagine there’s a lot less.

Mike: There are although we find them all over the place. So you know people move our engineering is in Ohio. So a ton of people will move there because we’re passionate about what we do you know they love the fact that we’re in the sports world, that we’re really innovating and pushing the envelope of what sports product or fitness product can do, and what they mean in the future. So when you have an exciting story like that with really innovative award winning technology– we have won the larger awards, it’s truly not that hard to find the people, they’ll find you…

Steve: Okay.

Mike: You’re not going to get too many to move from Silicon Valley to Ohio, but there’s not a monopoly out there. They’re very plenty of very good talented people across the country.

Steve: Okay yeah so you know I wanted to talk kind of about the early stages and your kick starter campaign. So I think I originally found out about you guys– I think it was from tech crunch but I can’t remember but there’s a lot of buzz about your kick starter campaign. So one of my questions was why did you decide to do a kick starter as opposed to other ways of raising money?

Mike: Well you know we’ve been successful raising capital, so it wasn’t necessarily a need for raising money that drove our desire to do a kick starter. But we did think because this was on a very early part of our launch plan for the product, for the basketball product, that it was a great way to build awareness and early I guess prototype validation that we’re on the right path. And you know it does get a ton of– you know the media launch is what happens on kick starter. So you know the plan was if we could at least pay for the cost of what it takes to do a kick starter campaign and be committed to it, it’s a great launch plan for the rest of the product and I think that held true.

So you know we had $100,000 goal and I think we raised $130,000 which was good, it was good it was solid. What it drove for us was just a ton of early press before we even had a product on the market. It attracted the attention of Apple, and we launched a product in Apple stores that was successful, a bunch of retailers saw it. So it gave that validation in the market, I think that was really our main goal and I think we were very successful in hitting that goal.

Steve: So you used your kick starter as a marketing vehicle as opposed to just for purely money raising reasons?

Mike: Yeah I think for money raising standpoint if you’re doing a very sophisticated tech product you know to launch it you know you need to be able to raise a couple of million bucks out of a program like that to really have a meaningful impact on the launch of the business.

Steve: Okay.

Mike: And we didn’t expect that we would do on the best. I think for us it was part of our launch plan which we could pay for you know through the kick starter funds, and then really help to spring board to the next level where we needed to go from you know early prototypes up to market. I think that was successful because all those early little things that come from kick starter, the awareness, the media coverage, the contacts with the retailers, it helps give confidence to the investor that you do have that you’re on the right path, and get you from point A to actually taking a product to market which is– that’s 20% is the most difficult piece of the equation. And that’s really kick starter has helped you go from the 80% to the 100% mark, and it accelerated that for us.

Steve: Okay and then so did you have a working prototype before launching the kick starter?

Mike: We did, you know we had reached that prototype stage and I think if you found our kick starter video, you’ll see it working. Those are actually working prototypes that we used in creating that video, but it was far from product ready you know being ready to launch. So we still had quite a bit of work to do to get to where we could put it into the Apple store and be confident it was going to be reliable, and deliver the experience we wanted.

Steve: Okay. So at that point you hadn’t had any volume manufacturing, and then this kick starter campaign kind of funded that first run, is that…?

Mike: Well it did, it helped fund that first run although when you are going out and producing in tens of thousands of units and you have to do it over seas, it funds it to a certain degree, but I think it helps bring the validation in the market that gave our current investors even some new investor’s confidence that we could go all the way with it, and so…

Steve: Okay.

Mike: In that sense yes it helped us go from prototype out to market because it does all those other intangible things for you, which is important; it’s an important piece of a thing. I think it’s a rare case where kick starter funds the whole thing. There’s a few stories like that, like the pebbles of the world and a few others, those are the exceptions, they are on the long end of the tail, not [Inaudible] [00:13:04].

Steve: I see that’s interesting, so you would say a lot a lot of these companies going kick starter just to kind of generate the buzz in the marketing?

Mike: You know it’s hard for me to say what their intentions are when they go on. I knew what ours were you know so we did not believe because our product was a little narrow. It wasn’t you know a wearable for example where you’d have that many potential customers. So I think we went in realistic. There may be a lot of companies that go in there thinking this is going to– I’m going to you know be the next pebble and they put all of their planning into having that kind of volume.

But I think it’s a very risky strategy because kick starter has gotten to a point where it’s not the novelty that it was, it’s much harder to raise that kind of money, and I think you really need to have an alternate plan or at least understand where this fits into your ultimate plan rather than being the sole plan, and I don’t know if other companies go in with that. I suspect that they do and they’re disappointed a lot because there’s a lot of competition in the you know the crowd funding space, and it’s gotten a little stale you know it’s much tougher to hit those numbers anymore.

Steve: So I was just thinking if I could get your take on kick starter for raising money versus angel funding versus VCN, kind of what was your thought process in terms of just raising money?

Mike: Well raising capital is a full time job whether it’s kick starter, angel or VC you got to know what’s your plan is and it takes a lot of time to get that right. So for example even with kick starter it is a very intensive, it is a time intensive month. The only thing you’re doing for those 30 days is trying to figure out how to get the word out about your kick starter campaign and it just consumes you. But to make it successful you have to spend the two months to three months before that really planning it out to get it done right, and that’s no different then, whether or not you’re doing it with kick starter or Angel or trying to raise VC money. It’s about your plan and how well thought out the time you put in to the though process to be successful with it. So I think kick starter is part of the early funding plan.

Steve: Okay.

Mike: Whether you choose to go Angel or VC, that’s really the type of company you have in the market you have and it’s really difficult to make a general statement about it.

Steve: Sure.

Mike: But it all requires the same thing as you’ve got to be very well thought out and you have to have tons of validation that you’re on the right path and that’s where success comes from.

Steve: Okay. So let’s talk about some of the things that you said about kick starter. You said that first 30 days was very intense. So what were some of the things– so first of all what’s the process involved in creating a kick starter campaign?

Mike: Yeah that’s a good question. So the real process is you know you’re going to create a very good video you know a visual for people to understand what you’re doing and tells a good story, and that’s takes a lot of planning. You’ve got to have the right you know team that’s– and not always internal, sometimes you’re going to bring outside help and we did that can help direct the shots and scripts and get everything put together and that takes about a month to do it right, just to get it filmed and edited. And so once the video is ready and towards the end of that the last week you’re applying for the kick starter, you’ve got to get in that information, so it’s just about a week of just prep to get approved by kick starter.

Steve: Okay.

Mike: But once it goes live is really where the time intensive work comes to play, and part of the process heading up to that it really helps if you have a really strong social media connection or network because you’re going to rely on the network out of the gate to give it it’s jump it’s pop in the first you know 5-10 hours.

Steve: Okay.

Mike: You really want to see a whole bunch of people coming in and supporting right out of the gate, because again it validates to the rest of the kick starter market that there’s something hot here. Now the worst thing you want to do is stall out, or kind of come out of there with no momentum because then it [Inaudible] [00:16:52] it must not be very good. So if you can leverage the fact that you got the network right out of the gate where everybody knows it’s coming as soon as it’s live, you get it out to that network and they’re all chipping in you know they’re all supporting you, that’s the first like three to five days, but then…

Steve: Okay.

Mike: Then the next part of it though and the real grind is day five to days 30 or you know day 28 because you’ve used up your initial network and now you’ve got to go and find new, and it’s just a constant network of social media and social media and more social media and everything you can imagine to bring out the awareness and could build out that viral component to what you are doing where it takes out a life of its own you know other people are talking about it, that’s the whole key to the difference between the very big kick starter campaigns and the ones that push through moderately well.

Steve: So let’s dig a little bit deeper so how did you establish that initial social media network for that initial pop?

Mike: You know you do it let’s say you’re going to do that six months before you know if you go in with no social media network at all you’re not going to be successful, it’s just too hard. You’ve got to have– this is something that if you’ve got a business that you’ve been working on you should be developing that network all the time. You should be getting lots of followers on Twitter, lots of likes on your Facebook page, if you don’t have them you need them, you should be using Pinterest. You should be in all of the different social media assets that are free and readily available; you need to be developing them.

Steve: So what are some of the things that you did to– so what did you focus on; Facebook, Pinterest, was there any one social media platform that you focused on or?

Mike: It was mostly Twitter and Facebook for us.

Steve: Okay.

Mike: Pinterest at the time we did was vague, but it was a medium we weren’t very confident in using yet. We didn’t know how to leverage that, and so our presence was a lot smaller you know we had a lot because we had a lot of beta stock you know beta products trusting with previous year and half. We had a pretty good email list that we could tap into, you know a lot of contacts in there of different coaches and players and things that could spread the word.

Steve: Okay.

Mike: So we leveraged you know we just went it’s kind of old school now, we went email that’s what we focused on.

Steve: It’s not old school at all actually yeah everyone relies on it. So you were gathering email addresses from the teams and the players that you were kind of… ?

Mike: Yeah.

Steve: Okay.

Mike: We had over 25,000 different players that had used our beta product in some way shape or form that we had access to heading into that. So we leveraged that obviously pretty intensively heading into this, but we had we had a pretty good you know starting point of all the assets that we could get out with it well.

Steve: So 25,000 is actually a lot of people, so you’re saying that 25,000 people actually tried out your balls prior to the kick starter?

Mike: Not these balls. So we had a beta form of the ball, the systems that we would sell, the team so they could use with their groups of players and camps and practices and it was just a very primitive form of this, it wasn’t the Bluetooth version.

Steve: Okay.

Mike: But it allowed for a lot of data collection from lots of players because you can run through 100 players in a couple of hours. So we had a bunch of those all over the world, we had 100 of those systems all over the world, that were just constantly collecting information and data for us that help drive the requirements for the new product, but with that we would be collecting information about who these people were and we could go back and talk to them, that was the whole point.

Steve: I see, okay so the ball that was going around was not the final polished version, it was more like a data collection device.

Mike: Yeah it was a Wi-Fi ball that we’d talked to a dedicated laptop that we would supply with the two balls that we would send out, and it was only for team use, it wasn’t for the consumer, it was for a team.

Steve: Got it.

Mike: And when a team would use it, they would technically use it with anywhere from 20-200 players in over the course of a month.

Steve: Okay.

Mike: If you get hundreds of those around the world, you’re collecting data and you’re collecting tons of data.

Steve: Yes.

Mike: That’s what the whole point of that was.

Steve: Okay and then in terms of your Facebook strategy were you buy likes, were you driving ads to your site, how were you generating buzz on Facebook?

Mike: You know that really comes down to the quality of your video and your ability to make things go viral, so we didn’t spend any money on buying likes and doing that kind of thing.

Steve: Okay.

Mike: We kept our budget to what went into the front end of it, so we spent a lot of time you know it’s the little stuff, it’s the grind. So if somebody likes you on Twitter for example or likes you on Facebook or follows you on Twitter you need to follow them back and then you need to encourage them to retweet and build that network. And so it seems like it’s very Minusha driven you know every like and every follow counts, that’s what it comes down to, you’ve got to be prepared, that’s the grind of that day five through 25.

Steve: Okay.

Mike: Mentally you have to be ready for because unless you have a million people you’re coming in with. If you don’t, you feel like everybody else, you’re going to run through that initial network in about five days.

Steve: Right.

Mike: And the whole trick is how do you turn any newcomers into that into somebody who also goes out and shares with somebody else, and that is just I mean it is I call it a grind because that is what it was, you just have to work it and you have to be prepared for that mentally.

Steve: Okay. So let’s talk about the grind for a bit. So how did you get some publicity and you know can you kind of describe the grind? What are the things that you were doing just to kind of reach out to people?

Mike: Well that’s the other part of it that I haven’t touched on. So one of the other parts of the plan is we did retain some independent PR experts, not a firm but they had a lot of years in PR and we had a little one month contract with them to help us build a buzz about the kick starter campaign and the product. So the other big part of our strategy that was beyond just the social media was we put out there that this product was coming, and in our case the media loved it, I mean they locked on to it very early and they wrote about it extensively. I think we had about 400 articles that were written about it in a one month time period.

Steve: Wow, okay.

