Product Launch Rebel

Ep. 056: On Becoming a Sales Virtuoso -- The Mickeli Bedore Interview

John Benzick — Fri, 13 Mar 2020 09:00:00 -0600

Let's face it, many aspiring entrepreneurs are held back by a fear of selling.

In this episode, I interview sales luminary, Mickeli Bedore, where he provides insider tips on strengthening your sales skills, establishing the right mindset and overcoming rejection.

Additionally, he reveals the story about when a key person underestimated him when he was a teenager, which drove him to become a sought-after keynote speaker and a sales superstar in some of the world's biggest companies, such as IBM, Verizon and Oracle.

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Top Takeaways from this Episode:

(1) Acquiring and nurturing "emotional intelligence" is an important quality for a successful sales person.

(2) To be successful at something, it's important to develop an appreciation for something. Appreciation helps to drive learning, which leads to success.

(3) Curiosity is at the root of any successful sales person. The best marketers and sales professionals are driven by a perpetual interest in others' situations and needs.

(4) Introverts can be very successful sales people, because of their heightened ability to listen, demonstrate empathy and thoughtfully solve problems.

(5) The fear of rejection in sales can be diminished by (a) knowing that we all experience rejection in various ways, (b) by understanding that a "no" isn't necessarily bad and (c) by investigating the "why" behind the "no."

Transcript:

Transcript coming soon!

Ep. 055: Do you believe in LUCK?

John Benzick — Fri, 28 Feb 2020 09:00:00 -0600

Today's episode highlights the fascinating topic of luck.

It explores important questions such as: (1) Do you believe in luck? (2) Have you experienced luck in your life, career or startup? (3) What role does luck play, if any, in a startup? (4) Can luck be created for oneself, or do some people just have more luck than others?

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Top Takeaways from this Episode:

(1) Simply being alive and healthy is, itself, the great foundation of luck. We take much of life and its resources for granted -- and there's so much luck available to us, regardless of our weaknesses or starting point.

(2) You have the power to increase your luck in a very simple way. Simply, you can do it by setting a goal. When you set a goal and move towards it, it’s a proven principal that the world delivers more luck to you.

Transcript:

John Benzick: Greetings, everyone, John Benzick here, welcome once again to the Product Launch Rebel podcast. As always, if you like the podcast, share it with others and post a review on Apple Podcasts.

You know, the other day, I was asked to speak on an entrepreneurship panel on the topic of luck and how it relates, if at all, to the notion of successfully starting a business. It was a fascinating topic, so I thought I’d extend the conversation to you guys.

During that panel, we were asked questions such as:

Do you believe in luck?

Have you experienced luck in starting your business?

What role does luck play, if any, in a startup?

Can luck be created for oneself, or do some people just have more luck than others?

As I considered these questions, I expressed that, when intersecting with hard work and perseverence, and luck can be, and often is, a factor in successful startups. Not all of the panel participants felt the same, but

Consider that there’s a spectrum of situations that can occur for entrepreneurs;

On one end of the spectrum, unprepared or disadvantaged entrepreneurs can succeed with their startups, sometimes wildly, when they are in the right place at the right time for their product to be accepted by the market. A startup can succeed in spite of an entrepreneur’s or even a product’s imperfections.

On the other end of the spectrum, we’ve seen very experienced and highly skilled entrepreneurs that have outright failed in their startups, when the hidden market conditions surrounding them conspire against them.

Now, of course, one of the key elements of whether or not a startup succeeds is the leader of the startup.

But what I’m saying here is that there’s another key driver, and often a more powerful one, which is market timing – which often includes the key element of luck. Not always, but often, the entrepreneur has to be somewhat lucky to correctly time the demand of the market. Even if one is slightly too early, or slightly too late, it could effect their survival.

So, despite the level of entrepreneurial skill and persistence, sometimes, luck plays a huge factor.

As an example, I read a lot of rock-n-roll biographies, and what I often see is that a lot of famous musicians, especially those from pre-internet days, when they look back at their careers, they claim that luck has played a key role in that success. They were in the right place at the right time when they were discovered, or by pure accident, they were centered in a confluence of trends, bringing them a tidal wave of success, despite their artistic weaknesses.

Another example, in business, is if an industry is consolidating, either on the buyer side, or the manufacturer side. Industry maturity and consolidation (i.e. market timing) can have a huge impact on the luck, or success, of a startup.

A quick example of this would be the ski and snowboard industry, where the number of retailers have declined dramatically over the years, and the number of retail buyers for those stores have declined accordingly. So these retail store buyers are buying fewer ski brands. So, a new startup trying to sell to these buyers has a harder time getting in the door and proving itself.

And to summarize the point on market timing, to some extent, market timing is related to luck.

It’s hard for an entrepreneur to know when the timing is right. To be sure, there are ways to test the market, cheaply and quickly, but you can never know with complete certainty.

But let’s get back to the broader topic of luck, and that panel that I was on – especially in relation to panelists who felt that luck had little or no role in their success which, to me, was surprising that they felt that way.

And to me, there’s a more important thing to consider:

As I was listening to the other panelists talk about luck, I realized that the miracle of simply being born healthy, into this world, a world of abundance, particularly in the United States, in this period of history, was extraordinarily lucky, extraordinarily lucky.

In other words, luck is all around us, depending on your attitude, gratitude and perspective.

Especially since the audience that I was talking to was educated, most of which were born into middle-class families, where food and education and opportunity was at arms length, or even somewhat taken for granted.

This is an audience that, more often than not, went on to college, started careers, had access to technology, etc.

You know, sometimes we have to step back and take inventory about how lucky we are, how grateful we can be and what we’ve had access to (even if we perceive we don’t have as much as others). There is such richness, related to life in general, including for startups.

Sometimes we can become blind, our senses comatose, to the abundance and the true miracles of, and luck, in our lives.

Hey, listen, I understand that many people in the U.S. have significantly less than others, and have been exposed to obstacles beyond their control but, by and large, even those individuals, with the right attitude and drive, can create more luck than they think they can.

As I think about it, my Dad is a great example of this, which is based on the idea that, even starting with zero, luck is, or the resources for luck, are available:

My dad was born on a poor farm where his mom had a debilitating mental illness, and his father was an alcoholic, spending time in jail, and generally not available to the family. My dad hung around the wrong crowd, was once kicked out of high school, never went to college and – to make a long story short, ultimately succeeded financially beyond his wildest dreams in starting and selling two companies.

His journey, from less-than-zero to abundance, transformed his life for the better. Incidentally, even with all of his hard work and starting from zero, he has also claimed that luck played a big part in his success.

The overall point here is that, in the grand scheme of things, life itself, is truly a miracle, which is to say, luck. This clarity can elude us when we’re healthy and grinding things out day-by-day; but for those that are confronting the final moments of their lives, through illness or whatever, that clarity about the miracle of life is luminous.

I mean, think about the resources around you, things that 100+ years ago people would’ve died for: indoor plumbing; clean, accessible water; on-demand digital global communication; indoor heating and air-conditioning; gosh . . . grocery stores plump full of endless options of just the cereal aisle, 20, 40 or 100 options, how many do you need!?

So, point is, bringing this back to aspiring entrepreneurs, there is so much, what I would call, luck, out there. If you’re breathing, you’re lucky. If you’re breathing, you’re at a lucky starting point!

Hey, I’ve got one other item I’d like to share on how merely being healthy and alive, makes you, foundationally, lucky, and at a useful starting point.

The other day, I was watching a news segment about a boy, in middle-school I think it was. He was healthy, but he was born without being able to see color. He could only see in black in white. Seeing in black and white wasn’t unusual for him, because it was all he ever knew.

But one day, his classmates surprised him with a wonderful gift, and this was recorded on video.

What we saw was his classmates giving him a pair of high-tech glasses that allowed the boy to see color.

Before you know it, we see the boy breaking down and weeping from the joy of seeing color for the very first time.

In other words – to him – simply seeing color was a miracle. To him, seeing color was a lucky thing to have.

So my question for those of you listening to this podcast is, when you wake up every day, open your eyes and see in color, do you get joyfully overwhelmed at how lucky you feel because you can see in color? Are you grateful that you can see color?

You aren’t, right?! It’s because it’s become all too familiar. But, really, seeing in color, and many other small things that we now take for granted, are miraculous and therefore, I believe, chock full of luck.

Okay, I’ll wrap this up by summarizing two points:

(1) Just being alive and healthy is, itself, the great foundation of luck.

To highlight this point, imagine looking at the earth from a distance, in outer space, and seeing earth’s richness of life in a broader context, where beyond earth, in dark space, there IS no life – no trees, no grass, no mountains, no air, no lakes, no rivers, no animals, no humans, no friends, no mothers and fathers – just blank lifelessness. Looking at earth from space puts the great fortune of life in perspective. Because to be BORN, and to be a part of this thing called life, is unique and treasurable because, hey, the chances of you, the podcast listener, stepping foot on the earth, for even 10 minutes, that was by pure chance, if you really think about it. But chances are you, now, take that for granted.

Whether you live for 2 years, 8 years, 53 years or 107 years, you had the fortunate opportunity to witness, get a good glimpse of life, including all its human-related imperfections.

Summary point number two:

(2) Importantly, you have the power to increase your luck, beyond that luck foundation, in a very simple way, which is: and this is a simple secret: you can increase your luck by . . . setting a goal. When you set a goal and move towards it, it’s a proven principal that the world delivers more luck to you. When you share your goal with others, some will introduce you to resources that will have luck attached to them – which will advance you. Whether your goal is to find a new job, launch a product, or improve your fitness, you’ll be introduced to people, articles, books, podcasts, etc., where you’ll stumble across chunks of good fortune.

So, kick around these thoughts for a bit and, by all means, let me know what you think; I’m super curious. Thanks for listening.

(Oh, and if you like the podcast, please, share it on social media, leave a review on Apple podcasts and subscribe to Product Launch Rebel on your favorite podcast channel, or email me through the VentureSuperfly.com website.)

Talk with you later.

Ep. 054: On Launching a Snowboard Outerwear Company — The Mike West Interview

John Benzick — Fri, 20 Apr 2018 14:24:21 -0600

Hear how Mike West, the founder of 686 Outerwear, launched his snowboard brand just out of college, with no formal design experience. Listen as Mike describes his past mistakes as a “blessing in disguise.” Hear him express the importance of curiosity, listening, and remaining humble, as an entrepreneur. Additionally, Mike encourages aspiring entrepreneurs to not wait for the perfect time to start a business.

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Top Takeaways from this Episode:

(1) To become an entrepreneur, put yourself out there and take a chance; be prepared but don’t aim for perfection.

(2) It helps to be a regular customer for the types of products that you’ll sell as an entrepreneur. This helps you understand the needs and desires of your customer base.

(3) Starting out, you can do a lot with a little. You don’t need much staff to start a clothing business. Much of what you do can be outsourced to other suppliers and freelancers.

(4) Counterintuitively, business challenges and mistakes can be blessings in disguise.

Transcript:

John Benzick: Oh man, in this terrific episode I interview Mike West, the founder of 686, The Technical Snowboard Outerwear Company. And one of my favorite parts in the interview was when Mike emphasized a key decision point of entrepreneurship, which is the importance of not waiting for the perfect time to start a business, and learning to be comfortable, or courageous enough, to just get started and to take the leap.

Mike West: Putting yourself out there, and maybe going out and learning it firsthand is okay. You will never be ready and everything set to go. You have to be ready but you won’t have everything perfect. I would have never been able to be where I’m at without taking a chance. And you will give excuses to yourself about why you can’t do it, but if you want to try it, try it. And if you don’t, it’s fine. It’s not for everyone, believe me. There’s so much pressure right now to be that guy. You don’t need to. But give it a try if you want to.

John Benzick: Greetings product launch rebels and welcome to the Product Launch Rebel Podcast, brought to you by venturesuperfly.com, where we help double your entrepreneurial courage, even if you’re in a sea of self-doubt. Please visit the Venture Superfly website and check out the contact page to join our mailing list.

John Benzick: Today I’m stoked to interview Mike West, the founder and CEO of 686 Outerwear for snowboarders. He started the brand just out of college with no formal design experience. When you go into many outdoor retailers across the country, you’ll see 686 prominently displayed. In fact, our family is a happy customer of 686. All of my three step kids, even Nadia and Pierce, wear 686 when they’re riding on the slopes, keeping them warm and dry and stylish to boot.

John Benzick: Mike also launched Matix Clothing, which is a lifestyle apparel brand stemming from the skateboard and surf culture of Southern California. Mike is a partner in North America’s largest action sports and outdoor warehouse fulfillment center called NRI Distriubtion, where they help distribute leading brands like Electric Eyewear, SurfTech, Outdoor Research, Black Diamond and many others.

John Benzick: And finally, later this year, Mike is planning to launch a new direct to consumer apparel brand called Westwell, which will play in the larger menswear and soon womenswear markets. Stay tuned for that. Mike’s a really creative force, that’s for sure.

John Benzick: Without further ado, let’s say high to Mike West. Mike, thanks for being here and welcome to the Product Launch Rebel Podcast.

Mike West: Thanks, John. Thanks for having me. When you list all those things up, I don’t really realize that things are on my plate, but it’s been a great ride. Whatever I can do to kind of tell my story, I’m pretty stoked to do that.

John Benzick: And I listed the abridged version. You’ve got a lot more things going on, I know that. That’s for sure.

John Benzick: So Mike, there are three segments in this podcast. The first is called Give Me The Basics, which helps set the context about your companies for our listeners. The second segment is called Let’s Get Personal, where we get into some of the more personal topics about what it’s like to start a business. And the final part is what I call Tell Me How, where we’ll get to the heart of the matter, on issues that aspiring entrepreneurs want to know now, to help move them forward.

John Benzick: Mike, what do you think? Are you ready for some questions?

Mike West: Let’s do it.

John Benzick: Fantastic. All right, here we go.

The Back-story of Mike’s Entrepreneurial Journey

John Benzick: Mike, let’s start at the beginning. Tell us the story. How did you originally come up with the idea to start 686?

Mike West: I think a lot of my ventures and just what I do is really based upon the feeling, the gut feeling, and kind of being the customer myself, right? Back in the day, I grew up in Southern California, my whole culture was based upon skateboarding. Street skateboarding, it was this kind of movement close to Southern California and Venice Beach particularly, where just this uprising like angst and kind of all the things about what we couldn’t do, into just this form of expression in the skateboard.

Mike West: I grew up kind of as a sponsored skateboarder. You know, back then, you weren’t looked in the way that you were looked today. People were like, “All those guys on the side, what are they doing? They’re creating trouble.” For me, I was a shy kid. That was my way of actually getting my expression out, so that eventually led me to meeting people, and being in this kind of artist kind of creative culture. That was a part of the mid ’80s, and I transferred that to snowboarding in the local mountains, and became instructor there. Just did that while going to school at the same time.

Mike West: That was my foundation of just finding myself, and my hobbies, and things I was just really passionate about. That’s how it all started before I actually started quote unquote business, which I do today.

John Benzick: Right. And you started with the outerwear component pretty quickly, right? You didn’t just start with T-shirts or things like that.

Mike West: Yeah, more or less, initially I just spoke about it is I didn’t initially have any design experience. I hadn’t gone to school, I learned from someone. What I did, I guess understood, and when you’re young, you really didn’t understand exactly those sets because you didn’t have the tools you have today. You know how to assert eyeing something. When you have an eye like, “I like that, I don’t like that,” and I learned how to maybe communicate that on more of a formatted process.

Mike West: When I was going to school, the few things changed me in terms of hey, the instructor told me, “You could actually do something for a career and in aspects you like to do.” It’s something as simple as that today is really hard to understand. You go to a prestigious school back then, you pay a lot of money, and you have to essentially do what maybe your parents were expecting you to do, which is become a professional. That was not necessarily my mindset back then.

Mike West: I learned the things I liked to do, which is basically back then was moving, being in the mountains, and thought about how I can center myself around that, and I thought about creating something, and I just did it by a speaker, and he told me to do this and do that. I got into … I actually did create a hat, a beanie, a T-shirt and a pair of jeans first. The second year I went to creating technical apparel because I realized that you can only get so far in protecting yourself from a T-shirt and a hat when you’re in the mountains.

How 686 Clothing Got Early Traction

John Benzick: Mike, talk a little bit about what was so unique about 686 when you started it. Apparel is such a tough industry. How did you cut through the clutter early on amongst so many outerwear and clothing brands that were out there?

Mike West: The interesting thing is we have so much transparency nowadays. Back then, you only knew what was in your little proximity of not even watching your phone, and handling phone. It’s more what you knew locally. I think that’s something that I knew really first-hand because I was the customer. I was really passionate about doing this, and I wanted to hear what people wanted. The first step is let me make something let me get the response directly right then and there and it kind of steamrolled.

Mike West: Back then it’s like, “Okay, wow you made something. I like it. Where did you get I?” and you kind of grassroots kind of grow a marketing that way. Then it kind of builts. Back then, the competitive landscape was different. The technical landscape was different. I think when I speak to some people, it’s the right place and the right time, it was the right time in terms of the industry was growing, which I didn’t know. It was mainly by larger companies, but they all started in a similar way. I came from a authentic point of view from where I was, what I was about meaning the city meets the mountain point of view where my initially concept was you can actually use this here and there, meaning you can use it in the streets and in the mountains. It’s very versatile where people kind of appreciate that. It was more this street style. Not high tech, very low tech, but very street oriented. That was kind of my point of view that continued throughout.

Mike West: Was that one of my successful points? I think it was one of them, but it was really the right time and the right place with a point of view that made the difference.

John Benzick: Just for some context to our listeners, how many products did you have on the outerwear side when you started producing outerwear, meaning that second or third year, did you have two or three jackets and a pair of pants? Did you have more than that? Did you start with less than that?

Mike West: Yeah, it was really specific, meaning I made it for myself and my friends. I had a T-shirt, a hat, a beanie, a pair of jeans, and then the outerwear was only an anorak jacket which was really a poor cut boxy 90s cut, which is actually back in today, and this wide pair of shell pants that you just really back then, you just protect yourself from getting wet. It didn’t really protect yourself from being cold. That was the first step.

Mike West: Then the next one really was the game changer, I could say, in the brand over the 26+ years is…you know I took a trip outside Southern California to Banff in British Columbia. It was a realism factor that I realized it’s not 40 degrees out and sunny all the time, it was really, really frigid in all aspects. I go, “Wow, you really need to actually have some sort of insulation than pure shell.” I actually got a pair of sweats, put in my pants, and I put my shell over it. I put some Velcro on it and sewed Velcro on my waist pant.

Mike West: And they go, “Wow, I can actually wear a pair of sweats and keeps me warm. And then after that, I can actually take my sweatpants and then wear my sweatpants as I’m lounger.” And that really created the next concept which is known today, which is our smarty collection is it’s a convertible three in one system here. And we were really the first ones to create this kind of branded three in one experience. There was another company, Columbia, you know that had that. But it was totally not in my realm. I didn’t know about them back in the day. So I we created this new feature called Smarty which is zip out zip in technology of interchangeable liners, which people related that to all that was a Kleenex or coke moment where like, if you take your liner out, they referred to us as Smarty, which was, you know, very learned later on, it’s a very powerful thing when people can associate not your brand, but other people’s products to what your name is.

John Benzick: And with that three in one concept, did that really differentiate you among retail buyers at the time? Did that really sort of get you the traction that you needed?

Mike West: Absolutely. I think that you know, like, if anyone starts something, you know that when they asking, “Hey, you know, what do you want to do?” Well, I want to make clothing, “What do you want to sell to?” I want to sell to everyone. You really need to really have a point of view and really have a certain niche in terms of who you want. And that’s what we did is we go, “Hey, this came from a really first person point of view in terms how we discovered this, why related to it.” and then this perceived value of going well, you can actually do more, more than one specific thing, was really powerful.

Mike West: And then also we concentrated strictly on pants, not jackets, we didn’t do jackets so many, many years later. So and today, you know, quarter of a century plus later, we’re the leader and no one else does in pants, you know. So that really kind of blossom our company to do other things while we really own one thing.

John Benzick: That is really a great little piece to the story. How many employees did you have perhaps in that first year or two? And how many do you have now just for context?

Mike West: You know, when people ask that, they kind of have an assumption towards that is, but back in the day, I mean, you had me and a friend, right? And then my first employee but those… when you do that you’re really searching for people you feel like you can trust. not really have the best biggest skill set back then. And then you do everything right? And today, they’re still here. The one that’s been made for almost the same time and he’s still here, he’s the president and I have a couple others been here for over 20 years. And, you know, we all kind of grew up in this realm, and we all really hone our skill set. We have about 20 something people right now. But we’re really tight meaning, you know, we were really efficient. And we do quite a bit for the assumption of people how big we are, but we’re not that big at all.

John Benzick: Sure, you can outsource a lot of that stuff nowadays, everything’s so fluid and, and that really helps out as well. And when I started my outerwear company, I was the one employee for a good few years, and we were getting into REI and a lot of semi large retail chains regionally across the US and you can do a lot with a little, especially the more efficient and effective you can get over time over each season.

Mike West: Absolutely.

Being Honest, Showing Humility and Being Forgiven

John Benzick: Mike, most entrepreneurs go into business with a set of assumptions. And many of those assumptions proved to be different from what they expected, thereby making them scramble to make changes in order to survive. If you can think back to the early days, regarding your company’s uniqueness in those early days, did your original assumption about that uniqueness prove motivating to consumers? Or did you discover a different product selling proposition after being in business for a while and getting some customer feedback?

Mike West: You know, it’s a little bit of both. We like I said before, we have our point of view, which, you know, in our space, it’s people love this kind of like authentic storytelling, you know process. And I think that, you know, when you’re doing in the early 90s, not knowing what people are really thinking and having this long lead time, you just did it really honest, you know, and I had a lot of humility going, “It’s okay, you can tell your story, you can tell people what you’re doing.” So it was this how it was, I think people began to trust us, by the way of just going, you know, I were at the same level, you’re not coming to me, somewhere else, you’re coming to me just like anyone wanted. And I think that’s a big part of how we were relative to a lot of our customers.

Mike West: And, and as we are today, you know, I think we didn’t have any like, we shouldn’t do that, because that’s going to happen. We kind of just did it and in another day, we were forgiven a lot. I had some really great products. And I see that products are actually still used today. But we made a lot of mistakes, too. So that process was forgiven because it was somewhat accepted back then because it wasn’t an quick, you know, the aspect of today and yesterday completely different. Right? It’s completely different.

The Personal Side of Entrepreneurship

John Benzick: Sure. Mike, let’s get personal on a few topics. Many aspiring entrepreneurs don’t know what they don’t know. I certainly...

Ep. 053: On Launching a Smartphone Accessory Brand — The David Barnett Interview

John Benzick — Thu, 12 Apr 2018 19:53:36 -0600

Hear how David Barnett, the founder of PopSockets, evolved from philosophy professor to entrepreneur, and quickly grew his smartphone accessory company to 40 million units sold in his fourth year. Listen as he describes how employing “the power of reason” became a key to his success. Learn how his early product assumptions changed based on customer feedback — thereby leading to crucial new product and marketing strategies. Additionally, hear how he overcame early manufacturing challenges to finally achieve massive success.

Leave a Rating & Review in iTunes for the Product Launch Rebel Podcast

Top Takeaways from this Episode:

(1) Don’t defer to the norm. Don’t defer to what most companies do. Don’t defer to general rules of thumb about how to start a business. Think through every problem on your own. Weigh the pros and cons and reason through it. It will bring you success.

(2) We have an amazing opportunity here in the United States that most people in the rest of the world just don’t have — opportunities to start our own business.

(3) Do not quit your job or quit school to become an entrepreneur, unless you have good reason to think your idea will be successful.

Transcript:

John Benzick: You know, one of the great things about my role interviewing entrepreneurs is that I get to hear so many diverse perspectives and advice on how to best launch a business; and as a result you’ll learn that there’s just not one or two or even three ways to succeed as an entrepreneur. There are many ways, many different ways to succeed. But the challenging part is that the advice I hear from one entrepreneur for example, can very often conflict with another entrepreneur’s point of view on a particular topic. And so it’s interesting to hear in this interview with David Barnett, the founder of Pop Sockets, how he uses the power of reason to sort through the noise and advice that he gets when he needs to make effective, crucial decisions. As a new entrepreneur who’s struggling to find his way.

David Barnett: They’ve actually learned that the power of clear thinking, I just have more and more confidence that people should not be deferring to the norm. Don’t defer to what most companies do. Don’t defer to what, what’s normal out there in business. Don’t defer to general rules of thumb about how to start a business. Think through every problem on your own, you know, weigh the pros and cons, really reason through it. It will bring you success. So it’s helped a lot that I paid no attention to someone’s background or when somebody says I’m an authority on this. To me, I didn’t even hear that until they give an actual reason for making a decision one way or another, it’s not going to have any impact on me. So the power of reason, I guess, is quite powerful and in business.

John Benzick: Today I’m interviewing David Barnett. He’s the founder and CEO of pop sockets. If you don’t know about Pop Sockets, the offer very clever smartphone accessories. My family has been using them for an a of years now and I’ve had my own custom made venture superfly branded Pop Socket as well, which is super cool. David officially started pop sockets in 2014 and now in 2018 he has sold over 40 million pop sockets worldwide. 40 million. This will be a terrific interview to learn about David’s journey as a new entrepreneur, especially since his previous career, at least on paper, was drastically unrelated to his new trajectory as a business owner. To learn more about his company, visit pop sockets.com David, thanks for being here and welcome to the Product Launch Rebel podcast.

