Barbell Shrugged - Real Chalk  — Be a Nice Asshole w/ Ryan Williams  — 20

Episode Date: April 24, 2018

Ryan Williams is a serial entrepreneur, a former navy SEAL, and founder of Industry Threadworks, a private label apparel production company. Having successfully launched and sold multiple businesses, ranging from apparel brands to equipment manufacturing companies, Ryan has learned invaluable lessons about people, mindset, and the principles of building a successful organization. In this episode, Ryan takes us on his journey from an unstable childhood, through his experiences in the military, to becoming a wildly successful entrepreneur. Ryan shares his strategies, perspectives, and lessons learned through his various business experiences. Enjoy! - Ryan and Yaya ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Show notes at: http://www.shruggedcollective.com/rc_williams ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Please support our partners! Thrive Market is a proud supporter of us here at Barbell Shrugged.  We very much appreciate all they do with us and we’d love for you to support them in return!  Thrive Market has a special offer for you. You get $60 of FREE Organic Groceries + Free Shipping and a 30 day trial, click the link below: https://thrivemarket.com/realchalk How it works:  Users will get $20 off their first 3 orders of $49 or more + free shipping.  No code is necessary because the discount will be applied at checkout. Many of you will be going to the store this week anyway, so why not give Thrive Market a try! ► Subscribe to Shrugged Collective's Channel Here http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedSubscribe 📲 🎧 Listen to the audio version on the Apple Podcast App or Stitcher for Android Here- http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedApple http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedStitcher Shrugged Collective is a network of fitness, health and performance shows that help people achieve their physical and mental health goals.  Usually in the gym, but outside as well. In 2012 they posted their first Barbell Shrugged podcast and have been putting out weekly free videos and podcasts ever since. Along the way we've created successful online coaching programs including The Shrugged Strength Challenge, The Muscle Gain Challenge, FLIGHT, Barbell Shredded, and Barbell Bikini. We're also dedicated to helping affiliate gym owners grow their businesses and better serve their members by providing owners tools and resources like the Barbell Business Podcast. Find Shrugged Collective and their flagship show Barbell Shrugged here: SUBSCRIBE ON ITUNES ► http://bit.ly/ShruggedCollectiveiTunes WEBSITE ► https://www.ShruggedCollective.com INSTAGRAM ► https://instagram.com/shruggedcollective FACEBOOK ► https://facebook.com/barbellshruggedp... TWITTER ► http://twitter.com/barbellshrugged

Welcome to Real Chalk, a Shrug Collective production. Mike Bledsoe here. Stoked to be launching this network so that we can introduce you to amazing content providers like Ryan Fisher. We'll be posting new shows every weekday, so be on the lookout. As a thank you for listening, Thrive Market has a special offer for you. You get $60 of free organic groceries, plus free shipping and a 30-day trial. Go to thrivemarket.com slash real chalk. This is how it works.

Users will get $20 off their first three orders of $49 or more plus free shipping. No code is necessary because the discount will be applied at checkout. Many of you will be going to the store this week, so just hit up Thrive Market today. Go to thrivemarket.com slash real chalk to get set up. Enjoy the show. And here we go, coming at you. You guys are tuned in to the Bobo Shrug Collective. Hope you guys are having a blast with this whole new concept we came up with this is yaya and this is the newest episode of the real chalk podcast this week we sat down with ryan williams from industry threadworks ryan's whole business basically is helping other businesses become successful so

he's seen it all he's heard it all he knows all the excuses and he definitely knows everything that can go wrong in the early stages of a business. He's started multiple companies himself and is now focusing on helping other businesses become more and more successful. So this is literally the source of it all. I've asked many people the same questions, but I feel like Ryan is in a perfect position to answer these things like why do people fail at the beginning of a business, what are the most common mistakes, and all those things that I'm sure are on your guys' mind as well. And Ryan did a great job answering them.

Dude also drives a Lambo, so you guys know that he knows what the fuck he is talking about. As always, guys, we're fucking stoked to be here. I can't stop cussing. I'm sorry, Mom, but I'm not starting this recording over, so we're fucking stoked to be here i can't stop cussing i'm sorry mom but i'm not starting this recording over so we're just going to use it and we're stoked to be here like i said would love for you guys to subscribe to the channel leave us a comment or review and then always love to interact with you guys it's at yaisview on on Instagram, at Ryan Fish on Instagram. Or send us an email, yaya at crossfitchalk.com, ryan at crossfitchalk.com with comments, concerns, remarks, nudie pics,

whatever it is, just send it our way. We love interacting with you guys. And I'm going to stop being an idiot, let you guys dive into the episode. Hope you guys have a blast. Cool. All right, kids, we're live again. Coming at you live from Fish's couch. Oh, yeah. Hanging guys have a blast. Cool. Alright kids, we're live again. Coming at you live from Fish's couch. Oh yeah.

Hanging out. The couch is notorious. Got Yaya here sitting down with Fish and we got Ryan from Industry Threadworks. Owner, founder, all that good stuff. Yeah, the one man show for a while. There you go. As usual. Awesome.

Yeah, so we have a lot of different topics like Fish and I were kind of talking about where we want to take this podcast and I think we're just going to jump all over

the place awesome just try and keep up with us as much as you can perfect man that's how my brain works but we'll start it nice and easy

I'll just let you talk about yourself everyone loves doing that so we'll start there kind of like a story to where you started how you got to where you are now, and we'll just interrupt you anywhere in between.

Perfect. Yeah. I normally wouldn't get this in detail with my background, but since you brought up the snowboard thing and everything, I grew up super poor, which is why I like money so much now. Of course. Everybody does. Because being poor fucking sucks, dude.

And I've been there as well. Yeah. So I grew up super poor. I went to, I never lived in a house longer than two years. I never went to a single school longer than two years. I went to five different high schools in three different states. Didn't graduate any of them. And that was due to what?

Just your dad's job or? No, my mom and my dad weren't married. okay um so I was living with my mom and we were just poor so she kind of like take whatever job she could teaching it like a university and stop it was always in the same city we just moved from location location but then I turned 15 when I lived my dad for a while through party he got pissed, kicked me out, so I had to go back home and she moved to a different state. Anyway.

Was the party worth it? No, it sucked. Oh, no. It wasn't even that good. It wasn't even that good. But when you're like 15, you have a beer and you think it's the greatest thing ever. Yeah, totally. Once you turn 21, you stop drinking, actually.

I know, it's no fun anymore. Yeah. I did all the bad shit when I was 15. Yeah. I'm like, I'm all mellow. Same. thing yeah totally yep once you turn 21 you stop drinking actually i know it's no fun anymore yeah yeah yeah but in all the bad shit when i was 15 yeah i'm like malmelo same um so yeah i grew up super poor bounced around a lot dropped out of high school uh military was nowhere on my radar when i dropped out of high school in fact i had a conversation with the uh principal or whatever he's like you know you never really get in the military with the without a high school diploma i'm like i don't give a shit like i'm leaving like yeah he's still that one anyway though yeah well i went and got a ged um because it's not that i was dumb uh my credits didn't transfer because i went through so many different high schools oh transfer and

they're like hey you're gonna have to come back next year and redo the first half of your senior year. I'm like no I'm leaving so so um I went to mammoth. I was a lift operator just stoned there's a lift operator all day long like watching the little kids like just Drop bombs off the lift. It doesn't sound like at all Yeah, they all seem about like this bill. They all seem like they're the same person at every left. It doesn't sound unfamiliar at all. Yeah. They all seem about like this they all seem like they're the same person at every lift. It really is. The lift operators? Yeah. I was that person. I had like almost like dreadlock hair like I was definitely like a little hippie and after that I went to Lake Havasu and I

was gonna be I was gonna try to get on the circuit the freestyle circuit for freestyle jet skiing. Sick. But I had a jet ski and jet skiing sick but I had a jet ski and a little truck but I had no trailer and no friends so I couldn't even get the jet ski in the trailer so I ended up like I think I went I was there for like a year and I went skiing like one time. And then the jet ski was, ended up being in my living room as a couch. I took the trailer off my truck, my little Azuzu, and I put that and that was like my dining room table. So I'd like sit on my jet ski and eat on my camper trailer.

Oh my God. Eat like the tuna surprise. Wow. I love that so much. Next level. It was tuna rice and mustard was like the tuna surprise. I lived on that for like years. The tuna surprise.

It sounds like a sushi roll. But when you're like 19 or 18, 19, like that's just life. You know what I mean? Like I wouldn't want to live like that now because I'd be like, oh my God, this sucks. But at the time, dude, you're out of the nest. It's your first time. You're like, you love it. Yeah.