Mike: So every time one of those articles was written, it expanded our universe immensely. So I’m a big believer in PR if you do it right and if you have the right story and right product. It could be immensely valuable, and it is probably one of the key parts of our strategy even today, where the media really likes this product, it’s a tactile very physical object that people can see or amazed by. So we use that to our advantage. Now I don’t know if every other product is going to have that same potential, but it was hugely important to us as we did it.

Steve: Yeah I can completely see that I mean as soon as I watched that first video, I knew your product is very compelling and you had an awesome story. So I can imagine something like that would just naturally generate buzz. I’m sure your PR person had a much easier job with your product than maybe some of their other clients.

Mike: Well you know it’s easy when it clicks, if it doesn’t click then you know it’s not so easy but in this case it took on a life of its own. So I talked about the viral nature and what can happen in social media. Our viral uptake was on the media side you know we just got a ton of press and that we did it in March, it was the month of March, and then that press was what generated the awareness to retailers and others and allowed us to carry it forward. And in fact generated a whole another round of PR for us and holiday when we launched, because it had been on kick starter, people were watching it, we were visible now to the world you now they took us seriously.

Steve: Okay and then I had to ask this question so in terms of approaching the NBA, did you do that earlier on or was it just after this press wave happened?

Mike: Well, approaching the NBA in what way, so what…?

Steve: Teams I guess.

Mike: So we have never really approached the NBA in that manner and there’s a pretty simple reason, there’s only 32 teams and they’re only going to buy so much product, so there’s…

Steve: Okay.

Mike: To get validation from the NBA is a whole different animal that I don’t think we want to talk about it really quick in the podcast. I don’t know if this is a good area for it, but to come back to your question is this working with validators in the market, that we think would have an influence in our market and our market is 818.

Steve: Okay.

Mike: What we found in our surveys in our studies that we did in building the product is that the college level coaches were far more influential on the normal family, because I think that in our market that it’s for any player that has an aspiration not necessarily to play in college, but they just want to get better and they want to have more confidence. They want to perform a little better and they’re willing to practice and we give them a better way to do that. It’s more responsive et cetera et cetera, but the college voice is more influential to that market, we found that in the NBA voice.

So we went out and sought out partnerships with like the national association of basketball coaches, but all the college level coaches and the organization that they’re a part of, and that’s what we use today as more of an influencing factor to validate that what we measure is real and it helps and it’s used by that level and it’s useful. So that’s where we put our focus, it was initially the NBA.

Steve: I guess that makes complete sense, your target market is younger kids who are aspiring to become really good players.

Mike: Yeah.

Steve: So if you can just kind of break down your sales. I’m not going to ask you about numbers but where do you make the majority of your sales today. Is it through the internet? Is it through the Apple Stores? How does the sales strategy play out?

Mike: Yeah, so you know for this holiday we started with Apple and they were a dominant provider or distributor for us last year when we launched. We were exclusive in apple and online 94fifty net sales and then partially because that’s all we could produce for last year.

Steve: Okay.

Mike: The product wasn’t ready until mid November, so we were even a little late to the party. But this year our strategy has been how do we expand that? So we have run Amazon now which is a big distributor for us in East Bay and Dicks Online, and we try to focus right now. We even have a big retailer up in Canada called Sport Check which is both in store and online. But we– the product is still so different and new.

And because it looks like a regular basketball, but it costs a lot more you still have the story have to tell. And we found that telling it through video and giving people more time to understand what they are purchasing and the benefits is best done online. So most of our distribution today is done through online channels through either our own 94fifty.com or partners that can use the assets that we create, and so it’s about 50/50 right now.

We do about 50% of our own and 50% of our distributions through partners. And we have a pretty strong international distribution at this point. And we have markets like Asia and China really start to pop for us because they love to play the sport over there. So it’s a pretty good mix and you know we really take our time in evaluating who is going to commit to really helping customers understand the value prop.

And it’s not just about stocking it in the store because it is an expensive product to build and you know it’s a whole different animal when you are running a retail, you got to do that right. So we’ve taken a pretty measured approach to how we get distribution out there and how we achieve the you know the production capacity really is our biggest constraint. We can produce so much and we sell so much and that’s it. You know it’s not like we can prop up a million of these tomorrow. It takes time.

Steve: Right. I actually I had a couple of questions on your retail strategy. I interviewed someone in the past where they had a very high end product and they put in retail stores, but they weren’t doing an adequate job of pointing out the benefits.

Mike: That’s right.

Steve: They were sitting here with the product that was very expensive compared to the rest. And so I would imagine you know your basketball looks like all the other basketballs and it feels the same, so in these retail outlets is there like a huge station set up where there is a video and then it can really educate the customer about why they should buy your product?

Mike: What we found with retailers in general with the internet of things type products they are starting to think this way, but they really have been caught a little flat footed in that there this wave of products. Not just basketballs but just about everything you can imagine that has the same problem that you have with the smart product. It is designed to look and feel exactly like the product.

It isn’t smart because that’s what people– that’s how they know how to use it. But the value prop is totally different because the information you get out of it and it is going to be more expensive. But retailers in general were not prepared for the pace at which these products enter the market including ours. And so they are just now starting to build those strategies is to how we set up these areas within the stores to deliver that value prop in a way that somebody will buy it in a retail setting in volume.

And a few companies have figured out that you know like a nest for example and how they get to retail, but the vast majority of them they struggle with how you educate both the employees that need to sell them and the customers that want to buy them. And it’s very time intensive and costly. So our approach has been when we see a retailer who sort of gets it we work with them, but if we feel like it’s pushing a string that the retailers aren’t ready, we just disengage and move on.

And because there are other avenues in which ways you can sell these products they are just as effective. But the market is still just I think a tad bit behind and I think you’ll start to see retailers and customers will see retailers really dedicating more space and time to developing the winning smart products strategy probably within the next 12-18 months.

Steve: The reason why I asked that question is I think earlier you alluded to the fact that your earlier sales were from the Apple Store, right?

Mike: Mm-huh.

Steve: As opposed to focusing more you had limited inventory it sounded like, right?

Mike: Yeah.

Steve: So the allocation of that it sounds like you allocated a big chunk of the Apple store as opposed to your own online efforts and I was just curious why that was the case?

Mike: Well they had 250 stores.

Steve: Okay.

Mike: So you know in order to supply that many stores where we started in you know they need to have not only what they put on the shop but they need to have an inventory and they need to have a couple of weeks backlog. So just by the nature of trying to go into that many stores out of the gate, they’re going to get a good chunk of it, but it was you know we reserved the knock that we could adequately supply internally as well. I think we did a pretty good job of broadcasting. If you want to immediately jump into that many stores that sell that much, you’ve got to have product you know be prepared to commit it.

Steve: How do you forecast the allocation, or make these estimates?

Mike: You know you’ve got to work with the retailer they do the best they can but our new products nobody really knows so…

Steve: Right.

Mike: You know you work with them for a couple of months and you know you try to do the best you can and say this is what we think but nobody has ever sold the product, seen the product, used the product, in the market, so how do you make that work? You know…

Steve: Yeah okay, yeah I was just…

Mike: It’s really a best guess in everybody’s part and…

Steve: Okay.

Mike: That’s the best kind of advice I can give there is no magic bullet to it I think.

Steve: Okay. So let’s talk a little bit about manufacturing. So you mentioned that earlier that these balls are manufactured overseas. So what is the process of such a complicated product you know you have the ball, the mechanical aspects of it, then you’ve got the you know the circuitry and that sort of thing, so how does that all come together?

Mike: Oh wow the– you know when you’re dealing with smart products you’ve got PCBs or circuit boards and all the components. The hardest part about it is you’re carrying the components, you know there’s roughly 70 to 80 different little pieces that go into this and they come from many different vendors, and the thing that’s happening is because there are so many products that are using these same components, it could be the least costly little thing on your PCB, but its n the highest demand and you’re going to get stocked out if you’re going to wait for it. So one of the hardest things to manage is the lead times which you have to allocate to just secure the parts to get it into manufacturing. That can take three months if you start from scratch sometimes four.

Steve: Okay.

Mike: So accounting for lead times is very difficult and then you know we’re not doing we’re not– you’re competing with you know the smart phone maker, so you’re not buying in the millions of units a month to start.

Steve: Right.

Mike: So you’re always at the bottom of the totem pole. We did a very good job of managing and really building strong relationships with the big vendors with the key parts so that they liked us and we really helped them with some really cool things with our basketballs that they wanted to do. You know it’s really just a matter of trying to make as many friends as you can so that you can ask for the favor and say I need this part, can you reserve you know 25,000 pieces for us for a run next month, and they will always find a way to help you.

But once you get all the parts, then you’ve got to have a very good contract manufacturing relationship, you want to do it as low cost as you can. You’ve got to have all the receipts and contacts now that we looked at both, but the key thing for us is that the inflatables industry which is basketball, soccer ball et cetera, is completely overseas now. That moved over there 30 years ago, so there’s no way we could finish our product unless we did it in China or overseas.

Steve: Okay.

Mike: There is just no way, it’s just not in the US anymore. So once that was the case, we just made the decision as you may as well have both of those components done as close together as possible because you eliminate risk of trying to ship things overseas, and trying to get parts here and there and we tried to put it all into a geographic area that was very-very close together, and that was our strategy, and I think it worked, but it’s not the same for everybody. We had a unique situation trying to bring the inflatables and the electronics industry together, that was new.

Steve: So in terms– so you did all the PCB design in-house and then you shipped the [inaudible 00:34:22] over to Asia and then you had all the PCBs and everything assembled over there?

Mike: Yeah, we do all of the design and engineering here and then the [inaudible 00:34:31] as you said, the files about what they are supposed to produce in their you know from a board perspective, they manage the whole securing the parts and getting it done on the QC and then they work with us on how you get the parts or the work in process or the finished goods or the sensors over to the ball manufacturer and how that’s all going to come together is really a fairly complex process of which we had to build our own apps to do a QC at every point so we could see that the sensors and the balls were being produced right, they weren’t being destroyed and we had to innovate the whole thing, so it was very complex.

Steve: That was actually my next question, but first of all how did you find the vendor to make the ball and do the assembly. I imagine it’s more than just finding a regular ball manufacturer right?

Mike: Yeah while we used the best factory in the world, they make the NBA ball and you know a lot of other top name top quality balls that you’d see in the market. That came from one of our key hires that we made who came out of one of those companies and build many-many products and sourced them for years. So we had to have that asset internal and those relationships to make it work. So that was just a key hire that we made and it’s been very effective for us.

Steve: Okay and then in terms of introducing this new electronic component to the ball that was just something where you had to fly over and just work out with the manufacturers directly.

Mike: Yeah, they flew here, so there was a mix and flights back and forth and you know make sure we were always on the same page and again came from our relationship of one of our other employees who had worked with them in the past. So I think we had some pre-knowledge and confidence in their capabilities in what they could do and what we could do so.

Steve: Okay.

Mike: It’s very much a team effort across the board you know.

Steve: Yeah.

Mike: With a small company you have to leverage every asset you got and those little intangibles can go a long way to making it happen or not happen.

Steve: And in terms of quality control, is it just a set of electronic diagnostics or are there quality control aspects of the actual physical ball itself as well?

Mike: All of it you know, so our app can scan every chip. You know it’s got a MAC address on it as it comes off the line and we can scan and do a little test that we designed you know just a little tablet consister [phonetic] literally scans everything that comes off the line.

Steve: Okay.

Mike: And gives us a real time report on it, and then when it gets over to the ball factory they have a process where they once they have sealed everything into the ball, they throw it into this bin to dry for 24 hours. We’ve got another app there that’s just scanning every MAC address to make sure it still works. And then when it gets back into the states, we ship everything here, we do a final physical check and we inflate everything with a special machinery that we invented to inflate it perfectly.

Steve: Wow.