David Barnett: Thanks John. It’s super cool to be here.

John Benzick: Oh, I’m super excited. So David, there are three segments in this podcast. The first is called, give me the basics, which helps set the context about your company for our listeners. The second part is called let’s get personal or we get into some of the more personal topics about what it’s like to start a business. And the final part is what I call tell me how well we get to the heart of the matter on issues that aspiring entrepreneurs want to know now to help them move forward. David, what do you think? Are you ready for some questions?

David Barnett: I’m ready. Hit me.

John Benzick: All right, fantastic. Here we go. David, tell us the story. How did you originally come up with the idea to start Pop Sockets?

David Barnett: Sure, in 2010 when I was a philosophy professor at the University of Colorado, I was tired of pulling my headset out of my pocket and having it be tangled. So my ear buds that I would use every time I made a phone call on my iPhone three back then, they were always tangled and out of frustration one day when I pulled them out, tangle that just hopped in my car and drove down to the nearest Joann Fabric in Boulder to look for a solution. So I walked around the aisles and eventually settled on a couple of really small buttons and a couple of really big buttons about one and a half inch diameter, the big ones. So the small ones separated the big ones from the backside of my phone. And then I used those two giant buttons to wrap my, my earbuds around the backside of my phone to keep them from tangling.

John Benzick: That’s really cool. Were these just regular apparel clothing buttons?

David Barnett: Yes, they were giant apparel clothing buttons. So if you can imagine the iPhone three is, was just tiny compared to today’s phones. So these, these buttons cover the entire backside of the phone, the two buttons together. And I like how you said, that’s very cool. You’re the only one who would say that, everybody around me thought it was ridiculous. So, so from there, actually that’s the transition into Pop Sockets. So from there, I just build the solution for myself. I had no intentions of commercializing it until enough friends and family made fun of me to the point where I decided to try to improve, improve this and make it have more functionality and look less ridiculous. So I went through a bunch of different mechanisms and settled on the accordion mechanism, which is the patented magic of the, the Pop Sockets. And I spent well over a year miniaturizing the, the accordions that you see in kitchen stores, like the giant funnels and bowls that collapse through that accordion mechanism. Right. Took me a long time to, to scale that down to the size of a popsocket. You can’t just shrink it. So a lot of work and then launched the business in 2014.

John Benzick: Yeah, that’s amazing. How many retailer doors do you sell to now and what channels do you sell through?

David Barnett: We’re in about 40,000 doors worldwide. As far as channels we are in the wireless carrier channel, so At&T, Verizon, Sprint, and other carriers. We are in a big box with Best Buy, Target and Walmart, then we’re in quite a few mid tier chains. Geez, I can’t, I can’t name them all, but for example, it’d be Tillys or Michael’s and then we’re in thousands and thousands of independent stores. So boutiques this is just domestically and we try our best to give a unique offering to each of those channels so they’re not all selling the same, the same Pop Sockets. And overseas we’re in about 45 countries in roughly similar channels.

John Benzick: That is astonishing growth in such a short amount of time, especially from a guy that’s never launched a business before. David, most entrepreneurs go into business with a set of assumptions and many of those assumptions prove to be different from what they expected there by making them scramble to make changes in order to survive. Regarding pop sockets, uniqueness, did your original assumption about that uniqueness prove motivating to consumers or did you have to change your selling proposition to sort of match what they were looking for?

David Barnett: So yeah, my original assumptions were false. I was lucky enough to learn early on, which is some key assumptions that were false because I was, I was still teaching at the University of Colorado, so I was able to get some early cases into their hands. The first Pop Socket product was an iPhone four case actually. Then it turned, it turned out by the fine. By the time I got to production, I think it was an iPhone five case, it had two Pop Sockets that collapsed flush with the backside of the case and it was, it was designed to make the headset, headset wrap, just perfect at the cost of a perfect grip or a perfect stand. And I noticed pretty quickly that while all my students said they’d love to wrap their headset around these every day when I put them in their hands, that’s not what they were doing.

David Barnett: They made me, one of them was actually using it for the headset wrap, but they were all using it for the grip and the grips were not in the ideal place. One was on the top and one was on the bottom. Really you want the grip toward the middle of the phone. And I learned this before I went to market. So I started tinkering with what the standalone Pop Socket that allows the consumer to put it wherever they want on their phone for the best grip location. And it’s been the real hit of the business. So had I not learned that lesson from my students, I could have launched at retail with, with the two Pop Socket cases and it probably would have flopped. And then I learned some other things in, in, you know, once we did launch, we launched slowly first in the couple independent stores, one on Pearl Street here in Boulder.

David Barnett: And I would sit and watch customers interact with our display and our product. And when we originally launched, it was two of these individual pop sockets. So we sold them in pairs and it, it just didn’t make much sense to the consumer. So I’d see them go up, they look at the packaging, they’d get confused, why would they want to, wasn’t a good explanation. So we, we started selling them just individually as, as singles with a hand drawn on the packaging to let consumers know that it was a grip for a phone. So a drawing of a hand with a phone with a pop sock and on it and the sales quintupled. I mean they just went through the roof as soon as we switched and started selling singles with the right packaging.

John Benzick: Amazing. So David, let’s get personal on a few topics. Did you ever aspire to be an entrepreneur or did you ever foresee that in your future back when you started this or before?

David Barnett: So yes, I had thought of myself as pursuing a career as an entrepreneur as a child. Actually when I was age 10 to 16 my neighbors called me Ross Perot, he was a famous entrepreneur who ran for president a long time ago. And that was my nickname because I had so many businesses as a kid, I was always, always trying to sell something, sell a service. I’d made mixed tapes that I sold to the my peers at school, at lawn bowling businesses. I got jobs at restaurants when I was 12 and 14. Got, got the restaurants in trouble with the Labor Department for working there. So yeah, I was a hustler as a kid, so I always thought I’d be a businessman. And then I sort of got distracted by the world of ideas and academia for 15 or so years and became a professor and then got back to back to my roots as an entrepreneur.

John Benzick: What planted the seed for that entrepreneurial moxie?

David Barnett: Gosh, you know, I have to say, I think it’s something genetic. I think everybody has a little of it, right? Humans just like they projects, so we get bored easily. We like to complete projects. There’s something satisfying about that. And then, you know, when you look around at whatever society you’re in, you look at the opportunity for, for these projects and in the, in the United States, we’re fortunate enough to have the opportunity to be entrepreneurs. I mean an amazing opportunity here in the United States that the most people in the rest of the world just don’t have. And I think as a kid, I dunno, I noticed that that was one of the obvious opportunities as far as developing interesting, stimulating projects and, and then seeing the success from it.

John Benzick: Many aspiring entrepreneurs, David don’t know what they don’t know before starting a business. They’re sort of unconsciously incompetent in certain areas, not as prepared as they thought they should be in starting a business. Before you started Pop Sockets, to what extent were your previous career skills and knowledge aligned with your task of launching this type of company? Let’s say on a scale of one to 10 10 being very aligned, how well did your previous skills and knowledge fit with your new startup?

David Barnett: Oh, I’d have to say a seven or an eight. I mean, on paper it looks like a horrible match. I was a philosophy professor, so I had zero business experience. But philosophy is just clear thinking. So what more could you want going into business and being an entrepreneur, especially where you have to be able to, to learn various subject matter, you have to be able to learn finance quickly, marketing, sales, operations, supply chain, manufacturing, engineering you’ve got to figure that stuff out on your own, which is just problem solving, right? Sure. so philosophy really prepared me well for that. To be able to, to address new subject matter and master it even if I don’t master it as well as the experts, at least enough to know, you know, what kind of people I eventually need to hire. And so on. My main weakness was, was lack of actual experience with, with these topics, especially supply chain and operations and hiring, right?

David Barnett: Hiring people you can think as clearly as you want, but if you don’t have experience hiring people, you don’t really know what’s out there. And, and you know what you can expect how many people that interview before you know, what’s, what the market has. You just have no idea. And so hiring was really difficult for me. The first year or two I was hiring. Well, I fortunately didn’t have the choice to hire, hire top notch people because I didn’t have the money to do it, but still I was hiring people with absolutely no experience and it made it really difficult. Moving forward,

John Benzick: What’s the number one lesson you’ve learned since starting the company?

David Barnett: Directly related to the last point. It’s people, people, people. So one number one lesson I’ve learned is it’s all about the people. Surround yourself with really good people for what your business is, what you need, and your chances of of success just explode.

John Benzick: Do you have any regrets in behaviors or decisions early in your entrepreneurial journey? A lot of successful entrepreneurs have had regrets even though they’re successful. Have you had any of those regrets in any ways that you would have changed your behaviors or decisions in the past?

David Barnett: Sure, I’ve made plenty of mistakes. It’s hard to say whether I would have changed it cause they were all learning lessons for me. And maybe they were good in the end overall because I learned a lesson and it became strong report and, and took the business in a direction that I wouldn’t otherwise have without that severe mistake. But some big mistakes I made were, Jeez, not finding a, not surrounding myself with experts early on, not immersing myself in the community here in boulder of of startups and other entrepreneurs so that I could share it, share experiences with them and learn from them. Had I done that, I think I would have avoided contracting with the wrong factories again and again, having tens of thousands of defective product again and again. All that pain I experienced could’ve been avoided had I made the right connections and develop the right relationships in the community early on.

David Barnett: That’s one big mistake. And then another one was just various partnerships. A couple of partnerships I’ve made. I was too eager to enter into partnerships because I had a lack of experience and it’s really easy when somebody approaches you and says, you know, I’m an expert, just I’m going to take you under my wing and everything’s going to be okay. It’s just often not the case, right? These sorts of partnerships that entrepreneurs enter into early on because it’s much easier to say to license your product to a big company or to have some big group come in and run a sales department or a marketing department. It sounds really appealing because it takes the pressure off of off of you, but there’s, there’s risks of the risks in doing that. So I’d caution against being against jumping into any such relationship.

John Benzick: We alluded to this earlier, David, but starting a business is pretty unusual and so I want to get down deep a little bit more to understand your motivations to be an entrepreneur. A lot of people just talk about starting a business, but they never actually start one. Do you think you’re a creator at heart? Do you have a need to express something that ends up being in a certain medium, in a certain way, such as the...

Ep. 052: On Launching a Performance Apparel Brand — The Joe Kudla Interview

John Benzick — Wed, 21 Mar 2018 20:58:23 -0600

Hear this new episode where John interviews entrepreneur Joe Kudla, the founder of Vuori Clothing. Listen as Joe uses fear as an opportunity to grow professionally and personally. Learn how Joe raised capital for his startup, who has influenced him the most as a business owner, and what has brought him the most joy -- and frustration -- since starting his company.

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Top Takeaways from this Episode:

(1) Experiencing fear could be a way to identify where you need to grow, either personally or professionally. Let fear be a guide, not a burden.

(2) Lacking experience, in your startup, can often be a curse -- but it also has its benefits.

(3) It's amazing what you can accomplish when you rid yourself of ego, and trust people with their expertise.

Transcript:

John Benzick: In today's interview, I talk with Joe Kudla the founder of Vuori, a hot new clothing brand out of southern California. You'll hear Joe talk about his joys and frustrations of being an apparel entrepreneur along with key advice on all aspects of launching a startup. One of the key lessons revealed in the interview was how Joe uses fear to his advantage, which is in contrast to how most of us experience fear, which is unfortunately a barrier to our own personal and professional advancement.

Joe Kudla: I've always enjoyed that kind of risk versus reward relationship, and I've never been afraid of taking a risk and falling on my face. And I guess if I was to say anything, it's to let fear sometimes guide you and for me, if I'm afraid of something, I'm typically drawn to it. So the idea of going out and getting in over my head or you know, taking a public speaking engagement or talking on a podcast. Sometimes it can be a little scary, but I try to use that as a beacon to know that I need to walk through that door if I want to grow as a human being, and I think that that has served me well in entrepreneurship.

John Benzick: Greetings Product Launch Rebels and welcome to the Product Launch Rebel podcast brought to you by VentureSuperfly.com where we help double your entrepreneurial courage, even if you don't know what you're doing, please visit the Venture Superfly website and check out the contact page to join our mailing list. Bear with me today as I'm trying to recover from a cold. As you might hear my voice by won't let that hold me back with my excitement because today I'm interviewing Joe Kudla. He's the founder and CEO of a clothing brand called Vuori clothing based in Encinitas, California. The brand has sort of a west coast vibe, but with definite and smart technical elements. Joe Distributes his brand through leading retailers, including REI and Core Power Yoga. Additionally, Joe has an interesting background. He grew up in avid multisport athlete. He attended the University of San Diego and a model traveling the world for major fashion brands.

Then was a CPA for Ernst and Young and even started and grew a successful professional staffing company. This'll be an inspiring interview to learn more about Joe's startup journey and to learn more about Joe's company, visit the Vuoriclothing.com; that's V, U, O, R, I clothing.com. In fact, Joe has kindly offered a 25% discount on any item at the company's website when you enter the Promo Code "Rebel 25" so be sure to do that as soon as possible. Hello, Joe, thanks for being here, and welcome to the Product Launch Rebel podcast.

Joe Kudla: Thanks so much for having me, John. I'm excited to be on the phone.

John Benzick: Oh man, I'm excited. That's for sure. So Joe, within this podcast there are three segments. The first is called, give me the basics, which helps set the context about your company for our listeners. The second part is let's get personal where we get into some of the more personal topics about what it's like to start a business. And the final part, Joe, is what I call tell me how where we'll get to the heart of the matter on issues that aspiring entrepreneurs want to know now to help them move forward. Joe, what do you think? Are you ready for some questions?

Joe Kudla: Let's do it.

John Benzick: All right, here we go. This'll be great. So Joe, tell us the story. How did you originally come up with the idea to start? Vuori clothing.

Joe Kudla: So I started Vuori really out of identifying a personal need. You probably hear that from a lot of guests on your show. But I was a competitive athlete growing up, played primarily physical sports, grew up playing football and lacrosse and played lacrosse in college at University of San Diego and pretty much just beat up my body. I had suffered from a lot of back pain and about 10 years ago, a good friend of mine suggested that I try yoga and I did. And I ended up falling in love with the practice. It was really one of the first restorative things I'd ever done for my body. And the first question I asked after a couple months of practicing was what does a guy wear to yoga class? And at the time, there just really weren't a lot of options out there. Lulu Lemon was definitely making a push into this space.

They were really focused on the female consumer and there just weren't a lot of options out there for guys like me. And so that, that was really the Aha moment was, man, there's a lot of guys practicing yoga these days and you know, the mainstream athletic brands weren't really speaking to that guy. We were wearing a lot of board shorts to go practice yoga in and they were great from some, from some standpoints, you know, they moved well, but they weren't really designed to stretch and sweat in. And so we just saw this opportunity that was kind of originally inspired by Yoga but really extended into this kind of lifestyle that we were living here in Encinitas. And that was, gosh, long time ago.

John Benzick: So Joe, I think I told you that I used to own a soft goods company myself. And so I know that the clothing industry is just so really incredibly competitive. And so tell me about what's so unique about the Vuori. How did you cut through the clutter among so many apparel companies out there?

Joe Kudla: I'm glad you brought that up because I'd always dreamt of being in the apparel business. I loved creating products. I love design. And so I had invested in and kind of by by default become a part of the management team of, to start up apparel companies before Vuori. And both of them were great learning experiences. But you know, I'm not doing those, those companies today. And so you can imagine how those ended. But with Vuori, you know, we really felt strongly about the needs that existed in the marketplace. If you think about what was happening in our country, people are getting more and more health conscious and yoga participation is exploding.

You know, when we were doing our research before we started the brand, there were 17 million people practicing yoga in the United States and 30% of those were men. And if you compare that, that's about, you know, spread around 6 million guys. And if you compare that to the number of people that surf in the United States, there's only 2 million people that surf. And so you think about all the different surf brands out there going after those 2 million guys. We felt like this was just a wide open space. And so you know that that's where we got a lot of confidence from a market standpoint. But then when you think about specifically what we wanted to do within the category is, you know, we're from the beaches of southern California and we wanted to build product that first and foremost was built with the best quality performance materials, have a saleable product that was moisture wicking, quick drying at great stretch was built with incredible seam construction.

So it would last and but the difference where I think that a lot of the brands kind of worked delivering is we wanted to build our product with an aesthetic that would effortlessly transition into everyday life and are in the women's active wear market. They call that studio to street. And so that's really kind of the force that's been propelling the active wear market on the, on the women's side of the business. But we felt like on the men's side of that, the men's side of the business that was really missing. And so we wanted to deliver on that brand promise. And I feel like we've been effective in doing that, which I think is part of the reason why we've gotten out of the gates with such a fast start. It really seems like a great idea from which to start.

John Benzick: And it's great to hear that you were in the apparel business to some extent before you started your business. So you didn't go into the business sort of being blind to all of the challenges.

Joe Kudla: I went in with a little, a little bit of insight. However, knowing now what I know have been through the last four years of growth at Vuori, I really didn't know much. And I think that that's a blessing and a curse in entrepreneurship having, you know, let's say I worked as a designer at Xyz company and I only saw a little corner of the page, I probably would be scared about trying to step in and and run an apparel business knowing all of the moving parts. And all of the different roles and responsibilities that it takes to execute on a successful brand. However, being a little bit naive, you know, I wasn't afraid to take that first step and kind of learn as I went.

And so I had a little glimpse into the space. But having been through what I've been through, I know now that there was a lot more to it.

John Benzick: Sure. And I indicated early in the introduction what types of retailers you sell to, but tell us a little bit more about the retailers that you sell to now.

Joe Kudla: In a nutshell, when we first launched the business, we were focused on point of participation, which is what we call places where people use the product for its intended end use. That's yoga studios and gyms primarily. And so Core Power Yoga was an early partner of ours and we sold to a lot of independent yoga studios and gyms. But in our second year of business REI gave us a call and asked if we would want to be a part of a small 10 door test.

It was a men's fitness incubator program. And we felt like we had won the lottery. We were, you know, frightened by it, but we were very excited at the same time and we participated and it turned out Vuori was one of the top performing brands in that test and they grew us from 10 doors to 70 doors. And we maintained our kind of top spot as one of the top performing men's fitness brands. And then we grew from 77 doors to all doors. And we maintain that. We have a great relationship with REI. We're doing very well there and very excited to be launching a women's business with them as well. So from a wholesale standpoint, you know, REI and Core Power, big anchors of ours but we're sold through 650 wholesale doors across the country. And one of the things that we did a little bit differently when we built our brand, you know, as we were forced to build a direct relationship with our customer, the wholesalers weren't a hundred percent sure about the men's fitness category.

Men's fitness historically in our country has been dominated by big box retailers like Dick's Sporting Goods, Sports Authority, Sports Chalet, and a lot of those guys were in a race for the bottom. So the quality, you know, in that channel wasn't necessarily kind of the type of quality that we're building. Lulu Lemon came in and really changed all of that, but your wholesalers in fashion, in the outdoor industry. In Surf, they, they weren't really paying much attention to the active apparel market. And so when we launched and we came to these guys with a bunch of samples, they weren't really ready for it. So we were forced to pivot and really build a direct relationship with our customer. And I'm really grateful that that happened because now our website is our single largest point of distribution for the business and it's a really healthy place to be. And we really love our ecommerce business from a wholesale standpoint. We really positioned the product so that we could sit and be authentic within five different points of distribution. So we've got the point of participation, which I mentioned.

We also sell in a lot of fashion accounts like Nordstrom for example. And then we've got the outdoor industry with REI leading the charge and a lot of outdoor specialty. And then we've got fitness, which you know, the fitness industry is, you know, we define as as like sporting goods. We also lump running specialty into that category and then we've got resort. And so with, within all of these Vuori can sit and decide to be selective and only sell to the best dealers within these five channels. And that's a really healthy place to be. It's a place that we want to be so we don't have to sign up maybe the down channel retailers for growth because we're growing our business direct and we get to be selective and pick the best partners in the wholesale channel.

John Benzick: When you started out, how difficult was it to choose the type of products and the scope of products when you started and how is that product line expanded at this stage?

Joe Kudla: That's a great question. You know, when we launched our first entrance to the market was through men's shorts because our feeling was if you go to a yoga class, I mean half the guys in yoga classes aren't even wearing shirts, but every guy has got a pair of shorts on at least. Hopefully, and so we looked at the men's shorts category as an opportunity to come in and do something really cool, especially with our background in surfing and you know, living this west coast beach lifestyle, we thought we could do something cool by introducing, you know, unique prints and cool colors, stories and making shorts that were really wearable that you could wear to a gym or a yoga class, but would also look great on Saturdays walking your dog or going to the farmer's market or meeting a friend for a drink at a bar.

And so shorts was really our entrance to the market and that's where we put a lot of energy. And then once we got people into the brand and they loved our shorts, we had the opportunity to kind of introduce different products to them. Was that the right decision to start with the shorts? It was I mean my, I think tha I still to this day shorts represent a large percentage of our sales and I think that's where a lot of people kind of enter the brand is through our shorts. But it's really exciting for us now because now we're offering, you know, kind of this whole technical sportswear offering where you know, we have pants that you can wear on the golf or where did the office or where on your on your bike riding and riding to work in the morning. You know, we're getting into some wovens and buttoned down shirts and stuff that you wouldn't necessarily wear to the gym, but they're infused with that same performance lifestyle aesthetic that we've gotten known for sure.

John Benzick: Since we're talking to a lot of aspiring entrepreneurs right now that are listening to this podcast, I like to give them sort of a context. When these companies like yours start out, how many employees did you have starting out maybe in that first six months or a year? And how many employees do you have?

Joe Kudla: So there were two of us when we started. It was myself and our head of marketing who is still with us today. She's been an integral partner of mine from the beginning. And today we're just approaching 20 employees.

John Benzick: That is really astonishing. Great work, Joe.

Most entrepreneurs go into business with a set of assumptions and many of those assumptions prove to be different or wrong from what they expected, thereby making them scramble to make changes in order to survive. Regarding Vuori's uniqueness, that sort of yoga angle tied in with some of west coast lifestyle, did your original assumption about the uniqueness prove motivating to consumers or did you discover a slightly different selling proposition after being in business for awhile and getting some customer feedback?

Joe Kudla: It's a great question. When we launched the brand, we made an assumption that we could build it or at least get out of the gates by selling to the yoga studio marketplace. There were a lot of women's brands that were launching and having a lot of success within yoga studios. And we thought, well, 30% of the audience is men's by selling in this at this point of distribution, we have a great opportunity to at least build a foundation which we can grow upon. And that assumption was unfortunately wrong. We sold into some of the better yoga studios in the country sell through was, you know, okay. It wasn't, it wasn't anything that we were ultimately super scared about, but it wasn't time. The inventory wasn't turning at a pace that it needed to in order for us to really build a sustainable business. And so we knew we had to pivot.

And so at that time we were launching a b to c business. We're selling on our website. And a lot of the marketing and advertising that we were doing through social channels was really targeted towards men's yoga. The original inspiration for the brand. What we found through that experience was that men maybe don't identify as identify themselves as Yogis, like a say a woman would. And so we did a lot of testing. At one point we sent a survey out to all of the customers that had purchased from us and we asked them, what do you like about the product? What do you not like, what other brands are you wearing? What do you use the product for? You know, and what was really is we thought for sure based on all of our brand communications being targeted towards yoga and men's Yoga, we thought for sure yoga would be the number one or at least number two activity that people were using the product for.

But what we found out was that yoga was like number five. Number one was running. Number two was training. I think even like walking the dog was ahead of yoga. And so we recognized early on that there was a great product market fit, but we were communicating the end use wrong. And so we made some pivots in our brand communications in our...

Ep. 051: On Launching a Tea Company — The Jim Lamancusa Interview

John Benzick — Thu, 01 Mar 2018 20:40:53 -0600

Hear this inspiring interview of Jim Lamancusa, the founder of Cusa Tea company. Listen as he describes the joys of starting the world’s first “premium instant tea” brand, along with his advice on partnering with a manufacturer, selling to retailers, proper price strategy and overcoming bouts of self doubt.

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Transcript:

Transcript will be posted within 24 hours.

Ep. 050: On Launching an Innovative Bedding Company — The Eugene Alletto Interview

John Benzick — Thu, 22 Feb 2018 01:39:45 -0600

Hear the spectacular entrepreneur journey of Eugene Alletto, the Founder of Bedgear, a performance bedding company. Learn how overcoming the loss of his father as a teenager, in large part, drove him to eventually succeed as an innovator and business owner. Listen as he shares his wisdom on the topics of perseverance, resilience and utilizing your strengths to overcome life’s obstacles.

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Top Takeaways From This Episode:

(1) You can teach yourself to not be a victim of your circumstances. Successful entrepreneurs have a key trait of not taking on a victim mentality.

(2) “Being an entrepreneur is not something that you can say you are. Being an entrepreneur is something you become. I had no idea. I wasn’t born to be an entrepreneur.”

(3) “Part of being an entrepreneur is learning every day. And if you’re not learning, you’re not growing personally. And if you’re not growing personally, you can’t grow professionally.”