Everything's great. Yeah. Fuck yeah. Tuna surprise. Tuna surprise. It's the best. All I want is for dinner tonight. you're out of the nest it's your first time you're like you love it yeah it's great yeah fuck yeah tuna surprise i'm gonna splurge to get myself a grilled cheese sandwich see i learned a lot man on that put me from dropped out of 17 so that put me at 19 and then i was like okay i want to i want to do something you know I want to find out who I am as a person as a man and my place in the world so I was like okay what do you have any

idea where that feeling came from because you were saying like you move out and you you're living in this house like nothing really bothers you when you're 18 where do you feel like was there like a certain moment or a conversation or something that turned you into like, fuck, I got to do something about this? You know, that's a good question. I don't know. My dad wasn't around growing up. So my mom's like super hippie. So growing up, I was always, I've always been myself, but I was steered very much toward like this like kind of pacifist, uber hippie lifestyle.

And I always kind of like didn't, I was a little more punk rock than that, you know? I didn't want, I didn't fit, you know? I was trying to fit, but I'm like, this isn't really me. I went and lived with my dad, and he's the complete opposite. Like, hyper-masculine, like, honestly kind of an asshole. Nice guy. Like, great dude, but not a very good dad.

The nice kind of asshole. Right, yeah. He's melody. Now he's great. We have a great relationship now, but back then, but not a very good dad. The nice kind of asshole. Right, yeah. He's melody, now he's great, we have a great relationship now, but back then, it was very tumultuous, but he wasn't around.

So for me, I think growing up, it's like, having, bridging these two worlds of like, hyper-masculine and, you know,

uber-hippie, it's like, where do I fit in that? So for me, it was before the internet too, so you had like, I mean, there's nobody,

you have nobody to turn to, there's no, can't google anything yeah who else has this thing you know so i was like okay what what can i do to find out who i am and i thought okay i got it in my head that i need to find the hardest thing i can possibly do and just just go see it you know what i mean like roll the dice and see where I fall. And if I'm going to roll the dice, I'm going to roll the dice as high as possible. And then if I don't make it, then I'll try something a little less hard,

maybe a little less hard, and see where I fall on the scale, you know? And I think at that age, almost everybody at some point wants to be a Navy SEAL. Like, I think everybody at some point thought about that as a child. Like, I'm a G.I. Joe. Yeah, literally.

I think, I mean, I have my own story on that for sure, but it was something I definitely wanted to do when I was around that age. Yeah. Well, how old are you now? I'm 31. Okay. Yeah. But the whole reason I live in California is because I wanted to be a C.O.

Oh, no way. I don't know if you knew that. Uh-uh. No. But I actually got laser surgery in my eyes. I had to get a PRK instead of LASIK because that was the only one that they actually took. And then I had a ton of different recommendation letters.

I had one from the Brigadier General of West Point and I had another one from a general at Annapolis and I was trying really, really hard to get an officer billet and I just couldn't get it. So then I was like, I don't know if I want to go in as an enlisted guy because I've always been plagued with. So then I was like, I don't know if I want to go in as an enlisted guy

because I've always been plagued with injuries. So I was like, the worst thing that would happen to me is I'd go to Buzz and I'd get an injury and I'd keep getting rolled back, rolled back. So I started doing CrossFit as a way to train and that's when I basically, I lived in Utah at the time.

I was on the Olympic bobsled team and then I moved to California because I was like, I'm going to go train with some of the, I was on the Olympic box set team, and then I moved to California, because I was like, oh, I'm gonna go train with some of the SEALs in San Diego, and this and that, and blah, blah, blah, and I did, and then I also got really fucking good at CrossFit during that time, and everybody's like, you need to compete, you need to do this, and then I had one year until I was allowed to go in, for my eyes to heal, and I went through pretty much everything. I forget what it's called.

Like when you go and they make you duck walk and like, you know, smash your knees on the ground and stuff. They have like the mini, like the mini buds, which is like the officer. It's part of, they have a couple different programs, but I think that's like a name. But I went through like the physical part where they make you do all these like weird things.

And then... Just the miserable shit. Yeah. So then I was like, okay, like this is what I want to do. And then it found, it was like a reality that wasn't going to get an officer billet. And I was like, shit, I don't know what to do. So I just kept crossfitting. They're super hard to get.

Super, super hard. Yeah. So I just kept crossfitting and then it kind of turned into, you know, my career that I have now. But that was literally like all I wanted to do for such a long time. Yeah. Was that such an awesome example of like, that you have to be able to like pivot in life.

You know what I mean? If all you, if all you had your eyes set was like the Navy SEALs, like this is what I got to do. And like everything else, I'm just going to ignore what's happening to a left and right. You wouldn't have anything that you have now in your life because you were able to adapt.

You're like, well, this might not work out. So what am I going to do next? And you're already doing CrossFit. You're like, I'm pretty good at this. So you just kind of like

shift into that and we talk about that all the time how that can make such a huge impact on your life if you're able to do that a lot of the things

that you're not really looking for always wind up being dude absolutely somebody told me a great quote the other day and it's like once in a lifetime opportunities happen

a couple times a week if you're open to it you know you know what to look for I was like man that's so true you know yeah that is crazy alright so now you're open to it you know you know what to look for i was like man that's so true yeah yeah that is crazy all right so now um you're looking for this challenge yeah and i was like

okay i can either you know at the time what's the hardest thing i can do i can either climb mount everest or i can try about that too yeah right but i'm like i don't have fifty thousand dollars to to climb mount climb Mount Everest so like okay I'll start looking in the military I looked into some other branches Air Force has CCT

and PJs Marine Corps has Super Hard Corps but it's just not my style you know Army's different

they're all it's like they're all ice cream but they're all just different flavors of ice cream so like if you don't like Rocky Road don't go buy marshmallows and chocolate chip ice cream because they're all it's like they're all ice cream but they're all just different flavors of ice cream so like if you don't like rocky road don't go buy marshmallows and chocolate chip ice cream because i can hate it you know um so they're all very similar we do all work with each other but at

the time i didn't know that so i went into all the recruiter's offices and kind of got a feel for them and luckily just you know rolled the dice it's like was like, okay, this is, I think this is what I want to do. And trained for it, went for it, and was lucky enough to make it through without any major issues. Got to a team, did six and a half years at Team One, three deployments. One before 9-11 where there was shit going on.

So you're basically doing like, you know, like the cool guy tour of the world hanging out in like thailand and australia going to strip clubs like just yeah massive amount of cool stuff and you guys make pretty good money i see a lot more than everybody like regular enlisted guys yeah more than um more than the regular parts of the navy yeah which isn't a lot but um it's more than it's more than normal um yeah then i got out or i didn't get out but i left team one in 2004 and went over and started becoming an instructor at third phase um so i was instructor from 2004 to 2008 then i got out of military and took a job as a gs

gs position as an instructor at sqt and it it's funny, that's where I met Dave Castro. Because we were actually, like our offices, our desks were right next to each other. And I was starting up Forge with Mikey. And our first business, we had no idea what the hell we were doing. Was Castro involved in CrossFit at this time? He was, but nobody knew what CrossFit was at the time. So this is like 2005. Yeah, they hadn't even had the games yet.

Okay. nobody knew what CrossFit was at the time so this is like 2005 yeah they hadn't even had the games yet okay so I got my first certification in 2005 at like CrossFit Brand X or something and I'm like I was in pretty good shape at the time

and I went there and I'm like oh I'm gonna crush this and I just no pacing no nothing they have this like 400

normal CrossFit thing and I just got so crushed dude I'm like what the hell is going on? So I hated it. Because I sucked at it. So I'm like,

fuck this, dude. I'm just going to go do curls in the corner. But yeah. But then because Dave worked with us at SQT, he was talking with Mike.

He was like, hey, we're having a little gathering at my place, my parents' place. Up in... The ranch? Yeah, the ranch. And we're having a little gathering at my place, my parents' place. The ranch? Yeah, the ranch. And we're just going to go do some workouts and stuff. I'm like, okay, cool, let's go.

Was Dave in good shape at the time? The what? Was Dave in good shape at the time? Because I'm going to go ahead and say right now he's not. I don't think Dave's ever in good shape, to be honest. Can I go on record? Dave has different priorities, I think. Okay.