Mike: And to make sure that the battery still has a charge in it because a very big thing for us that we learned that when we wanted to work out of the box, we always have to charge it to work. So one of the big things about our product is you pull it out of the box and you put it on the charging pad its wireless charging, and it turns on and you’re ready to use it within 30 seconds of pulling it out of the box. There is no pre charging required, so to innovate that process we had to think of all these little steps to make sure that not only did it work when we ship it out, but it’s charged and it’s going to come out in just two seconds you pull it out, plug it in, plug in the charging pad and put on the pad and off you go, you’re ready to play.

Steve: Nice and why was that such an important factor for you to have the battery charged upon opening?

Mike: Well it’s such a new product and we– and people had never experienced it before and we didn’t work with other smart products for example Nike basketball shoes or whatever. And almost all of them require this setup, this 15-20 minute of trying to figure it out, and in our market its not necessarily the most tech savvy you know these are these are people that just want to play.

Steve: Right.

Mike: They want to start and the anxiety level that builds up with the new tech product that you’ve never used is very-very rapid. Every minute that you make them you make your customer try to fiddle with something. So we say let’s design a product where it’s so easy to pull out of the box, take one step you know you’ve already got your app downloaded, dribble it four times, it’s going to connect and off you go. And that was it was very important to us to make the success of the product from the customer’s prospective, the momentum after sale, that’s why we did it.

Steve: Yeah that actually makes complete sense now that I think about it a little bit more. I would image people who are tech adverse if the ball is not ready to go right off the bat they might think it’s busted or something as well, right?

Mike: That’s right, that’s exactly right and then you know with social media if they think that they can tear you part very quickly and you know that’s death for a new product that hits the market, particularly when they’ve got some high profile press and we had so much press and you don’t want that. So we work very hard to make sure we could sustain the expectation after the customer has bought the product and used it for the first time. Now we’re not perfect, I’m not going to– I mean there are some product that got out to the field that didn’t– somehow got through our screening and that’s got to be normal for any logical…

Steve: Sure, right.

Mike: But we kept it at a very minimal range manageable range and your customer service and how you replace and get people up and running is very critical. So we had all that planned out and it’s all very practical.

Steve: Okay, and then you know just this question mainly for the listeners, you know for an aspiring entrepreneur that wants to create an incredible physical product that involves tech, what advice would you give just you know from a starting standpoint. What would you focus on initially?

Mike: Oh, so, ask me that again Steve, and you could edit out the first one, let me make sure I understand that question.

Steve: Okay so you know, this is actually a question for me for the most part because I’m very interested in tech and you know physical hardware products. So for an aspiring entrepreneur that wants to create you know this kind of marrying of physical product with tech, there’s just so many directions you can go when you first start out. So what would you focus on when first starting out you know in terms of establishing the team and in terms of defining the product? How’s that?

Mike: You definitely need a team, you need– it’s not a one man job for tech. You need some very smart founders in the business that are multi-facetted and that can think in a couple of different ways, business, strategy and tech. So that I think that’s first. Don’t be afraid about the things like whether somebody is going to steal your idea you know if you get bogged down with those things– the whole key is get through the green lights you know imagine yourself driving down the road and you’ve got to get to the airport, you’re about to have a child, you’ve got to get to that hospital you know.

So you have to get there, and it’s all about speed, so if you get caught at a red light or get slowed down by yellow it’s bad. So sometimes you’ve got to shift out of a lane that you think you need the green, leave and just to get to that green light, you’ve got to get through the green and that’s got to be the philosophy you have.

But then the second thing is if you have your team and you are comfortable and the chemistry is there and you know you’ve got the right vision, getting to the customer and really understanding that you are on the right path and making those adjustments is so critical, and I mentioned before we started talking that we have large companies coming to us now saying can you help us build a product like this for a different form factor or a different space. You know what you’ve done is that innovative, and we give the same advice to them as yes not only can we do it, but we can do it fast but fast means we’re going to take you to the customer from day one because you have to get the experience right.

This new wave of products where I think many are failing in it is that they think data in it of itself is the answer and it is not. I think what the customer is going to want and we’re seeing it today and we’re going to see it more and more is give me data that is usable that, okay I get the number but what do I do with it, what’s the next action I take so that I can see some improvement in the thing I’m passionate about. And understanding those connections between data and actionable contextual kind of feedback, something you can use is critical and the only way you can get it is to get to a customer with a real prototype. So build your prototypes fast, get to your customers fast, fail fast, and go back and try it again.

Steve: Okay.

Mike: Over and over again is the real key to it, and if you can do that and do it efficiently then you have a chance of winning. If you can’t or you avoid it, I pretty much guarantee you are going to lose because you’re going to end up with a product that looks just like everything else or worse.

Steve: And then along the way gather emails and contacts and establish your social stuff so that when you’re ready to launch, you already have a following.

Mike: Well absolutely. Every person you talk to is going to know about 1000 others. So you know you’ve got to win them even if it’s an early prototype that they buy in your vision and they’re willing to talk about it to their next 1000 people, and you try to collect and build that every step of the way so that if you get to a point where you’re trying to do a kick starter or something like that, you’ve got that asset ready to leverage, and it is an asset that’s a very valuable asset.

Steve: Okay and then in terms of doing the kick starter, will that be something that you would definitely do again?

Mike: It depends on what we were– what the goal was, so you know if I was starting a new company with a new product yes.

Steve: Okay.

Mike: For our company today I don’t think we need it because it satisfied what our goal was and we’ve got all the things that give it its own momentum now, so we’re sort of beyond that, we wouldn’t use it again for this company. But if you are starting if I was starting a new company yeah it would definitely be in my launch plans.

Steve: Okay cool, hey Mike we’ve already been talking for 45 minutes and I want to be respectful for your time. Where can people find out more about your ball and perhaps even contact you if they had any questions about your product?

Mike: Yeah, the best place where we have by far the most information is 94fifty.com and that’s the number 9 and number 4 and the word fifty spelled out 94 and F-I-F-T-Y and just a ton of great information there, that’s about the product. Our company website is informotionsports.com and that’s more of a broader strategic kind of website, you can learn more about us you know we’re distributed as I mentioned kind of all over the internet whether you go to Amazon or Dicks online or wherever, East Bay, but they’re all going to point back to the information we have there, and you can find out how to contact us directly from any of those sites. That would make it pretty easy for people to access us and we’re trying to be as responsive as we can about responding to everybody either as a question or a concern or whatnot, a piece of feedback.

Steve: Okay well hey thanks Mike for coming on the show; I know you’re busy man and I really appreciate you coming on.

Mike: I appreciate you having me, thanks Steve.

Steve: All right, take care.

Mike: All right, bye.

Steve: Hope you enjoyed that episode. Mike’s company 94fifty.com is one of the coolest companies that I have seen in a while, and I’m definitely going to get one of those basketballs for my son after all he’s going to be the next Jeremy Lin, count on it. For more information about this episode go to mywifequitherjob.com/episode51, and if you enjoyed this episode please go to iTunes and leave me a review. When you write me a review it not only makes me feel proud but it also keeps this podcast up in the ranks so other people can use this information, find the show more easily, and get awesome business advice from my guests.

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For more information go to mywifequitherjob/contest, and if you are interested in starting your own online business be sure o sign up for my free six day mini course where I show you how my wife and I managed to make over 100k in profit in our first year of business. Go to www.mywifequitherjob.com for more information and thanks for listening.

Thanks for listening to the My Wife Quit Her Job podcast where we’re giving the courage people need to start their own online business. For more information visit Steve’s blog at www.mywifequitherjob.com.

If you enjoy this podcast please leave me a review on iTunes, and enter my podcast contest where I’m giving away free one on one business consultations every single month. For more information go to www.mywifequitherjob.com/contest. And if you are interested in starting your own online business, be sure to sign up for my free six day mini course where I’ll show you how my wife and I managed to make over 100k in profit in our first year of business. Go to www.mywifequitherjob.com for more information. Now onto the show.

Welcome to the My Wife Quit Her Job podcast. We will teach you how to create a business that suits your lifestyle so you can spend more time with your family and focus on doing the things that you love. Here is your host Steve Chou.

Welcome to the My Wife Quit Her Job podcast. Today I`m really excited to have Eric Bandholz on the show again. Now Eric runs the incredibly profitable online store beardbrand.com and he is actually my very first return guest believe it or not. Now, why did I bring him back on the show again so soon? In between our last conversation, Eric went on my favorite TV show on television Shark Tank. And since I have not yet had anyone on the show who has been on Shark Tank yet, I knew I had to have him back. Now I`ve got a lot of question for Eric today and I must say that I`m a little bit jealous that he got to meet Daymond John and Mark Cuban, Barbra and Mr Wonderful, and with that welcome back to the Show Eric how are you doing today man?

Eric: Hey Steve I`m doing absolutely fantastic. How are you doing?

Steve: Pretty good man. I would imagine you would be doing pretty fantastic after going on the show.

Eric: Yeah.

Steve: It was an amazing show, I don’t want to spoil the show incase people haven’t seen it yet. So we can talk about the outcome a little bit too at the end.

Eric: Yeah we had to keep my lip shut because it happened, so long ago but it also aired a while ago as well. So– but it was you know I was following up on it and the ratings came out, and I was– the show was on Halloween and I was thinking because it was on the Halloween it would get lower ratings than normal. I looked back on old Halloween shows and they seem to be down, but it was actually the highest rated show of the season, so…

Steve: Really?

Eric: Yeah.

Steve: Awesome.

Eric: So I was pretty excited about that as well.

Steve: Do you get ratings for your own specific segment. Do they break that down for you?

Eric: I just looked on a public website, so I don’t know how they broke down…

Steve: Okay.

Eric: Per segment or anything like that.

Steve: Awesome and just curious before we get into the guts of the interview, did you have like your analytics open and then as soon as the show came on, did you see it like shoot up?

Eric: Yeah we had a TV set up for a viewing party. We had a bunch of people over here at the Beard Brand office, and then we had another monitor set up right next to it with the analytics from our website urbanbeardsmen.com, and from beardbrand.com with real time pages open on both of those so…

Steve: And I’m just curious like what’s your normal and what did it shoot up too as soon your segment aired?

Eric: Our normal kind of coming into this show was about 20 or 30 people.

Steve: Okay, on at a time.

Eric: On at a time and then during the show it just like– it would take time to refresh like it was– like real time wasn’t like real-real time, but it would be like you know 50, 100, 500…

Steve: Wow.

Eric: 1200 and then it went all the way up to 6300 simultaneous visitors.

Steve: Oh my goodness, okay. So what– I did want to get into this later, but since we are talking about it, what did you do to prepare for that onslaught of traffic?

Eric: So our shopping cart is on Shopify and they can handle up to half a million visits per minute.

Steve: Okay.

Eric: So, I was pretty sure we weren’t going to get that many visitors. So Shopify was totally fine and then with urbanbeardmen.com, I had that hosted on like a shared host, but it had been acting walky kind of leading up to the show. So we switched to Amazon web services and bought a bunch of server time, and we paid a lot of money– I mean it wasn’t a lot it was like 100 bucks and had a friend set it up, but you know it handled the traffic and we cashed out everything before the show, so that everything was loading quickly, and just kind of optimized to handle the onslaught, and a lot of people really didn’t go on to urban beards men from beard brand. But I mean– maybe a few hundred, but it wasn’t anything that we were just blown away with the traffic.

Steve: So in terms of shopify, I`m sure they can’t handle that much traffic for every store. So did you have to give them a heads up a head of time or…

Eric: I mean they seemed pretty confident.

Steve: Okay.

Eric: Of those abilities, so I gave– I did contact them and reached out to them and let them know, but I think they have seen that a few times. I think there is other companies who have been on Shark Tank who have just kind of opted out ahead of time.

Steve: Okay.

Eric: Shopify is for the most part you know, keeping the website up hasn’t been a big trouble for them.

Steve: Awesome, well that’s good to know. So let’s start from the very beginning. No first of give us 60 second refresher to what you sell in your store again just so the listeners remember, and then tell us what your motivations were for even applying to Shark Tank.

Eric: So Beard Brand we foster style for the urban beards men and that means we are trying to change the way society views beards men by helping them understand that beards men aren’t simply you know lumberjacks or bikers or hippies or outdoors men, but there is also you know what we call the urban beadsmen, which is maybe more professional, family oriented, community driven type of guys, you know your typical office guy.