(4) If you aim your mind towards things that you’re passionate about, you can become a great learner. And learning can deliver you success.

Transcript:

John Benzick: This episode of Product Launch Rebel features Eugene Alletto, the founder of Bed Gear. I walked away from the interview feeling inspired by a guy who became really transformed by entrepreneurship and by following his vision of a better bedding company. This is a guy who had lost one of his parents at a very young age and at face value, didn’t have anything special to offer; not being particularly good at schoolwork, not being a great athlete, having bad skin, a bad haircut, and as he describes — lacking confidence as a young man — not being one of those “chosen ones” within his peer group. But as you will hear in this episode, you’ll see how starting a business built his confidence in not just his career, but other areas of life. A value packed episode is in store for you as you hear an entrepreneur’s story about persistence, pursuing what you’re good at and passionate about, and learning that you’re capable, and not a victim, of your poor circumstances.

Eugene Alletto: Just the ability to just move on and not not get pissed off at what you’re not good at, or not get pissed off at circumstances, or not get angry when someone says no to you and blame it on somebody else is really, I think from an entrepreneur’s perspective, the people I meet that start businesses and are successful entrepreneurs and are happy are ones that are not victims and it’s really an lesson — and I think it’s something you can even teach yourself.

John Benzick: Greetings, Product Launch Rebels and welcome to the Product Launch Rebel podcast brought to you by VentureSuperfly.com where we help double your entrepreneurial courage, even if you don’t know what you’re doing. Please visit the Venture Superfly website and check out the contact page to join our mailing list. Today I’m excited to interview Eugene Alletto. He’s the founder and CEO of a super cool bedding product company called Bed Gear. I met him at the massive Las Vegas Market furniture trade show and I was blown away by the smart products his company is offering, which includes some really high tech mattresses, pillows and sleep related products. In fact, as I was walking through Bed Gear’s showroom, I thought that if Nike got involved in the bedding industry, this is the type of stuff they’d be doing, Bed Gear has done a great job of applying the concept of performance to bedding, applying things like their Air Tex, Dry Tech and Vertex technologies. To learn more about Eugene’s company, visit BedGear.com. Hey Eugene, thanks for being here and welcome to the Product Launch Rebel podcast.

Eugene Alletto: My pleasure and look forward to spending the rest of the next 30 or so minutes with you.

John Benzick: Oh man, it’s going to be great. So Eugene, within this podcast there are three segments. The first is called give me the basics, which helps set the context about your company for our listeners. The second part is let’s get personal or we get into some of the more personal topics about what it’s like to start a business. And the final part is what I call tell me how where we’ll get to the heart of the matter on issues that aspiring entrepreneurs want to know now to help them move forward. Eugene, what do you think? Are you ready for some questions?

Eugene Alletto: I am.

How Bed Gear Started

John Benzick: All right, fantastic. Here we go. Eugene, tell us the story. How did you originally come up with the idea to start Bed Gear.

Eugene Alletto: The Bed Gear idea really morphed over time, both the name and the product assortment. The part that really is interesting is like you’ll hear in most entrepreneur stories. Solving a problem is typically what what we see as entrepreneurs. And that’s where this becomes interesting. We had a son who was suffering from allergies. He’s now 20 and this was when he was around six, seven years old. And we were told by the doctor to go to the surgical supplies store, which probably don’t exist today because of the Internet, and pick up a vinyl mattress protector to encase the mattress so that we could eliminate the dust mites from his room. While we were successful in eliminating the dust mites, however, when he would wake up, we would notice that he was waking up in a pool of sweat cause you can imagine sleeping on a piece of vinyl with our body temperature being at the level that they are, you’re going to wind up taking that heat and transferring it into moisture.

Eugene Alletto: So he really had a tremendous amount of restless sleep. Even though we solved one problem, we created another. And looking around an industry that I’m aware of because of my background, I’ve been in home furnishings for many years. I realized that there was nothing being manufactured that would be breathable, yet still secure the need for reducing allergens in your bedding. And that’s really where the idea came from. It was a far cry from what it is today in terms of what we’ve discovered along this journey. However, that was the solution and the problem solving that we were looking to accomplishment when we first started with our very first product, which was a mattress protector.

How Bed Gear Differentiated Itself from Other Products

John Benzick: Eugene, the bedding industry is so competitive. And so tell me, what’s unique about Bed Gear and how did you cut through the clutter among so many bedding products in those early days?

Eugene Alletto: Very, very difficult. In fact, the frustration for me, and I’m sure for many entrepreneurs, is just how do you get that traction? How do you get the white space or the opportunity is really the easy part. The hardest part is actually getting people to believe in your vision and see that there’s a need for this product or an idea that you may have. So what I innately did based off of my journey I’ve been on is I realized that you needed to go talk to somebody that could actually sell your idea in volume. And so I had gone to a company called Sleepy’s, which was a large bedding manufacturer retailer in the northeast. They had at the time, they had a couple of hundred stores and they did lots of business. And I was able to work directly with ownership and management there.

Eugene Alletto: Both our companies were based on Long Island, New York, and I shared with them the story. I explained to them the value that this would bring to consumers. And I was able to get the product on the floor. And within a very short period of time of going to the stores and sharing that story, even with the sales associates on the floor, we were able to get some really good sell through. And I’ll tell you just to add a little piece of what you talk about in terms of clutter. What really made us unique and different was the value proposition wasn’t just the fact that we were able to have moisture wicking airflow and still maintain if you have allergies. Not Everybody has allergies. So the product became wildly successful because it was something that was health and wellness related to the customer.

Eugene Alletto: The clutter that you speak about is that the category that we started in was filled with many, many people that were manufacturing products to protect the mattress. However, most people don’t even want to spend money on a mattress. The last thing they want to do is spend money protecting it. So we didn’t know this, but what we found throughout the next several years is what built our company and brand promise was that we focused more on what’s going to be good for you as a consumer, not what’s good for mattress. And most of, even to this day, most people that sell mattress protectors are there to protect the mattress. And what we build is a product that protects you but also helps you get better night and healthy nights sleeps. So it really was the sales process as much as it was the, the product itself.

John Benzick: How many retailer doors do you sell to now and what types of retailers do you sell to?

Eugene Alletto: So we’re currently in over 450 furniture and bedding retailers. The other big decision we made was how to distribute this product. We recognized it was really important to have a store that’s got what’s called self-guided. So going into a mass merchant where there are no salespeople, there’s no sales support, you have to navigate yourself. We chose to go to a place where consumers go to buy their mattresses and at that time have a product that would be presented to you by a professional salesperson explaining the benefits and features. And it really is what propelled us to where we now have brand awareness with, with professional athletes, to doctors, to bus drivers to firemen and policemen. So we’ve become a brand, not because of going to the mass merchants and hoping that the consumer finds it.

Eugene Alletto: It was really more of a recommendation while you were purchasing a new mattress through your sales associate. So stores like a Raymour and Flanigan or Hom Furniture in Minnesota or The Brick in Canada. And now the beauty of it is we’re a global brand, we’re in multiple countries doing the same thing that we’ve done here in America. We’re in Russia, we’re in China, we just launched in Thailand. The beauty of it is as we get more into this interview, we are no longer a one product company. We are an entire assortment of products that all support the same brand promise. So we’re actually having stores being built. We have both freestanding stores in countries I just mentioned. However, here in America we now have in store galleries. So you can walk into like Nebraska Furniture Mart in Dallas or Kansas City or Omaha, Nebraska, and you’ll see a destination, a small version of what you had seen when you came into the Las Vegas showroom.

Eugene Alletto: We’re in Art Van furniture. There is a hundred of those stores in the midwest or Raymour and Flanigan’s in the northeast. And so what’s interesting is what helped America start to do these types of stores, these stores within a store concept, these popups as as they’re called today, is actually our international business. When the international buyers and owners came into our showroom and they saw this incredible brand of performance around the bedding category, they said, we want this, and I thought they wanted our product, but they said, no, we want the brand. This is an iconic American brand and we want to put these in an independent stores associated with our brands throughout the country, so we’ll have over 350 stores in China within the next three years. We’re already up to 35 and only a few months, 16 in Thailand we’ll have over 300 stores in Russia. We already have I think it’s 72 to date when the American companies saw what was happening with our brand globally. That’s what finally helped me to develop this in store experience that would really differentiate both our product as well as the retailer. So it’s an amazing journey.

Progressing from Few Employees to Many

John Benzick: Eugene, just to give our listeners some perspective, how many employees did you have originally when you started your company, maybe in that first year, and how many employees do you have now?

Eugene Alletto: There was me and I shared employees from some of the other small businesses that I had started in home furnishings. And so it was, it went to two and then it had a four shared employees. And then we are now 240 employees. We have a factory in South Carolina, over 300,000 square feet of factory and warehousing. Now we have an office for our creative suite here in the New York area. We have a warehouse in California and we just opened up our very first international manufacturing facility, outside of Shanghai to support all of our international growth. And what’s really, really awesome is the amount of American jobs that we’ve created. However, we also have taken the American ingenuity to open up the factory to duplicate the factory in China is identical to the factory that’s in South Carolina. And we share best practices and have really become more global citizens because of Bed Gear.

Working With International Distributors

John Benzick: So internationally, do you work with distributors or do you go directly to the retailers in those countries?

Eugene Alletto: So we start, and I highly recommend this, it’s really hard to sell a distributor and understand what they’re doing or not doing for your, your idea or your brand or your product. So I literally just got on an airplane and went and visited retailers where my product would be sold and determine what the value proposition would be. Determining where the right fit would be for us before determining how best to distribute the product. It’s always really important to know how your product is going to be sort of reviewed and expanded and understood what the, what the adjacencies are. And what I mean by adjacencies is, if your product is on the shelf, what’s to the left and the right of it so you can determine how best your products need to be priced and how they need to look.

Eugene Alletto: Because a lot of times distributors of products, they do it at a defense and they’ll tie you up in these countries. However, if you understand them, the value that you bring to the country and start working with the retailers first, then you create the direction that’s best for your brand and your product. And I think one, one of the things I think would be really helpful, John, is we talked about what was it that started the business, what was the product that got me started? And I think to give the listeners a little bit more context as to, what exactly we do is really important at this point because we’re getting into so many, so many sort of growth initiatives that we’re talking about, it’s hard to understand that.

Eugene Alletto: I think if it’s just purely what, you know, what we talk about in terms of a mattress protector. So would it be okay if I just gave a little bit of an overview of what you saw in Vegas in terms of product specific?

John Benzick: Yes, of course. That would be great.

Studying Consumer Behavior

Eugene Alletto: Awesome. So after we got started with this protector and we started to see that health and wellness and the customers reacted really well to products that were gonna benefit them, we started to get into this category of where people buy mattresses and we saw a huge, huge gaping hole. So even though it was a very small step, it gave, it gave us the opportunity to kind of get your head around like, oh my God, how come nobody thought of that? And here’s the big Aha moment. Well now that we’re in, we’re embedding stores and furniture stores and we see people laying on their backs with their legs crossed and their heads on these giant fluffy velveteen pillows that were supplied by the bedding manufacturers, recognizing that there was no process to buy mattresses.

Eugene Alletto: People just jumping from one bed to the next, over and over again on their backs. And what we started to see and when talking to the salespeople, it was really about price and comfort and it was very hard for people to navigate this sort of assortment of 50 to 75 mattresses that all essentially are white rectangles. With that in mind, we know that when people leave the bedding store, they were given like free pillows. Well, when I looked at the pillow, I realized, wait a minute, some of these not only are the pillows garbage and you know, seven, $8 Walmart like pillows. However, the pillow is an important piece too. I know how I sleep and I wouldn’t want to just have some random average pillow when I’m going to spend a thousand or 2000 or $500 on a mattress because the pillow is an intricate part to the overall sleep and comfort.

Ep. 049: On Launching an Innovative Pet Product Company — The Ken Goldman Interview

John Benzick — Tue, 23 Jan 2018 18:45:50 -0600

Hear the fascinating story of how Ken Goldman launched his dog gear company, Stunt Puppy. Learn how he started producing dog leashes and collars by hand, and how he utilized his professional marketing experience to grow the brand. Listen as he describes his number one lesson since starting Stunt Puppy, and who has most influenced him in his career. Hear why he chose to produce his products in the United States, and what has frustrated him the most as an entrepreneur.

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Transcript

John: Greetings Product Launch Rebels, and welcome to the Product Launch Rebel podcast, brought to you by Venturesuperfly.com, where we help double your entrepreneurial courage, even if you don’t know what you’re doing. Please visit the Venture Superfly website and check out the contact page to join our mailing list.

Today we’ll be learning about the pet product industry, which should be a lot of fun. I’m interviewing Ken Goldman. He’s the founder of a unique brand of dog gear called Stunt Puppy. It offers products such as collars and leashes that are designed and made in the United States, right here in Minnesota. The company designs products with cues from the rugged camping and climbing gear industry, so they are extra durable. Seems pretty smart and cool. Ken’s products are available at StuntPuppy.com, as well as through many retailers across the United States. To learn more about his company, visit StuntPuppy.com.

Hello, Ken. Thanks for being here, and welcome to the Product Launch Rebel podcast.

Ken: Oh, it’s great to be here. Thanks for the invitation.

John: Absolutely. This is going to be a lot of fun. Thanks for your time.

Ken, within this podcast there are three segments. The first is called “give me the basics,” which helps set the context about your company for our listeners. The second part is called “let’s get personal” where we get into some of the more personal topics about what it’s like to start a business. The final part is what I call “tell me how” where we’ll get to the heart of the matter on issues that aspiring entrepreneurs want to know now to help them move forward.

What do you think, Ken, are you ready for some questions?

Ken: I’m ready and I’m hoping you’re gonna tell me how at the end.

John: Fantastic, here we go!

02:29 — Ken, tell us the story. How did you originally come up with the idea to start Stunt Puppy?

Ken: It probably sounds cliché but it definitely was not on purpose. My dog Bauer and I, he was a golden retriever and we were a therapy team so we spent a lot of time in hospitals moving out and about and I wanted some gear that helped us move around the hospital easier and more fluidly. And that combined with the fact that I know how to sew, combined with the fact that I love gear, uh, it just all kinda came together. I went down to my basement and started making stuff for he and I. So we were, it’s definitely a happy accident. Um, then layer on top of that, I have another company that’s a marketing agency and we kind of looked at it and said, hey, we could build a brand around that. So that was 11 years ago.

03:31 — John: Yeah. That’s very interesting. And tell me about your sewing background. How did you get into that?

Ken: Definitely not on purpose. My mom, who still sews to this day, she’s a big quilter and so I was the youngest of three and just kind of hanging around so I stepped in a lot of pins and needles growing up and their fabric swatches all over the place and so I just wanted in on that. So I learned how to sell early and you know, I learned a sewing machine wasn’t something strange to me and I always kind of had one. It’s not that I was making myself clothes or anything, but I wasn’t afraid of a sewing machine. So when I got to the point where like, hey, I want to do this, I just pulled out the machine and, and went for it.

John: Yeah, it’s interesting. It’s interesting that you were a sewer before that. I remember when I started my snowboard and ski clothing brand, I was not as sewer but I really sort of got interested in it, but I never took the time to do that. So I’m sort of fascinated by that.

Ken: Something just really cool about sewing in general. I mean it goes along with Legos and putting things together and I’m actually doing a week long sewing workshop in a couple months to kind of build out that skill even more for prototyping.

John: Yeah, very interesting. It’s so neat to make stuff.

04:56 — Ken, the pet product industry is just so competitive. So tell me what’s so unique about Stunt Puppy.

Ken: I will, but give me a minute because I want to talk a little bit about when people talk about the pet industry and how giant it is. And of course I should have the number off the top of my head, it’s like $70 billion, I think. And so when people look at a business and that, you know, they get really excited but it’s, it is so fragmented. One, I mean, first of all it’s not all dogs, right? Um, and there are more cats than dogs, just FYI. And then, so let’s slice off, get to just dogs and then you get to, well there’s specific kinds of owners and dogs that were relevant to which are basically active dogs and active owners, and there’s nothing against non active dogs and non active owners. And I define that as people who take their dog outside of the house.

Um, and this is a long way of getting to the answer your question, but essentially we try to really narrow our focus and build off our position. So if we just focused on these active dogs, active owners, which is really a small slice of that big market, and then within that market, try to focus on the ones in a more urban setting and really trying to build a brand around those people and speak to those people. So that’s number one, how we stand out. Number two, and this kind of dovetails into that, we’re not trying to be everything to everybody and so it’s OK to build things only for some of the segment. Another separate element of our unique character is that we are made in the US. Um, we feel really strongly about it and so we really try to, it’s about making the stuff ourselves, number one and building jobs in our own community and just basically building stuff that is as good, if not better than anything we’d use for ourselves, like our human gears, so to speak.

07:15 — John: What type of retailers do you sell to?

Ken: We focus on independent running store retailers because we focus on the running industry, but that doesn’t mean we’re not in pet stores. We are in some or even in some bike shops and things like that. But our, our effort and focus is in the running channel. And then interestingly enough we have, we have two distributors, one is in South Korea and the others in Japan. Our South Korean distributor is focused purely in pet. So we’re much more of a fashion brand there, which I mean everything is different there. And how we’re perceived there is different and it’s pretty cool because they didn’t ask us to change any of our gear. They’re just seen in a different light. And then in Japan we’re definitely seen as an outdoor brand. So along with selling gear, like outdoor, wearables for people and climbing gear, et Cetera.

08:19 — John: What types of products do you offer now?

Ken: The majority of our products, our leashes and collars with some special functionality, we also have a harness that is only about a year and a half old. That is has been received very well. It was five years in the making and later this year we are doing a joint venture with another company out of New Zealand and we’re bringing in a full line of outerwear.

John: That will be really neat and complicate your product mix a bit and to manage.

Ken: Very much so in a couple of different ways. One, OK, where are we making these things? Cause now I’m going to go back on what I said about made in USA. We will make the majority of that in the US, but there are a few things that need to be made in specific places because it’s the best place to make them. For instance, a dog flotation jacket we make in the best flotation jacket factory in the world. That factory is in China. There is a Merino jacket that we will continue to make in New Zealand because that’s where the wool is and it makes the most sense in terms of footprint, but probably everything else of their stuff will come to the US and get manufactured here.

09:45 — John: How many employees do you have now, and just give us some perspective, I think you started 11, 12 years ago. Give us also a look back into those early months. And given that we’re talking to aspiring entrepreneurs here, gives us a sense for how many employees you had during that first year, let’s say.

Ken: Well first year it was just me. It was literally making everything like with my own two hands and everything, so we’re a little different or I’m a little different in that I also own a marketing agency, so they’re a big piece of the effort. So right now 11 years in Stump Puppy has three full time employees but a full time marketing agency behind it. So it, and I can’t separate the two, so we’re more than three people, but there’s three people full time.

10:48 — John: Sure. How did you choose the name?

Ken: You know, it’s actually not a very interesting story. So many people ask me that. I wanted something where we get own the URL. I wanted something that was, that felt good to say that something that would be memorable and that’s really all there is to it. I wanted something that, you know, in terms of design, we could work with it in terms of letters and letter shapes. There’s a lot of dog gear out there that isn’t branded. You know, bottom line is I wanted something that kind of at least expressed active and people would remember.

11:29 — John: Say, Ken, most entrepreneurs go into business with a set of assumptions and many of those assumptions proved to be different from what they expected, thereby making them scramble to make changes in order to survive. Regarding Stunt Puppy’s uniqueness, did your original assumption about that prove motivating to consumers or did you discover a different selling proposition after being in business for awhile?

Ken: You know, I, I think the thing that changed from the beginning or that was emphasized more after we got going is that we should, I immediately thought, oh, this is going to need to scale wide and we’re going to need to, the line is going to have to be really wide. But as time went on, it was almost the opposite. So like, you know, what, if we just focus narrowly, like talk about people who run with their dogs, that’s something we can own, we can be authentic in and talk about it and produce better product so that it was almost like a reverse epiphany there. Um, the other one is I never would have thought how long it would take to develop some product, like the harness was literally five years and it wasn’t five years of constant working on it, but it was oh, we’re throwing that away. Oh, that’s no good. And every time we thought we had it, then it’s like, ah. Um, and there some of that was in the end realizing that there is no silver bullet, um, that maybe we just need to say, OK, this is what we’re going after. And it’s not going to be the perfect thing for everybody, but it’s going to get a nice, good, majority of the people looking for it.

13:17 — John: So Ken, let’s get personal on a few topics. Many aspiring entrepreneurs don’t know what they don’t know before starting a business, they’re sort of unconsciously incompetent in certain areas and they’re not as fully prepared as they thought they would be or should be in starting a business. If and especially, I’d love to get this answer from you, especially that the fact that you are a marketing guy. Before you started Stunt Puppy, to what extent were your previous career skills and your knowledge in line with the task of launching a pet product? Let’s say on a scale of one to 10, 10 being very aligned, how did your previous skills and knowledge fit with your new startup?

Ken: Well the marketing skills I felt really good about and even more specifically the brand skills, like in terms of building a brand, so I’m, you know, like sevens and eights there, but in terms of product development or manufacturing or quality assurance, I had no idea what I was doing. I was completely making it up.

14:36 — John: How about sales?

Ken: That’s a great question. And so often marketing gets lumped with sales and they’re so different. I had sold marketing services but never sold products into retail or distributors. So that was, yeah, I was completely green and probably good that I didn’t know what I didn’t know cause it’s, it’s a little daunting; I mean, trade shows sitting in a trade show booth for three days. There’s nothing that can prepare you for that.

15:05 — John: How much better of a marketing guy are you now? Since starting Stunt Puppy and having sort of that real life honest, authentic exposure to all the elements of the marketing mix now including product development and, and all the functions of a business.

Ken: I think a lot. I’m definitely more tolerant of a marketing guy now. I, for instance, if somebody can have this great idea for a product extension or something like that here and on paper it’s like, Oh yeah, that is a good idea. But there’s all those other things like what does that do to the SKUs and how does that reflect, how do get into stores that already have the associated product. And so just kind of feeling that pain. Um, even down to like how many UPCs are we going to be sitting over or regenerating UPCs or recycling them things that as just a pure marketer, if you’re working with a client, if they said something like that, you’d be like, oh, that’s ridiculous. Like, get over it. Let’s move on. I’m definitely getting more of that full picture or yeah.

16:19 — John: Ken, what’s the number one lesson you’ve learned since starting your company?

Ken: Stick to your positioning and don’t try to be something you’re not. Authenticity, people, they smell it. It’s amazing. I mean some of the feedback we get there, we have one comment we get, something about our attention to detail and you can really tell that these people really care about dogs. I would never write that marketing copy, but it’s 100 percent true. I mean from the way we turn a seam over on the inside of a collar that nobody would know, but it’s more expensive and takes longer to do, but we know that that is a more comfortable feeling on the inside of a collar for a dog. I mean, that’s it. You know, our, our tagline built from the dog up is that we really believe in that. Like that’s where we’re starting.

17:16 — John: Yeah. Ken, many entrepreneurs, including very successful ones have regrets in doing things incorrectly early in their entrepreneurial journey. And I think those regrets can reveal valuable lessons to aspiring entrepreneurs. Since you started Stunt Puppy, would you have approached the business differently if you could go back and do it over again?

Ken: Wow. I mean we’ve definitely made mistakes and continue to make mistakes. Like I’m sitting on hang tags that are deficient because I jumped into the project too fast and they don’t hold the product up, but I don’t know if I would’ve done anything different because unless we do something and fail, we’re not learning. And that sounds so cheesy, but I mean I guess I could think of if I would’ve gone another way in the beginning. I mostly think around the money side. Like if I would have brought in a bunch of other people and the money and maybe I’d be regretting that now, but I didn’t so I can’t complain there now. Definitely bumps in the road and different turns and tosses and tumbles, but that’s, I mean, it’s the journey. Um, and at the end of the day we’re working with people who are crazy about their dogs and that’s a pretty amazing audience.

18:44 — John: Yeah. It seems that 99 out of a hundred people can just talk about starting a business, but they never star one. It’s all show and no go in a way and starting a business is special and pretty unusual. What motivates a person like you, Ken Goldman, to stop just talking about launching a business and actually go out and start a pet product company.

Ken: You know, it’s just something I could really sink my teeth into and feel good about. It just hit all the right buttons in terms of, Oh, I’m working with my hands, I’m creating something, a building a brand. At the end of the day it’s with dogs that, I mean, it’s rare that we run into people who don’t have a good connection to dogs and if they don’t then we just, we’re not really talking to them in the first place. Uh, and some of it, you know, like I said in the beginning it was an accident and you know, I have this other agency that, you know, in some ways was a crutch in terms of, uh, you know, monetarily I didn’t have to worry about completely making it with this one thing, but I also had a lot of other people saying you can’t do two things. You can’t do both. You need to pick one or the other. And I don’t think that’s true. You can do two things and it’s, it’s not a perfect world,

Ep. 048: On Launching an Innovative Baked Goods Company — The Michael Tierney Interview

John Benzick — Wed, 13 Dec 2017 19:50:14 -0600

Learn how young Michael Tierney, the founder of Mikey’s Muffins, launched his company and, within three short years, is selling through major grocery retailers. Hear how he gets motivated, mostly, by failure. Listen as he describes what he’s most proud of along his entrepreneur journey, and what frustrates him the most as a business owner. Learn his advice on raising capital and the importance of surrounding yourself with good people in order to grow.