So yeah, he hooked us up with that, and we went there. And you know what's funny, dude? Like, we had our booth selling t-shirts right next to Bill Henninger and Katie Matters with Rogue. And they were just starting up, too. Oh, shit. Dude, a little, like, literally fold-up table. Yeah. And, like, we're here, they're there, and they have nobody to work. Oh, shit. including spectators including competitors it was a whole different world

back then but yeah it's really interesting to see like now I mean I mean Rogue is obviously Rogue massive

but yeah back then dude it's just like well I used to work in Park City that's when I was on the Olympic team and Chris Buehler

worked out in the gym that I was I was a gym attendant no shit so I just cleaned up after everybody and i remember seeing this little guy just like doing these very strange pull-ups you know which now are butterfly

pull-ups but when he was doing butterfly pull-ups people were doing kipping yeah no one had ever seen a butterfly pull-up yet and i remember he would always ask me to do this workout like 21 15 9 thrusters and pull-ups and i'm like and he'd show me what a thruster was and i'm like and it was 95 pounds and i'm like dude that's fucking dumb yeah you know and then one day he's like i'll give you 500 bucks you can beat my score he did it in like 202 and i was like god and back then that was i was like okay challenge accepted you know so my first time i did all the thrusters i'm broken every time but then i would do these like really strange pull-ups like it's like a mixture of strict and like me trying to figure out what to keep yeah so you're like kicking your knees

into your chest type of thing like trying to keep up somehow so i did uh four and a half minute frame for my first frame my first crossfit workout ever yeah and i proceeded to vomit for probably an hour and a half after like i actually thought i had to go to the hospital i for sure got red though oh yeah dude that's it was really really i'm still scared of that workout i literally almost rather get stabbed. Well, the worst part is that the better you get, the more it hurts because the faster you get. It never gets better. It never gets better.

So then he shows me a video. He's like, I went to the CrossFit Games, and he shows me this video. And I'm looking at it, and I'm like, it's like 2007. And he's doing it at this ranch. He's doing the pull-ups and and the thrusters or maybe it was deadlifts or something and he's like yeah this is the crossfit games and i'm like oh cool and then like now we're here and it's right it's what it is it's a whole but it's crazy by itself yeah it's it's so nuts man um so yeah you're there and you have your booth bill's got

his booth from rogue old school yeah we didn't know nobody knew at all what was going on with CrossFit was gonna go what Rogue was gonna go where Mike and I were gonna go everything was just so new I mean looking back you're like I mean it's obviously the fact that like we're all just like babies wandering around this new little garden that CrossFit built and it's like it's amazing what has sprung up out of that, man. It's been an absolutely incredible opportunity for us. And just to see how it's come up and then also be kind of involved in the periphery, just in different areas. It's been, like, extremely beneficial for Forge as a company. Like, I owe Dave a lot for, for hooking that up.

dude, he's, he's really helped me out a lot with that. Awesome. And a bunch of other things. I don't know, you guys have your, Oh,

no, honestly, I'm fine. I just like, I wish that he didn't blast me all over the whole world and say that I was a fucking douchebag when other people were doing the same thing.

But either way, honestly, I, it was probably more in my favor. I think i got more popular after that than than unpopular like because of that scenario everybody actually hated date more than they hated me so i i got thousands of emails yeah from people that were

like dude dave's a dick blah blah blah that's the podcast i was listening to this morning the one where you're talking about um that whole situation Yeah. Was it on Barbell Shred? It was on yours. Oh, okay. Yeah. But yeah, man, I had a similar situation where with Demon Bells, right? Yeah.

The company with the kettlebells on it. Somebody was upset about something and, you know, dealing with, like we were talking about, dealing with a normal

customer base, you're going to get people emailing like all kinds of random stuff they're upset with. Like, like, random stuff they're upset with. Like random stuff.

And somebody was upset with something that wasn't a very major thing, but she thought it was. I'm like, look, here's what we can do. I'm really sorry this happened. Something like the box wasn't perfectly tied up or something. We're shipping 50 pound chunks of iron across the country. It's's it's not gonna arrive like the boxes are gonna look that great um so she's upset about something and then i was like look this is this is the best we can do um i think it refunded her full refund or partial refund whatever it was but anyway we took care of

it pretty well she still wasn't happy i'm like look like i'm sorry but that's all we can do so i'm gonna blast you on this and that i'm like you know what I I hope you screenshot of this like I'm sorry but like this is like this is very normal this is the best we can do I'm sorry you're not okay with it but you know all right and so she ends up blasting it out and I didn't see it because it's in private like uh any message area or something but then I get a couple emails like, oh my God, you're such a dick. I can't believe you did blah, blah, blah, whatever she said I did. But we get 10 times more emails like,

hey, I never heard about you guys. I really like your product. And like, I totally understand where you're coming from on this. I think you took care of it pretty well. And we'd like to work with you and buy some of your product. So it was one of those things like,

I was like, oh man, this really sucks. I hate letting people down. I never want want them if i give them a product like i want them to be super fucking happy about it now so it's always internally just i take it personally when people don't like what we do or aren't happy with what we do but there's a limit to where like okay fuck it yeah if you could if you could feel like you did your very best you know what i mean there's a reasonable backstop to that. Yeah. Exactly.

I have a friend who runs a golf blog. It's like actually pretty big. And when Tiger got arrested for the DOI and like all those pictures came out, they posted something on the Instagram. I forgot what it was. It was like a joke about the whole Tiger thing. And they posted his mugshot on the thing. And they actually got an email from tiger's lawyer asking him to take it

down and the guy was like hell no i'm not taking it down like if i'm the guy who gets sued by tiger woods i'm fucking rich and famous forever because like anywhere this shit's gonna come up they're gonna be like who the fuck is this guy right and go to his blog and that's gonna blow up it really is true any publicity is good yeah yeah I think at a certain point though, like if you, the core of it has to be that you were right in the beginning.

Yeah, of course. Yeah, absolutely. It doesn't matter how the message gets out but once they look into it, as long as the core of the message is that you were right, then I think,

I think you're almost bulletproof at that point. You like to show them and that's what I did. People email me, I showed them, literally sent them the screenshots of the email and they're like, oh, I see your point. All like to show them and that's what I did. People email me. I showed them literally send them the screenshots of

the email and like and they're like oh I see your point. All right. Yeah. Yeah. If you do your very best and you can you

know fight off the little things that happen like that and they can actually turn around and help you. I think it all comes down to just

consistently doing the right thing and just being generally a good person. Like shit just works out. Yeah. It really does. Business and life and so many things dude you talk about this shit all the time

so then you go from forge to demon bells so now you're once again trying to build a brand yeah there's another brand i i built and sold a another program called the disciples of iron so i sold that to um a friend of mine a couple years ago. And then Demon Bells. So yeah, nobody had come out with, we're the first company to come out on the market with kettlebells with faces on them. And I didn't intend to start the company.

I wanted to go buy some. I'm like, dude, somebody must make these. You know, like I want a kettlebell face with a skull on it. Like where can I buy one? Google did. Nobody made them. I'm like, well, I can't be the only guy that wants one of these you're pretty cool so i went through the process of uh starting a huge pain in the butt man i mean that's the equipment manufacturing is not a business i will ever get into again um that's probably why i wasn't around dude yeah mad props to bill from rogue for doing

he's done because it is insanely hard to do what he does i mean it seems easy like oh just make stuff and people buy it you should be like no no it's a whole different process um so yeah we ran into a ton of issues with that we're able to you know pull some trapeze and be like like highs and lows like oh we're killing it. Like when they featured us at the games in, I think 2015 or something like that, did a closeup on it. And like,

I was like, dude, we're going to sell a million dollars of this stuff. Be great. We sold like, I think like five grand that day and then it dipped right back down.

I'm like, what the hell is going on? So massive highs and lows. And then we're experimenting with overseas manufacturing in the beginning. That was another nightmare. Especially when you deal with something that's so heavy. It's like you have the shipping costs and all that shit.

Same thing with Rogue again. They do such an amazing job with that. But that's got to be a challenge in that industry especially. Yeah, absolutely. It's massively competitive. Your margins are razor thin. Your product is super expensive. It's incredibly difficult to ship. And the CrossFit market is difficult to deal with. Gym owners are usually not killing it in the gym. You know how hard it is to make a gym i'm like one of i'm like one of very few yeah people reach out to me every single day they're like yeah dude how do you handle this problem like what did you do to get here yeah people don't realize how hard it is and they think like oh i'm gonna open a crossfit gym and charge 150 200 bucks and be rolling it in like no no no like

a crossfit gym is 99 of the time just a passion project and you're lucky to break even and i think people are starting to realize that now, because there was a time where there was a new CrossFit gym opening up every single day. Everybody thought it was just a money machine. Yeah. And everyone thought, well, I love working out. You're one of the first ones. Yeah.