Steve: Mm-huh.

Eric: And to help them out we provide beard care products. So we sell beard oil, mustache wax, combs, brushes, kits and the likes for that niche out there. And we wanted to be on Shark Tank because just the opportunity to expose our brand to millions of people, and then in addition to that to be able to partner with some high priority people. We are really heavy and focused on branding.

Steve: Mm-huh.

Eric: And I think part of branding is aligning with people who fit your image and can help you– who have the resources to help you grow quicker than you can grow, and specifically I`m talking about like celebrity endorsements.

Steve: Okay.

Eric: And I wasn’t thinking necessarily like one of the sharks would be a celebrity endorsement, but I was thinking that they probably have more connections to other beards men, who have more clout than I do, and they might be able to make that introduction or help us with writing the contracts or formulating those deals that we don’t have a lot of experience doing. And then from like the advisor stand point you know to build a multimillion dollar company is our goal. I have never done that before. So everyday I`m learning something new, and it would always be nice to have like an advisory community or platform, someone to help us out and help us grow.

Steve: So just curious, did you go into the show full on wanting an investment from the sharks?

Eric: We– for us it was a win-win situation.

Steve: Right.

Eric: Our business is healthy and growing in a sense that we don’t need any outside money. So we are not desperate for a deal, but if we could have worked out a deal we would have worked out a deal, so yeah.

Steve: And I`m just curious I mean just– I’ve seen the show I don’t know if all the listeners have watched the Halloween episode yet, but what were you– going in did you know how much you were willing to give up for the company and how much were you actually willing to the sharks and kind of how did you kind of evaluate how much you were willing to give up verses what they would have to offer you in your business?

Eric: We did a lot of research before going on to the show trying to figure out what the valuation of our business was, and you know at the time our business was only– had only existed for 18 months. So there is not a lot of backing data you know any of that, but from talking with a law firm that does a lot of MNAs to talking with other VCs and other successful business owners who have sold, we– they advised that our business was valued anywhere between four and ten million dollars.

Steve: Okay, is that about– what multiple is that? A three to four X or?

Eric: You know I don’t really know when you consider multiples if its– is it on revenue or is it on profit or anything like that, but at that point we had a run rate 1.2 million dollars.

Steve: Okay, and that’s revenue right.

Eric: That’s revenue. And we were focusing more on the run rate than we were on total sales because of the rapid growth, but and you know personally I don’t really get into valuation too much. it`s not like we are really looking forward to selling. It`s just some kind of– I just wanted amo [phonetic] and…

Steve: Absolutely.

Eric: Opinions from other people other than me, and what the valuation of the business was so that I could feel confident, you know pitching to them and standing ground for what we thought the business was worth. But if you watch the show you will see that we came in there asking for $400,000 for 15% which puts us at 2.6 million dollar valuation. So we gave– we factored in the unique opportunity that a Shark could have by being associated with the TV show, and discounted our business in results to that, and then I think we would have gone down as low as two million dollars to do the deal.

Steve: Okay.

Eric: So like, all that was kind of going in beforehand.

Steve: In terms of giving up equity though, were you willing to give up like 50%?

Eric: Well so, for those who aren’t familiar with how the show works, they– you set a number that you need and if you can’t get to that number the deal won’t get done. So, if you want to have a deal done, it’s going to be better to do like a lower amount like $100,000 or something like that. And we came in at $400,000. So it’s a little bit higher amount and a little bit bigger investment for them. So it’s a little bit harder to get a deal done with that higher price tag. I forgot what you asked.

Steve: I asked like let say Cuban came up to you and said hey I have a million bucks for…

Eric: [crosstalk 11:43] so we were willing to do…

Steve: Because you own 100%, is that right?

Eric: Yeah, I mean I would much rather just sell the whole thing than sell half of it.

Steve: Okay.

Eric: So I think, we would have stuck ground at that 400,000 and let’s see here what is that…

Steve: I`m busy asking you what percentage of the company were you willing to give up at let’s say about a $ 2,000,000 valuation?

Eric: Well, we would have done 400,000 because we would have had to, so that takes you to what percentage is that?

Steve: One fifth, twenty percent right?

Eric: Okay right. So we would have given up the 20%.

Steve: Interesting. Okay, so you went in with the dollar amount instead of– like I was just curious if one of the Sharks– sometimes they go up, right. They give you more money than you ask for and they ask for a higher percentage.

Eric: Yeah I mean, I probably wouldn’t have, I probably wouldn’t have gone higher than 20%.

Steve: Okay, all right.

Eric: So let’s talk about the application process, what is that like? Walk me through what you had to do to get on the show.

Eric: So there is a lot of different ways to get on the show. The best opportunity is when the producers just randomly stumble across you business and they reach out to you and they ask you to be on the show. So you are pretty much green lighted through several steps of processes. There are two other ways, the other ways, the other way– one other way is by filling out the application and submitting it and just sending it through their yahoo email address that you get online, and then the final way is to go to like a casting call out around the nation. That will happen, and I think we did the one where you emailed through their email system.

Steve: Okay.

Eric: And that worked for us. We were considering doing one of the casting call events in Austin Texas, but we didn`t want to stand in line for two hours for something that we really didn’t have control over. We were kind of at that time we had already submitted our application.

Steve: Right.

Eric: And so for us too is you know if they dig it they dig it if not we’ve got to move on with our business and focus on growing it.

Steve: So describe the application and how do you make yourself stand out? Like what are some tips and tricks on getting on that you did?

Eric: I think Lindsay just filled that out over the course just 15 minutes and just put in our information and kind of went with it. So…

Steve: Are you serious?

Eric: Yeah it wasn’t like– at that time I don’t even think she was familiar with the show Shark Tank, she is like oh this sounds cool, I`m going to fill it out and put it in. And so she filled it out in like 15 minutes and, I mean I think what we are doing is kind of cool by default. I think you know not a lot of people are doing what we are doing and I don’t think they`ve had anyone on the show who is doing what we`ve done. So I think the big thing is being unique. You know if you are not a beard oil company out there listening, then they are probably not going to air that, or if they do air it, it’s not going to be for a number of years. So they want to have like unique consumer based products.

Steve: You know what’s funny though Eric, I’ve watched every single episode of Shark Tank and a lot of times they have people that are just like baking cookies or cup cakes and what nots. That stuff isn’t that unique, so I would imagine that you have to make your application stand out a little bit. There must be something that Lindsay did in that 15 minutes. Perhaps she is amazing.

Eric: Yeah, I mean we were proud of our story and we tell our story and you know our story involves like Urban Beards and then and change in the way society views beards men, which are pretty big tasks, which I think stands out you know, it’s not like we just make cookies and we sell them. But you know our numbers we have pretty good numbers for growth as well and I think that tells the story as well. I don’t know if I’ll ever ask them like why did they pick us over the 35,000 other companies.

Steve: Okay. So you send in your email, how long did it take for you to response?

Eric: It took about like six months.

Steve: Six months? Okay, no you didn’t hear from them yet for six months?

Eric: Yeah, so we estimate like October-November something like that and we had from them I think in May.

Steve: I’m sorry this is a text based submission process, right. You didn’t include a video or anything, right?

Eric: I’m pretty sure at this point we didn’t do a video.

Steve: Okay.

Eric: But they followed up and we did a video.

Steve: Okay.

Eric: With my…

Steve: So they followed up and were you on the show at that point when they’d followed up, or did they want more information out of you?

Eric: Yeah, so I think they kind of said they were interested in you know having you continue through the Shark Tank process and you know shoot a video, let’s see what you are like and submit it. You know like sell the producers on why you should be on the show.

Steve: Okay. And then what– do you have that video?

Eric: I’m not allowed to show that video.

Steve: Oh you are not allowed to show that video, okay.

Eric: But I do have it.

Steve: So may be privately you can give me a link to it.

Eric: No, you don’t get it privately.

Steve: I don’t get it privately either.

Eric: No, no.

Steve: Yeah, all right. Well even with that personality video, you still going on the show huh Eric. Okay cool, so you send in that video and then what happens?

Eric: It’s just like a…

Steve: What’s it like to talk about that video? Is that just a personality thing– the video was just a personality thing? Or did you just pitch your company at that point?

Eric: Yeah I mean it’s both, right you know it’s essentially showing how you would appear on TV. Yeah, and then it’s just a lot more forms and a lot more back and forth, a lot more tweaking and you know communicating, and then just getting ready for the show essentially like just there is all these baby steps that needed to happen.

Steve: Okay.

Eric: To make sure that you are ready for the show, you know make sure that all their Ts are crossed and their eyes are dotted legally, and make sure that they want to cover their ass.

Steve: Okay.

Eric: So they don’t get sued for promoting something that’s panted or you know.

Steve: Sure.

Eric: So they don’t want to you know they are doing it not only like vetting you for talent, but also vetting you for your business, to make sure that the Sharks would you know that you are actually a rigid business, that it’s something that they would invest in as well. So there is a lot of like you would go for any kind of investment, you got to give up your numbers or reason and all that other stuff.

Steve: Do they come to you at your office?

Eric: No, it’s all on line, emails and stuff, yeah.

Steve: Oh it’s all on line, okay.

Eric: Yeah.

Steve: Interesting you know because you know I’m always under the impression that when people go on the show they haven’t been completely vetted yet. But it sounds like they vet you completely before you even get on the show.

Eric: So the Sharks are not that– the sharks have no idea what’s walking through that door. But the whole producing team, then Shark Tank show they’ll vet of course.

Steve: Okay. And then after that what happens? So you did your video, you submitted it, and then how much time has elapsed?

Eric: It’s a pretty quick process to get in on the show or getting to film the show, but it’s just a you know I’ll be a little vague here it’s pretty much you know sign a bunch of papers, walk through a lot of back and forth with the producing team you know just kind of they really like set your expectations. They just tell you what’s going to happen, and how it’s going to happen. They are very upfront, they are very clear, and they really just walking you through the process. I think it’s more in line our strategy was listening to these guys because they know what they are doing, like they’ve done how many episodes in the past and how many entrepreneurs.

Steve: Okay.

Eric: They really take advice from them on what they recommend that we should do as entrepreneurs. So we had a really open book on what we wanted to do, and how we wanted to do it, and just kind of fall in line with them. So you just walk through them and you talk with them and you work out all the details, and then you don’t talk about it which is…

Steve: Yeah we’ll see what you are willing to talk about here. So we can talk about the preparations right. So how did you prepare to be on the show?

Eric: Well of course we did the valuation for our business that we talked about. So you get a fill for what we thought our business was worth then. And kind of we watched a lot of episodes in the past to see who is going to react, and how we thought they were going to react and how we would handle various scenarios. I’m one of those guys who if I prepare too much, I underperform, I get nervous, I over think things, and so I actually prefer winning it a little bit.

Steve: Okay.

Eric: And just be myself.

Steve: I’m the same way actually yeah.

Eric: Which you know sometimes it’s good and sometimes it’s not so good, but it’s how I feel so comfortable. So I did one dry run with the– my co-founders.

Steve: Okay.

Eric: And I set the pitch like in my head and throughout the day like probably a thousand times. Like I was just constantly saying the pitch and saying it over and over and over again. Because that’s one thing that’s really scripted that you got to know is that first two minute intro.

Steve: Okay. Now how long is the pitch by the way?

Eric: It’s they want you to keep it under two minutes.

Steve: Under two minutes, okay.

Eric: And then I kept in there and they still– they cut out a few pieces of it which was a little annoying, like I had some good jokes in there, and they cut them, but I guess they weren’t that good if they cut them out.

Steve: Okay, so what are some of the facts that you just had to down part; you mentioned valuation, anything else?

Eric: You know it’s just knowing how you’ve grown and knowing your numbers.

Steve: Okay.

Eric: And I was very– at that point I was very hands on with the business. So I knew like all the day to day numbers, I knew everything.

Steve: Okay.

Eric: We had a lot of growth and you’ve got to know your numbers, but that’s with any business you’ve got to know your numbers. You’ve got to know your market and stuff like that, but…

Steve: Was there a particular Shark that you were hoping to get?