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Ep. 047: On Launching Justin’s Nut Butter — The Justin Gold Interview

John Benzick — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 20:09:16 -0600

Hear this exciting interview with Justin Gold, the founder of Justin’s Nut Butter. Listen as he describes overcoming a deluge of obstacles in starting and growing his company. Learn where he discovered his entrepreneurial drive, how he raised money and why he still doesn’t know what he’s good at — despite his tremendous startup success.

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Ep. 046: On Launching a Healthy Food and Beverage Brand — The Rita Katona Interview

John Benzick — Wed, 05 Jul 2017 18:43:40 -0600

Hear how Rita Katona followed her passion to launch a healthy food and beverage company called So Good Brands, Inc. Listen as she shares her inspiration to start the company, and her biggest joy as an entrepreneur. Learn Rita’s biggest challenge of managing multiple business models as well as “getting it all done” on a daily basis. Hear her advice on pitching your product to retailers and surrounding yourself with personal and professional supporters.

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Ep. 45: On Launching an Adventure Travel Clothing Brand — The Ryan Hitzel Interview

John Benzick — Fri, 23 Jun 2017 22:24:10 -0600

Hear the amazing startup story of the wildly successful Roark Revival apparel brand, founded by Ryan Hitzel. Learn how he channeled his experience as an adventure traveler and surfer, as a creative director in advertising, and as an employee at Volcom clothing, to become an apparel entrepreneur. Listen as he describes his top frustrations as a business owner, and how he overcomes his occasional feelings of self doubt. Hear him describe how key people have influenced him, and how entrepreneurship has changed him.

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Ep. 044: How to Unleash Imagination and Create New Products — The Barry Kudrowitz Interview

John Benzick — Fri, 09 Jun 2017 13:55:56 -0600

Hear how Barry Kudrowitz, a leading authority on design, innovation and new product development, helps people to think more creatively and unleash their imagination to create new products.

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Ep. 043: The Launch and Growth of Pure Cycles — The Michael Fishman Interview

John Benzick — Sun, 04 Jun 2017 20:54:03 -0600

Hear the exciting story of how three childhood buddies launched their own bicycle brand, in college. Learn how they first bootstrapped the business with their own startup capital. Listen to Michael Fishman, Pure Cycles co-founder (and our interview guest), describe how he would approach his startup differently if he could do it over again. Hear his core motivations to become an entrepreneur, and how he found his entrepreneurial moxie.

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Ep. 042: On Launching a Domestic Bike Manufacturing Company — The Zak Pashak Interview

John Benzick — Thu, 25 May 2017 15:06:24 -0600

Hear how this young Canadian serial entrepreneur moved to Detroit, USA, to start the largest US-based bicycle manufacturer, Detroit Bikes. Learn what drove him to start a bike company (it wasn’t primarily about bikes) and the personal and professional obstacles that he faced in his quest. Listen as he describes how starting Detroit Bikes helped build his confidence and taught him key lessons about entrepreneurship.

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Ep. 041: On Starting and Growing a Pickle Company — The Rick Field Interview

John Benzick — Fri, 19 May 2017 20:03:11 -0600

Hear how a series of mid-life challenges, and a passion for pickles, drove Rick Field to launch Rick’s Picks, a fancy product line of pickles. Learn how he tweaked his family recipes based on customer feedback from NYC farmers’ markets. Listen as he describes his biggest joys, and most challenging frustrations, as a food entrepreneur. Hear how he deals with entrepreneurial self doubt and separates work-life from personal-life.

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Ep. 040: On Disrupting the Food Condiment Business — The Scott Norton Interview

John Benzick — Wed, 10 May 2017 22:41:12 -0600

Hear the amazing story of how this young entrepreneur, Scott Norton, and his business partner, sought to disrupt the sleepy food condiment industry. Learn what inspired Scott to see a career in “business” in a whole new light. Learn how he tested early condiment recipes in a college apartment, raised startup capital and chose influential retailers to drive revenues.

Listen as he describes what he’s learned most about himself since becoming an entrepreneur, who has been most influential to him, and what he’s most proud of since starting the business.

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Ep. 039: On Launching a Women’s Surfwear Brand — The Amanda Chinchelli Interview

John Benzick — Wed, 03 May 2017 19:43:25 -0600

Hear how this accomplished surfer started one of today’s hottest surf wear brands — Seea. Listen as she describes how entrepreneurship has changed her, where she draws her inspiration and where she finds joy as a business owner. Learn who has influenced her most, and why she thinks launching Seea was her destiny.

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Ep. 038: On Launching Two Ski Companies — The Jason Levinthal Interview

John Benzick — Sun, 30 Apr 2017 15:22:27 -0600

Hear the wild story about how Jason Levinthal started and grew Line Skis (the first modern twin-tip ski company) and ignited a youth ski movement and helped save skiing. After a few years of struggle and lackluster sales, learn how another competing brand and the X Games helped boost his fledgling company to the stratosphere. Listen as he describes how he launched his second company, J-Skis, with a smarter business model.

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Ep. 037: On Launching a Line of Fitness Products — The Tee Major Interview

John Benzick — Thu, 20 Apr 2017 12:57:42 -0600

Hear how entrepreneur, Tee Major, expanded his fitness training business by launching a new line of unconventional fitness products, including — of all things — steel maces. Learn how he went from strained “solopreneur” to relief by choosing to work with co-founders who offered skills that Tee didn’t have. Listen as he describes how entrepreneurship has enhanced his communication skills — and relationships — in all aspects of his life.

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Ep. 036: On Starting an Outdoor Consumer Electronics Brand — The Caro Krissman Interview

John Benzick — Thu, 13 Apr 2017 19:55:33 -0600

Hear how this perpetual entrepreneur, Caro Krissman, launched the consumer electronics brand, Outdoor Tech, to better serve outdoor enthusiasts. Learn how his network of peers motivated him to achieve. Listen as he describes how entrepreneurship has changed him — as well as his biggest joys and frustrations along his entrepreneurial path.

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Ep. 035: How to Launch a Fitness Wearable Tech Company — The Davide Vigano Interview

John Benzick — Thu, 06 Apr 2017 15:21:12 -0600

Hear how this successful Microsoft executive escaped the corporate world to start his own wearable tech company. Learn how he spotted the business opportunity, identified a key strategic investor and found a manufacturing partner — after an exhaustive search of over 70 contenders!

Hear his personal thoughts about how entrepreneurship has changed him, how he deals with self doubt and what he’s learned most about himself from the entrepreneurial experience.

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Ep. 034: How to Launch a Green Juice Company — The Shauna Martin Interview

John Benzick — Fri, 31 Mar 2017 15:33:29 -0600

Hear how a life-threatening scare led to the life-changing creation of Shauna Martin’s hot new juice company, Daily Greens. Learn how Shauna evolved from producing green juice in her kitchen, to now producing juice, on a mass scale, in a 20,000 square-foot specialized facility. Listen as she describes her biggest joys — and biggest frustrations — since starting her own business.

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Ep. 033: On Launching Love Your Melon Headwear — The Zachary Quinn Interview

John Benzick — Tue, 21 Mar 2017 22:24:41 -0600

Hear how entrepreneur, Zachary Quinn, co-created a business idea in college, dropped out, and led the astonishing growth of Love Your Melon headwear. Learn how he and his business partner chose to regularly give 50 percent of their profits to support children with cancer, and provide opportunities for thousands of young adults to make a true difference in their communities.

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Ep. 032: How to Launch a Natural Nut Butter Company — The Andrew Kincheloe Interview

John Benzick — Thu, 16 Mar 2017 16:24:12 -0600

Hear how Andrew Kincheloe started and grew his Buddy’s Nut Butter brand out of college, with absolutely no business experience. Learn how he humbled himself by making mistakes and facing challenges in production, marketing and small or zero budgets. Listen as he describes one of his keys to success — passion — and how entrepreneurship has changed him.

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Ep. 031: On How to Launch a Frozen Treat Company — The Erik Brust Interview

John Benzick — Wed, 08 Mar 2017 21:58:52 -0600

Hear how this young entrepreneur, Erik Brust, started a company in honor of his cousin, who — with Erik — conceptualized the Jonny Pops frozen treat idea.

Learn the exciting story of how Erik started in his college dorm room, and grew the company into a multi-channel, nationally distributed brand.

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Ep. 030: On Starting a Natural Snack Brand — The Mary Kosir Interview

John Benzick — Thu, 02 Mar 2017 19:28:55 -0600

Listen to Mary Kosir, the Co-Founder of WholeMe foods, talk about her journey to become an “accidental entrepreneur.”

Learn the details of why she delayed starting WholeMe for 5 years, only until she found the right business partner. Hear her wise advice on the topics of raising money, finding a manufacturer, overcoming self doubt and facing difficult decisions.

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Ep. 029: On Launching Epic Provisions — The Taylor Collins Interview

John Benzick — Wed, 22 Feb 2017 23:54:57 -0600

Hear the astonishing success story of Taylor Collins, the Co-Founder and Chief of Epic Provisions.

Learn how he and his wife channeled their athletic spirit into rapidly growing this 100% mission-driven, grass-fed and meat-based natural food company.

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BONUS: Click HERE to learn how to become a supplier to Whole Foods Market. It’s an article written by my friends at Repsly!

Ep. 028: On Launching a Ski Company and Movement — The Matthew Sterbenz Interview

John Benzick — Thu, 16 Feb 2017 14:08:03 -0600

Hear how this young entrepreneur became a driving force in skiing’s revolution.

Learn how the founder of 4FRNT Skis, Matthew Sterbenz, went from pro athlete — with zero industry knowledge — to manufacturing his own skis, raising capital, and recruiting a brotherhood of influential athletes to infuse new energy, and a pioneering spirit, in a tired industry.

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Ep. 027: How to Launch a Pillow Company and Awaken a Sleepy Industry — The Mike Lindell Interview

John Benzick — Tue, 07 Feb 2017 22:11:49 -0600

Hear the extraordinary success story of Mike Lindell, the Founder of MyPillow, Inc.

Learn how he overcame a deluge of rejection, legal mistakes and drug addition to rapidly grow into a $500 million dollar company. Discover how he ignored “expert” advice to manufacture his product overseas and, instead, created a U.S.-based factory that now employs nearly 1600 employees in his state of Minnesota.

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Episode Outline:

0:46 – Introduction to Mike Lindell, the Founder and CEO of MyPillow, Inc.

3:18 – Beginning of the “Give Me The Basics” Podcast Segment

3:30 – Mike talks about why he saw a new pillow concept as a business opportunity.

4:26 – Mike talks about being in business for 13 years and whether he thinks the time went by fast. “My expansion seems so surreal.”

5:08 – Mike explains what makes his MyPillow concept so unique.

5:57 – Mike shares his current revenue figures of $400 million to $500 million. And the number of units sold: 26 million.

6:10 – Mike tells us about his current number of employees: between 1500 and 1600 employees. “That just keeps going up.”

6:28 – Mike talks about the types of products offered from MyPillow.

7:07 – Mike talks about the uniqueness of the MyPillow concept and how his initial assumptions about the business changed in the early days. He explains how he had to offer strong guarantees and then “guarantee with everything I had.”

8:16 – Beginning of the “Tell Me How” Podcast Segment

8:30 – Mike talks about whether or not he had to raise capital for the business. He talks about how he was never able to use a bank. He talks about the times he tried to raise capital. And he cautions aspiring entrepreneurs to be very careful because some money financers can threaten to take the business away.

10:03 – Mike explains his rationale for manufacturing in the United States (Minnesota) instead of seeking an overseas manufacturing partner. “I micro-manage that way, I’m built that way . . . I think a lot of entrepreneurs are.”

11:51 – Mike talks about the number of prototype iterations (94) he did to arrive at the concept that he felt confident about. “The excitement was beyond belief.”

12:43 – Mike talks about the pillow fill options he tested as he developed the concept, and working with engineers, and tearing “hundreds of pieces by hand” to make it work. “I had a lot of divine interventions.”

14:23 – Mike advises inventors to put themselves in the shoes of the consumer when they develop a new product. By listening to consumers, it helps inventors add the right features to the product. After that, “the money takes care of itself.”

16:42 – Mike talks about who did the original pillow sewing, and where they produced the pillows. He further explains the constant rejection they received from major retailers when he presented the product to them.

17:39 – Mike recalls some of the early issues they had when they first manufactured the product. “Yeah, I made them the wrong size.” “I made my first 300 pillows – when I was out of money – I made them too wide and too long.” “That was scary.” So he sold them as a “very special limited edition.”

19:01 – Mike talks about how, early on, he approached retailers to sell the product and the constant rejection he received. “I knew I had a great product.” They advised him to try selling the product in a kiosk in a mall. The kiosk didn’t work well, and he spent a lot of money doing it. But a key customer introduces Mike to a big idea: home and garden shows and fairs.

22:30 – Mike explains how they did the home and garden shows “for years” and how customer enthusiasm kept him going during those struggling periods. From there he had the idea of doing an infomercial. And his first infomercial was his first big positive turning point. From there MyPillow “went from five employees and my kids to 500 employees in 40 days.” “We were the number one infomercial by the end of 2007.”

26:32 – Mike shares his state of mind going into producing the first infomercial. He talks about how he “just knew” that the infomercial would be successful.

29:16 – Beginning of the “Let’s Get Personal” Podcast Segment

29:37 – Mike talks about his core motivation to being an entrepreneur. “There’s no plan B.” “It’s good to have a mentor – a trusted mentor.”

31:33 – Mike talks about the one thing he would do over again: to get good legal advice.

32:07 – Mike considers his number one personal strength: “I think it’s the passion – having a passion behind everything you’re doing.”

33:01 – Mike talks about whether he ever envisioned himself to be the CEO of such a fast-growing company. “It doesn’t surprise me, I’ve had other miracles throughout my life.” “It’s surreal but not surprising.”

33:38 – Mike talks about how his faith has been at the heart of everything he does, especially since he surrendered to stop his addictions. “I have quite a history.”

35:49 – Mike talks about whether it was his destiny to start and grow MyPillow. He goes on to explain how MyPillow has become a platform for something bigger. “I think it’s destiny . . . I’m glad I made the right discernment and didn’t give up on the MyPillow because it was just a platform for a bigger thing that’s coming.”

37:12 – Mike considers how some of his family and friends look at him differently now that he’s successful. “This isn’t me, this is God [that has made him successful].”

38:56 – Mike talks about what has brought him the most joy along his entrepreneurial journey. “Helping people.” “It’s been just so rewarding.”

40:02 – Mike talks about his top frustrations – how many people tried to take his company, and the betrayal that he has experienced. “It’s been very hard for me.”

40:56 – Mike talks about how he never had any real self-doubt regarding the MyPillow concept.

41:45 – Mike expresses how starting MyPillow might have changed him as a person. “I don’t know if it really changed me – I’ve always been an entrepreneur.”

42:50 – Mike talks about what he’s learned most about himself since starting MyPillow. “That I can keep that passion for a long time.”

43:10 – Mike talks about who has been most influential to him: “I would have to say God.” And Mike talks about other entrepreneurs that he has looked up to. He goes on to say that “there’s nothing better than the trenches” and getting direct customer feedback.

46:13 – Mike offers closing advice for aspiring entrepreneurs: “If it’s a product, make sure you get a provisional patent.” And “learn from other people in the business” and “get that legal representation in the beginning.” And finally, make sure that “whatever you have, look at it from the customer’s point of view.”

Ep. 026: How to Launch in the Natural Products Channel — The Bob Burke Interview

John Benzick — Thu, 02 Feb 2017 18:37:53 -0600

Curious about launching a natural food or beverage product? Want to get your product into Whole Foods Market and other natural product retailers?

This is an interview you don’t want to miss!

Listen to our interview with Bob Burke and get insider tips on finding a manufacturing partner, getting your pricing right so you’re profitable, and working with retailers, distributors and brokers.

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BONUS: Click HERE to learn how to become a supplier to Whole Foods Market. It’s an article written by my friends at Repsly!

Episode Outline:

0:45 – Introduction to Bob Burke, Founder of Natural Products Consulting.

2:00 – A list of companies and brands that Bob Burke has helped launch and grow in the natural products channel

2:45 – Bob shares his areas of expertise when helping people launch and grow in the natural products channel

4:05 – Bob describes the types of projects he works on when he works with clients; he gets involved in all aspects of the business, but most of his projects are writing customized business and marketing plans; “they’re a lot of work.”

6:55 – Bob talks about the types of projects that he’s best suited for, and the specific tasks related to those projects. Additionally, he talks about some of the more successful case histories, or projects/brands, that he’s worked on.

9:52 – Bob talks about the benefits of working with entrepreneurs that don’t have natural products industry experience: “The ones that don’t have the industry experience aren’t weighed down . . . they’re unencumbered.”

11:42 – Bob shares information about his seminars, including his Two-Day Sales Seminar, where he brings in 10 experts in their field (i.e. e-commerce, former Whole Foods Market buyers, distributor and retailer customers, etc.) to educate about selling to this channel. He also offers a full-day Financing Seminar, where they talk about deal structure, terms sheets, etc.

14:56 – What has been the highlight of Bob’s consulting career? Bob talks about his biggest ongoing pleasure of having opportunities to stretch myself in new areas as he gets exposed to new people, categories and projects.

17:09 – Bob shares his biggest frustration since being in this natural products business.

19:04 – Bob helps listeners understand the natural products channel; the roles and players involved. These include large and small retailers (i.e. Whole Foods Market, Sprouts, etc.), distributors (i.e. UNFI, Kehe, etc.) and brokers.

22:00 – Bob talks about the success and failure rates of new products in the natural products channel.

24:12 – Bob explains how he handles situations when people present new products to him that he believes don’t have potential.

26:20 – Bob talks about the top frustrations that new entrepreneurs face in the natural products channel. These include getting your first product into a large retailer (i.e. Whole Foods Market). Another source of frustration includes trying to figure out brokers and distributors. Additionally: trade-spending deductions when working with distributors.

28:41 – Bob shares his thoughts on how often new entrepreneurs need to realign their initial launch assumptions, and thus pivot their product or brand, in order to survive. He gives key examples of companies that have switched directions in order to grow.

34:02 – Bob shares his thoughts on the growth trends in natural products channel (i.e. low-sugar, no sugar, cold-brewed coffees, grain-free products, gut health, etc.).

35:58 – Bob talks about some of the entrepreneurs that have impressed him most over the years. And he talks about some of the characteristics that these entrepreneurs had, that led to Bob’s favorable impression of them.

38:31 – Bob shares his experiences in helping entrepreneurs develop new products.

39:30 – Bob gives his thoughts on the best process for new product development.

41:43 – Bob talks about how new entrepreneurs are finding manufacturer partners to help them produce their product. He continues to explain the importance for new entrepreneurs to focus on doing the most valuable activities to grow the business (which often means “not running a plant”).

44:20 – Bob shares his thoughts about how to best avoid problems when working with a third-party manufacturer. He advises new entrepreneurs to focus on the production term sheet, in addition to the lowest price manufacturer. “Err on the side of flexibility.” Look for a manufacturer that is flexible. And, most importantly, “you need to own the recipe.”

46:41 – Bob offers his advice on how to set the right pricing for your product. It should reflect your positioning in the category. Additionally, consider the pricing of your most direct competition. And, make sure your pricing allows you to make a profit – it needs a healthy gross profit margin.

48:29 – Regarding setting the price for a new product, Bob advises new entrepreneurs to do a pilot test of the product, so there is evidence that the price is working among other key consumer-acceptance factors.

50:27 – Bob talks about the best way to approach distributors and retailers for the first time. Bob advises that new entrepreneurs first work with a broker to help prepare for the product introduction.

53:00 – Bob shares his thoughts about preparing for and developing trade-spending (dealer and distributor marketing) programs, and the budgets needed, to be successful.

58:10 – Bob provides closing advice: He suggests that, in the beginning, to “begin with the end of mind” and think about “what outcome are you looking to shape?” Additionally, he advises the new entrepreneur to align expectations with everyone involved, including brokers, retailers and distributors.

Ep. 025: Going from Rubble to Riches — The Sara and David Russick Interview

John Benzick — Tue, 24 Jan 2017 21:25:58 -0600

Hear how this visionary couple grew an innovative garbage collection business into a windfall of profits. Listen as they describe careful planning and team-building as keys to their success. Score insider tips about raising capital, finding the right manufacturing partner, selling to retailers and accessing startup resources.

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Episode Outline:

0:45 – Introduction to Sara and David Russick, Co-Founders of Bagster, LLC, and Tubbs, Inc. Waste Systems. And Gopher Angels Network.

3:37 – Beginning of the “Give Me the Basics” Podcast Segment

3:40 – Sara and David talk about how they saw Bagster as a business opportunity. They heard about a similar business idea in Europe. They operated a related business in the Midwest, so they were somewhat well-suited for the idea.

5:52 – Sara explains the complex two-part business model required for Bagster. It required both retail distribution and operational support (truck collection) competencies.

6:55 – Sara and David talk about their confidence level going into starting the Bagster business. Sara talks about the careful planning that went into preparing for the launch, and the stellar team that supported and collaborated on the idea.

9:50 – Sara and David describe Bagster as a better business model than that of Tubbs; and how Bagster was executed “nearly flawlessly” but “not easily.”

11:17 – David talks about the relationship between their two companies, Bagster and Tubbs.

12:05 – David talks about some of the tactical pivots that were required for Bagster to optimize benefits to customers.

13:19 – David and Sara talk about the uniqueness of operating a two-part business model, selling to retailers while offering supporting waste-collection vehicles for customers.

15:00 – David talks about how learning from their Tubbs business (i.e. knowledge of targeting customers) helped them succeed with Bagster.

16:15 – Beginning of the “Tell Me How” Podcast Segment

16:33 – David and Sara talk about how they financed their business, by doing a combination of self-financing, vendor-financing, loan financing and investor financing.

17:50 – David and Sara talk about entering the New England market.

18:24 – Sara and David talk about the challenges of raising “Series A” capital to help them expand into other markets, while running an existing business.

20:30 – David shares what he’s learned most about raising capital: (a) make sure your investors are aligned with your goals and (b) it helps if investors bring additional skills to your business, in addition to money.

20:55 – David talks about his experience in finding a partner to help manufacture the Bagster bags. He talks about the process of finding a manufacturer in China.

25:23 – Sara and David talk about their experience in selling their product to retailers; and how hardware stores are mainly operated by families (not corporate bureaucracies), so it’s easier to get access to them and develop rapport with them, if you have a product that they like.

27:37 – Sara and David describe how scaled their growth by using a franchise-like model.

30:08 – David talks about how they supported retailer salespeople to help raise product awareness and drive store growth.

33:24 – Sara talks about key aspects of their marketing plan to help generate consumer awareness and demand.

36:54 – Beginning of the “Let’s Get Personal” Podcast Segment

37:17 – David talks about his core motivation to become an entrepreneur. He describes his entrepreneurial drive as “genetic,” since his family owned a department store in South Dakota. He talks about how he “loves to create and build.”

38:49 – Sara talks about how she became an “accidental entrepreneur” while she was on track to become a lawyer. She describes how she “got sucked in” to the business.

39:52 – Sara and David describe how, prior to being married, dating and becoming entrepreneurs, they worked together at two companies.

41:10 – Sara answers the question, “Did your success surprise you?”

42:02 – David describes what he’s most proud of since becoming an entrepreneur: “providing work-jobs” and helping employees elevate their lifestyles. Sara talks about the joy of working with great people and assembling great teams. Her proudest achievement is “raising two awesome daughters” while operating and selling two businesses.

43:48 – David and Sara describe their top frustrations as entrepreneurs. “Never enough time or money to be perfect.” “Learning things too late.”

44:45 – Sara and David talk about what they’ve learned most about themselves since starting their companies. “I can handle more than I think I can.” “I love to learn.”

45:34 – Sara and David talk about how they’ve influenced each other throughout their entrepreneurial journey.

46:20 – Sara and David offer closing advice: “persistence is important.” Be “honest about your skills.” “Get your concept out there and work it.” “Tap into” entrepreneurial “resources and networks.”

Ep. 024: How to Launch a Vodka Brand — The Ben Brueshoff Interview

John Benzick — Tue, 17 Jan 2017 21:51:16 -0600

Hear how this savvy, young co-founder and entrepreneur launched a vodka company, based on locally farm-raised beets.

Hear how they found a distilling partner, convinced a great design firm, sourced raw materials, and worked with distributors to launch and grow their brand.

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Ep. 023: On Launching a Farm-Based Distillery — The Cheri Reese Interview

John Benzick — Tue, 10 Jan 2017 22:32:16 -0600

Do you long for a simpler life that is more meaningful?

Then be inspired by Cheri Reese, who left the hectic city life with her husband to start a unique farm-based “field-to-glass” distillery. Hear how they came up with their business idea, raised capital and set up a manufacturing facility. Listen as Cheri describes her biggest joys, her top frustrations and her number one piece of advice for new entrepreneurs.

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Ep. 022: How to Begin Your Personal Transformation in 2017 — with John Benzick

John Benzick — Thu, 05 Jan 2017 23:15:24 -0600

Do you seek new growth opportunities? Are you frustrated with seeing only incremental change, at best, in your personal or professional life?