Like Jason Kaliba or something like that, which I've heard now that he's not even. Oh, really? All his gyms are kind of... Well, also the cycles. Everything's cyclical, whether branded. And CrossFit is a brand. So it runs in cycles. And then you've got a million other factors that come into play with that.

It is kind of a discretionary thing. It's an expensive gym membership. Sometimes, you know, eight to ten times what a normal gym membership is. So you have to provide that much value. And then if most gyms can't provide the kind of value you know and you know what what it takes provide that value is your training staff and providing like you're talking about on the podcast earlier that lifestyle you know it's not just a quality thing it's not just an equipment thing it's it

becomes a lifestyle like why do people go to chop why do people go to these things kind of build a community yeah I a vibe. And they feel connected to the brand. Say, I am this brand. I'm involved in this community. This represents me. And I made sure that every person was on my level. I remember on other podcasts I've

talked about my first three months open, I coached every single class, every single day. And I had hundreds of people hit me up. They're like, hey, I want to be a coach there, blah, blah, blah. Like I had been amping up my social media for months before I was even open. Like I had over 100 members my first day. And my first class was 5 a.m. and my last one was 7.45 p.m.

And I did every class, every day. I wrote the workouts. I did the billing. I signed people up. I mean, I was sleeping three, four hours hours a night I was training 10 to 20 minutes a day like little 10 minute parts and I go to regionals and this and that and I literally just like unless someone came in and fucking blew me off my feet I was like you are not coaching here yeah I've had people coach one class and I'd be

like no and they'd be like do those only one class I was like, dude, there was only one class. I was nervous. I'm like, I don't care. You're out. I can already tell. And they'll go. No, that's what it takes, man. It really is. You never expect somebody to.

I mean, the ideal as a business owner is you can replicate yourself and just have a bunch of clones of you running around. That's fantastic. But the realities of that is, number one, it's not possible. And if you have other people with your mentality, they're off doing their doing their own shit you know i mean they're off building their own business i feel like for most businesses you need to have the vision of like you're gonna own several businesses or like your one business is gonna branch into other opportunities and if you don't believe that then you're probably gonna go into the wrong business like. It's not really necessarily delegation, but it kind of is. And I think it's almost more important to hire somebody that can supplement you.

You know what I mean? Like Ryan and I are very different people, but we work very well together. And I think there's a lot of stuff that we're able to do because of the energy that we have in between us. Where if we were exactly the same person, I don't think that would work out. Oh, yeah. You know? Yeah, absolutely. Mike and I had that that issue first started up we literally flipped a coin to see who would be like

you know president and vice president like he's like all right who's He got president, I got vice president. Which doesn't matter to me. But we had, that's how little idea of what we were doing we had. We had no solid roles or sense of responsibilities. There was nothing set up because we didn't know what to do. So the problems that we ended up running into was that we kept stepping on each other's toes on the things that we were doing similar um but thankfully we

were different enough where he was good at a lot of things um that i wasn't good at and i was good at more like the technical side that he wasn't strong in so what we're able to what we're able to build together turned out to be much greater than what either of us could have built on our own. We made so many mistakes those first couple of years. Even if you didn't build anything though, you already are way ahead of everybody else because most people have ideas and they don't do shit about it. Yeah.

That's the biggest thing, just execution. Was he a SEAL as well? Yeah. So you, right before we started the podcast, you were talking about something that is kind of like a misconception in a general world with like SEAL starting businesses. Oh, yeah. I thought that was super interesting if you want to go into that yeah well the thing is like people always think if you're if you're successful at a high level in something then

you must have some innate knowledge and that's going to carry you over to being highly successful in other things and there there are a couple um a couple guys who are navy seals that have gone on to be you know successful to very successful like eric prince from blackwater obviously is the most successful one i know of um there's a couple other guys uh and then me so you know medium edge on there um but that's not that's not the norm you know and because where we're at now is we do B2B apparel production for other companies. So we're like the brand behind the brands. So when a company wants to establish an apparel product, we help them craft that product,

make sure that it matches their marketing, all the other stuff that they've already built. Then we build the product out to make sure that it fits, make sure that they can sell it. They have all their social media platforms out, everything dialed in. And then we give them the product and help them push it. So we have a lot of team guys because I'm a Navy SEAL riding around a Lamborghini. All these guys, they hate me at the team.

Like, oh, fuck this douchebag. And then they get out and they realize nobody's going to pay them $100,000 a year to just hang out and be cool on the beach. So like, what am I going to do? So then they call me up like, hey bro, let me pick your brain from the years. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. And I used to though, I used to hang out with them and walk them through it.

And what I found is that a lot of the guys, they'd have this great idea, but they wouldn't come to me for input. They just wanted to hear validation that their idea was great. So I take this idea and like, okay, this sounds good. Here's the good parts. Here's what I think will work. Here's things that if you want to be able to scale up, you're going to have to change this and maybe think about modifying this or whatever. Give them constructive criticism. And they just be like, oh, you know what you're talking about i'm

gonna go do it i'm like well why did i bother why do you bother even telling me if you're not going to listen to the input i have yeah and that happened so often that finally i was like fuck it i'm just not and i'm not gonna help at all until they show like okay they build a little bit and i'll come in like okay cool like you put the time in you put the effort in you know you have some stake in it and then we'll go in like here's here's how to fix it but the biggest problem that i found is that guys who operate at a high level like that they tend to get a massive ego um and this happens a lot with, uh, uh, sports guys too. So like NFL, um, all these guys, they get a lot of money and they get treated like, like Kings and Queens and princesses.

And then all of it dries up. So they get out of the military, their contracts are gone or whatever it is. And they're left with like, okay, now what? And a lot of these NFL players end up working at like Home Depot and stuff, man. A lot of these team guys end up like, Home Depot and stuff, man. A lot of these team guys end up selling meat door to door and stuff. And it's because they're not willing to

take a step down and be a new guy again and be open to learning. I have an ego too. Obviously I'm a team guy. I'm going to have an ego. But I try to use it to drive myself to learn more. You know what I have an ego too. Obviously, I'm, you know, a team guy. I'm going to have an ego. But I try to use it to drive myself to learn more. You know what I mean? Because like if somebody comes in and tells me I'm doing something totally wrong,

I'm like, awesome, dude. Like if you see something I'm fucking up, like let me know, dude. Like let me take notes. Like I want to fix this. I want to present the best part and the best service I can. And if there's a way that I can improve that, I'm all ears. But I've always been like that. But a lot of the guys that I talk with now, they're getting out of the military.

They're like, whoa, I just want to go shoot guns and have people pay me because I'm really cool. I'm like, oh, business doesn't really work like that. But I fell into that too. When I first got out, Mike and I had no idea what we were doing. And we would go meet with these people that own like massive print shops up in LA and licensing companies and stuff.

And we'd let them know like, hey, we're a couple of Navy SEALs and starting a clothing line. And the Navy SEAL thing got our foot in the door but the first couple meetings were terrible I mean we'd go in there

and we'd pitch and we didn't have we didn't have anything printed out we literally had like shitty tech packs on our computer just like showing them

like oh hold on let me scroll over like a total disaster right but it got us in the door so we'd go in there and they'd be like hey guys

really great to meet you thank you for your service you're really cool but you're never gonna make us any fucking money so we don't care and we're like fuck like this that's crushing to hear that absolutely but after it happened a couple times we you know driving back from LA and we're like okay nobody gives a shit like we can use the Navy yielding as a way to get these meetings and get in the foot in the door. But if we don't learn how to offer value and prove ourselves within this, this new realm of business, we're like, we're gonna get doors slammed in our faces all fucking day. Um, so we went back, totally redid everything, um, and did the best we could.

And then every meeting we had after that, they'd be like, well, it's kind of cool, but here's where you're fucking up. And we're like, okay, tell us how to fix this. And eventually we got to the point where we go into meetings like, okay, it's pretty good. And then eventually it worked out into where we're fairly competent in what we're doing. But it's always a progression, man. I mean, you know how it is. Business changes. I mean, you could be at the totally top of your game today,

and in six months, shit will change, and what you've been doing today will be totally irrelevant. So if you don't have that mentality of constant learning, those are the guys that we see struggle the most because they'll find a winning formula, work it for a while, and it doesn't work. And bank on that forever. Yeah. I mean Blockbuster is the perfect example.