Eric: I think Daymond with his experience in branding and building [inaudible] [00:22:08] up.

Steve: Okay.

Eric: Would have been a good connection for us as well as Mark Cuban with his philosophical alignments to us. I think those two probably would have been our preferred Sharks to work with.

Steve: And given that none of the Sharks were kind of they didn’t have beards– if they did that would have been a huge advantage for you I’d imagine. But what was your overall strategy to convincing them to invest in something that traditionally at least what I feel they don’t traditionally invest in. What was your overall strategy besides letting them pay your beard and that sort of thing?

Eric: Well I guess we’ll start getting in a little bit of spoilers uh?

Steve: Yeah. Let’s do it.

Eric: So we– I don’t know we have a pretty good story, and the market is out there, the numbers are out there.

Steve: Yeah.

Eric: To back our stuff and our business shows in those numbers as well. So I was hoping that they could really look at our business from the financial stand point, and really just you know emphasize like what we’ve been able to do on a big struck budget, how we’ve been able to grow. But I think– apparently it was a harder task than I thought because it’s kind of odd when you know I do podcast like this, you guys have seen what we’ve done.

Steve: Yeah.

Eric: You’ve seen the website, you’ve seen the brand, you’ve seen the videos, you’ve seen all that, and you like totally get it, right? When you go up pitching you don’t have all that background information. So they’ve never seen my website, they’ve never seen the reviews from our customers, they’ve never you know seen the You Tube videos on our 2,000,000 views on You Tube, like they haven’t seen like any of the brand that we’ve build. And they are just taking…

Steve: Face value.

Eric: Yeah, face value that oh yeah we’ve built a brand and they are like no you haven’t, you haven’t a brand. Once you get into that kind of argument, it’s like I can’t prove it’s wrong because you know I don’t have the computer there and the likes. But I think it’s you know I didn’t have full control of them. They are like kids in a candy store you know they are all running around on these ideas on their heads and questions they want to ask and they are all ask them at the same time. So as the pitcher you’ve got to be in control of that room. And I think I had a fair amount of control of directing them with what I wanted to talk about, but…

Steve: I know a lot of stuff gets cut out by the time it gets to television. So I mean in terms of the actual appearance, how long were you up there in front of them?

Eric: I think I was up there for about 45 minutes.

Steve: Oh okay wow! Okay. So they cut all that down to about 5 minutes I think on TV, right?

Eric: Yeah it was like 6 minutes, I think I timed it.

Steve: Yeah, so can we talk about what happened in the other 39 minutes a little bit?

Eric: I don’t know if I’m able to discuss that information or not. But how they portrayed me on TV was for the most part pretty accurate…

Steve: It was pretty positive I think.

Eric: Yeah and then I think it was pretty accurate of the whole 45 minutes. Like I think you know they cut out probably some positive things that I would have liked to see, but they also cut out some negative things that were said. So I think it was pretty fair representation. I felt like the room was light and friendly and fun. And I think they showed it as that way, and I think that you know I think they showed them as being impressed with our numbers.

Steve: Yeah that came across in the episode actually.

Eric: They weren’t hammering me at all on my numbers, or you know I think Kevin had one mention evaluation, but the other guys they weren’t really joining him on this valuation. And I think that’s just kind of Kevin’s thing, right?

Steve: Yeah, Kevin always does that.

Eric: So I was like okay you know Kevin will say that, but other people they didn’t connect with the niche or the market in the show. And I think that’s how it’s portrayed on TV as well. So I think it was a pretty accurate portrayal of the events that happen.

Steve: Okay. I know you signed a whole bunch papers, but so in that 39 minutes your pitch was only you said a couple of minutes long, right?

Eric: Yeah.

Steve: And then after that is it just basically general Q&A, or they ask you questions? Or did you have you know an additional pitch after that?

Eric: No. So you going on with that pitch and you want to leave a little bit of tease on there. So they start asking questions.

Steve: Okay. And so for the remainder of the time they are just asking questions. Did any of them– I’m trying to remember if any of them have facial hair? Did any of them try your product on their face at all or?

Eric: They smelled the products, they opened them up.

Steve: Okay.

Eric: But I don’t know if I saw them putting on their face or not. Daymond– he kept some bottles after.

Steve: Okay.

Eric: He’s got a little bit of a goatee.

Steve: Right.

Eric: I think I probably like if it wasn’t late in the day, I probably could have twisted Daymond’s arm into partnering up with us. I do think he is kind of on the verge.

Steve: Okay.

Eric: But you know the circumstances didn’t work that way.

Steve: Okay. Are you allowed to talk about anything related to their personalities, or like the bencher [phonetic] that went on during your pitch?

Eric: I mean like when you are in this moment I don’t know if I could really take in their personalities. So it was just what you see is pretty much what I saw as well. But they were all very like, oh so Barbara was on the show as Lori.

Steve: Lori, right.

Eric: And Lori, Robert, Kevin, Daymond and Mark, all five of them were phenomenal people. They are very nice. They ask questions in a way that I would expect them to ask questions. They weren’t confrontational to me, they may have disagreed with things, but I didn’t feel that they presented in a way that was rude or…

Steve: I guess what I’m trying to ask is what questions did they ask that weren’t aired? You know stuff that they cut out, but that was stuff that they’d ask about your business.

Eric: Yeah, I mean it was just kind of…

Steve: I’m I putting you in hard place here?

Eric: It was more about learning about the product and learning about the business. And just kind of more details.

Steve: Okay, in kind of like a casual setting?

Eric: Yeah, I mean well it wasn’t super casual like taking a beer, it was pretty intense, but you know like they would just ask questions and they all ask like just imagine like five people who are interested in your business, and they all ask a different question on the exact same time.

Steve: With a bright red light, with a bright light, a hot light shining on you the whole time.

Eric: Yeah so, but it was– they just want to learn about the business and get a better understanding about where you are at, what you are doing, what’s your market’s like. Just a standard business set of questions.

Steve: Okay. Let’s talk about some of the fun stuff now. What impact has being on the show had on your sales and on your website?

Eric: So it’s been a huge impact. There’s first two days, so Friday night and Saturday were our two biggest sales for us ever. We did about $20,000 on each of those days.

Steve: Wow!

Eric: So that was before the show we were doing about anywhere between probably 5 and on a good day like a really good day it would have been like 7,500, but probably around 4 or 5 was our average daily volume.

Steve: And you mentioned they went from 30 visits to 6,000 visits at one point. That’s crazy, so the people that you are getting on the show– what I’m I trying to ask here? So were they people that had already purchased from you? Or these are like all new customers that were just watching the show and coming on. Like I guess a lot of people– I don’t know what I’m trying to ask, let’s just move on.

Eric: Well I get it, so we did a lot of promotion with our customers before the event, kind of letting them know that we are going to be on the show, to watch the show, to support us, to share the word the we are going to be on the show.

Steve: Okay.

Eric: If they wanted to purchase any of our products we encouraged them to purchase before the show because we knew that we were going to get backed up a little bit. So we were able to see a slight boost in sales before the show, because of I’d say like our business we had a lot of wholesale orders. We told our wholesalers that you know we are going to be on the show to stock up, and so there was a boost just from the pre-sales as for the show.

Steve: Okay.

Eric: And then once the show aired I think there was a lot of new people who had never had of the brand before and was able to connect with us, which I think was really great, a lot of gifts. I haven’t broken down the analytics yet to see like what the male to female ratio was, like before the show it was about jeez I think it was like 80 or 90% were guys ordering. So I’m sure after the show that ratio was probably changed a bit as they’ve got more gifts.

And it’s been nice because I think what happens is people watch the show and then they’ll come back into work and they’ll say, hey man you got a beard did you hear about that beard company that was on Shark Tank. You know so people just talk about it, and they tell their friends and it gets out there and it dropped down 20,000 in sales. And kind of dropped down to around like $10,000 a day.

Steve: Okay.

Eric: So that’s what we are doing now. Hopefully it stays at 10,000; hopefully that’s our new floor. And then we can start building from that.

Steve: And we are going into the Holiday seasons now, and traditionally I would imagine your sales spike during that period as well.

Eric: Yeah I mean we call this growing season.

Steve: Okay.

Eric: From September through February is really like when we make our most money. It’s really good for us not just Christmas time, but the whole season. So we are excited about what the Holidays will bring for us. We expected it to be higher, I don’t know. It’s an exciting time where we are building this company to level, well every day we are building the company to levels I’ve never done before because I’ve never built a successful business before.

So it’s just fun to see where I’ll go and where we need to invest our money to make sure that we have the resources to grow the company. That’s the most nerve wrecking thing, like when do I bring on talent, and who do I bring, and what is that process like, because we want to be a $100,000,000 company.

Steve: Wow!

Eric: We want to grow to be like a dominant player in the market place. And we do want to change the way society views beards men. So you are not going to be able to do that as a little [inaudible] [00:33:12] you know half a million dollar a year company.

Steve: Right, okay.

Eric: So we are not in this for the lifestyle or we are kind of in it to…

Steve: To make a big company right, got it. Okay in terms of your preparation you mentioned that you alerted your wholesalers that you are coming on the show. Did you send that email to your list, your consumer list as well that you are going to be on the show?

Eric: Yeah.

Steve: Okay.

Eric: So anyone and everyone we surmounted out to everyone. You can go to our Facebook page and see the posts that we are making.

Steve: Okay. And did you make any changes to your website itself before as well as after?

Eric: We did. We did a little bit of AB testing to kind of make sure we had an optimal homepage. We added a Shark Tank banner up, which linked to our story.

Steve: Okay.

Eric: We added this little join our subscription club you know notification newsletter. And then we kind of tweaked the main images to show a little bit about our– yeah I mean that was– we had the opportunity; we talked to other people who were on the show and then listened to the kind of things that they did. And they put up like pop ups on their stores and live chat on their store, and you know threw up discounts and sales, and they are really trying to maximize like the exposure that they got.

And we had the– you know that’s really not our strategy and we don’t want you know a thousands of new people to their first interaction with us is a giant pop up banner on a cell. Like we don’t want them to think that’s how we run our business.

So we decided against that and maybe and man we left some dollars on the table, but you know our business model has always been about confidence and knowing we’ve got the best product. And they’ll be able to purchase when they are ready to purchase, and not to pressure our customers into buying.

Steve: Okay. That was actually part of my question was gathering email addresses part of your strategy as opposed– did you have any of your email sign up forms that you had added because of the influx of traffic. Because I would imagine a lot of them coming in and just want to take a look at the site might not be ready to buy it right away.

Eric: Yeah, I mean I’d also imagine a lot of people are going to decide never plan on buying either.

Steve: Sure.

Eric: I don’t want to get their email address to spend money on them, marketing to them when it’s not something they are interested in. So we are not big on you know the old school, or I wouldn’t even call the old school, just like modern day marketing techniques, like that’s not us.

Steve: Okay, got it.

Eric: We try to market by providing valuable content and just growing organically like just finding people who are passionate about what we are doing.

Steve: Okay.

Eric: Rather than tricking them into joining our list and then you know blasting out all these emails telling them to buy shit.

Steve: Okay. And so that’s why you had a link to your story, right? So you draw them into your content and your overall mission statement so to speak.

Eric: Yeah. I wanted them to continue to get to know us. And the link wasn’t really obvious so people kind of had a quick around for it, but some people clicked there in. And we wrote the story kind of based on you know my interactions with the Sharks and what we talked about.

Steve: Okay.

Eric: So it was a little bit different than what they heard because I kind of write that you know on the fly.

Steve: Sure.

Eric: it’s a good like a 1500 word article.

Steve: And going forward are you still in communication with the Sharks at all? Do you plan on communicating with them in the future?

Eric: No, no. We are not looking for money.

Steve: Okay.

Eric: We’ll always entertain it if one of them decided to call us up; I’d probably pick up the phone.

Steve: Okay.

Eric: [Inaudible] [00:36:57] what they have to say, but you know we are always willing to sell the business for the right price, but it’s not something that we are actively looking to do at all. So we are not investing our resources into that.