In this episode, John Benzick introduces the topic of “leverage points,” and how they can help revolutionize your productivity, satisfaction and achievement. He offers a simple 5-minute assignment to help you envision radical growth possibilities for you in the New Year.

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Episode Transcript:

Greetings Product Launch Rebels, Happy New Year, and welcome to the Product Launch Rebel podcast. I am your host, John Benzick, the founder of VS, the website that helps you double your entrepreneurial courage, even if you don’t know what you’re doing.

Today is a short but hopefully impactful podcast episode. I have a simple message that may transform your entrepreneurial — and maybe even personal — results this year.

And that message is about identifying and then leveraging your number one strength to an audience that will reward you for it.

It’s the beginning of the new year, and I don’t know about you, but I often get quiet around this time of year, because I think of my past year and how I can improve in the new year.

I just think that life is amazing, and I don’t want to waste another year by not being self-aware or not pursuing things that are meaningful and purposeful, or to miss out on life’s opportunities. In fact, I don’t want to waste one minute of my life, and I’m sure you don’t either.

So at the beginning of each new year, I think about the things that are bothering me in both my professional and personal aspects, and I develop plans on how to overcome those struggles.

And the funny thing is, those struggles seem to re-occur over and over from year to year. They happen so many times, in fact, that I’ve often thought about giving up on my quest to overcome these weaknesses or burdens.

But about 5 years ago, on that topic, I asked some friends if they ever abandon their goals for the year, and nearly all of them said that they do abandon them and no longer set goals for the year.

And that really struck me. I felt sad that my friends gave up on their goals.

So now, ever since then, I think to myself, you know, I’m not going to give up on my struggles, the things that are holding me back, I’m going to continue working on these things that are bothering me, through heck or high water. Even if I continue to fall short of my expectations on them.

And actually, what has quietly inspired me to do this, really, is my Christian belief system. And I believe that God wants me to keep working on the things that I struggle with, even though I might fall short in doing so.

And I don’t think that he wants me to give up (because he doesn’t give up on me), so I’ve chosen to not give up, despite my seemingly chronic weaknesses or issues that consistently hold me back.

In fact, I love stories of not just incremental improvements that people make in their own lives, but the transformational stories of people’s lives. I just think that that takes so much courage and commitment to experience something like that, something that I probably will never experience, but secretly and quietly hope to.

And I think each of us, whether we’re conscious of it or not, strives for some sort of personal transformation.

There’s a great book that I read a couple years ago called Business Secrets of the Trappist Monks by August Turak, and it suggested that idea, that every person aims for some sort of transformation, to be connected to a mission that’s bigger than themselves.

And I sort of bought into that idea. It really impacted me.

So if you’re a growth-oriented person, do you seek incremental growth opportunities? Or do you seek transformative growth opportunities?

Today, in this episode, I briefly highlight the concept of leverage points. My goal is to encourage you to identify, and then leverage, that one quality, or asset, that can produce the most transformational growth in your life or in your organization.

Believe it or not, most of what we do or offer is of low value. We often severely under-utilize the key high-value attribute that can produce vastly superior results for us. Unfortunately, we spend most of our time presenting low value features or qualities that limit our advancement and produce mediocre results, at best.

It varies for each person and company, but your highest-value attribute might be a skill, a personality trait or some sort of specialized knowledge, or a combination of those.

So, what key feature are you under-utilizing?

If you seek transformative growth, I encourage you to review your top qualities, skills and attributes, and identify your leverage points.

What one personal or professional quality carries more weight than the others, given your situation and your audience? What’s your best bargaining chip?

If you’re familiar with the 80/20 rule, you know that 20 percent (or less) of your qualities generate 80 percent (or more) of your results. Conversely, 80 percent of your qualities muster only 20 percent of your results.

Are you spending too much time (i.e. 80 percent) generating only 20 percent of your happiness, production, or achievements?

So your assignment this week is this:

I encourage you to journal about, and define, a chronic low-growth situation that is bothering you or limiting your business. Additionally, list your (or your organization’s) top five qualities that are relevant to the issue.

If you need help, ask for input from someone who clearly understands you or your business. Then, review this list of qualities and identify the one that, if fully leveraged, will have the best chance of transforming your challenge into a transformational growth opportunity.

So set your timer.

Take five minutes now and, just for fun, do a quick draft of this assignment. This short five minutes could plant the seed for colossal insights and growth for the next 12 months.

Good luck, thanks for listening, and we’ll see you in the next episode!

Ep. 021: On How to Launch a Yard Product Company — The Michael Miller Interview

John Benzick — Fri, 30 Dec 2016 16:39:22 -0600

Hear the story of how Michael Miller started a yard product business. Learn about his journey of bootstrapping the business; working with retailers, distributors and sales representatives; and working with manufacturing partners. Listen as he describes his top joys and frustrations of being an entrepreneur, and how it has changed him.

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Ep. 020: On How to Launch a Healthy Food Company — The Donn Kelly Interview

John Benzick — Thu, 22 Dec 2016 00:59:37 -0600

Hear about how this entrepreneur started a healthy food product company. Learn his stories about bootstrapping the business; working with retailers, distributors and brokers; and finding a manufacturing partner. Listen as he describes his top joys and frustrations of being an entrepreneur, and how it has changed him.

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Episode Outline:

0:45 – Introduction to Donn Kelly, Co-Founder of Doctor in the Kitchen and the producer of Flackers flax-seed crackers.

2:38 – Start of the “Give Me The Basics” Podcast Segment

2:51 – Donn describes his company as a “natural and healthy food product company,” producer of Flackers crackers: raw and gluten free. The “healthiest cracker on the market.”

4:14 – Donn talks about how his initial assumptions about the business changed as he evolved the business. He originally assumed his product would be a very niche item. He pleasantly learned that the product was not a niche item, and that many more grocery retailers wanted his product.

5:20 – Donn shares the number of employees in his company and their roles. He explains the other key non-employee partners that help to produce, sell and market the product.

6:55 – Start of the “Tell Me How” Podcast Segment

7:14 – Donn talks about how his co-founder and he originally bootstrapped the business, and how they are now seeking additional investors to help take Flackers to the next level of growth. He talks about how raising money is nearly a “full time job.”

8:04 – Donn describes his experience in raising capital, and what investors are looking for when considering investing in Flackers.

10:00 – Donn talks about how much money they are raising to grow the business, as well as where he will apply the investment dollars.

11:01 – Donn explains his occasional hesitation in raising capital, as well as his strategy to finding investors.

13:43 – Donn talks about how he found a co-manufacturing partner to produce the Flackers cracker. He describes how he and his staff originally manufactured the product themselves.

19:21 – Donn explains the types of problems that can occur when working with a manufacturing partner, and ways to avoid those problems.

21:50 – Donn shares his top piece of advice on working with a manufacturing partner.

21:52 – Donn talks about the process of selling to retailers. He explains how he originally created a mock-up package and created interest among local co-op grocery buyers. And how he made sure he built-in enough profit margins so that Flackers, the retailer and the distributor would all make enough profit on the product when the product was sold to consumers.

26:55 – Donn talks about working with distributors and then (29:07) with brokers.

30:35 – Donn gets into the details of how to work with brokers.

32:30 – Donn explains the company’s approach to increase sales with small marketing budgets. He talks about prioritizing dollars to support the retailer and distributor programs, as well as product sampling at the store level.

36:14 – Start of the “Let’s Get Personal” Podcast Segment

36:30 – Donn talks about his motivations to become an entrepreneur, including preferring to not work in corporate environments and being inspired by other entrepreneurs.

38:15 – Donn describes his top joys of starting a business.

39:11 – Donn talks about his primary frustrations since becoming a business owner.

40:12 – Donn describes some of the self doubt that accompanies many entrepreneurs amidst startup uncertainty.

41:19 – Donn talks about how becoming an entrepreneur has changed him as a person.

42:15 – Donn shares what he’s learned most about himself since becoming a business owner.

42:53 – Donn expresses who has been most influential to him in his life.

44:01 – Donn offers closing advice to aspiring entrepreneurs: “seek out people who have done it” before. “Talk to people . . . ask to meet them.” “A little piece of advice could be a golden piece of advice.”

Ep. 019: On How to Launch a Fitness Equipment Company — The Tim Porth Interview

John Benzick — Wed, 14 Dec 2016 21:42:20 -0600

Hear Tim Porth, Co-Founder of Octane Fitness, describe his successes, joys and frustrations in building one of the most respected fitness equipment companies in the world. Learn how, in 2001, he left his previous job and overcame startup issues from investors and manufacturing partners to get a foothold in the ever-changing category of fitness equipment.

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Episode Outline:

0:45 – Introduction to Tim Porth, Co-Founder of Octane Fitness, the fitness elliptical manufacturing company.

2:41 – Start of the “Give Me the Basics” Podcast Segment

3:17 – Tim describes the original business opportunity and why he and his partner, Dennis Lee, started Octane Fitness. He talks about his and Dennis’ previous experience in the industry as a key benefit to their original success.

4:30 – Tim talks about the types of customers that Octane Fitness sells to, and its distribution strategy, which includes selling to specialty fitness stores, health clubs and major league sports teams. He also mentions that he met Bruce Springsteen, since Bruce purchased an Octane Fitness product to use backstage on a recent tour.

6:10 – Tim describes the types of products that are sold by Octane Fitness.

7:40 – Tim shares the number of people currently employed by the company, as well as the original team in the very beginning.

8:53 – Tim shares Octane Fitness’ revenue totals for this past year.

9:10 – Tim describes what it felt like when the company was recently sold to Nautilus.

10:05 – Tim talks about how they came up with the Octane Fitness name.

11:25 – Tim further describes the opportunity they saw before they started the business, and explains how fortunate they were since the competition left a gap in the market for the product they designed and offered.

12:50 – Tim describes his current role at Octane Fitness. “I feel like a kid in a candy shop.”

13:20 – Beginning of the “Tell Me How” Podcast Segment

13:39 – Tim talks about how they raised money for the business in the early days. He describes the risk that he and Dennis Lee took when they left their jobs, talked to investors, and faced economic uncertainty.

15:35 – Tim talks about how he and Dennis Lee worked together at a previous company before starting Octane Fitness.

16:10 – Tim describes the challenges of raising capital for the business.

17:30 – Tim talks about his confidence level going into launching the business in 2001.

18:59 – Tim offers advice on how to raise capital: “Stay at it.” “Get introduced to more people.” “Ask for introductions.”

19:55 – Tim describes how they found a manufacturing partner to produce the elliptical machines.

21:11 – Tim talks about the manufacturing issues that occurred in the early stages of the company and how their costs were 25 percent more than expected.

23:25 – Tim explains the severity of the original manufacturing problem and how it threatened their company.

24:37 – Tim offers key advice on how to best find a manufacturing partner.

25:25 – Tim talks about how they originally approached retailers about their business idea and product line.

26:45 – Tim explains how they sought retailer and customer feedback about the product before they started manufacturing the product.

27:48 – Tim describes working with sales representatives and distributors.

29:48 – Tim talks about the role of trade shows, events, and expos in their marketing and sales plan.

31:30 – Tim talks about their approach to pricing the product. He describes a “bottom up and top down” method.

32:30 – Tim offers some key advice on how to set the right price for your manufactured product.

33:44 – Tim describes how they originally marketed their product with small marketing budgets.

37:40 – Beginning of the “Let’s Get Personal” Segment

38:01 – Tim describes what motivated him to become an entrepreneur.

39:37 – Tim explains the critical moments in the history of the company, which included a frivolous lawsuit about patent infringement, which caused distraction and needless expense.

42:00 – Tim answers the question, “Did Your Success Surprise You?”

42:38 – Tim describes what he has been most proud of since starting Octane Fitness.

43:50 – Tim talks about some of the self-doubt that he experienced since becoming an entrepreneur.

44:35 – Tim describes how becoming a business owner has changed him as a person.

45:10 – Tim talks about the achievements that are yet to come for him and Octane Fitness.

45:51 – Tim describes what he’s learned most about himself since becoming an entrepreneur.

46:41 – Tim describes the people that have been most influential to him.

48:03 – Tim offers closing advice to podcast listeners. “Paint a vision.”

Ep. 018: How Elite Athletes Conquer Fear — The Levi LaVallee Interview

John Benzick — Wed, 07 Dec 2016 20:21:18 -0600

Hear how 10-time X-Games medalist, Levi LaVallee, went from small-town snowmobiler to elite athlete, world-record holder and entrepreneur by conquering fear and competing against only himself.

Learn how he became the first person to attempt a double-back flip on a snowmobile. And listen as he describes overcoming a life-threatening crash to becoming the world-record holder for snowmobile distance jumping.

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Episode Outline:

1:10 – Introduction to Levi LaVallee, entrepreneur, elite athlete, world-record holder, 10-time X-Games medalist and snowmobile racer

3:01 – Levi talks about his enjoyment, growing up and living in the small town of Longville, Minnesota, and how he has built his business operation and “compound” in that area.

6:58 – Levi expresses how growing up in Longville, Minnesota, has helped make him who he was today. He describes how living there has kept him focused, honest, and void of distraction.

11:44 – Levi talks about the benefit of not letting yourself get “too soft.” And to not wait for the best conditions to work on your business or activity – and by focusing on what got you to where you are, and constantly growing.

15:56 – Levi talks about his recent self-help guru “audio book binge” and his quest for constant improvement.

19:30 – Levi shares how he first started four-wheeling and snowmobiling as a youngster and how his dad built his first jump out of a car hood. And how Levi became a professional snowmobiler at age 20.

22:00 – Levi talks about why and how he’s evolved into taking more risks as a professional athlete. He describes his father’s influence on him, and his small physical size – and not becoming “the weak link,” as a motivator.

25:30 – Levi thinks about what he would be doing for a living if he did not grow up in a snow-oriented environment, and if he never grew up around snowmobiles.

27:28 – Levi talks about who has most influenced him while growing up. He mentions Michael Jordan, the basketball pro, as a key early motivator. Other influencers included motocross racers Ricky Carmichael, Jeremy McGrath and his friend, Travis Pastrana.

32:15 – Levi talks about what he thinks is the main driving force that motivates most leading action-sports athletes. In part, Levi talks about the importance of making sacrifices to accomplish goals, following one’s passions and defying people’s expectations.

35:19 – Levi describes what he thinks is his #1 strength. “Overcoming fear.” He explains the pressures that many leading athletes face, and how that pressure can increase their fear of failure and reduce their success.

39:01 – Levi talks about the scariest experience of his career, and how he prepared for that activity. He mentions the double-back flip in the X Games “where he laid it all on the line.” He then explains the equally scary episode of preparing for the world record distance jump.

43:50 – Levi describes how he prepared his snowmobile equipment for the world-record distance jump. Wind-tunnel testing was needed.

46:02 – Levi talks about the mounting pressures that accompany a major broadcast event (i.e. the world-record distance jump and the double-back flip attempt) and why preparation is the key to following through with the goal.

49:06 – Levi offers his advice on how budding entrepreneurs can learn to deal with and overcome mistakes. “Learn from them.” “Be aware of the problem.” “Then come up with a plan, and execute.” “Have a good solid plan.” “Always think of that end goal.”

51:46 – Levi talks about his top weakness – wanting things done a certain way, and procrastination – and how he deals with and overcomes it.

55:25 – Levi explains his Team LaVallee organization and his role in it, his new coaching focus and how his career has evolved.

1:01:00 – Levi talks about the multiple activities that are involved in a world-record distance jump, including safety protocols. He talks about how it was a multi-million dollar project. And how Red Bull has been a great partner and supporter in the project.

1:05:00 – Levi describes the scary situation of his world-record practice jump, where he crashed at over 100 miles per hour. And the emotional situation that accompanied that experience. After thinking about that crash, he thought “there’s a reason I’m still here.” He then overcame that crash and planned to re-do the jump a year later, which was then successful.

1:10:35 – Levi talks about the high-risk activities and the pre-jump intimate discussions that he has with his close family members. He talks about the trust that his family members have in his judgment and the in-depth activities that prepare him (and them) for the jump.

1:13:48 – Levi describes his feelings at the moment he successfully completed the world-record distance jump as thousands of people cheered and celebrated. “An amazing, amazing time.”

1:16:10 – Levi talks about his weeks preparing for the world-record jump and his wondering “Is this my last day?” And how he tries to eliminate his negative thought process. “Just go do it.” “You’ve prepared, you’ve done jumps since you were four years old.”

1:19:00 – Levi describes how becoming an elite athlete has changed him as a person. “It changed me pretty significantly.” “I started realizing that sacrifice is the name of the game.”

1:21:17 – Levi talks about what he’s learned most about himself. “I’ve learned my flaws. And I learned the positives I have.” “I had to learn the hard way.” He talks about how he enjoys coaching others so that they don’t have to learn the hard way.

1:24:55 – What have been Levi’s biggest joys as an entrepreneur and athlete? “The joy for me has been how much I’ve overcome . . . and the adversity.” His biggest trophy is his snowmobile from his biggest crash. It’s about “how quick I can get back to it” after I fail. And to help people based on his experience.

1:27:45 – Levi talks about his biggest frustration. “Myself. I come from a stubborn family, and I see that come out at times.” Additionally, Levi talks about the challenging transition going from athlete to team leader. “You have to be able to work with people and value the relationships.” “I am able to understand that more and more.”

1:32:20 – Levi describes what’s next for him in the next 5 years.

1:33:33 – Levi talks about what he hopes to be his legacy. “I hope they remember me for the person that I am and that you don’t have to come from an ideal situation to achieve the things you want.” “All you need is the heart and the willingness.”

1:37:15 – Levi gives his last piece of advice: “Don’t fear failure.” “Be afraid to not try to pursue it.” “Go out and try.” “Do the research. Put in the time. Understand how it will work.” “Be aware of what could go wrong, but don’t be scared of it.”

Ep. 017: On How to Change the Face of Bicycle Apparel — The Brent Gale Interview

John Benzick — Thu, 01 Dec 2016 23:53:36 -0600

Listen how Brent Gale, Co-Founder of Twin Six, became fed up with the uninspired choices for bike gear to spark a revolution in bicycle apparel. Learn how they successfully bootstrapped their business, without outside investors, to expand into multiple product lines (including bicycles) and selling to international markets. Hear how they’ve overcome multiple startup challenges by forging ahead, one-step-at-a-time, despite no industry experience.

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Ep. 016: How We Launched a Line of DIY Project Kits

John Benzick — Wed, 23 Nov 2016 17:08:19 -0600

Hear how Josh Porter and his MakersKit co-founders went from zero sales to over 300,000 units sold in less than three years. Listen as he describes their unique evolution to becoming a product-based company selling to over 4000 retailer doors and in every state in the U.S.

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Episode Outline:

0:45 – Introduction to Josh Porter, Co-Founder and CEO of MakersKit. MakersKit is a producer of do-it-yourself project kits sold in specialty retailer stores in the U.S., Canada and Europe.

2:53 – Start of the “Give Me the Basics” Podcast Segment

3:02 – Josh describes MakersKit and what makes it unique. He talks about the scope of products offered and the retailers that sell MakersKit.

5:45 – Josh talks about what drives the need for do-it-yourself products.

7:09 – Josh describes his team, Mike Stone, Chief Creative Officer, and Alex Froelich, Chief Product Officer.

9:40 – Josh talks about the number of retail doors they are selling to now (4,000 to 6,000). Retailers include Macy’s, TJ Maxx, Urban Outfitters, Tilly’s, West Elm, Williams Sonoma and others. They are sold in every state in the U.S.

10:24 – Josh answers a question about whether his business assumptions have changed since they started the business. He describes how it took them over two years to figure out their business model, and how they’ve become more data driven. He talks about getting to know their customers and to learn what they’re looking for. He talks about how they’ve used social media to identify product opportunities.

12:00 – Josh talks about how MakersKit started in San Francisco. They started doing fun do-it-yourself workshops on the weekends, which became popular. Then Google invited them to the Google Plex to do some projects. Google helped them create their first videos. MakersKit was published in a San Francisco Chronicle newspaper article, thereby being discovered by Macy’s (the retailer). This led to them being accepted into MakersKit’s first Techstars experience in New York.

15:56 – Start of the “Tell Me How” Podcast Segment

16:10 – Josh describes how they raised money for the business. Starting out, they bootstrapped the company with some financing from family members. Techstars New York helped them find additional financing sources. MakersKit made a list of over 200 investors and talked to those that were the right fit for their business. Josh describes the importance of building relationships with financing sources.

21:05 – Josh talks about how they manufactured their product. They started in a studio in Los Angeles, then moved to a warehouse downtown Los Angeles. Then they moved to a third-party logistics company. They sought a manufacturing firm in the middle of the United States to keep shipping costs down. They had to find a partner that was excited about the product.

23:20 – Josh describes manufacturer partner challenges. He mentions that their biggest challenge is that MakersKit is based on the west coast, but the manufacturer is in the middle of the U.S. He describes that it can be frustrating because there’s a distance. But the benefits outweigh the costs.

24:40 – Josh talks about how they approached retailers to sell the product for the first time. They got their first big order from Macy’s based on a news story that Macy’s heard about. Josh talks about the importance of finding a way to “stand out” so that the buyer chooses your product to be sold in their store.

26:45 – Josh describes how they set the price of their product. He talks about the challenge of selling the product 50 percent off the retail price so the retailer gets the margin they need.

28:25 – Josh describes how they are able to create awareness and demand for the product on small marketing budgets. They are able to leverage their retailers and an influencer audience. They leverage their own social media. They’ve had a lot of PR success.

30:04 – Start of the “Let’s Get Personal” Segment

30:20 – Josh describes what motivated him to start a business. He talks about growing up in rural Missouri and mowing lawns for money as the start of knowing that he wanted to someday be a business owner. Additionally, being around friends that have started their own business was helpful for him.

32:05 – Josh describes his biggest joys of starting a business. He talks about the joy of seeing a direct impact on what they do, about bringing smiles to people’s faces. Additionally, he’s enjoyed working with a small team; it’s like a second family. They all live in the same apartment complex. He’s most proud of seeing their idea come to life.

33:27 – Josh talks about his biggest frustrations. He describes how their original ideas change based on customer feedback. He talks about how they had to learn that their customer base was different from what they expected. And adapting the business every day to serve customers needs.

34:21 – Josh talks about the self doubt that he occasionally experiences as an entrepreneur. He talks about learning from mistakes and going forward.

35:27 – Josh describes how becoming an entrepreneur has changed him as a person. He talks about how being an entrepreneur is totally different from working in a corporate environment. And how being a business owner can be very humbling.

36:26 – Josh talks about what he’s learned most about himself. “Hard work pays off.”

37:56 – Josh talks about how his parents have been most influential to him. And what his parents think of him now that he’s an entrepreneur.

39:21 – Josh offers closing advice: he encourages listeners to go forward with their idea if they really believe in it, even in the face of naysayer criticism. “It is totally worth it, and I wish you all the best.”

Ep. 015: 8 “Must Do” Tips on How to Launch a Physical Product — With John Benzick

John Benzick — Thu, 17 Nov 2016 20:43:55 -0600

Are you thinking about launching a consumer product business? Then get the inside scoop on how to boost your chances for success. Listen to John’s 8 insider tips on how to launch a product, even if you’re feeling frustrated, confused and uncertain.

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Get the Free eGuide (8 “Must Do” Tips for Launching a Physical Product) that was mentioned in this episode

Get the Free Business Plan Template that was mentioned in this episode

Episode Transcript:

Greetings Product Launch Rebels, and welcome to the Product Launch Rebel podcast, I am your host, John Benzick, the founder of VentureSuperfly.com, the website that helps you double your entrepreneurial courage, even if you’re in a sea of self doubt.

Today, I am offering my own advice on how to launch a physical consumer product. In fact, I’ll be revealing my top 8 “must do” tips to help launch your product.

Obviously, I interview a lot of entrepreneurs on this podcast, to get answers to questions about how to launch a business. But I thought I’d boil down the many strategies, down to the essentials, and summarize the major over-arching themes regarding successful product launches.

The 8 tips that I’ve distilled down in this episode are based on several things:

First, they are based on the things I learned over the years by launching, or helping to launch, several consumer product businesses. I’ve been involved in launching my own a snowboard and ski outerwear brand, where I manufactured product in China and distributed to ski, snowboard and outdoor retailer shops across the country; and I’ve also been an owner in an energy supplement brand where we manufactured and distributed a small energy inhaler to hotels, spas, drug stores, grocery stores, and sporting goods stores across the U.S. and internationally.

Additionally, these 8 tips are the result of my mentoring many entrepreneurs in my roles as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence and CEO-in-Residence at the University of Minnesota, as well as being a mentor with the Techstars Retail Startup Accelerator in Minneapolis.

There are many things that an entrepreneur needs to do well, both strategically and tactically, but the 8 tips that I’ll talk about today are – I believe – the essentials to giving yourself the best chance to make it work.

So, the Eight Must-Do Tips for Launching a Physical Consumer Product are as follows:

1. Be passionate about your product, industry and customers.

Well, this might seem obvious to many of you, but beware. Sometimes, if we’re not careful, we can get enticed, temporarily, by the shiny, glittery, trendy-oriented industries or product categories that we see in the magazines, in online articles, or what our peers seem to be excited about.