Right. Exactly. That's what I learned in school. They saw the trend coming with Netflix and Hulu and all that stuff but they were like, nah, this shit's working for us. We're going to keep doing exactly this. Yeah. Exactly.

How easy would it have been for them to pivot into something like Netflix, like an online marketing and they could have easily saved their company. Yeah. And didn't they refuse to buy, was it Redbox or something like Netflix, like an online marketing, and they could have easily saved their company. Yeah. And didn't they refuse to buy, was it Redbox or something like that? They're like, oh, we're not going to buy that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly. I think it's so important to have a healthy mix of the self-confidence, but also then

the vulnerability. You need the confidence because you're going to get doors slammed in your face all day long. Shit's going to go wrong. You're not just going to start a business today and all of a sudden be successful and wake up tomorrow so you need to self-confidence of like alright this isn't working but I believe in myself I believe in my idea right and I know that one day this is gonna work but then also have the vulnerability on the

other side to be like okay I understand I'm not perfect and I understand that there's a lot for me to learn and I think that vulnerability will take you a long way because I'm sure so open to like please just help me that there's a lot for me to learn. And I think that vulnerability will take you a long way because you're going to be so open to like, please just help me. Yeah. It's a balance. But I think at the end of the day, like as long as you're trying to get better, you're going to fucking learn, man. You know? You're not going to be perfect.

And so many people paralyze themselves to like – they have this idea like, oh, I'm going to wait. I'm just going to wait. It's one thing. Just one more thing. One more thing. And like, dude, I'm going to wait. I'm just going to wait. It's one thing. Just one more thing. One more thing. Like, dude, fuck it. You know, none of us would have an iPhone in our pocket if they waited to like, there's always one more thing to ask. Yeah. Like, you know what? When this happens, then we'll do it. Yeah. I remember asking one of my, um, my senior

high school teacher. He was a good friend of mine and I ran track and, uh, played a bunch of different sports in high school and he was like my best he was like my my favorite person when i was in school and i remember just being like hey when i get out and i go to college and start applying for jobs but like what do you think like the best thing for me to like have on my resume because i trusted him he said it doesn't matter what the fuck's on your resume you don't have communication skills yeah he's like he's like you should write at the top of your resume like literally before all your cool shit just be like i work really well with people yeah he goes and you'll fucking crush it and like i didn't understand that comment until

i was like 30 years old yeah and i'm like look i totally understand it but i remember even yannick here like he i mean he works in my gym as a coach and every coach i have right now they literally all say to me because my gym is so prestigious and everybody wants to work there, if you want to be a CrossFit coach, you want to work at Chalk. And they'd be like, well, hey, man, is it cool that I have this certification or this or that? I'm like, dude, can you fucking fix everything that happens in any class? And are you proficient enough to show the movements to anyone? And can you tell anyone how to scale something on the fly?

Like that's what I care about. You can take all those certifications and go shove it. Especially if you can't talk to people. If you're not fun and you're not like providing energy, there's so many people that are book smart and you literally can't even talk to them. Especially in CrossFit too. They're so fit and you have the conversations

and they're like, they literally can't talk unless they're doing burpees or something. And that's why great CrossFit too. Yeah. They're so fit and you have a conversation with them. They're like, they literally can't talk unless they're doing burpees or something, dude. And that's why great CrossFit athletes are not necessarily great gymnasts. Being a great athlete does not make you a great coach. No. That's almost in everything. And like going to art school, that was one of the biggest things that I've learned because there were so many kids that were way better artists than me, but they're never going to land a job because they can't hold a conversation for fucking 10 minutes.

Yeah. You know what I mean? And speaking of the resume thing too, I did this thing that actually got me my first job coming out of college because my teacher told me just do like one little thing that'll make the person like smirk or like smile like on your resume where you're like all right i get it that's kind of cool right so i have the regular resume print on the front and then the back of my resume was all like a little pattern i made out of my logo and inside of the pattern if you really looked at it was like a negative space and it said I really need this fucking job but you could only see it if you actually like looked at it yeah so going into newbie I was like oh I was wondering if they

if they saw this and then I remember the job that I actually got it and then the guy was like and guess what you got this fucking job and I was like oh yeah that's fucking fucking awesome. So little stuff like that will set you apart. Yeah, man. Dude, if you learned that at 30, you're like eight years ahead of me. I only reached like – I'm 40 now. So like probably 38 when I finally realized that because I've been building my own brands for seven seven eight years but now that we're in a position where we're helping to build other brands we we work so closely with the owners that we see how they run their operations and it's the same problems over and over again so I've learned so much more about business in the last two years of running this

company that I ever did running my own brand. It's been absolutely exponentially fantastic learning process. But the communication is key. And we see it all the time where guys have like a great product, a great mission, this thing, but they don't communicate with their partner. And they both want the same thing, but they're not communicating the same ways. And then they totally miss each other and it escalate and then it just blows up. And we've seen like, you know, multi-million dollar brands just implode over this stuff. Like consistently and it's for the same reasons.

And I read a book a couple years ago. I wish I'd read it when I was like in my 20s. We always have a book recommendation on the show so. Oh, this is probably going to be a little bit different. It's not a business book at all, but talk about work-life balance. It's a playboy magazine. My favorite is pretty close. It might be.

Yeah. But work-life balance, we have all these highs and lows, and some of the biggest highs and the biggest lows have been with business, but they've also been in personal relationships. So to be – money is nice, but happiness is the real goal, right? A hundred percent. So to do that, you have to have a balance of everything in your life that you place value on. So for me, business is one thing but it's fairly analog. You know what I mean?

Like you can learn a couple basic things and as long as you continue consistently, you're pretty much going to get where you need to go. Human emotions

are a completely different animal. So as far as communication, the one book that I wished I read when I was like 25 is called The Five Love Languages.

And it totally changed. It's amazing, dude. It totally changed my perspective on, obviously, you know, male-female relationships. But I see a lot of the same value being put into the business relationships. Oh, okay. Because a lot of things,

so there's five different things that people value. I forget what they are in a second. One is touch, but you don't want to go like touch your business partner. Yeah, touch, affirmation. Yeah, so you touch your business partner. That might cause more problems. Yeah, words of affirmation and acts of service and things like that. But people are motivated in a certain way or you're

fulfilled by your business partner or even the feedback that you get from your clients and customers. You're always searching for that feedback to feel fulfilled. And that's been a big learning curve for me is now that we're scaling up, I'm having to get more empathetic and deal with how to motivate employees because that's the only way I can scale we're as big as we can get with having me run the shop so the next evolution for me is to become a better boss and be more empathetic and understand what motivates other people so that book even though I originally bought it because I was having massive relationship problems, not with Disney, but a previous girlfriend.

But it was so impactful and it made me realize so much that I was doing wrong that it has huge carry over the business world too. Because it's just human, it's human emotion, human interaction that runs everything. It is. And I'm such a Vulcan, you know what I mean? Like I only care about one thing and that's freedom, right? interaction that runs everything it is and i'm i'm such a vulcan you know what i mean like i only care about one thing and that's freedom right the freedom to experience life any way i want to the easiest way to do that is to make enough money you can do whatever the fuck you want so that's why i really like money because like money by itself is useless it's literally paper

or ones and zeros on a computer screen it It's the most absolutely useless fucking thing ever. But it's what you can purchase with it and trade it in for that you can pretty much convert it to anything you want. You know? And the possibilities are the most, yeah. Yeah. And that's what I want to do is be able to experience life anyway I want to. I want to go experience what it's like to, you know, ride on a fricking jet across the

Arctic Circle, you know? Like that'd be fucking cool. I want to go do that. But to do that, you need money. But our employees aren't motivated by that. Some of our employees

want stability. They want a white ticket fence. You know what I mean? They want to do work nine to five and then come home. Some people want words of affirmation.

They want to be told, hey, you're doing a great job on this. So for me, being so – That's crazy how much different everybody is. Isn't it weird? Yeah. Like the white pig offense in 9 to 5 life just fucking killed me.

Oh, I cheat myself. Not at all. Yeah. But for those people, that's what motivates them. So that book helped me realize that I need to get a lot better at understanding other people if I want to grow my business. Every girlfriend I've ever had told me to read that book. So we have another thing in common.