Steve: Okay. Sounds good men, hey I’m really happy that you came on the show and I’m really happy for the results that you got on the show even though you didn’t end up with an investment. It sounds like the whole experience was extremely positive for your business.

Eric: Yeah, I mean again for us it was a win-win situation and the only fear– our biggest risk and our biggest fear is of going on the show were that we would be perceived as like a stupid goofy type of business that everyone laughs at, like one of those that they mock.

Steve: Well you’ve got the numbers; you can’t laugh at the numbers.

Eric: Right. So I think you know may be if we only had like $1000 in sales when we got on there, we probably would be laughed out the door. But since we had the numbers I think it was pretty clear that we had our act together, and I think it was portrayed that way. So I think we were portrayed pretty accurately with the– and I think that the other risk is you know not a lot of the companies on the show like really have an established brand. They are kind of a product. And we didn’t want to get lumped in together with these companies out there that just have one product and no business sense. So we wanted to be portrayed in a way where we know what we are doing.

Steve: Yeah no that totally came across in the show to me, but I’m a little biased too because I know you. And I know your business, I’ve watched your videos and everything, so I was a little biased, but I thought it came across as that. I mean you were definitely not some newbie guy up there, you knew what you were doing, and so I was pulling for you to make a deal but…

Eric: Yeah I think viewers like it when deals get done; they feel more connected to the brand. They feel like the sharks are connected with the brand so you are connected with it. And I think there’s a lot of positive energy that you get from getting a deal or getting an offer, but I still think there’s a lot of value and energy you get by appearing on the show, and not getting a deal. So again it’s a win-win and maybe the win is not as big when you don’t get a deal, but it’s still a win.

Steve: Awesome Eric. Hey man thanks a lot for coming on to the show and talking about your experience, and I’ll be sure to link up all the stuff that you sent me before we started talking. You wrote a couple of articles about your experience as well, and I’ll be sure to link that up as well.

Eric: Great. Always a pleasure to hang with you Steve and pleasure to be on the show and hopefully the viewers out there, the listeners out there I got some good feedback and they can build their business.

Steve: Yeah and hopefully some of them have got beards as well. Send you some customers. All right man Eric, take care man.

Eric: All right cheers.

Steve: Hope you enjoyed that interview. I’ve always wondered what being on Shark Tank was like and believe me; I’ve tried to extract as much info out of Eric as I could without him violating the NDA that he signed. And what I really admire about Eric is that he took a chance and it looks like his business increased by about 30% as a result of being on Shark Tank. For more information about this episode go to mywifequitherjob.com/episode47 and make sure you check out the show notes because I posted actual revenue numbers for Eric’s store beardbrand.com before and after the Shark Tank appearance.

And if you enjoyed listening to this episode please go to iTunes and leave me a review. When you write me a review, it not only makes me feel proud, but it helps keep this podcast up in the ranks so other people can use this information, find the show more easily, and get awesome business advice from my guests.

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For more information go to mywifequitherjob.com/contest. And if you are interested in starting your own online business, be sure to sign up for my free six day mini course where I show you how my wife and I managed to make over a 100K in profit in our first year of business. Go to www.mywifequitherjob.com for more information and thanks for listening.

Thanks for listening to the My Wife Quit Her Job podcast, where we are giving the courage people need to start their own online business. For more information visit Steve’s blog at www.mywifequitherjob.com.

If you enjoy this podcast please leave me a review on iTunes, and enter my podcast contest where I’m giving away free one on one business consultations every single month. For more information go to www.mywifequitherjob.com/contest. And if you are interested in starting your own online business, be sure to sign up for my free six day mini course where I’ll show you how my wife and I managed to make over 100k in profit in our first year of business. Go to www.mywifequitherjob.com for more information. Now onto the show.

Welcome to the My Wife Quit Her Job podcast. We will teach you how to create a business that suits your lifestyle so you can spend more time with your family and focus on doing the things that you love. Here is your host Steve Chou.

Welcome to the My Wife Quit Her Job podcast. Today I`m really excited to have Eric Bandholz on the show. Now Eric is someone who I met at the Ecommerce Fuel conference in Austin Texas last month, and he runs the incredibly awesome site beardbrand.com. Now Beard Brand is a really successful store that sells beard care products. And what’s really cool about his shop is the strength of his brand. In fact Eric devotes a lot of his efforts towards promoting the Beard Brand name, and it has paid a lot of dividends in establishing a fanatical following for his shop.

I also had the pleasure in witnessing Eric’s beard live in all of its glory last month in Austin, and it is indeed impressive and very well kept if I do say so myself, and with that welcome to the show Eric, how are you doing today?

Eric: Oh man Steve what a warm and awesome intro. It’s a pleasure being here this morning and excited for the chat.

Steve: I must say that the beard is impressive. I mean you see photos of it online, but in person it’s even more impressive.

Eric: Well what do you know, it just grows on me.

Steve: So you know give us a quick back ground story behind beardbrand.com, and how you decided to start your shop.

Eric: So I used to work for Merrill Lynch as a financial advisor and that is pretty much the antithesis of a big bearded image. It’s all about the all American boy that– the suits and the beardless faces and that job was really not a good fit for me. I don’t like working for the man and you know I’m a very philosophically driven guy and really in economics as well. And Merrill Lynch is core economics are different than my core economics. So it was just a matter of time before I left there, and when I left there I decided to start my own business as a freelance graphic artist and grew my beard out, so through this journey of growing my beard out I got really into it.

It tried to learn all the techniques there were to grow the quickest and the fullest and groom it the best way and use the right products, and at this time there really wasn’t a lot of stuff on it, and there was this beard competition in Portland Oregon that I had to go to, everyone was talking them. So I went to my first beard competition and absolutely just like fell in love. Like this is I don’t know for all the listeners out there who have– if you have never been to a beard competition you`ve got to add it to the list of things to do. It’s like a beauty pageant for men, but there is usually a little bit of alcohol and booze involved and a little bit of debauchery.

So it’s just you know a good time. What I noticed you know especially with my background in Merrill Lynch was that you know traditionally beards men were thought of as like lumber jacks or outdoors men or bikers, and I never really fit into this group, and what I noticed there was other people like me who were stylish and career driven and you know independent, and we coined the term urban beards men to kind of identify those people, and we`ve been able to unite the community and jus kind of grow from there.

Steve: That`s awesome man, so just curious, did you win this beard competition or…?

Eric: No there was probably about 30 people in my category, and I didn’t even get top 10. So there are– while you may think my beard is quite awesome, it dwarfs in comparison to a lot of these people at these beard competitions.

Steve: So just to also be clear while you were working at Merrill Lynch you were beardless, is that correct?

Eric: Yeah I mean, I would generally be completely shaven, but every once in a while I would grow out probably like one of two week long beard, so if I had any kind of facial hair it’s very-very short and very trimmed.

Steve: And I do kind of understand what you are saying there. You know a lot of times there is this connotation with people having these gigantic beards with people who are kind of like back woods type of folk, and just to be clear your products kind of cater to those working professionals with beards, is that right?

Eric: Right, and I want to emphasize that you know, we’re not anti biker or back woods like those are beautiful and awesome communities and as fellow beards men we really identify with those guys as well, but we decided to almost go with like a hyper niche and real specific niche and you know we`ve got a lot of customers who identify themselves more with outdoors men and kind of the bearded biker look and things like that, and that’s totally cool. So we definitely support that look as well.

Steve: And just to be clear, so the products that you sell are primarily focused towards skin care, is that correct.

Eric: Yeah, skin and hair care are going to be the big focus and of course the hair as in as in beard care.

Steve: Sure

Eric: Like our beard oils is a leave in conditioner, it’s going to be healthful or healthy both for your skin and your beard. So it kind of has a dual purpose.

Steve: Okay.

Eric: You can’t really have one without the other I suppose.

Steve: Okay and then you create all these product formulations yourself, is that correct?

Eric: Some of them we work– we`ve done internally. We`ve developed our own platform after lots of research online and you know looking at ingredient lists of our competitors and similar products and using that as a foundation for starting, and kind of going from there. But we are also developing some new products in the future that are probably outside our expertise of developing and in house. So we are working with a cosmetics company to develop a product for that as well.

Steve: Okay, and so for all my listeners who are thinking about creating or selling skin care products, like how do you begin? Like for example I would have no idea like how to create like beard oil or that sort of thing, how did you guys get started with that?

Eric: So for me I was really immersed in the bearded community and listened to what a lot of people said and was doing, and I’ll be the first to admit that I didn’t invent beard oil or beard care. Like there has been other people who have been doing it, and they talk about what works for them and what doesn’t work for them and I`ve used a good number of products out there. So I kind of knew like the attributes and features that I wanted, and it was just a matter of getting high quality ingredients and since it’s a natural product, it’s something that you can develop pretty easily though product testing and trial and error and just tweaking. We’re able to come up with a formula.

Steve: So how do you– is there a company that you go to do this, like how does it work exactly?

Eric: So yeah within the beauty industry if you are looking to get into this, there are a lot of cosmetic companies out there who produce shampoos and washes and soaps and oils, and you know beard oils and hair oils and just anything that you can think of from a cosmetics stand point they are going to be able to do. It’s pretty you know they are the companies that are manufacturing everything; they like to be in the background, so it’s going to be very difficult to find them.

One of the ways you might find them is by going to like a trade show for their cause and you can be able to connect with them there, or find other people in the industry and ask for referrals was the way that we went as well?

Steve: Okay and then when it comes to actually formulating your own stuff, is it just– do you tell them that you want this ingredient or this ingredient– you kind of have to have an idea of what you want in there, right?

Eric: Yeah it’s not like you can say make a shampoo and then they make a shampoo. So we tell them that it’s going to be used for beard care, we want to have you know higher end– we want it to be a higher end and nicer shampoo, sold in SOS free paradigm, free like without you know the type of chemicals that our community doesn’t want to have in their beard care. So there are like certain directions that you can point them.

Steve: And so you kind of have to have an idea already or know what ingredients do what, and that sort of thing before you even get started right?

Eric: Yeah, again like we didn’t just– I didn’t just roll out of bed and I was like I`m going to come up with a beard– you know a lot of research and a lot of time spent on you know– it’s funny like I was thinking about this one day when we were kind of testing things here in our kitchen, and it’s like you know I`m part sales man, part business owner, part designer, part you know finance guy and I’m also part chemist, which I thought I would never venture into.

Steve: Interesting.

Eric: So it’s kind of interesting when you think about that when I really started like digging down into like how ingredients worked and like the attributes of various ingredients and the things to look for and consider you know I`ve got much more to learn and understand as well, and I don’t think I`m ever going to be a super wealthy guy becoming a chemist. So that will be one thing that we`ll outsource. But it is like really interesting for me because I love learning new things and getting into it. So I definitely plan on expecting to spend a lot of time learning and researching.

Steve: How does the testing process work, so you have a new formulation, do you have like a bunch of people with beards that you have as like test subjects or…?

Eric: Yeah there is us testing it internally, trying the product out and using it and seeing how it’s working and going, and then there is like lab testing as well where you see like how long the product will last, do you need like additional preservatives, things like that.

Steve: That’s in terms of shelf life, right.

Eric: Right.

Steve: I was just talking in terms of just you know the actual beard, and how it makes your beard feel and that sort of thing. Is it like kind of like a more qualitative test, or do you have like quantitative numbers that you assign to certain things?

Eric: For us it’s more qualitative just kind of more of how it feels and the experiences that we have and…

Steve: Okay.

Eric: Just what I personally want with my beard care. So it’s a little bit of selfishness, but you know it’s kind of leaning on my expertise within the community as well.

Steve: Okay, and then in terms of just like getting your first batch made, how much would you expect to spend? Like if you can take us back to the very beginning for your first batch.

Eric: Yeah, with us I mean the beauty with our products and how we launched it, is it’s a really low cost eventually, I mean it was a couple of hundred bucks I think.

Steve: Really? Okay.

Eric: For the ingredients and the sizes that we’re doing. So we’re able to just– I mean it was almost like a lot of our research and development was through the market. Kind of like a lean start up where you test it with your customer base and go from there.