When you peel back a layer, however, and over time, you might discover that the product, or the category, or the customers that are served, ultimately, deplete your energy.

I experienced this personally, before I started my first business, which was a snowboard and ski clothing brand. Just prior to that business, I was planning to launch a gourmet fast-food retail concept called FreshWorks. I put a lot of time into designing the business plan, looking at retail locations, working with chefs to develop the menu, among other things. But, slowly, over time, I discerned that even though I thought the concept was cool, I had to be honest with myself – the restaurant business was just not for me. I learned that I just wasn’t passionate enough about any of the key aspects of the business; for example, the food, the customers, and just the nature of managing perishable products.

And if you need anything to start and succeed at a business, it’s energy. You cannot “fake it ‘til you make it” when it comes to being motivated and committed. You can “fake it ‘til you make it” when it comes to learning the tactical aspects of the business, and if you’re deeply passionate about it. But you cannot fake high energy, or being highly motivated, over time, and as a result, your business will suffer.

Many entrepreneurs fail, in large part, because they discover that they’re not passionate enough about their product, industry or customers. Therefore, they don’t have the stamina to power through the startup challenges that they’re bound to face. Entrepreneurs encounter a lot of rejection, and passion can help overpower the obstacles.

So, tip #1 is to be deeply and sustainable passionate about your product, your industry and your customers.

Now, on to tip #2 that will help you launch a physical product.

2. Make sure your product solves a real problem.

This is so, so essential. Even if you’re passionate, your product needs to solve a real problem.

And this tip, too, might seem super obvious. But, believe me, what many aspiring entrepreneurs “feel” or sense as an opportunity, or as a problem to be solved, isn’t nearly strong enough of a customer’s problem, to quickly generate sales, or to switch buying habits from brand A to your new brand B.

And it’s so, so difficult, to get people to switch or to buy something new, especially when it comes to creating consumer-oriented physical products and building a brand, which is very, very expensive.

For example, if you want to start a clothing company (of which there are many clothing brands), or a new energy drink (of which there are also many), how would you differentiate your product or product line from competitors?

You might see an opportunity for a unique variation of your product within the clothing or energy drink category, but the vast majority of new brands can’t change the in-bred habits of consumers, unless that new clothing line or new energy drink is solving a REAL and significant problem, as perceived by the potential customer.

Many aspiring entrepreneurs think they can change the buying habits, but they can’t. It is very, very difficult, and very, very costly.

So what do you do to see if you’re solving a real problem with your product idea?

My advice is to quickly create a “minimal viable product” (or a prototype) and get feedback on it from key sources (i.e. potential customers, retail buyers, industry sales reps, etc.). Even if the prototype isn’t perfect, you still benefit by hearing possible objections and suggestions for improvement. You’ll get a good feel for the customer dynamic.

You’ll quickly learn if people are clamoring for your product. And they do need to clamor for it. And you cannot get feedback from just friends and family, because they might not want to hurt your feelings, and they may just tell you good things about your idea, even though their feedback may not be reliable.

If people are not clearly clamoring for your product idea, it will take a lot of money, time and effort to convince them to change their buying habits.

So, take an unemotional and unbiased look to see if your product solves a real problem.

Okay, so onto tip #3 on how to successfully launch a physical product.

3. Test your top assumptions about your product-based business.

In addition to testing the assumption that your product solves a real customer problem, create a list of 20 or 30 other assumptions about your business, and then test the top 5 that will have the biggest effect on your business. These top 5 assumptions have been referred to by other startup authorities as your top “leap-of-faith” assumptions. You can test these assumptions by talking to prospective customers, retailers, industry sales representatives or other industry experts. Other ways to test include running test ads on FB or Google Adwords, emailing people, writing a blog post and getting feedback, asking open questions on Quora or Reddit, or in some cases, going as far as doing a Kickstarter or IndieGoGo campaign.

The types of assumptions you test will depend on the type of product you plan to launch, but know that there are always ways to cheaply and quickly test your key assumptions.

To help brainstorm and test assumptions, you can use questions or fill-in-the-blanks to questions, such as:

I believe customers will pay ____ for this product
I believe my customers will have a need to ______
I believe these needs can be solved with ______
I believe the #1 value a customer wants to get out of my product is ______
I believe I will acquire a majority of my customers through ______
I believe that the customer can be described as ______
I believe that my product solves the problem of ______
I believe that the customers will find these features important ______
Additionally, there can be assumptions about competitors, or even industry technology, such as
I believe there is no significant new competition in the market
I believe there is no significant new technology to fear

So, what other assumptions do you have that, if proven false, will cause our product launch to fail? That is the question that you need to ask yourself.

So, to repeat, tip #3 on how to launch a physical product is to test your top assumptions.

Regarding point #4 . . .

4. Get off your butt (and out of the office).

Sitting around and just thinking about your product, or even planning your product launch, can be like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. It really can be.

So you need to get off your butt and seek input fast on all angles of your business, from product development, to marketing, to operations, to product sourcing, to legal and financing.

Get up, get out, and go meet with experts to improve your product idea and launch plan.

There’s a real true benefit to getting out and meeting people. It makes what you’re doing more real. It helps manifest an actual product launch.

You learn the things you need to learn to succeed, at quadruple the speed. You become smarter, better, faster, wiser.

So you’ll need to regularly email people, call people on the phone, and approach people in person at events, conferences, trade shows, in stores or wherever and however you need to reach them.

If you’re not super motivated to do these things, then I question whether or not you have the drive, or true desire, to succeed. Many aspiring entrepreneurs enjoy pursuing and thinking about possibilities more than pursuing getting things done, and making things happen.

If you need help with getting out, getting your courage up and reaching people, refer to my podcast episode #12, “how to conquer rejection.”

So that’s tip #4, which is get off your butt and out of the office.

For tip #5 on how to launch a physical product . . .

5. Create a one-page business plan so people take you seriously.

You’ll need to keep it simple and don’t get overwhelmed by it. In fact, if you need a simple template, I’ll offer it on a link at the website along with this episode number 15.

Speed is important when launching a business because you’re behind from the get-go.

Chances are, you lack the industry relationships, the respect among peers and the knowledge for a smooth and effective launch. To double your relationships, learning and traction in half the time, write a simple one page business plan – even a well presented draft – and use it to raise your credibility among manufacturers, investors, marketing experts and other key partnerships. And when you get feedback on the plan, update it quickly to get smarter (and demonstrate your smarts) on all aspects of your business including operations, financing, manufacturing and marketing.

One of the great things that I learned in launching my first business was to create little hand-held, sort of 5” tall, business plans, highly summarized, and with cool graphics, which I could pass out to important people when I met with them.

I had a regular normal-sized business plan, too, but the small ones were pretty cool and made a good impression.

Passing these out to people that could help me with my business, really legitimized me in their eyes. It made them take me very, very seriously (even when I didn’t have much experience), it made me appear more knowledgeable than I actually was, which led to lots of free and valuable advice and contacts.

It gave people the impression that I was a person that was going somewhere, someone to be watched and highly considered.

And for those of you that get frightened by writing business plans, don’t get too concerned about not having all of the best answers or solutions or strategies in your business plan. You’ll be amazed at how a good rough draft, presented well, can advance you quickly.

So that’s tip #5, which is to draft a one-page business plan so people take you seriously

Regarding point #6 on how to launch a physical product, that point is . . .

6. If you don’t know how to do something, directly contact those that do.

Now, this might seem obvious, but in my experience, many aspiring entrepreneurs do not get out and meet people.

As I mentioned previously, you can get free advice fast if you are clear about what you need to know, but don’t know.

For example, if you’re wondering how to get a new product into Whole Foods Market, go talk to the store manager or find a manufacturer’s sales rep walking the retail floor at Whole Foods. It’s amazing what you can quickly and easily learn by just asking.

If you’re not sure how to manufacture your product, attend an industry trade show to find one or visit Alibaba.com. If you’re not sure what type of legal entity is best for you, call a small business law firm and schedule an introductory meeting. Most of them meet for free for the first 30 or 60 minutes, and you can learn a lot from those meetings.

Back when I started my outerwear company, I didn’t know how to find a good manufacturer, I had no idea, really, but I was highly motivated to get a good face-to-face meeting with a manufacturer (Without traveling to China or Vietnam or wherever). So I learned about a major snowsports trade show, which was in Las Vegas at the time.

I went to that show and looked for a manufacturer, because I had a feeling that china-based manufacturers would be walking the floor, and looking to drum-up new business from other outerwear manufacturer brands such as The North Face, Columbia and Burton Snowboarding.

In fact, as I was thinking about starting my first company, the outerwear brand, my whole entrepreneurial journey started by walking into a local ski and snowboard shop and talking with the guy, the retailer, who bought snowboard clothing from sales reps and the major brands.

That led to me meeting with a sales rep for a major outerwear brand, who led me to knowing about the snowsports trade show in las vegas, which led me to meeting my Chinese manufacturer, which led me to getting all sorts of hugely valuable contacts, very quickly, in the outdoor and snowsports industry, people that could help me in marketing, manufacturing, selling, raising capital, etc. Going to that trade show was a gold-mine for me, which saved me thousands and thousands of dollars.

But I went to that show with a very specific plan, with a set of concrete goals, about who I needed to talk to, and what I needed to learn.

So that’s tip #6 on how to launch a physical product, “If you don’t know how to do something, directly contact those that do.”

Now, for tip #7, you need to . . .

7. Understand the invisible forces that threaten your business.

You could be the smartest and most committed entrepreneur around. And one that knows the obvious obstacles that threaten your business; things like the competition, customer rejection and poor cash flow.

The hidden forces, however, are just as likely to sink you.

These are things driven by your industry maturity or life cycle; things like the bargaining power of suppliers and buyers, the threat of substitutes and new entrants (often referred to as Porter’s Five Forces model – you can google it). Or even the weather.

And never underestimate your competitors, no matter how unsophisticated they may appear. They understand these forces better than newcomers, and they navigate these obstacles with much better efficiency.

In my first business, the outerwear company, despite seeing a growth opportunity in a sub-segment of that market that I planned to enter, I made the mistake of not knowing that the overall snowsports industry was consolidating and maturing, on both the retailer side, as well as the manufacturing side. So there was a huge, huge growing obstacle that limited me on getting into stores.

Big clothing brands were buying smaller established brands, which gave me less power in working with retailers since those brands were essentially “locked in” to the retailers purchase before I even showed up. And big retailers were buying smaller retailers, which had the same negative effect, because they would buy more of the large brands, and less from up-starts like mine. It was an enormous downward pressure on the potential growth of my business, and something I really didn’t see clear enough before going in.

Additionally, I learned that the retailer buying season was very short, much shorter than I expected, in the snowsports industry, where I had only one or two months – a very small window – of selling, and delivering product.

Nor did I understand that the yearly performance of the snowsports industry overall, which included me, was much more driven on the weather than I anticipated. For example, if it didn’t snow in November in key markets, or before Christmas, huge inventories piled up within retailers, and therefore they would have an even smaller budget to buy from me the following year.

So it’s important to know the seasonality of your product category, too. And many product categories have seasonal ebbs and flows, even if they seem like year-round products.

And now, finally, onto the final tip, tip #8 on how to launch a physical product, which is

8. Embrace your feelings of stupidity and uncertainty.

Along the entrepreneurial journey, things can be messy, uncertain and very murky.

As a result, all business owners – even successful ones – experience feelings of insecurity and stupidity, especially as they try new things.

So if you’re feeling imperfect, uncertain or scared, move forward anyway.

Flip this challenge on its head by taking the time to ask the “dumb” questions that will point you in the right direction.

Have courage, be bold and ignore naysayer criticism.

To finish this episode, I’ll summarize the 8 tips to successfully launch a physical consumer product:

Be passionate about your product, industry and customers – you’ll need it to overcome the barrage of challenges.
Make sure your product solves a real problem – take a hard and unemotional look to ensure that.
Test your top assumptions about the product – to see

Ep. 014: How to Find Your Career “Sweet Spot” — with John Benzick

John Benzick — Thu, 10 Nov 2016 23:50:07 -0600

In your career, do you feel like you’re using your talents and being rewarded for them? Are you operating in the best environment, with the right people, that will maximize your career satisfaction, growth and income?

Listen to John explain how you can find your career “sweet spot” to compete on your terms and on your strengths.

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Episode Transcript:

Greetings Product Launch Rebels: This is John Benzick from Venture Superfly.com, the website that helps you double your entrepreneurial courage, even if you don’t know what you’re doing!

Today in this episode I’m going to talk about how you can find the right fit for your entrepreneurial pursuits or career, to find your entrepreneurial or career focus area, or sweet spot. To make sure you’re playing in the right sand-box, so to speak. And compete better on your own terms, and on your strengths.

And I’ll start with some questions – a bit of an assessment.

Regarding your career, or job, do you feel fully appreciated by others, and rewarded for your talents? Do you even know your top talents? Do you feel like you’re unleashing your talents in a way that is elevating you to a higher level, and will continue to raise you up for the long term, and keep you secure over time?

Are you working with the right people, using your best skills, and operating in the best environment that will maximize your career satisfaction, growth and income?

If not, in this episode, I’ll introduce to you a very effective – but simple – exercise to help find your direction. To help put you on the right path.

And that exercise can be best explained by a personal story.

The idea of this exercise that I’ll introduce to you, came to me almost magically, about 11 years ago, at about 3:00 in the morning. I had a terrible time sleeping that night because I was doing some consulting work during that period, and I noticed that I struggled with inconsistency regarding the value I was bringing to clients.

With some clients, I did feel like I was adding a lot of value, feeling confident about myself and being well-paid.

In fact, in those situations, it felt as if I wasn’t even working hard, my success simply seemed natural and productive and rewarded. It just seemed like I was in a great spot and developing great relationships as well.

On other projects, however, I felt less secure.

There didn’t seem to be harmony with my role, my expertise, and the people that I was working with. It seemed that no matter what I did, there was something out of sync. I felt like I was constantly treading water, and always on the verge of losing the client – sort of barely holding on.

And so that night at 3am, feeling fidgety and troubled, an idea struck me right between the eyes, magically, like a lightning bolt.

It was an idea that I absolutely had to get down on paper, fast, before I lost it – do you know that feeling? It was one of those important “aha” moments that you have to act on.

So I leapt from my bed and darted downstairs to my home office desk, and foraged for a blank piece of paper and pen.

Eyes half-open, I drew a line down the middle of the paper, from top to bottom.

At the top left-hand column, I wrote the heading, “Life-Depleting Experiences.” At the top right-hand column, I wrote the heading, “Life-Giving Experiences.”

I then reflected on my life history related to each of these two headings. I recalled experiences in my career, in my friendships, in my family, in sports that I played – even in music, volunteer and other experiences. Not just job experiences.

In the life-giving experiences column, in bullet-points, I described situations where I felt purposeful, energetic, capable and valued. I jotted down things like, “developing new products,” and “thinking strategically.”

Conversely, in the life-depleting column, I described situations where I felt purposeless, under-appreciated, and unsustainable. Here, I wrote things like “day-to-day operations” and “highly structured corporate environments.”

I then pooled dozens of those notes into sub-headings of “talents used,” “knowledge or subjects shared,” “people that I worked with (or audience),” and “work conditions.”

And as I gazed at my notes, I became captivated by the contents I wrote in the life-giving column. These are the things that energized me, made me attractive to others, and delivered value to projects and others.

While reviewing my entries, it became clear to me that, to be happy, I needed to deliberately pursue a life in the life-giving column as much as possible. And I should avoid spending time in the life-depleting column.

I noticed that in certain life-giving situations, for example, I had valiantly and effectively led others.

In sub-optimal conditions, I wasn’t able to lead hardly at all! In some settings, I was an excellent coach to someone. At other times, I felt invisible.

The life-giving column turned out to be a major guidepost for me.

During this 30-minute process that night, I unearthed characteristics that clearly suggested where to focus, where I belonged and where I could thrive. If you’re following me closely here, can you see how that would be?

Regarding life direction, and where to focus my energies, my answer was right there, on paper – in black and white. That life-giving column is where I could thrive on my terms, on my strengths, and propose my best offerings to society.

These are the simple steps I did (the exercise I wrote down) that gave me confidence, vision and energy to no longer feel that struggle or inconsistency.

And it’s the exact same thing that I’ll suggest to you now, in this podcast.

So let’s try to recreate that for you. Here’s what I want you to do:

Pull out a sheet of paper (or you can download the PDF that I have attached to this episode on my website, episode number 14).

Put your name at the top in the center of the paper. And write down the main heading, “Where I Will Thrive.”

Then draw a line down the middle of the paper, from top to bottom, separating the left and right side of the paper, into two columns (a left column and a right column).

At the top of the left column, right down the column heading, “Life Giving.” (This will be referring to the things you will do, or the environments you’re in, or the people you with, where you feel it is giving you life, is energizing you.)

At the top of the right column, write down the column heading, “Life Depleting.” (This will be where you’ll jot down your ideas about the things you do, the environments you’re in, or the people you’re with where you feel heavy, less valued, un-appreciated, and struggling.)

Then, picture this: one-fifth of the way down the page from the top, write the word “talents” as sub-headings, in both the right- and left-hand columns of the page.

Then, allowing for some space, two-fifths down the page (or another 20 percent down the page below the sub-headings labeled as “talents”), write the word “conditions” in both columns as sub-headings to those columns.

Then three-fifths of the way down the page, write down the word “subjects” in both columns and sub-headings.

And finally, four-fifths of the way down the page, write the word “people” as sub-headings on both sides of the page.

So envision this: what you have here is a piece of paper with two columns, one is the life-giving column, and the other is the life-depleting column. And each of those two columns has sub-headings labeled as “talents,” “conditions,” “subjects,” and “people,” where you’ll jot down thoughts and ideas related to each of those sub-headings.

For example, in the talents section, you’ll write down the talents or skills that you use that both energize you and make you feel purposeful and useful, as well as those skills that you use that deplete you, that either you’re just not that interested in doing, or you’re not good at.

And what you’ll be doing here is listing your thoughts and ideas within each of these sub-categories: but on the left side, your notes will include those things that bring you life, that energize you and make you feel good and productive, and that reward you, financially and otherwise.

And on the right side (the life-depleting side), you’ll jot down your thoughts on those circumstances, things and people that have depleted you, that drain your energy, where you feel insecure and less valuable.

So, the end-result of this will be that you will be able to start focusing and leaning into, and pursuing those things that are life-giving to you (the left-column stuff), and start reducing emphasis, and getting away from those life-depleting activities (the right-column stuff).

So let’s go through each of these two columns, along with their sub-headings, one by one, along with some examples, to give this meaning, and to demonstrate, so you can do your own.

And then, when you’re done – like what happened to me – you’ll clearly see where you need to apply your energy to maximize your growth potential – in the areas of people to work with, skills to use, knowledge to demonstrate and type of environment to work in – to significantly increase your personal growth potential.

Now, in some cases, it might be easier to start with the right-hand, life-depleting column first, since sometimes it’s easier to know what you struggle with versus what you really want. Sometimes it’s easier to know what you don’t want, as opposed to what you do want.

So, in the right-hand life-depleting column, under the sub-heading of “talents or skills,” write down the skills or talents that you use when you feel low energy, or not mentally or physically alert or good about. And really, in this life-depleting column, these might be your “weaknesses” in terms of skills or talents.

So for example, in my case back on that early morning 11 years ago, in the life-depleting column, I wrote things like “tactical thinking” and “working in large groups,” and “executing projects started by others” among other things. These were things that I could do and have done (sometimes well), but didn’t prefer to do, and really didn’t have the interest to do, day in and day out. Someone else would likely be better at, or more committed to, these things compared to me.

And in the left-hand column, the life-giving column, I wrote things like, “strategic, big-picture thinking,” “creating new products,” “selling,” “ideating,” and “leading small creative teams” and other descriptions.

All in all, I had about 15 things listed in the “talents” life-giving column, and 15 talents listed in the life-depleting column.

The next sub-heading for you to jot down your ideas, is the “conditions” sub-heading. This is where you write down ideas related to your work conditions that give you life, or that deplete you.

So for me, as an example, I wrote eight or nine things in the life-giving column. Things like, “working independently,” and “working on short-term projects,” and “working in informal situations,” and “working in creative environments.”

In the life-depleting section of the “conditions” sub-heading, I wrote things like “being involved in day-to-day operations,” “working on long-term projects,” “corporate environments,” and “formal, and rule-driven work settings.”

Moving on to the next sub-heading of “subjects,” this is the area where you write down subjects that you demonstrate, talk about, or pursue, that either give you life, or that deplete you.

As an example, in my life-giving column of “subjects,” I wrote things like, “entrepreneurship,” “innovation,” “strategic planning,” “business development,” and “product development.”

And in the life-depleting column of the subjects sub-heading, I jotted things like “managing existing businesses,” “quantitative-oriented subjects,” “specialized business knowledge” (since I’m more of a generalist), and “standards and policies.”

And finally, in the “people” sub-heading, this is where you write down your ideas related to what type of people give you encouragement and energy, versus what type of people that deplete your energy, that don’t resonate with you, and don’t seem to value your knowledge, skills or style.

So in the life-giving column of my notes, under the “people” sub-heading, I wrote down descriptions such as “creative people,” and these included designers, marketers, product developers, visionaries, out-of-the-box thinkers and entrepreneurs. These are people that I’ve seemed to enjoy working with over the years, and they seemed to enjoy working with me.

In the life-depleting column under the “people” sub-heading, I described people that were more quantitative thinkers; people that looked at things in black and white, people that were driven by rules and regulations, and were more authoritative versus collaborative.

So, in summary, what we have here is a valuable list of things in life that deplete you, and a list of things that sustainably give you life, energy, purpose and focus.

It’s right there in black and white.

And when you focus and apply yourself towards the life-giving column – the talents, conditions, subjects and people – we see that this is where you need to spend your time to maximize your personal growth and security.

I do want to re-iterate that in my past I have done well on a short-term basis working in the life-depleting column, using talents that weren’t my top talents, working in conditions that weren’t ideal, and demonstrating knowledge in areas that weren’t my top knowledge areas. But over time, those weren’t areas that were sustainable for me. They were areas that, ultimately, I really couldn’t compete well over the long term.

So this exercise really, truly helped me see, for the first time, in black and white, where I should apply myself, which was to lean into the things listed in the life-giving column.

It was powerful for me, and I think it will be powerful for you, too.

Of course, it’s not always possible to live entirely in the life-giving column. You can’t always just instantly jump from one column to the other, and live your life that way, because outside resistance is everywhere.

Knowing that you have your thoughts written down, however, in this template, is to have a very helpful occupational compass that you can refer to or implement, either slowly or quickly, depending on your situation.

Additionally, when not in the thriving, life-giving column, referring to its contents could help you incrementally construct those conditions.

To shift the balance, for example, you could promote your skills more confidently, and more often, within your current space, or when you’re stuck in a set of life-depleting situations. You could also seek out supporters within that life-depleting environment to slowly start building your “tribe” and mission.

Finally, to finish out this podcast episode, as I mentioned earlier, visit the VentureSuperfly.com website, and look for this episode #14 to download this exercise template.

Alright! Good luck to you, everyone, let me know if you have questions, and we’ll see you in the next episode!

Ep. 013: How to Launch a Wearable Tech Brand — The Andrea Perdomo Interview

John Benzick — Tue, 01 Nov 2016 21:36:25 -0600

Be inspired by this young female entrepreneur, and her co-founder, and how they’re blazing a revolutionary new trail in wearable technology.

Hear her describe the challenges (and opportunities) of raising capital, learning fast, creating a high-performing team and proving skeptics wrong.

Leave a Rating & Review in iTunes for the Product Launch Rebel Podcast

Podcast Timeline:

0:43 – Introduction to Andrea Perdomo, Co-Founder and President of Revolar, the wearable tech safety-device company.

2:52 – Start of the “Give Me the Basics” Segment

3:15 – Andrea talks about what makes the Revolar so unique compared to other personal safety options that are available. (Revolar offers different alerts based on a user’s level of discomfort.)

4:52 – Andrea talks about the original idea behind Revolar, and how her co-founder, Jackie Ros, came up with the idea based on an incident that happened to her sister.

7:31 – Andrea describes how a fateful opportunity led her to meeting her business partner and co-founder, Jackie Ros. Andrea talks about her early career (and pre-Revolar) motivations to make a difference in the world and how she drove from Atlanta to Denver to work as an intern for a non-profit (which is how she originally met her co-founder, Jackie Ros).

8:46 – Andrea describes how, early on, the company aimed to learn from consumers, friends and family to understand user safety needs and to help sharpen their brand message. They learned that the concept of safety is different for different people.

11:22 – Start of the “Tell Me How” Podcast Segment

11:40 – Andrea describes the process and challenge of raising capital, after going through a bootstrapping phase, and living a frugal lifestyle eating ramen and potatoes. One of their key approaches was to talk to investors as advisors. She talks about the challenge of needing to prove consumer demand for the product before anyone invests in the company.

Andrea talks about how they originally did pitch competitions to raise money, and how they proceeded to use Kickstarter to prove demand for the product, which eventually led them to raise an additional $3 million from The Foundry Group.

She talks about how they learned that raising money is all about relationships – building relationship with investors, like marriage or dating. “You have to get to know them as people.”