But it's the nice thing about it too. It's not like a cover to cover book. You go take a little test on what, what you are and then you only have to read a couple of chapters and you're like, Oh, I get it. And like you said, I think it helps you in so many other aspects of your life as well. Not to be like manipulative or anything like that, but it really helps to like walk into a room and be able to understand who you're talking to and who that person wants you to be. Especially kind of like in a business sense, you know, make them feel secure, make them feel safe if they're investing in you, if they're trying to work with you. Oh, yeah.

Whatever it is, right? So if they're able to relate to you, not that you need to be fake or anything, but if you understand what they're looking for, it's a lot easier for you to give out that vibe. Yeah, just communicating, like being open and honest with what you want and trying to figure out what they want. And it's so much more efficient and faster to figure out the human piece of it.

Cause I sucked at that for a long time. I was such like a, my natural default is like an engineer, straight analytics robot, you know what I mean? When I was growing up, I had no sense of humor. I didn't understand sarcasm. Somebody tell me a joke

and be like, I just stare at them like I don't understand humor at all. So that's my default. That makes for a good bus instructor. The weird thing is, um, part of this is that my dad wasn't, I didn't grow up with my dad.

So like guy humor, you know, whatever, like, like busting each other's balls. Yeah. I never played any sports. So I,

I never had that. So for me going into the SEAL teams, so much stuff went over my head that I telling jokes. I'm like, I don't understand what the fuck they're talking about. So I had to go through and literally as a kid analyze what it was that made things funny. So I would literally hang out with my friends that were funny and be like, okay, is the content of what they said?

Is the context of the way they said it? Is it the pause that they did it? Is there facial expressions? The delivery? Yeah. How are they getting this reaction from people? So I had to actually analyze it, dissect it,

figure it out, try to replicate it. And now I'm funny as fuck. No, I'm just kidding. But it really shaped kind of, it helped me become not an extrovert but not so much of an introvert that I would be – when I was younger, I was like incapable of conversation. Like I just was – or go out to recess and I'd literally be the kid to go out and sit at the door and eat my lunch at the door because I didn't know how to communicate with people. It was totally weird.

Yeah, I don't say about people like that that's crazy usually those people stay like that their entire life it's crazy that you were able

to figure it out this is a weakness of mine and I need to change it do you think maybe SEALs I can imagine just being there

and just fucking busting balls and you kind of gotta get that quick sense of humor so you can get the humor off of you and project it

onto another guy there's definitely some motivation to uh to not stand out there yeah yeah yeah for sure but yeah it was so my default setting is like very analytical so that's why business is so when i first got into business i thought oh it's just ones and zeros and if you do this and you'll get this outcome and i have no idea how much actual personality and communication came into play but now that we've been working with so many other brands i realize that it is a massive amount i'd say like 80 80 to 90 percent of of not not starting a business but scaling a business and keeping it successful is communication it really is super interesting so i ask this question a business, but scaling a business and keeping it successful, is communication.

It really is. Super interesting. So I ask this question a lot, actually, but you might actually be the perfect person in the world to ask this just because you work with so many businesses that are just starting out. Exactly like in today's society, since you work with so many businesses, what are the most common flaws you see in people starting their own brands? It depends on the brand. But typically, they focus too much on the idea and they wait to get perfect.

When in reality, the execution is what matters. You got to understand that your first product is not going to be perfect. You just got to have something that you're relatively proud of that you can stand behind and be open to the feedback. And once you get feedback, like, okay, here's how we're going to fix it and do round two. We're on iPhone, what, 10 now? Yeah. You know?

I mean, but if they came out with the phone. Yeah, but if they waited until iPhone 10, we'd never have an iPhone. They did the one, like, hey, this is good enough. Here you go. Right. And then they're like, oh, iPhone 2. And people are gaming for it, you know? But business is always like that.

It's never going to be perfect. You just have to let the balls throw something out there and run with it. and people are gaming for it, you know? But business is always like that. It's never gonna be perfect. You just have to have the balls to throw something out there and run with it, but also it's that balance between hyper-aggression and then humility. You have to have the balls to throw it out there, but also the humility to temper the feedback and be like, okay, here's how we're gonna deliver

a better product, you know? Because a lot of people don't do that. They have one hit and they're like, okay, that's it, and then we're just going to sell this thing forever and they don't change and then you run you know three five maybe seven year cycle and then you're done yeah i can totally see that just kind of grasping onto a little baby and like this is exactly what i wanted to do and we're going to do this like this forever yeah because nobody wants to change it's hard to change dude and nowadays everything's changing like so fast yeah so much so fast because like social media like any any song nowadays is like cool for a week and then everyone just forgets about it yeah it's

i literally haven't even heard like a like a metal song or like a classic rock song in forever like there's no one really replicating that no anymore. It's like EDM or hip-hop. Hip-hop is turned into just... It's just like mumbling now. They're like, I'm so fucking rich. It doesn't even matter. I'm going to start taping the sound of me taking a shit, and that's going to be fucking worth a million bucks. Yeah, somebody could sell that, I'm sure.

I'm sure. They talk about it. But just like going viral on that stuff it's so insane how it works and it just it's so fast that you just have to be able to adapt to it like the fucking yodel boy that we're talking about at walmart this show's gonna air in like four weeks and no one's gonna know who that kid is anymore you know and so adapting to something like that i think is huge instead of just grasping onto one idea just syncing with it yeah and the nice thing too is that um so like if you think

about a couple years ago the only way to get exposure was like before Facebook knows more than a couple years ago now but the only way to get exposure was through television right and that was a massively expensive production process it took a long time but now we can literally sit here on our phone and it was expensive yeah massively prohibitively social media is free it's free yeah this is this is literally the best time in the history of the human race to launch a company it really is the tools that you have today some of them didn't exist three or four years ago yeah instagram didn't exist four years ago whatever it is you

know like when we first started first first company, there was MySpace. Facebook wasn't around. So it's good and bad. Back then, you could launch something and it was good because the competition was less. So if you did a few things, you could stand out. But now, it's so easy to do that everything is so saturated. So you have to do different things to stand out it's it's constantly changing man yeah it blows me away how fast it's changing now it is crazy for sure

you guys in business to business how much social media stuff do you guys use um not enough um i definitely notice when i do have a little bit of time i'll post more on my own page and the business page. And then we notice about a week or two later, we see a great big influx of interest in what we're doing. Oh, okay. And more clients, more business. But when I clam up and I don't have time to do those things, that new client business slows down quite a bit. Okay.

How much other advertising outside of social media in general do you guys do? We don't. The reason for it right now is that we're almost maxed out with what we can do. We were maxed out three months ago and I hired a sales rep and an assistant for Disney. Disney is my fiance but she's also my CEO so So she runs my whole, basically runs my whole company. She's amazing at it. She's in my room right now working. Yeah, she is.

Yeah, she was working on the way up here. She's a lot like me. We get along really well. So let's say I'm a company and I'm reaching out to you right now. What is my scenario coming into you for your help and then what are you going to do for me the over the last couple years just so people understand exactly what it is you do and how you make them basically our our best thing that we can do is um the most value we can bring is a company that's already kind of built up a following, built up a little bit. Like a clothing brand?

Usually a clothing brand, yeah. Or at least a business that's selling apparel as a product. So some of our companies in the logging industry, right? One company has this product that splits logs. They want to get an apparel. And they have a little bit of a following. So typically a company that's about selling $80,000 to $100,000 of the product a year, we've, I think, our fourth or fifth brand now that we've brought them from the $100,000 mark to the million dollar mark within 9 to 12 months.

Whoa. Yeah. And what is that process like? What exactly do you guys do for them? Basically, um, when you're selling about like, you know,

20 to $50,000 annual, it's just like, you just go down to the corner store and you get your prints, your stuff printed and it's like no big deal. And, and you're selling to your, like your homies and stuff like that. Yeah. When you get to the hundred thousand dollar mark,

you're starting to sell to people that aren't your friends, the people don't, that don't know you. So you're starting to branch out of your circle. So they expect a little bit higher quality than just the corner shop. Printing is one of those things where it's super easy to do, but it's super hard to do well. So we work with a variety of print shops that are really good at what they do, and we've streamlined our production process. So when these guys come to us, normally the brand is they're scaling up, but they're having problems with the quality.