Steve: Does that mean that you didn’t have like a third party, I guess beauty supply manufacture make your first batch? Because I would imagine would they dabble with something so small in the beginning?

Eric: Yeah we started like super small and our business– like our first month of sales were like 900 bucks, and we’ve definitely gone the organic road. So a lot of it is just kind of boot strapping and getting something done. And when you’re a young company getting off the ground, you have a brand to build, but you don’t have a brand to tarnish. So you are able to take some risks that larger companies aren’t going to be able to do.

So we took some calculated risks to get our products out to the market and test it with the market and go from there. So you know if there is a listener on here who works for L’Oriel or Procter and Gamble, they would be turning in their grave for lack of a better term, probably some of our techniques and processes to get out there. But there is so much more to cosmetic business and grooming line business than the actual product.

There is this actually through the process in my research I downloaded this PDF that kind of gives an intro into beauty cosmetics and what to look for and how to do it and how to formulate your own things. And so much of it is actually like the brand and the image that you are trying to create to unite the audience that you are going after. So if you think that you can simply just create this great product and put it in like a brown bottle and people buy it, then you probably need to re-analyze your strategy.

Steve: Okay, that’s actually really good segway into what I really want to focus kind of like talk on, which is how you’ve been able to establish such a strong brand for your products. I mean from what I understand the audience of people who buy your products are actually very fanatical and very supportive of your brands. So I want to talk a little bit about how you did that? What are some of the things that you did early on to establish your brand?

Eric: Well I think what was one of our key aspects was giving away a lot of valuable content without the expectation of anything in return. So I’ve got a YouTube channel where I’ve done a lot of how to grooming type of videos, and how to you know take care of your beard and grow it faster. Just essentially giving out free content without any kind of expectation in return, and I think that builds trust with people you know you’ve become the expert within an industry, and people trust what your are saying, trust what you are doing. And then when you do come in, make a recommendation then they’re going to connect with you. They know there’s other products out there, they may just go with you simply because they like you which is a really fun thing to do as well.

Steve: So what I was going to ask you, how do you even get people to find your YouTube videos right? Because you just can’t put a bunch of videos– chances are people won’t be able to find them that easily.

Eric: Yeah you know I just kind of did that. I just created videos on things that I was passionate about. And I think the beauty with YouTube is it’s still a little bit of a wild west. There is like still a lot of videos out there that don’t exist within very specific niches, a lot of guides and how tos. And the beauty of YouTube is like viewed in a channel; I guess is it takes a lot of work to create a video and a good video that has good content. So if you are able to do that, then it’s going to be pretty easy to find new stuff.

Steve: So all of your YouTube growth was more or less organic?

Eric: Oh yeah totally, totally. Like I didn’t do– and I guess this isn’t like you know for the listeners out there, it’s kind of annoying and frustrating and say, “Oh you just put videos out there and people found it.” But it was essentially like that; I didn’t do any kind of optimization where like, what is the title that I need to put in? Or what is you know what type keywords are people searching for and things like that.

It was more of like you know this is kind of what I want to talk about and what I’m passionate about, what I’m interested in and I don’t know if there is people out there or not. So it wasn’t something that we built. You know we launch this YouTube channel and then like two months we had 10,000 subscribers. It wasn’t anything like this. This was something that took a very long time, very long process.

And you know not a lot of views, not a lot of new subscribers. So I’m sure I could have shortened up that time period by optimizing my topics and really optimizing my channel. But I think there is a little bit of authenticity that comes from not being very polished.

One of the YouTube guys that I follow on his channel, one of his first videos was him at a golf course like taking strokes and you know swinging at the ball. And his YouTube channel is about like electronics and technology. And it just shows that you know he was someone who is just kind of passionate about what he is talking about, and he is sharing videos on YouTube. So I think if you are trying to stand out in the crowd then stand out from the Amazons of the world, like you do need to do a little bit of that. You do need to be authentic.

Steve: Did you have your YouTube channel before your store, or did come after the store?

Eric: I had the– right when I came back from the beard competition is when I got the idea for Beard Brand, and that’s when we started writing and talking and sharing a lot of new content. So that was in 2012, February 2012 that we launched like all those platforms. And then it was January 2013 that we launched our store, so I had been…

Steve: Okay.

Eric: Talking in the community for about a year.

Steve: So that kind of implies that your YouTube videos at least the earlier ones don’t even have a link to your site at all, right? Because you didn’t have the site.

Eric: Yeah I mean I had Beard Brand, right? So I always had the name Beard Brand. And the beauty of YouTube is that you can always edit the description after the facts. So I added some links in there. And I had like my old logo on there. The older version of Beard Brand and you know I’ve played with different things, over the course of different videos like you know how I’m placing my icon on there, my water mark and things like that. But it’s always been called Beard Brand which I guess makes it easy.

Steve: Okay, and then in terms of just do you measure the click throughs from those links, or I guess what I’m trying to ask is how do you know that the YouTube videos are actually what is bringing customers to your site and your brand?

Eric: I just recently did a survey with our customers and how they first found out about us, and 46% found out about us through social media. And within social media, half of those people were from YouTube. So it was directly asking our customer base for direct results, and then I do do a little bit of analytics to see where people are coming from and where the traffic is coming from. And so I keep an eye out on that as well.

Steve: Okay, and so you mentioned that half was from YouTube, where was the other half coming from?

Eric: The other half was from Facebook was our second largest source and then Reddit was our third largest source. And which is kind of surprising I think a lot of people don’t see Reddit as a very high source of customer base, or may be for traffic they get. But we’ve been able to convert out customers, which has been a really rewarding experience.

Steve: So let’s talk a little bit about Reddit because in my experience the folks over at Reddit are kind of a neglected bunch, and they’re very quick to jump on anything that is self-emotional. And a lot of cases you can get banned if you do that, right?

Eric: Yeah, I mean it’s a tough community to crack and I would say that I still have many of them. The beauty was with Reddit are– is that there are sub-Reddits which is like very specific niche communities, which have their own personality. So you can’t just go to Reddit and say I understand the whole Reddit community, you have to really understand each individual sub-Reddit. And we’ve been able to build good community with the Beards sub-Reddit as well as the entrepreneur sub-Reddit has been really good to us.

Steve: So what is your strategy with Reddit?

Eric: With Reddit it’s pretty much just be authentic and give away content for free, and not ask for anything. And in addition to that whenever I make a post, I’m very involved. So if anyone asks any questions, I always respond to every question, spend a lot of time into it. You can’t just you know generate this giant long post and then a bunch of people ask you questions and then ignore those questions. I think probably one of the successes too is being involved in the community in addition to giving to the community.

Steve: So by that did you participate for a long time before you even decided to post anything?

Eric: On Reddit?

Steve: Yeah.

Eric: Oh yeah, I mean I got pulled into the whole Reddit thing, like I’m definitely like a fan of the website; it’s been probably too many hours on there. Looks like I have two tabs open right now on Reddit, so.

Steve: Okay. When you talk about posting an article, do you post a link to something or do you just post the entire article on there?

Eric: So to get in with Reddit, it’s going to be more advantageous to do what’s called a self post, where you post the full articles straight into Reddit. They will be a lot more suspicious if you post the link, because a lot of people are just trying to drive traffic to their website. And by posting a self post to a specific Reddit, then they’ll see that you are actually trying to help the community out and help the sub-Reddit out, and I think that’s a preferred way to go.

Steve: Okay, and then this article that you are posting on Reddit, is that unique to Reddit or do you use it anywhere else, or is it just for Reddit?

Eric: Yeah when I post to Reddit all I’m doing is just posting to Reddit. I don’t drive it to other blogs. I have recently written a fairly in-depth extensive article, I think it’s something like 2200 words. I’m hoping to get connected with you know as a guest writer on a larger website, but if I don’t do that, then I will come in and I’ll share with the Reddit community exclusively to them.

Steve: Okay, and so that’s pretty interesting. So you went out and you found a very specific sub-Reddit that I guess caters to beards, and then you started posting informational articles and just participating in that community. And that community was– a large percent of them was going to be potential customers for your products, is that kind of accurate?

Eric: Well, actually it’s been the entrepreneur sub-Reddit which I really post a lot of my articles to. On the Reddit beards I’ll just post photographs of my beard here and there, and then we’ll sponsor the community and donate some products to winners. But it’s the Entrepreneur community which has been really good to us. And those aren’t actually our customer base, so it’s kind of for us like getting value from the community. And with them helping us grow our business and give us feedback and insight that I may have not considered so…

Steve: Okay.

Eric: It’s completely different than what you would assume. But it’s good though because there is like other entrepreneurs on there, other bloggers, other people looking for content who have shared our articles that we’ve posted on the community on the entrepreneur sub-Reddit.

Steve: Okay, so indirectly your efforts on Reddit have kind of just boosted your brand and your business, even though that they might not be necessarily your target customers.

Eric: Yeah absolutely. So we’ll post something on Reddit and get like one or two thousand visits that day from the post. And those people you know the conversation rates are awful, like you know no one is buying, nor am I expecting them to buy. But they learn about us, they learn about the brand and then they tell their friends who have a beard, and then it kind of gets its own little growth structure.

So it’s a fun process. It’s a great community out there you know it’s tough and it’s fickle and they’re very skeptical. But one if you authentic and you are true and you do want to give to the community and you know get feedback from the community, there is just a great rewarding experience.

Steve: Okay, and then you mentioned the other part of your social media strategy was Facebook. So is that just driving traffic through your fan page? Like how do you run your Facebook page?

Eric: Yeah, we do somewhere on our Facebook page as our Tumblr page, but at a less frequent token. What we found on Facebook that works really effective are memes, they seem to get shared a lot. Unfortunately I’m not– we are not big on memes, so it’s kind of like a patch plan to, do I post this memes with the hope that you know people like it, or what do we do. It’s been a little bit of hit miss strategy, and Facebook isn’t my favorite platform for marketing.

Steve: Okay.

Eric: I think it’s just a lot of people are on there and we were buying advertisements as well. So I think we’re introducing our brand through buying eyeballs as well which isn’t the best way to grow in my opinion.

Steve: So buying eyeballs for the purposes of establishing a brand, or to actually drive target traffic to people that will actually buy?

Eric: Yeah, when I say buying eyeballs I just mean we’re paying for advertisements. And then people would see those advertisements and come to our brand. So I’d imagine most of the traffic from Facebook that were considered social media were actually paid type of customers.

Steve: Okay and then how do you kind of structure your Facebook ads. Is it just content that you are linking them to or…?

Eric: Again like we haven’t really had a lot of success with Facebook. It’s not something that we really are proud of, or want to brag about or probably have a lot of expertise in it.

Steve: Okay.

Eric: We’ve tested like just simply buying ads in the newsfeed and on the sidebar, and then of course trying to grow our page. Currently what we’re doing now is simply remarketing. So if someone visits our website, then they will see some Facebook ads in their newsfeed as well.

Steve: Okay, so how do you get customers to your shop? Like what is your main driver of converting customers?

Eric: We are active on many social media platforms. So of course YouTube’s been a great driver whereas also out in Tumblr, and we are on Instagram has been one that we put lot of resources into recently. And then of course YouTube has been huge for us. So those social media aspects are great ways for us to generate traffic. We also purchase advertisement on Google AdWords.

Steve: Okay and how’s that been doing?

Eric: It’s been good. I think we’re getting about a five time return on investments. So if we spend five bucks, it will generate about 25 bucks in revenue.

Steve: Is this just search, search AdWords, or do you do you do display network as well?

Eric: We do the– what’s that called, the product, the PLA is I think is what the…

Steve: Oh PLAs, okay.

Eric: So we do that, and then we do the adwords, but we don’t use their display at all. On the display we found it was just like erasing all the money we had, I wouldn’t recommend it at all.

Steve: Yeah I’ve been playing around with it recently too, which is why I thought I’d ask, but yeah it’s been really challenging.

Eric: Yeah it’s a good way to lose money pretty quickly. So for us personally and what’s worked with our customer base is been the PLAs and the Tech Search.