16:50 – Andrea talks about some hiccups along the way to raising capital (i.e. learning the financial terms).

18:24 – Andrea describes how she would have done things differently when raising capital. She advises others to start raising money early, and to figure out the brand story needed to tell investors, and the importance of painting that picture of where the company will be in 5 to 10 years.

19:26 – Andrea talks about finding a manufacturer for their highly technical product, and the challenges of doing so with very little experience in working with manufacturers and engineers. “Manufacturing: it’s difficult.” “The big thing was trying to learn how it all works.”

Andrea describes the challenges of sourcing all of the different components and finding the best price, making sure the product was environmentally friendly, and finding a source that was as close to home as possible.

Andreas goes on to offer key advice: “Don’t be afraid to hire people or get advice from people that know more than you. “It’s okay to not know all the answers.”

24:15 – Andrea talks about the many trade-offs when it comes to hardware manufacturing; and making sure their product is well-designed for the user. “You can’t have it all.” “It’s weighing [what features are] most important and what can wait for later.”

She describes the challenges of production lead times for the many components, and with forecasting.

26:50 – Andrea talks about the challenges of selling the product to retailers and about the tension that exists between the cost of the product, and the end-price requested by the retailer.

29:59 – Andrea describes their process for determining their distribution strategy and how they, from the very beginning, aimed to offer their product to the masses.

32:20 – Andrea talks about creating awareness and demand for Revolar on small marketing budgets. She talks about the importance of having a strong and well-defined brand and message that goes along with the function of the product. She talks about how they spent a lot of time on their messaging even while developing the prototype.

She advises others to experiment with their message with different types of audiences. She talks about how they tested messaging with digital ads (Facebook and Google).

Andrea describes how it takes a lot of information and time to educate consumers, and of the importance of using good retail displays and packaging.

36:16 – Start of the “Let’s Get Personal” Podcast Segment

36:39 – Andrea talks about her motivations to start a business. “It’s definitely about the end goal.” She talks about how she’s motivated by how Revolar has brought users greater piece-of-mind. “That’s what really drives us.”

39:50 – Andrea talks about her biggest joy of starting a business. She describes how they celebrate the little “champagne moments” along their entrepreneurial journey. She then talks about her “incredibly proud moment” that related to the trust that has been built within the Revolar team.

41:44 – Andrea describes her biggest frustration, related to some cultural barriers.

45:08 – Andrea addresses the topic of entrepreneurial self doubt.

47:02 – Andrea talks about how starting a business has changed her as a person. “It taught me that I am a lot stronger than I ever anticipated.” “I am definitely a much better person.”

48:28 – Andrea talks about what she has learned most about herself since starting a business. “It’s definitely best to surround yourself with people that know more than you do.” “You have to have the courage to say that you don’t have the answer.”

49:27 – Andrea talks about who has been most influential to her. She talks about her dad, and his experience of moving from Ecuador and making a life from nothing, from scratch. She talks about how inspired she has been “by his attitude from having nothing over and over again, with a smile on his face.” And about “having a positive attitude and making it through.”

50:47 – Andrea closes the interview with some final advice to budding entrepreneurs: “Just try it, put yourself out there, and give it a shot, and surround yourself with people that have done it before.” “Don’t live your life with regret.”

Ep. 012: How to Conquer Rejection (Even If You’re In a Sea of Self Doubt) — With John Benzick

John Benzick — Thu, 27 Oct 2016 14:29:17 -0600

Is the fear of rejection holding you back?

Hear John Benzick, the host of the Product Launch Rebel podcast, explain his “Top 8 Tips for Conquering Rejection.”

Listen to his specific proven methods on how he has reduced his chances of rejection by up to 75%, even while requesting things from investors, potential customers and other important people that don’t know him from Adam.

Leave a Rating & Review in iTunes for the Product Launch Rebel Podcast

The E-Guide Referenced In This Podcast Episode is Available Here

Podcast Transcript:

Greetings, Venture Superfly leaders, this is John Benzick from Venture Superfly.com, the website that helps you double your entrepreneurial courage, even if you don’t know what you’re doing!

Today, on the Product Launch Rebel podcast is just me, myself and I . . . I am my special guest today.

I will be talking about a topic that effects all of us, and not just those of you that are aspiring entrepreneurs. It’s a topic that I have presented live at in-person events, but never on my podcast. It’s one of my favorite topics and one that I’ve dealt with personally and extensively, especially since becoming an entrepreneur for the first time way back in 1999.

So what is that topic?

Well, it’s the topic of rejection.

More specifically, this episode will reveal my “Top 8 Tips on How to Conquer Rejection, even if you’re in a sea of self doubt.” (And please be aware that I have a free e-guide that can help you avoid rejection by up to 75% when requesting things from important people. The guide can be accessed through this episode page on the VentureSuperfly.com website.)

Get the Free E-Guide Here

Of course, we all experience rejection — even on a daily basis — and over time, we tend to find ways to avoid it. But, I think that’s wrong, because of course, what doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger.

So, why do I want to talk about rejection?

Well, one of the key reasons is that in my presentations to aspiring entrepreneurs on how to launch a business, I came to realize that even though I could teach people the nuts and bolts of launching a product or planning or starting business, one of the key hidden obstacles within most of the students, was their reluctance, or their fear of approaching people that could help them with their business. Or that fear of rejection or of looking stupid.

To get a new business off the ground requires talking to lots of people, and that makes you feel vulnerable, especially when you’re trying to figure things out and exposing your lack of knowledge on something.

You know, in the early stages of launching my first company, it was a clothing company, I was rejected from all sides; I was rejected by potential investors; I was rejected by retailers; I was rejected by people that I wanted to hire, and by potential business partners. It was rejection city.

During this arduous period, however, rejections became acceptances. I expanded, deepened and sharpened my skills. I learned more about business and myself than any other time in my life.

I found that there was no substitute for this kind of training. My MBA and previous employee-based learning was nothing compared to the real-life lessons of launching a business, and putting myself in difficult situations.

Most of us have heard the expression: “Anything worth doing, is worth doing well.” My amendment to this has been, “Anything worth doing, is worth the risk of rejection.”

So, what are my thoughts on conquering rejection:

Well, I’ve concluded that there are really two ways to overcome rejection:

One way is to learn how to handle rejection when or after you’re rejected, and you will become rejected, because that’s a part of life.

The other way to conquer rejection, when you do take a risk, is to reduce the chance of rejection in the first place, or at least reduce rejection by a considerable degree based on how you approach the risk.

So these 8 tips that I offer are the things that I do, and I hope that at least a few of them will help you, too. Here we go . . .

Tip #1 (and I’m going to start off very broadly here): Choose to Live a Meaningful Life

You know, life is tough. The world and people and forces around you have their own interests that are different from yours. So you have to expect to get knocked around a lot, and thereby acquire lots of psychological bumps and bruises.

But if you choose to live a meaningful life, you fortify your ability to withstand those opposing or contrasting forces.

And I think that if you don’t consciously choose to make life meaningful, time can go by so quickly, that you can find yourself later in life, finding that what you did with your time was not very meaningful or personally transformative.

So I think the main point to this Tip #1, is that life is short. And with this life-is-short mentality, it pushes you outside your comfort zone, awakens you to a broader life context and creates a motivation that goes just beyond a quest for fun or security or safety. Because a quest for these things are ultimately not satisfying when life is over.

When all is said and done, you want to say that you’ve lived a meaningful life, you’ve explored the boundaries, principles and fringes of life and your self, and as a result, you see things that others don’t see, you’ve gained a richer understanding of things that others don’t fully understand, which can provide a higher level of contentment and purpose, I think, to make any risk you take, worth it.

I mean, just think of a period of time in your past, maybe if you went to college, maybe you studied too much and didn’t establish the relationships that you wish you could have, or conversely, maybe you didn’t study enough, and maybe dropped out because you saw college as an obstruction to watching TV or other forms of fun or entertainment.

And, of course, each person has their own definition of what a meaningful life consists of for them, but I think that the common thread is that it puts each individual into a zone that allows for more risk-taking, and resilience (or quicker recovery time), because whatever quest they’re on, it’s important to them, and is aligned with their values or beliefs.

Choosing to live a meaningful life can make the concept or feeling of failure far less relevant (and therefore less painful) to what you’re doing, because you’re really aiming for meaning, which overcomes any feelings of stupidity or embarrassment.

So, I hope that this first tip makes at least some sense to you, but for me it’s been one of the cornerstones to being able to deal with and conquer rejection.

So when I started my first company, Morphic, I thought I knew what I was up against, that my chances of success, at least according to general statistics, weren’t that great. But I didn’t want to just be an employee for a company, even I failed at my own thing, I wanted to explore the boundaries of what I was capable of . . . I wanted to live more meaningfully, whatever the result.

Tip #2: Be Grateful for What You Have

So for this Tip #2, I believe this is also another cornerstone to being able to conquer rejection.

Being grateful for what you have, and taking inventory on those people and things on a weekly basis, and really absorbing them into your psyche, can really fortify your commitment and resilience against any obstacles that confront us.

Most of us, I think, operate and live with a general feeling of insecurity, when we see others and the world around us, we see that we don’t measure up, that this other person has a bigger house, or nicer car, or a better education or better social skills or network or whatever, and as a result we feel a scarcity within ourselves, which limits our motivation to take a risk or to recover from a mistake, or to try something new.

But conversely, by taking inventory on the things that we do have – however small – the things that are available on our terms and under our control, and shining a light and placing weight on those things, whether it be a simple skill, or a family heritage or set of values, or a knack for something, or a particular thing that you’re good at . . . can really tip the scale in your favor. And help you realize that your quest for something that might seem risky, is really not that risky at all. Because you can really see that whatever you gain in addition to that, is icing on the cake.

If you reach or ask for or pursue something that you didn’t have in the first place, and you don’t get it the first time (for example, if you get rejected), you really don’t lose anything because you still have the things that you always had before you reached to get the other thing. So it’s true, you really have nothing to lose.

So for me, recently I was at a conference alone, and I wanted to meet 8 different keynote speakers to invite them to be interviewed for my Inner World of Entrepreneurs interview series. Going up to 8 different speakers, 8 different times, one by one, in a crowd of people is not easy for me to do. (See image to the left that shows the keynote speakers that I met.)

In fact, I feel very insecure doing that sort of thing. But what I do before approaching someone is to take inventory about the great things that I have in my life, such as my wife, my family, my previous successes in getting interviews scheduled, or even the fact that I was a captain of my soccer team in high school.

These are things that lift me, give me the courage to go up to these people, because I think, well even if the person I’m approaching rejects me, at least I have this history of things, or list of current things that I’m grateful for, that they can’t take away from me.

So that’s tip #2.

Tip #3: Pursue Something That is Worth Getting Rejected For

So this is similar to my first and second tip. I was very conscious of this when I started my first company, the clothing company. I was very self aware at that time that if that company failed, I wanted that pursuit to be worth the failure.

Out of all of the things that I could launch, for me, a clothing company was something that I could feel better if I failed at it, because I knew that was something that was worth the attempt. I had other business ideas to consider at the time, but to me they weren’t worth it, even if I had succeeded to some degree.

I’m not sure if that makes sense to a lot of people, but I understood that launching a company was difficult, and that 9 out of 10 companies usually fail, so I thought, “okay, if I’m going to fail, I’ll at least want it to be a failure based on something that I can really commit to, learn from, and meet some great people.”

So, if you do get rejected or if you fail, that rejection should be more comfortable than living with the regret of not trying to do that thing in the first place. And I knew that even if I failed at that first company, I wouldn’t regret it, because it was something that I really, really wanted to do.

Okay, so onto tip #4.

Tip #4: Focus 100% on Helping People

Think about this, if your focus is 100% on helping other people (customers or potential customers for instance), and understanding them and their fears, frustrations, challenges, dreams and goals — truly helping those people accomplish what they need with what you’re offering, it takes you away from thinking about yourself, and your insecurities and fears of being rejected or fear of taking that risk.

And if you get rejected in that situation, at least you can take comfort in knowing that you were taking the high road for the right reasons, to help that person. You can feel good about that.

If your interests are pure in helping someone, then you shouldn’t feel any guilt or shame about it, right? Focusing 100% on helping people can make you far more resilient than if you’re more concerned about how you might look, or come across, etc.

Plus, even if you are rejected (and chances are you wouldn’t be rejected), the person or group that turns you down would still probably respect you for your attempt, and aiming for respect should be a good goal to have, or at least it’s a very good by-product.

Okay, on to tip #5 . . .

Tip #5: Grow Up in an Entrepreneurial Household

So this is sort of a goofy one, because not everyone, obviously, has grown up in an entrepreneurial household like I did. But I think it’s still instructive for those that seek to get better at becoming more resilient.

For me, growing up in an entrepreneurial household taught me a key thing first-hand, that doesn’t always come natural to those that have grown up in households where parents were employed.

My dad, who was an entrepreneur, and who was self-made to a large extent, could go up to people in stores or restaurants and ask for things that normal people just wouldn’t ask for. And he would do it in a way that was non-confrontational, trust-worthy and sincere, sort of disarming those that possessed what he was interested in. His approach wasn’t calculated or contrived in any way, it was just him being himself and being transparent and friendly in how he would inquire about things.

And often times, he would get what he wanted by using this approach, because people basically trusted his demeanor and gave him the benefit of the doubt, even if they didn’t know him, which was often the case.

One time when I was in high-school, we were at a pizza restaurant, it was a chain restaurant, and he walked in the back of the kitchen where the cooks were and started talking to employees in the back room; I can’t remember what it was about, but it was just a friendly discussion about the food equipment or something like that, and it really didn’t upset any of the employees, just because my Dad had a friendly natural inquiry about something and I think the art and natural authenticity of him doing that gave the employees assurance that he wasn’t there to cause a commotion, but just to inquire about something.

The point here, is that he wasn’t concerned about rejection.

It seemed to be the last thing on his mind. Instead, his sincerity of learning about something, or asking about something, was his main goal, and even if he was disallowed from his request, it wouldn’t prohibit him from doing it again somewhere else.

I think that most people that are not entrepreneurs have limitations or structures already in their mind that they shouldn’t do this sort of thing. They operate within a more traditional social set of rules.

But growing up in an entrepreneurial household, at least for me, exposes you to a mind-set where getting rejected isn’t the end of the world. In fact, it’s something far from it. And growing up in that environment, you observe and incorporate those things into your behavior in a second-hand sort of way.

This art of approaching people and requesting something without the fear of rejection.

Now, let’s move on to tip #6 . . .

Tip #6: When Asking for Something, Don’t Expect a “Yes” (in a World of “No’s”)

Now, this might seem counter-intuitive or against the common notion of today’s better-known Law of Attraction idea. But this is an approach I often take. Before I ask for something from a VIP, although I can come very prepared in my request, I expect them to say no.

By doing so, for me at least, it lowers my anxiety of requesting something from the person in the first place. Does that make any sense? I’ve already absorbed the real possibility of rejection. I’ve dealt with it emotionally ahead of time. And since I’ve done that, that anxiety or sense of high-stakes is not with me at the time of my request when I’m with that person making that request. And so I have less of a hint of anxious energy that I’m giving off, to spook the person or myself, when I approach them.

The reason I feel this way is because the fact seems to be, that the world and its people, basically, have their own very specific self interests. There’s nothing wrong with that, it just is. People are interested in different things. And the likelihood of the person you’re requesting something from could very well be rejection. That’s fine, you’re just trying to help them, after all, right?

My personal story about this is that about 11 years ago a company that I partially owned was looking for investors. I was at an upscale restaurant that was jam-packed during lunch, and I recognized one of the wealthier and more successful business people in our city, who also invested in companies, I didn’t know him (and he certainly didn’t know me) but I recognized him, sitting at a table with someone, having lunch.

The e-guide I mentioned at the beginning of this podcast gets into the details of this story, but to make a long story short, I really felt fear the idea of approaching this guy while he was having lunch in a packed restaurant. A guy that didn’t know me at all. But one of the things I did before approaching him and requesting a meeting with him was that I absorbed the idea that he could decline my request to schedule a meeting with him to discuss an investment opportunity. And once I dealt with that likelihood ahead of time, with my anxiety diffused, my approach to him was easier to execute.

It turns out that I did eventually get that meeting with him. And that story continues with my next tip, tip #7.

Tip #7: When Asking for Something, Don’t Aim for a “Yes” – Aim for Gaining Respect

Okay, you do want to get a “yes,” but when you aim for gaining respect from that person, your approach to implementing your request with that person, is different. Your goal is to gain quick trust with that person and so your approach to him or her takes careful planning. It doesn’t have to be major time-consuming planning, but it does take careful thought.

So getting back to my example of approaching the investor candidate at the busy restaurant, before I approached him I put myself in his shoes. I used empathy as a key tool here.

I thought about some positive things and negative things.

On the negative side, I thought it’s likely that this person feels that he doesn’t want to be interrupted having lunch. I also thought that, as a VIP, he probably gets a lot of requests from a lot of people, and that he might be a bit jaded and mistrusting of others that he doesn’t know, and thinking that people are...

Ep. 011: On Launching an Apparel Company — The Mike Arbeiter Interview

John Benzick — Tue, 11 Oct 2016 22:39:06 -0600

Hear serial entrepreneur, Mike Arbeiter, explain how he started two apparel brands, and a technology company.

Listen to his ideas on how to raise capital, work with overseas apparel manufacturers and create consumer demand on a limited marketing budget.

Hear him describe his biggest joys and frustrations as an entrepreneur – as well as how he overcomes occasional periods of self doubt.

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Episode Timeline:

0:42 – Introduction to Mike Arbeiter, President of Fisher and Baker apparel, and Founder of InMotion Apparel and Liquicell Technologies.

2:36 – Beginning of the “Give Me the Basics” Podcast Segment

2:45 – Mike describes Fisher and Baker and what makes it unique. He explains how the company’s founder, Greg Horvitz, set out to build a better line of men’s functional outdoor lifestyle clothing, through classical styling and design.

4:25 – Our guest talks about the number of clothing styles the company started with, and its startup team.

6:14 – Mike talks about starting his previous apparel company, InMotion, and what made it unique. He explains the proprietary technology that became the basis for his second company, Liquicell Technologies.

7:07 – Mike talks about the challenges associated with the bicycle retail channel and how he doesn’t plan to return to that type of business.

7:49 – Mike talks about how his business assumptions changed after he launched his first company, InMotion, and how they decided to pivot the company based on those changes. He proceeds to explain his experience with Fisher and Baker, and how they did extensive research interviewing channel players and consumers to better understand customer needs.

9:40 – Our guest talks about the origins of Fisher and Baker, and how its founder, Greg Horvitz, an industrial designer, was previously in the high-end furniture business, and how he wanted to get into an different business that he could more easily scale. And how he wanted to work with his two passions, outdoor and clothing.

10:36 – Mike talks about the difficulties of starting an apparel company. He talks about how highly competitive the industry is. He explains how the more successful entrepreneurs have a strong vision for what’s trending in the market, and how they study their audience by getting “out there” and getting feedback from key sources.

13:26 – Mike shares his thoughts on the top three things that he learned when talking to retailers and consumers for Fisher and Baker, and how this feedback helped them prepare for a successful launch.

16:18 – Beginning of the “Tell Me How” Podcast Segment

16:35 – Mike talks about his approach to raising capital, such as having a unique value proposition, laying out key milestones that are reasonable and achievable, and being transparent.

18:11 – Mike gets into the details about what his investor pitch deck outline might look like.

20:00 – Our guest gets into the details about how he found a manufacturer for Fisher and Baker, and how he looked at the better apparel brands and learned who manufactured their items.

23:45 – Mike explains two basic ways of working with a manufacturer. The first is a full package method where the factory buys all textiles and trims on the brand’s behalf. This includes an up-charge of 12 to 18 percent. The second way is called CMT, where the manufacturer provides labor and trims, and the apparel company purchases the major raw materials. Mike explains the pros and cons of each of these two methods.

25:00 – Mike talks about other challenges when dealing with overseas manufacturers. For example, understanding the product life cycle within the supply chain, the importance of very clear communication (especially with Asian manufacturers), understanding the culture, and the importance of face-to-face meetings.

31:09 – Mike talks about how to best approach retailers. “Have your story together.” “Sell the experience.”

33:45 – Mike explains working with sales reps and using showrooms to help sell and market their products.

36:00 – Mike talks about his approach to setting the product pricing. He explains how he studies competitors’ pricing, wholesale margin requirements, “minimum advertise pricing,” as well as talking with consumers and retailers.

37:45 – Mike discusses the challenges of creating brand awareness and demand with small marketing budgets. He talks about the importance of social media, using local influencers at a grass-roots level, hand-selecting people to help build a social media following, and direct marketing. He explains building an ambassador group, the role of the website and having an in-store presence.

42:35 – Beginning of the “Let’s Get Personal” Podcast Segment

43:00 – Mike talks about his entrepreneurial motivations and how his early career experience with Rollerblade influenced him. “If you’re not all in, don’t become an entrepreneur.”

44:35 – What has been Mike’s biggest joy as an entrepreneur? He talks about watching his co-workers grow professionally and personally.

45:20 – And his biggest frustration? Failing in the hiring process.

46:24 – Mike explains his experiences with self-doubt as an entrepreneur.

47:48 – Mike talks about how starting a business has changed him as a person, and how it has made him more reflective on how he deals with people and his life.

49:04 – What has Mike learned most about himself as an entrepreneur? “It’s all about people. Great people create great things.”

49:25 – Mike talks about who has been most influential to him.

50:25 – Mike offers closing advice to budding entrepreneurs: “If you want to become an entrepreneur, you need to have a lot of passion.” “You better love it.” “It’s a 24/7 gig.” “Take time to breathe.”

Ep. 010: On Launching a Pet Tech Product — The Lisa Lavin Interview

John Benzick — Tue, 04 Oct 2016 22:37:54 -0600

Listen how Lisa Lavin explains her launch of PetChatz, the revolutionary pet technology product.

Hear how she wisely began with solid “voice-of-the-consumer” research to work out many issues before the launch.

Discover how she raised capital, found a manufacturer, and shifted from a traditional brick-and-mortar retail selling strategy to a more successful e-commerce, direct-to-consumer distribution model.

Leave a Rating & Review in iTunes for the Product Launch Rebel Podcast

Podcast Timeline:

0:47 – Introduction to Lisa Lavin – Founder and CEO of Anser Innovation, and developer of PetChatz.

2:38 – The “Give Me The Basics” Podcast Segment

2:44 – In her own words, Lisa describes what makes her product so unique to her customers.

5:11 – Lisa talks about how the PetChatz idea was founded, via a serendipitous lunch with her friend, Mark Kroll, who was a top medical device inventor. She explains that she “came from a long line of entrepreneurs.”

9:04 – Lisa talks about how she applied her background of doing “voice-of-consumer” research to test the PetChatz 1.0 product. She explains how they “learned a lot” and spent their whole next year in re-development. Then, during the beginning of 2016, when they re-introduced the PetChatz product, it became “one of the “Best in Tech” at the major Consumer Electronics Show.”

11:20 – Lisa further explains what she learned from the product testing period, and how she originally assumed the product was going to sold through bricks-and-mortar stores. And then how, instead, e-commerce became her main distribution channel.

13:10 – The “Tell Me How” Podcast Segment

13:26 – Lisa gets into the specifics of how she raised money for the business, and how it took three times more money, and three times more time, than expected. “Oh, my gosh, the lessons that I’ve learned.” 99% of investment came from the local investment community. She explains how she learned that you really have to understand your investor.

16:07 – Lisa describes the main topics in her investor presentation deck. She recommends having a “brief,” with five slides. Additionally, they had a full business plan and private placement memorandum. “You have to pitch and pitch and pitch.” “You have to refine your pitch and your deck, always ask for feedback.” “A lot of lessons there.”

17:32 – Lisa describes two key things that she learned in raising capital – that investors invest in the horse and the jockey. Do they believe in the CEO and the people behind the CEO? “We put together an amazing board of directors.”

19:34 – Lisa advises anyone to bootstrap their company as much as they can without raising capital, if they can. Her first round of capital was raised from good investor networks.

21:17 – What were the top reasons for investor rejection, early on? The male investor, who is not the typical pet parent, did not understand the concept. “You kind of have to understand the pet-parent mentality.”

22:40 – Lisa talks about how she found a manufacturer for her product. “We’re very, very lucky to have identified this manufacturer in our home town.”

24:25 – Lisa describes the difficulty in creating the PetChatz product. “Oh my goodness, yes.” “Developing the hardware is hard. Even more difficult is the software.“

25:47 – Lisa talks about the common issues that exist when working with a manufacturer. She describes how “your manufacturing partner is critical here, and the ability to work through the issues together is so important.”

27:30 – Lisa describes selling her product to retailers and how they realized that e-commerce was a better opportunity for them.

29:00 – Lisa explains how she determined the pricing of her product.

30:35 – Lisa talks about the product mix, and how they arrived at the optimal mix for the company.

34:00 – Lisa describes how they are marketing their product on limited budgets. “Very creatively, I will tell you that.” That was part of the key learning. “We’re all about leveraging social media.”