They're having problems with the deadline, having problems with the print shop not being able to deliver what they say they can when they can. They're having problems with their customer base being like, oh, we're, you know, we really want this this drop and you guys are a week behind schedule and they're like fuck what do we do so we come in as we basically take all that we handle it for them they email us like hey here's our design files here's what we want we're like no problem deliver products in two two and a half weeks and it's exactly what they need it's fully private labeled with their own custom branded neck label folded and bagged 100% guaranteed by us that it's fully private label with their own custom branded neck label folded in bag harm sent guaranteed by us that it's going to be quality stuff like exactly what they ordered so we're a little bit more expensive than a normal print shop but what they get out of that is a lot more valuable so then they just put it

in their warehouse send that to their customers and we take all it off their plate and then we also do you guys don't send it they have customers, and we take all of it off their plate. And then we also... So you guys don't send it, they have to send it? We can send it too. We can do fulfillment. Most of the brands we work with already have their own warehouse, their own stuff. Usually what I recommend is that they do their own fulfillment because, especially when a brand is first starting out, that custom touch goes so far

so like if you're the brand owner even if you just write thanks on every packing slip that takes you what five minutes a day maybe to go through it but if somebody pulls it out

from a brand they love throwing a sticker throwing something like that they're like oh he's signing this himself I went to the fitness business summit in San Diego two like two or three weeks ago oh yeah

and the guy who owns First Form several months ago oh. Uh, Andy. Yeah. Oh yeah. You actually reposted his Lamborghini. Yeah. We've been chatting on Instagram quite a bit. So he, his, his business model, he has an entire team and he makes hundreds of millions of dollars. Yeah. It's out of control. If you guys don't know who I'm talking about, he owns first form supplements. Andy Frisella, right seller right andy for seller he actually has a great podcast as well um does not give a fuck about anything which is great i love love love love love that because i feel like there's a couple people in this room they're about the same so um he has an entire department where the only thing they do is write handwritten cards to every person who

buys their supplements handwritten it says thank you or whatever and he says like the amount of loyalty that he builds from that is literally priceless like oh yeah he's like i don't fucking care how much money that these it cost me to hire someone to just sit there all fucking day and write it i will pay for that all day long and anybody who comes in my industry and tries to come up against me will be destroyed because you will get a product instead of like a relationship he's like and i'm the fucking relationship like every time no actually and most people don't know enough about the product anyway to know what the fucking difference is you know i mean like i've been involved in fitness not at the same level you guys are but i've been around it for long enough.

I don't know the fucking difference. I know casing is different in a way, but I don't know why. So I'll buy whatever the fuck. But the difference is... Most people aren't going to do the research, really. Right. I mean, you're probably going to wind up talking to the person who wants to know every single question, but the reality is that 90% of them don't really care.

They just want... Whatever the fuck's the point of that? They want you to tell... I mean, people... I don't know. People email me all the time and say, hey, is is this product good when all they had to do was a little bit of research but hey ron kirk said it was good it's fine yeah no absolutely man all the time yeah and that that relationship dude it comes back to communication it really is but that's that's

the number one thing that i tell all these clients that come to us is like as an apparel brand you're not really selling apparel you you're not really selling apparel you're selling a lifestyle the apparel is just a way for somebody to buy into your lifestyle

to represent their lifestyle right exactly like a t-shirt is like a tattoo that you put on for the day you know

I want to look like this yeah like Iron Maiden some days you're feeling Iron Maiden you know sometimes you just want to put on like a plain plain shirt

I love like Patagonia because of what they stand for. It's such a rad brand. Just saying. Shout out. I am wearing an Iron Maiden shirt

now. It has nothing to do with Patagonia. Trying to get sponsorships left and right. That's not a Patagonia shirt, is it? No, no, no.

No, I was saying I'm wearing an Iron Maiden shirt, not a Patagonia shirt. But I just think it's cool that they take a lot of their money and they put it

into like the actual place of Patagonia in Chile. Oh, really? And they, take a lot of their money and they put it into like the actual place of patagonia and chile oh really and they uh like a lot of that money goes back to the land to keep it from not being built on and all that like the lifestyle of it i think it's really rad having a mission having substance behind it goes a long way something for people to buy into you know it's not just a shirt with the print on there's something that's a more to say about it yeah like tom's shoes they're giving a pair of shoes away yeah I was going to say that I was going to bring that up too so when people buy Tom's shoes

like the shoes might be whatever but they want to be known as hey I buy Tom's shoes because I'm a good fucking person I care about this shit yeah

exactly so that's that thing like it cost them a little bit of money but what they get back is

massive in terms of like market share and that that communication. It's huge, man. So what made you fall into that now? So like I think what happens with all of us is we're all – we have a vision. We start on that vision.

Things change. We go with the change. Like were you in the middle of something that you like – you kind of like and you're just like, man, like when I see this next thing, I'm just going to pounce on it. And then obviously you pounce on the right thing. Well, yeah, it was kind of weird. Um, I never even thought of this as a viable business model. I didn't even know what this was until I still don't. People like, I was like, what did this guy do? I was trying to explain it to him. I was like, he's going to do better than I will. I still don't know how to describe it. It's weird.

So what I did, my job in Forge and the apparel that I had before was I was basically the production manager. So I would do the designing and then I would like put together tech packs and make sure that everything worked correctly and interface with the print shop, make sure that everything was going correctly. Just basically run the production. And so when you're an apparel brand, your other friends that have businesses typically go to you and be like, hey, we're having problems with our print shop, which is print shops are notorious for having major problems.

I agree. Even the print shops we work with, if we didn't have our systems in place and leverage our volume to control the product output even they have massive problems but we do at least a million dollars a year on each of them so they don't want to fuck up

so we go in there this needs to be like this we basically have control over all their employees to get what we need done so so i was doing that with with forged and our friends would come to us and be like hey can you produce these shirts for us i'm like yeah sure this is kind of like a homie thing um i've been doing on the side since like 2009 but i didn't really think of it as a business until uh i everything, sold Demon Bells and I'm like, it's the first time in like eight years I had a break. I'm like, okay, well, you know,

what do I do now? And I had a couple of friends that owned a pair of lines that were having problems with production and they were paying like at a thousand units, they were paying like $10 a shirt. I'm like, that's crazy. Bro, $10. I'm like, holy crap, man. I'm like, dude, I'll get those to you. The exact same product for $6, you know, $6.50 if it's still green.

And he's like, bro, you can do that? Awesome. I'm like, hell yeah, let me do it. So times 10,000, that's a lot of money. Yeah. So we saved him a massive amount of money. He was a pretty big brand. So then in tactical circles, so then we ended up getting referrals from them.

They were like, oh, who does your shirts? He's like, oh, I go through Ryan. And I'm like, oh, I guess I should make a company around this. So we ended up building it out. And I had no idea if it was going to work. I'm like, I'm just going to do it like as like, you know, a homey thing for a little while, see if it works. And we ended up getting enough, enough steam, enough momentum, enough interest.

But I'm like, okay, let's find a name and let's put it together and let's make it a real business. There's always levels to this, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's like, okay, we're, you know, doing, you know, $100,000, $200,000 a year in business. I'm like, okay, this is cool. I can still have my day job just on the side. And then started to get more. I'm like, oh, my God.

So we got up to a million dollars a year in business. Not net, just gross. We run really small margins. Excuse so we got it i got it up to a million dollars a year in gross by my fucking self no employees no nothing well with a day job i'm like holy fucking shit dude like completely unsustainable i was getting up at like four or five in the morning driving to to the print shop, approving stuff, getting stuff organized, leaving at like 7 a.m., going to my day job,

getting off there at like 2 p.m., going back to the print shop, finalizing everything, shipping it out, going home, emails to like, you know, midnight,

one in the morning, and no time to spend with my girl. It was miserable. I mean, we were making decent money, but it was totally unsustainable, you know? I mean, you know how it is. Like, you can do that for a little while, we were making decent money, but it was totally unsustainable, you know?

I mean, you know how it is. Like, you can do that for a little while and then you're like, fuck this. So my first...

And then nothing matters anymore either. Yeah. I don't even care how much money I make. No, it's not worth it. Nothing matters.

It's not worth it at all, right? And then you're a prisoner of your own creation. So Disney, at the time, was going through nursing school

and she had this career path and this goal forever and she really wanted to do it and I was like dude that's awesome I totally go for it and she was getting frustrated

because she's she would get put in a position where she knew what was right and what had to be done at the hospital but she wouldn't be allowed

to make decisions for her comfort her patient's comfort because of bureaucratic bullshit in the hospital, but she wouldn't be allowed to make decisions for her comfort, her patient's comfort because of bureaucratic bullshit in the hospital system. And she's like, why can't I do what I know is right for the patient? Why can't I just do this? Like I see what needs to be done. Why can't I do it? It felt completely disempowered. She was frustrated and I'm frustrated with my job and I didn't want to push her to be like, Hey, you're going to come work for me. But finally she's like, I don't know if I want to do this anymore.