Steve: Okay, then you mentioned Tumblr and Tumblr is actually something that I don’t quite understand fully myself. How does it work? And what is different about Tumblr versus just any other blog platform?

Eric: So Tumblr is almost like a cross between social media and blogging. We use it as a way to curate content that fits our image, and share that seamlessly. So the beauty with Tumblr is they have a re-blogging platform where essentially you find something that looks cool, and you click on the re-blog button and it shows up on your blog. So we’re able to generate about 15 posts a day of photographs that are lifestyle photographs. And so there are more than just things that we’re creating and pushing.

Steve: And so it’s kind of similar to Instagram then in what you are saying?

Eric: Yeah, it’s really similar to Instagram in the sense that or how we use it is really similar to Instagram in the sense that we are posting up photographs that are really rapid paste. It’s different than Instagram in the sense that I don’t know of a sharing feature within Instagram. I know there is like an app called Regram or something like that. But there is no real like I run across a cool photograph and I’m able to just share it on my blog.

So Tumblr is great for that. One word of warning is the copyright trolls will get on there. So you have to do a little bit of due diligence with the photographs to make sure that people who are uploading them have the rights to upload them, or else you could be getting random mails from them to get the images of the world.

Steve: Okay, and then you know it sounds like a lot of– the majority of your efforts early on were specifically focused on building a brand and for your business. So how long did it actually take before you actually noticed some traction from your efforts?

Eric: We had, well I’ll just kind of give you the number of our sales.

Steve: Okay.

Eric: Our first full month was about 1000 bucks. Our second full moth was about 700 bucks, we went down. And then our third month was about probably another 1000, I think it was our first three full months we had about 4500 bucks in sales. In July of 2013 we– I know this only because I just wrote this article. We had– I think it was about $15,000 in sales in July. By November we had grown to about $75,000 in sales. And then in December of that year during the holiday rush we were up to $120,000 in sales.

Steve: Total or a month?

Eric: That was per month, each month. So I would guess it was like the July August September time frame where the momentum really started picking up.

Steve: And so basically you are saying within a year you were doing six figures per month in revenue. Is that right?

Eric: Yeah totally, we are…

Steve: Crazy, okay.

Eric: We had a million dollar run rate within the first year.

Steve: That is crazy. And then can you pinpoint a specific traffic source for that? Or is it just based on word of mouth and buzz that you’ve established through your brand.

Eric: Yeah, it’s a pretty broad source of traffic. I don’t think there is– we’ve never really like targeted one single platform to drive business. We’ve always been pretty broad with our strategy. So it’s just gain out there, it’s talking to our customers, providing a great product, really like sending products quickly and fast and just you know a little bit of luck, but also there’s lots of other companies doing what we are doing.

Steve: Yeah.

Eric: And they’re not– I don’t think they’ve been able to grow the way that we’ve been able to grow. So being able to really you know– the mission of what we’re trying to do and we’re not trying to self product, we’re trying to change the way society views beards men. You know we’re trying to show that just because you have a beard doesn’t mean that there should be a native stereotype with you. That there are beards men out there who are career driven and working professionals and they have families and they do good in the community as well. So that’s what we are trying to do at Beard Brand.

Steve: Okay and then can you talk a little– I mean it sounds like it was very smooth sailing for that first year. Can you kind of talk about some of the mistakes that you might have made, or some things that you might have done differently if you started all over.

Erick: Yeah it’s– the funny thing is you learn to do what is successful and then you become successful at it, and then you get cocky and you are there again, and you think that whatever you touch– you know you think that you have the Midas touch and everything you do turns to gold. So one of the things that allowed us to grow was by selling other people’s products, at least just being a simple reseller, and figuring out what items move the quickest and then developing those products internally.

So we made like a pretty large investment into a product that was a little bit outside of our core values, and ended up with us you know not moving it as quickly as I’d like. So we have a higher inventory in a sort of moving product. Now the shelf life on the product is long shelf life, so it’s just the pain of putting all this cash in something that’s not going to pay out for a longer period of time. So really like testing the market first at least from a boot strap perspective is going to be a more effective way of growth than kind of making decisions based on your gut.

Steve: Also I didn’t realize, so you started out selling other people’s products?

Erick: Oh yeah, so it was probably about five months that we sold another line of beard oil and mustache wax and sold that line all the way through November as well, so.

Steve: So you were carrying inventory, or was it drop shipped.

Erick: Yeah, we have never drop shipped, it was always buying inventory and reselling it, and know I would recommend against drop shipping.

Steve: And in terms of selling other people’s products, I imagine they were branded, right with– not with the beard brand name, is that correct? You weren’t white labeling anything.

Erick: Correct, so it was under a different name and you can still buy those products online. We didn’t have exclusivity or anything like that.

Steve: Okay, and then so it’s mainly the strength of your brand that allowed you to sell other people’s products and then graduate– within that first year, did you have your own products that you created from scratch as well?

Erick: Yeah, it took us about five or six months to develop our own product in-house.

Steve: And then gradually I guess you started replacing the branded stuff with your own stuff because the margins I imagine were a lot higher.

Erick: Well actually it was– we would probably still be selling that product online if that vendor wanted us to sell it. So I think he thought the success with Beard Brand was from his products and didn’t appreciate what we were doing as a company.

Steve: Interesting. That’s counter intuitive to me.

Erick: Yeah, he pretty much just stopped selling us his products and so.

Steve: Okay.

Erick: You know, but what can you do you know, if he doesn’t want to sell to us then.

Steve: For all the people who are listening out there, it’s obviously you know with the Amazons out there, it’s very important to establish your own brand. Actually I want to get your opinion on Amazon. Do you sell your stuff on Amazon as well right now?

Erick: We do sell on Amazon, and it’s not my favorite platform and it drives only a small portion of our business, probably about three to four percent of our sales come through Amazon. So much of us is being a brand and company and building an image, and we don’t– Amazon doesn’t provide those kinds of tools. They’re just all about the product and product-product-product, and getting the product as cheap as possible and that doesn’t fit our business model at all.

Steve: And is that something that you would– I just want your opinion here. Is that something that you think that all e-commerce stores should do? Like what is your view on selling on Amazon from the perspective of a small business ecommerce owner?

Erick: I think it’s– there’s a company in Spokane called Green Cupboards who built their business by drop shipping on Amazon. So I don’t want to say if you are a small business you should avoid Amazon. It’s just– I think you really got to commit to it and understand the ins and outs of it. And one of my fears as a control freak is by not having your own platform; you are dependent on the whims of Amazon.

They could change the commission structure which would totally affect your business. They could change so many things with the platform. They could kick you off, they could ban you. I mean there are certain things that go on with them that make it an un-enjoyable experience for someone who likes to be in control. But you know they have an audience as well and they could generate sales for you, you know, but yeah I don’t like them.

Steve: What is your– do you use FBA?

Erick: We do not use FBA yet, I think especially we’ll roll to them.

Steve: So what is your motivation for using Amazon, is it just like to just kind of dip your toe in that water just to see what’s going on or…?

Erick: Yeah, we had a sales person from Amazon call us and bug us and you know tell us to get our stuff on Amazon, and I was like no-no-no-no, and I’m like okay well it’s not going to be that much time investment for us, so we just put our products up there and we don’t promote it at all. We don’t push traffic there, we don’t optimize it; we don’t invest a lot of time on it. So it’s just– it’s purely capturing opportunities there that we wouldn’t be able to catch by not being on there. It’s you know all of our strategy is going to BeardBrand.com.

Steve: Okay, and then in terms of the products that you do list on there, they are all your own stuff that you make yourself, is that right?

Erick: Correct, there’s no other items on there, other than our beard oils and our mustache waxes.

Steve: Okay, do you do anything with Pinterest at all?

Erick: Yeah, we just started putting in a little more effort into our Pinterest account, and have actually gotten pretty good traction. I keep track, our growth– let me pull up our social media numbers. So with Pinterest we’re growing on a clip of probably like one or two followers a week for 69 weeks. And then actually just in July we started posting regularly and we have been adding about 30 to 50 followers per week.

Steve: Okay.

Erick: So simply consistent content has been a way for us to grow organically, and we’re up to about 1000 followers on air. But it’s not at a level that will really drive a significant amount of business to us currently.

Steve: Okay and then in terms of your experiences with buying ads and blogs, we’ve kind of talked about this before we started talking, but is that something– is that a part of your strategy as well?

Erick: Yeah, we advertise within community related websites. So something that’s going to be tied in around beard care or the bearded lifestyle, so it’s not a huge opportunity for us when we talk about you know growing to you know like what every entrepreneur wants to do grow to a hundred million dollar company. Like these websites are great for getting us off the ground and in connecting and being in tandem with the community, but they can only generate so much traffic. Like even if we got all their traffic, it probably wouldn’t be enough for us so– but it’s– they’re a great community. So you just kind of want to help support them.

Steve: You know again from the perspective of someone just starting out, if you had the opportunity to just focus on a single traffic source, what would it be, what would you recommend?

Erick: I would recommend YouTube.

Steve: Okay.

Erick: I think if you only had– well I mean for what we are selling and what we are doing?

Steve: Yeah, from your perspective.

Erick: Yeah, from my perspective it would be YouTube. I would put all my eggs in that basket.

Steve: Interesting.

Erick: And probably like my second one would be your own proprietary content source. So we are generating urbanbeardsman.com which is our own content and just curate it all on one page. Again you have less long-term risk with that, but more upfront cost and burdens to get that launch and get the traffic there.

Steve: I’m just curious, have you tried any YouTube advertising since you’re so heavily invested?

Erick: We tried a couple of things here and there, but it wasn’t anything. It’s a very time consuming thought process because what you have to do is create a video advertisement and then you know what is that advertisement? How is it going to work? Who are you following and what are you doing? There’s a lot of things that go into it.

Steve: I can imagine, I can imagine.

Erick: Yeah, you almost need an ad agency I’m sure. I’m sure there are some smart people out there who don’t need an ad agency, but I don’t know if I’m one of those smart people.

Steve: Whatever Erick. Hey so I want to be respectful of your time, we have already been talking for 45 minutes. You know that I was going to ask you this, but for me it takes me about seven days to grow a little bit of stubble on my face. So which one of your products would you recommend to help me grow a beard, and how long would it take?

Erick: Yeah, you’re asking me a tough question here.

Steve: I know.

Erick: You’ve got the Asian genetics. You’re up our wall a little bit. You know none of our products are snake oil. So we don’t do any miracle grows. What we do is just kind of products that will help take care of your beard once it grows.

Steve: So I just set Erick up with that one because at the conference I repeatedly threatened Erick to start the Asian beard brand line. So, just thought I would throw that out there. But…

Erick: You can do that, it might be a little bit tougher market, but we do have some Asian customers as well. So they are out there, maybe a little more rare, but for all Asian listeners out there, give it a shot. You don’t know what you have until you try.

Steve: So Erick for those people who might have questions for you, where can they find you online?

Erick: Reach out to me on my Twitter account. It’s @bandholz. I’m usually pretty good about tweeting back. And if you can’t find me on Twitter, just Google my name Erick Bandholz, I’m the only one out there. So that’s also preventing me from doing bad things because I can’t shift my blame to some other person.

Steve: All right Erick, cool, well thanks for coming on the show I learnt a lot, and I think it’s amazing what you have done with your brand. It’s really inspiring.

Erick: Pleasure is all mine. I’m happy to be part of it and hopefully some of the listeners will be able to find value from our chat.

Steve: Awesome, take care man.

Erick: Thanks Steve.

Steve: Here’s what I find amazing about Erick. He’s established a very powerful brand with beardbrand.com by primarily leveraging word of mouth and social media, and he did all this in little over a year. And in terms of ad spent, Erick invests his money primarily for branding purposes as opposed to grading his campaigns directly on direct response. And his results have simply been amazing. Now I don’t know if any of you guys watch Shark Tank, but Erick was also recently on the show and I plan on having him back to discuss his Shark Tank experiences.

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Thanks for listening to the My Wife Quit Her Job podcast, where we are giving the courage people need to start their own online business. For more information visit Steve’s blog at www.mywifequitherjob.com.