36:00 – The Let’s Get Personal Podcast Segment

36:25 – Was it Lisa’s destiny to start PetChatz/Answer Innovation? She explains how she believes in destiny, and that things happen for a reason. “I was presented with this huge opportunity.” “It became clear to me that I was destined to start this business. “ “Wow, I have to do this.”

37:48 – Lisa describes her biggest joys of launching her company. “Creating a new product that delights customers.“ “I love creating disruptive technology.“ “Most importantly, I love the creation and working with a group of people that are just as passionate as I am. It’s just sheer joy.”

39:04 – What has been Lisa’s biggest frustration? “The time and money thing.“ The fact that it takes three times as much money and time as originally expected. She goes on to say that it made her a much better business leader.

40:40 – Lisa describes experiencing self-doubt as an entrepreneur. Sometimes “the only thing that I have is my faith. The only thing that I can do is believe.” “There’s self-doubt that pervades every single entrepreneur’s life, it just takes faith.”

42:05 – Lisa describes how entrepreneurship has changed her. “I am absolutely not the same person.” She talks about how she faces challenges: “there’s a solution to this, we just have to find it.” “My perceptions of problems have changed immensely.”

43:49 – Lisa talks about what she has learned most about herself, since being an entrepreneur. “Just how much strength that I have. It really comes to understanding the fortitude I have internally.“ “To handle great strife and challenges and still accomplish our goals.” “I am a product of all the smart people around me.”

45:20 – Lisa talks about who has been most influential to her. “My family.” Additionally, “I have so many mentors that have changed me, that have gone above and beyond.“ Including Marti Morfitt (former CEO of CNS).

47:00 Lisa offers closing advice: “When bad things happen, just remember that the best thing is next.” “Surround yourself with smarter people than yourself, step outside of your comfort zone, and meet with those people.” “Sometimes you just need to believe.” “Don’t give up.”

Ep. 009: Selling to Large Retailers — The Chad Hetherington Interview

John Benzick — Thu, 29 Sep 2016 20:06:42 -0600

Listen how Chad Hetherington helps entrepreneurs find retail partners to launch and grow their products. Learn the keys to success in distributing products through large brick-and-mortar retailers.

Leave a Rating & Review in iTunes for the Product Launch Rebel Podcast

Podcast Timeline:

0:42 – Introduction to Chad Hetherington, Founder of The Stable

2:59 – Beginning of the “Give Me the Basics” Podcast Segment

3:45 – Chad describes his company, The Stable, and its role to help bring brands to retail partners, across different channels.

5:34 – Our guest talks about what he looks for in companies that he works with. A strong story; brands that disrupt their category; the strength of the management team.

6:22 – Chad gives examples of the types of brands that The Stable works with

7:28 – Chad describes the success rate of the new companies that he works with, and the keys to their success.

9:30 – Our guest shares details about the importance of launching carefully with big retailers and the danger of rolling out too big too fast.

10:50 – Chad talks about how often new “first-generation” brands need to pivot, or change, based on real-life consumer feedback or competitive situations, in order to survive.

13:19 – Chad shares how many brands he works, and how many employees work at The Stable

14:10 – Beginning of the “Tell Me How” Podcast Segment

14:35 – Chad talks about the keys to success for products at retail: 1. Great packaging and (2) price points that are competitive.

16: 54 – Chad expands on the topic of pricing and the experience of working with retailers on setting price.

19:02 – Our guest expands on the challenges of collaborating with large retailers on pricing, and the implications of pricing pressures has for small brands.

21:44 – Chad talks about how small brands are marketing their brands successfully, even if they have very limited marketing budgets. And how Facebook ads, a good PR partner, reasonable pricing and solid packaging can go a long way.

24:00 – Beginning of the “Let’s Get Personal” Segment

24:20 –Chad talks about his motivations to start a business like The Stable.

25:32 – Our guest describes what he’s most proud of as the founder of The Stable.

26:15 – Chad describes his biggest frustrations as an entrepreneur (“waiting around”) and his occasional bouts of self doubt.

28:15 – Chad talks about how starting a business changed him as a person. “It’s made me more humble.” “I have a different perspective on life than I ever did.”

29:23 – Our guest shares what he’s learned most about himself. “I know that I can do it.” “Can I actually pull this off?” “A drive that I never knew that I had.”

30:06 – Chad talks about who has been most influential to him. “My parents, for sure.” “My wife.” His previous boss at Quirky. Richard Branson from Virgin.

31:24 – Chad offers some closing advice for aspiring entrepreneurs. “Stay on the path that you set.” “Don’t give up.” “Every day is another day.” “Constantly tell your story.” “Don’t let a failure affect your life. Failures are what make you better.”

Ep. 008: On Launching a Nutritional Beverage — The Will Brown Interview

John Benzick — Mon, 26 Sep 2016 21:07:24 -0600

Listen as William Brown describes how he was inspired to improve the nutrition of cancer patients. Hear about his challenges of raising capital, marketing with small budgets, and convincing a manufacturer to produce his new product idea.

Leave a Rating & Review in iTunes for the Product Launch Rebel Podcast

Podcast Timeline:

0:48 – Introduction to Will Brown, CEO and Co-Founder of Trovita Health Science.

2:53 – William describes his company’s mission and products, and how he intends to change the paradigm of clinical nutrition.

4:20 – Our guest describes the size of his company, and his distribution channels

6:20 – William describes how his assumptions changed about his product, and how the product’s selling proposition evolved and became a hallmark for marketing.

7:54 – William talks about how he and his founders came up with the business idea and where the inspiration came from.

10:13 – The “Tell Me How” Segment of the Podcast

10:30 – Our guest addresses how he raised money to start this capital-intensive business.

12:19 – William expresses what he thinks is his company’s big opportunity and how that was described in the business plan

15:47 – Our guest describes his obstacles to raising money and recommends that to “focus is key.”

17:30 – William talks about what it feels like to ask for money from family, friends and venture capitalists. “I remember the fear.” “Most nervous I’ve ever been.” “Adrenaline rush.”

18:50 – William shares his experiences of seeking a manufacturer for his product. He describes the challenges to get the support from the manufacturer.

22:55 – Our guest describes how the company came up with the beverage formula.

25:38 – Our guest talks about his biggest lesson in selling to retailers, including jumping too quickly into the retail distribution model.

28:53 – William describes his experience and challenges of setting the company’s pricing strategy.

30:37 – William talks about creating awareness and demand for the product with small marketing budgets.

33:31 – “Let’s Get Personal” Segment of the Podcast

34:05 – Our guest talks about how it took him 2 to 3 years to get the company going. “It took a long time and a lot of effort.”

34:50 – William talks about how patients inspired him most to start the company, and how he needed to get a better product to the market.

36:19 – Our guest talks about why he thinks he’s a creator and why it was his destiny to launch his company.

37:00 – William describes his biggest joy of starting the company, and what has made him most proud.

38:35 – Our guest describes his biggest frustration of raising capital, and how it has diverted his attention from growing the business, spending time with customers and creating products.

39:54 – William talks about his experiences with self doubt, and how he’s “experienced every high and every low” and how it’s a “weekly roller-coaster ride.”

41:43 – Our guest talks about how being a first-time entrepreneur has changed him.

42:33 – William describes what he’s learned most about himself since being an entrepreneur.

43:50 – William shares who has been most influential to him, and why.

45:40 – Our guest shares his last key bit of advice to budding entrepreneurs: “just be a bulldog and maintain that tenacity.” “That level of tenacity is required.”

Ep. 007: On Disrupting the Bottled Water Industry — The Matthew Swanson Interview

John Benzick — Fri, 05 Aug 2016 20:47:40 -0600

Hear the inspiring story of how this young entrepreneur is disrupting the bottled water industry.

Listen as he describes his secret to raising money, of working with distributors and beating the mega-competitors by out-hustling them.

Leave a Rating & Review in iTunes for the Product Launch Rebel Podcast

Podcast Timeline:

0:43 – Introduction to Matthew Swanson, Co-Founder of Rethink Brands, and the producer of Rethink Water

2:41 – “Give Me the Basics” Podcast Segment –

Matthew describes Rethink Water and what makes it unique. He explains the company’s mission to “go beyond just water” and describes its culture; “we have the mission of a non-profit, and hustle and drive of a for-profit”

4:13 – Matthew talks about their quick and rapid growth, the number of retailers they currently serve, getting into Target stores, and their total number of employees.

6:00 – Matthew expands on Rethink Water’s main point of difference (paper carton versus its reverse osmosis production technique) and how “plastic never touches” the water, thereby offering health benefits as well as environmental benefits.

6:47 – Matthew talks about how his initial assumptions changed regarding Rethink Water’s brand positioning.

8:02 – Matthew describes the genesis of the idea to launch Rethink Brands and how it evolved over time. He talks about Chris, his friend and co-founder, and why “it’s extraordinarily important to have a co-founder.”

11:22 – “Tell Me How” Podcast Segment –

11:38 – Matthew describes his approach to raising capital for this capital-intensive business. He advises aspiring entrepreneurs to raise three times the amount of money they think they would need for a food and beverage company. He describes how fortunate he has been to meet people within the industry that have helped him. He talks about the importance of seeking “value added investors” when starting a new beverage company for the first time.

16:02 – Matthew describes his challenges of raising money – his conversion rate was 15 to 20 percent.

17:00 – Matthew suggests that his career background – working for Procter & Gamble and Google – helped him launch the business.

17:52 – Matthew expands on why it can take three times more money than expected when you launch a company like Rethink Brands.

20:01 – Matthew describes the challenges of finding a contract manufacturer for Rethink Water and how they had to convince the manufacturers to work with them. He mentions how tough it was to get the level of service they needed and deal with state regulations.

26:13 – Matthew talks about selling Rethink to retailers, including leading retailers like Target. “A big learning experience.” “You never really know what those hot buttons are to peak their excitement.”

29:13 – Matthew describes choosing the pricing of Rethink Water and relying on his successful Procter & Gamble method of presenting to retailers.

30:07 – Matthew shares his experience working with distributors and, in particular, one of the biggest distributors on the East Coast. He describes the best way to work with distributors by offering them lots of people support.

31:44 – Matthew talks more about product pricing. They did a lot of competitive analysis by distribution channel.

33:08 – Matthew describes the keys to creating consumer demand and awareness on a small budget, and hustling and working hard. The company influences consumers at the point of purchase with lots of events and free sampling.

35:32 – “Let’s Get Personal” Podcast Segment —

35:58 – Matthew talks about his core motivations to start Rethink Brands. He talks about “the wantrepreneur versus the entrepreneur” and how he was previously “always the wantrapreneur.” Hear how he was inspired to become a true entrepreneur.

37:37 – Matthew describes whether or not he’s a true “creator” and if starting Rethink Brands was in his destiny.

38:12 – Matthew expresses his biggest joys as an entrepreneur: hiring people and watching them grow. And watching customers enjoy his new product.

39:36 – Matthew shares his biggest frustration — and surprise — in launching Rethink: not yet working with Whole Foods. But, interestingly, he describes it as an opportunity, too, thereby reflecting his positive attitude and mindset.

41:16 – Matthew talks about his self doubt of waking up “at 2 in the morning in a cold sweat” and dealing with rejection. “You have to get over the ‘no’s’ super, super fast.“

42:47 – Matthew describes how becoming a business owner has changed him as a person “It changes everything.” “You need a huge support system around you to do this.” He’s now a much better businessperson and time manager.

44:14 – Matthew shares what he’s learned most about himself: “I can do it.” “I’m doing it.”

45:01 – Matthew talks about his developmentally disabled brother, Ryan, who has been the most influential person to him. “He’s still living this super-fulfilled life. “ “Why not go and try.”

46:15 – Matthew shares one last piece of advice: “If you’re thinking about doing [becoming an entrepreneur], just go do it.”

Ep. 006: On Launching a Brewery — The Adam Sjogren Interview

John Benzick — Tue, 02 Aug 2016 20:24:21 -0600

Hear the thrilling entrepreneurial journey of brewery founder, Adam Sjogren, of Northgate Brewing.

Listen as he describes why and how they started, what it was like to raise capital, and how he promotes the company on a limited budget.

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Podcast Timeline:

0:43 – Introduction to Adam Sjogren, the co-founder of Northgate Brewing in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

2:41 – “Give Me the Basics” Podcast Segment – Adam describes his brewery company, how the business idea emerged, and what makes the brewery unique.

4:05 – Did his original startup assumptions prove correct, or did the company need to pivot based on customer feedback? Hear Adam share his answer.

5:17 – Adam describes the size and growth of Northgate Brewing, as well as future growth expectations and plans.

6:30 – Adam describes what it’s like running a small business for the first time. “My beard has gotten much grayer . . . but also very rewarding.”

6:51 – Adam shares how the company started: “It started with a broken ankle.” His co-founder, Todd, was in an entrepreneurship class and he wrote the business plan, thereby expressing to Adam, “I think we can do this.” Hear Adam describe that “we started in a 700 square-foot garage and it worked! Somehow it became successful!”

8:36 – “Tell Me How” Podcast Segment – About raising capital (8:51) and asking friends and family for money. Adam describes he and Todd emptying their nest eggs. “There was a lot of beer involved, so that helped!” And “a lot of sleepless nights.”

11:25 – Adam describes his background before starting the company.

11:33 – Adam shares how they learned how to manufacture the beer. He talked to the helpful founders of other companies (i.e. Surly and Fulton). These people were very open about the process and how to source the equipment. They used converted dairy equipment.

12:54 – Adam addresses some of their early manufacturing problems. “It never goes smoothly.” He advises others to add six months to the startup process because of the industry federal and state regulation.

14:09 – Adam offers his key pieces of advice regarding manufacturing. “Check the references of the manufacturers.” “Friends in the industry gave us amazing tips.” “Get the best equipment you can afford.”

14:55 – Adam describes how he approached bars and restaurants (to sell to them) and the importance of product sampling and the relationships with owners and buyers.

15:55 – Adam shares his experiences about being rejected and the pressures of selling: “I get rejected every day. You gotta have thick skin in this business.” “’No’ doesn’t usually mean ‘no,’ it usually means ‘not now.’”

17:19 – Adam talks about the challenges and importance of creating consumer demand – and creating community involvement, offering events and educating bar and restaurant servers.

20:29 – Adam describes how they set their pricing. They had to raise their price after running the business for 6 months. Margins weren’t large enough. They re-did all of their pricing sheets.

21:45 – Adam offers his thoughts on working with distributors, and the pros and cons of working with them.

23:38 – “Let’s Get Personal Podcast Segment” – Adam describes his entrepreneurial motivations (23:50).

25:00 – Adam shares what he’s been most proud of – his biggest joy – since starting Northgate Brewing.

25:52 – Adam expresses his number one frustration since starting Northgate Brewing.

26:23 – Adam talks about some of his self doubt as an entrepreneur. Despite his success, he talks about his “sleepless nights lying there staring at the ceiling, wondering what I did wrong. It’s very frustrating to start a business.”

27:20 – Adam describes how starting a business has changed him, and how he’s “much more assertive now.” But also “more willing to listen and more willing to admit that I don’t know what I don’t know.”

28:18 – Adam shares what he’s learned most about himself since becoming an entrepreneur: “I’m willing to work a lot of hours without sleep.” “It’s not all unicorns and rainbows.”

33:20 – Adam offers closing advice: “Make sure you’ve had that talk with your family – that they know what you’re in for” before starting a business.

Ep. 005: On Launching Three Beverage Companies — The Joe Heron Interview

John Benzick — Fri, 22 Jul 2016 18:25:31 -0600

Hear Joe Heron explain the keys to success in launching three beverage companies and selling two to PepsiAmericas and MillerCoors.

Listen how Joe Heron thoughtfully identified beverage-growth opportunities and then – through careful execution – set up successful distributor and retailer partnerships.

Listen as he describes how entrepreneurship provides the unique opportunity to understand what makes America a great place to live, work and “be the best you can ever be. “

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Podcast Timeline:

0:41 – An introduction to Joe Heron, CEO of Copper and Kings American Brandy Company, and Founder of Crispin Cider Company and Ardea Beverage Company.

1:53 – An overview of Joe’s career history and how his skills and know-how led him to launching his first company, Ardea Beverage Company.

3:38 – What Joe does best as an entrepreneur.

4:19 – How growing up in South Africa prepared him for entrepreneurship. How he learned to manage and embrace change.

5:34 – Joe provides an overview of his current company, Copper and Kings American Brandy Company, its current status, and how it’s unique.

7:15 – How Joe and his wife, Leslie, came up with the idea for his first company, Ardea Beverage Company (creating a new category and marketing Nutrisoda)

8:33 – Background on the success story of Ardea Beverage Company and Crispin Cider Company. “Have someone who’s got your back and who can stay with you through tough times.” Hear Joe talk about his key to finding the right beverage opportunity, and what he calls the “The Well Served Paradigm.”

14:06 – Joe’s thoughts on having an exit strategy when you launch a business.

16:30 — Joe’s description about the early phases of company growth. The first year is always the most adrenaline driven. Years two and three are awful years, re-configuring distributor networks, always investing ahead of the game, hiring sales people, staffing. It’s about survival. Year four is when you start to develop your wings.

18:14 – Joe talks about what makes his approach different: being obsessed about execution.

18:44 – Joe expands on the keys to successful execution in the beverage business: delivering a superior product and good relationships with distributors and supporting the distributor “selling machine.”

21:20 – Joe talks bout mastering your supply chain (referring to the down-stream supply chain).

24:25 – Joe describes what he has most learned about himself: “that I’m far more stupid than I remotely realized.”

25:25 – Joe talks about what it felt like selling to investors, retailers, distributors, and offers his advice. “Nail your presentation, value your company correctly, raise more money than you think you need.” “It’s not for everyone. You have to be brave, you have to be dumb and you have to move like a wolf.”

29:29 – Joe describes why his wife is the most influential person is his life.

Ep. 004: On Launching Handsome Bicycles — The Ben Morrison Interview

John Benzick — Tue, 12 Jul 2016 16:25:15 -0600

Learn about the exciting entrepreneurial journey of bike-company co-founder, Ben Morrison, of Handsome Cycles.

Hear Ben describe how he and his co-founder discovered their business idea, raised money, found a manufacturer, chose a pricing strategy and set up retailer partnerships.

Listen as he describes his struggles with self doubt, uncertainty, and dealing with a capital-intensive manufacturing-based business.

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Podcast Timeline:

0:41 – Introduction to Ben Morrison, co-founder of Handsome Cycles

2:29 – “Give Me the Basics” Podcast Segment: hear Ben describe his bicycle product collection, the scope of products and what makes the brand so unique.

6:03 – Did Ben’s initial assumptions about the bicycle’s uniqueness prove correct, after getting customer and retailer feedback? Hear Ben explain his answer.

10:02 – “Tell Me How” Podcast Segment: listen to Ben talk about how his company raised capital (10:18), found a manufacturer (17:21), introduced the product line to retailers (25:35), and determined product pricing (31:13).

32:46 – “Let’s Get Personal” Podcast Segment: Ben talks about his motivations to start a bicycle business, and whether or not he’s a “creator at heart” (35:20). Hear him describe what he’s most proud of as a co-founder (36:30), his biggest frustrations (38:26), his dealing with self doubt (40:38), how entrepreneurship has changed him (41:49), what he’s learned most about himself (43:55), and who has been most influential to him (45:09).

Ep. 003: On Launching a Drum Accessory Company — The Jeff Sevaldson Interview

John Benzick — Sun, 03 Jul 2016 16:22:18 -0600

Learn how two bootstrapping college roommates launched a drum accessory company.

Hear how they networked with industry insiders, attended key trade shows and used Google to get the company going.

And see how social media marketing has been “huge” for them, given their limited marketing dollars.

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Podcast Timeline:

0:44 – Introduction to Jeff Sevaldson, co-founder of Drumlite

1:33 – Company description and what makes its products unique

2:20 – The story of how they discovered the product idea in college, how they tested the idea, and how the idea started rolling

3:50 – The motivation to be an entrepreneur and start Drumlite

7:21 – The quest to find a find parts and a manufacturer

14:03 – Finding the money to launch the business

15:38 – Coming up with product pricing so it is profitable and satisfies retailers

19:20 – Preparing to sell to retailers – how they did it

24:50 – Creating product awareness so it would sell in the stores: the role of social media and getting drummers to spread the word

28:58 – Forming a distributor relationship with Pearl Drums

30:00 – Biggest challenges and mistakes: being smart with their limited dollars. Learning how to bootstrap well.

31:30 – What have you learned most about yourself? “I’m not perfect.” “I don’t have all the answers.” “It can be a tough lesson.” Find a good business partner.

33:33 – Top piece of advice to budding entrepreneurs: Make sure you have a good partnership. Don’t be distracted by the glorious life of tech companies. Hardgoods companies are not sexy, but do it if you are motivated by it. Surround yourself with good people.

Ep. 002: On Launching a Beverage Company — The Bob Safford Interview

John Benzick — Thu, 30 Jun 2016 22:29:51 -0600

Learn about the thrilling startup journey of beverage-company founder, Bob Safford.

Hear Bob describe how he got serious about his business idea, how he found investors, how he deals with startup challenges, and what he has learned most about himself.

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Podcast Outline:

0:42 – Introduction to Bob Safford, the founder of Boundary Waters Brands (producer of the Joia All Natural Soda brand of sodas)

1:32 – Bob describes whether he’s a “creator at heart” and reflects on whether launching Joia was his destiny.

2:29 – Bob explains how he discovered the Joia beverage idea. No longer a drinker of alcohol, he was frustrated by not finding interesting non-alcoholic beverages to drink. He would often concoct his own beverages at home. The moment of inspiration came when he was out with friends one night.

4:25 – Bob shares what made him go one step further and get serious about his business idea. He describes his history of believing that he would one day start his own business. He then started networking with people involved in the beverage industry. And he met Joe Heron, the successful founder of three beverage companies, who introduced Bob to key people.

6:40 – Bob tells the story about when he knew Joia would be for real. After conducting his first three-day sampling demo at a local grocery store, and sampling “hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people,” they sold 80 cases of soda. At that point he thought, “I think this is gonna sell, I think this is gonna work.”

9:01 – Bob talks about what it felt like to be an entrepreneur for the first time, and having a personal connection with his product: “It’s always a great feeling to see your product out there when you’re least expecting it.”

11:49 – Bob answers a question about whether or not he took his own marketing advice when he launched Joia. (Bob was a successful marketing executive before he became an entrepreneur.) He describes how “it was a challenging construct, because I created [Joia] for me.”

13:45 – Bob describes his key challenge of having “absolutely zero leverage” when working with suppliers, even when he’s a paying customer. He explains that a startup is very different from companies that are established. He expresses his “rude awakening” and his “single greatest lesson . . . which is don’t assume you have any leverage anywhere anytime, even when you’re paying the bill.”

14:38 – Bob talks about the consumer reaction – and changing consumer tastes — that he and other food and beverage companies weren’t fully expecting.

18:50 – Bob shares the challenges as a consumer product entrepreneur, and how he’s dealing with them; the struggles of having fewer resources than a large established company, and using product sampling as the key vehicle to drive product trial among consumers.

22:08 – Bob describes what it’s like selling his idea to investors, retailers and distributors: “Challenging and frustrating.” Retailers have been the easiest because of the product’s great taste. Distributors have been more challenging because of industry consolidation. Regarding investors, he’s felt “fortunate” to have a strong network that could make small investments in his company. “When you love your product it’s pretty easy to be a pitch-man for that.”

27:17 – Bob talks about who has been most influential to him in his career.

29:55 – Bob shares what he has learned most about himself as an entrepreneur: “You better learn a way to handle stress, because it’s at unprecedented levels.” “Things don’t go smoothly . . . it’s a tough world.” He offers his advice on distinguishing the most critical success factors of the business – the one or two things you really need to worry about.

Ep. 001: Introduction to Product Launch Rebel Podcast

John Benzick — Tue, 28 Jun 2016 20:07:24 -0600

Greetings everyone, this is John Benzick from Venture Superfly.com, and I’m excited to tell you about my podcast called “Product Launch Rebel.”

It’s a weekly podcast that helps people launch physical consumer products.

There aren’t many online resources that help people create physical consumer products, which is a bit surprising, since many budding entrepreneurs are focused on launching something physical, like a new wellness food snack, or a clothing item, or a toy, or a new energy drink, things along those lines.

And many aspiring entrepreneurs have lots of uncertainties and perceived barriers that prevent them from moving forward, uncertainties such as:

How do I know if my product idea will sell?
How should I protect my idea from other competitors?
How on would I manufacture something my product?
How much money do I need to create and launch this type of business?

And there are answers to these and many other questions, and I’ll aim to offer them in this podcast series.

Any type of new business is not easy, but if you’re attracted to a more tangible physical-product-based business, my “Product Launch Rebel” podcast will be helpful for you. It’ll reveal insider tips and best practices on ways to create and launch your physical consumer-product based business – we’ll be interviewing entrepreneurs and experts, as well as me sharing my experiences and thoughts that will save you lots of time and money.

As you listen to this, my first episode, this is my request:

Please listen to the podcast episodes, where you’ll hear some great startup stories, get valuable insider tips, and learn best practices on a variety of relevant topics
Please visit iTunes and subscribe to the podcast now.
Please comment (in the comment area below) during or after each podcast episode, since your comments will help me identify future podcast topics, I want to make absolutely sure you get the most from the Product Launch Rebel podcast.

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