I'm going to look at doing something else. I'm like, thank God you said that because I need some fucking help. And she's extremely detail-oriented, very pragmatic, almost like a numbers nerd like I am. I've known her for 10 minutes. I think that she's very – She walked in within like I am. I've known her for 10 minutes. I think that she's very... She walked in within like two seconds. She had the laptop and the notebook and the phone. Everything set up on the table.

Dude, yeah. She's like, this is too loud. I'm going to go somewhere else because I need to work. And I'm going to work. She's very motivated. Yeah, and it's been fantastic. So she's my first employee. And I'm so fortunate that I was able to hire

my girlfriend at the time who's also my best friend and we still have a good relationship and we piss each other off like crazy sometimes but

it's gonna happen yeah it's gonna happen but at the end of the day like she's in a position now where if she feels like something's fucked up she's completely

empowered to make whatever changes she deems necessary she can if we fuck something up and it benefits both of you both ways yeah absolutely like if we fuck something up we need to refund a customer she doesn't need a check with me she's like totally this is incorrect we're going to refund you for this and she comes to me and say here sign this check like okay cool like she's 100 on it man it's it's been amazing and that goes back to the freedom that you were talking about at the beginning of the episode it man it's been amazing

and that goes back to the freedom that you were talking about at the beginning of the episode you know it's not just about money it's not just about this

it's about like freedom of choice and doing the things that you think are right and having the power to actually go and execute them as well right

and feel empowered to like you're doing something you know like I love this job because what we're able to do with our clients is that they all have this dream you know they all they want to build something and we can we show them like hey use our system this is this is what we see working like do this and we can help you get here and they do it

and they're able to execute on it and we're able to help them build their dreams and dude for me i learned from every one of our clients and we help them grow and you can see them just like reaching their goals and getting excited about setting new ones i'm like dude that for me is so fulfilling you know and we make we make decent money we make very small margins though but because we do such a massive volume of work yeah it ends up adding up um but then we run into our latest problem is scaling so like we still only have a team of like four or five so now i gotta add like i wish i could find the right like three or four people right now i'd fucking hire my spot but it's finding those people oh it's your family i mean you're gonna be around

those people yeah that's how i feel about coaches at my gym for sure. Yeah, it's like giving out that vibe for sure. So if I've learned anything about you in the last hour, you're like the typical entrepreneur. So usually those kind of people have something new like in the back of their head, another idea. Do you have anything cooking on the side that might? You know, I've thought about it. I have a million ideas but at the same time, you know, so does everybody else. So like I've thought about it. I have a million ideas, but at the same time, you know, so does everybody else.

Yeah. So, like, I always think about it. I put it through a filter of a couple things. Number one, how profitable will it be? How easy is it to execute? How much capital will it take up? And how fast can we get it to the point where it's making money? And once I put it through those filters, I'm like, fuck, I don't have that many ideas.

Everything sounds really cool until you're like, wait, how am I going to do this? I think it's killed off pretty fast. Yeah. So there's a couple things that I think would be rad that I personally love to see as a consumer that I think should be out there. I'm going to try to execute on a couple of them. We're just so busy with our own shit. It's part of my time. It's super hard. I'm going to try to execute on a couple of them, but we're just so busy with our own shit.

It's part of my time. It's super hard. I have so many ideas, and I literally have a problem sleeping at night because that's when they all hit me. Yeah. And how to orchestrate them, that's when it hits me. The whole,

the entire process of how it should be done hits me as soon as I hit the freaking pillow. Dude. And it's just like the worst feeling ever. And I remember going to that fitness summit, this business summit thing in San Diego a few weeks ago. This guy was like, it was the first time in my life where I legitimately believed that niche was like a cool thing to be in. Because I was always like, man, like why would I market to this small group when I can market to, you know, this like a fitness group. Forget about CrossFit.

What about just like fitness people in general? But those aren't really the people that make money. It's the niche people that actually do really well. And I've heard you speak on a couple different podcasts where you like, you're a believer in the niche group. And I feel like if you're good at your niche, like you could really, really crush. Well, I think niches are like, they're like toeholds, right? So like you, you, if you you it's like climbing a wall so if you have this wall of like fitness industry like holy shit good fucking luck you know it's it's massive it's like you guys watch game of

thrones i have never watched it oh my god you're probably in a room with the only two people that i just can't do tv shows that sucks you in for too long. Do what it does. I can't do a seer. I can only do a movie and that's it. I'm done. Okay. Don't do it. It's really awesome though. So anyways, there's massive fucking like 400 foot tall ice wall. That's like the fitness industry. Like it's you, you can't just go like climbing up and spread out and just go over the top of it. Um, you define like a niche that you can get something in there. And maybe there's like a, I like to call it columns of influence, right? So like the fitness column is like this massively round thing that goes up 100 feet. The CrossFit column is a lot smaller.

So you can, if you enter into the fitness realm, you're going to get lost like right away. But if you enter into the CrossFit realm, it's a lot smaller. So you can do things to get yourself to the top of it a lot easier. And once you're in the top of this niche, then you get noticed by another niche and then you can, um, you know, sidestep over to that, do things to get bigger in that niche. And then, you know, slowly climb your way up to the top of this massive market through you know building and maintaining the presence in small niches which I think is really impressive of you what you've done with you know she's the the athlete thing and now the business part of it yeah yeah the business part with the cross the gym

like it's huge I think I was like one of the first people to make my gym like an online gym and I really just thought it was like I was like I wonder how many like I was the first gym to ever open that was like really really cool like I spent a lot of money it's like a million dollar crossfit gym which was really rare at the time because everybody's gym was like 60 grand you know it's like a really small project and mine was massive and my business partner actually made myspace so he has millions of dollars oh no way yeah i went to high school with one of the guys that built myspace that's funny dude definitely not this guy because he was born in new zealand but uh different guy but uh

yeah he like made the whole operating software for myspace he's like a genius and um i remember just like the first day i was like i'm not gonna put my workouts online like every gym puts their workouts online why would i do that like i want people to see my gym being successful one day and be like what the fuck do they do in there and then i still like it took four years until i until i saw that like by me not doing that i was like i'm gonna put my workouts online now and i'm gonna make it 20 bucks and i'm gonna see who who signs up. Yeah. And it started off as like, you know, like this really small chunk of change. And then I just, every single month it's been going up. Like it keeps going up and I'm literally like always fathomed by it.

I'm always just like, holy crap. Like the amount of time I do put into my workouts, like really is like spreading. Like people all over the world really like my workouts. They really like, they like the amount of work I'm putting in. Good programming is hard, dude. It really is, man. And that's the magic sauce in a gym, dude. You go to a gym to get results and not just go fuck around and bump chest with people.

The programming is the key. And not a lot of people know enough to do quality programming, man. That's the number one thing, people. I always say, like, what do you like about my gym? i always want them to say it's like the cool vibe but they're like i mean it is but they're like number one is the programming and then the cool vibe i'm like oh shit so we had a crossfit gym with forge and it was we did it just as like a marketing arm so that we could have t-shirts that say like crossfit forge on it yeah um so we never that time yeah it was fun man and it worked but we never really charged anybody any I remember that time. Yeah, it was fun, man. And it worked.

But we never really charged anybody any money for it. And if we did, it was like, you know, our homies were charging like 20 or 30 bucks a month or something. But one day we got this idea like, oh, we're going to actually like make it a gym and charge people a real amount. Worst fucking idea ever, dude. Because as soon as we started charging them them for it it just killed the vibe and the hard charging just people showing up and doing whatever we posted through the maximum amount just crushing it just went out the window and they were just like going through the motions again and we just canceled it right after that man um but i was doing the programming for the gym

dude it just takes time yeah it takes time i sucked at it in the beginning yeah it's mega good it takes me a lot a lot a lot of time yeah you for sure i ended up building this uh one of my side projects called strength alliance um it still exists but i haven't put any time into it like a year so i I built the workout program for the Navy SEAL pipeline. So not the BUDS pipeline, but the SQT training pipeline afterwards. So they sent me to a bunch of different schools

and said, hey, you're in charge of basically the fitness program for this. I'm like, well, fuck, all right. So I built it out and then tested it

on like 1,200 students. And it fucking works great. But it's for like, it's not for CrossFit. It's not for like, it's for testing for like bodyweight bench press, bodyweight squat, both for max reps. Like bodyweight, like I do like 205, you know. Max pull-ups with weight and some other basic stuff. So it was like strength endurance type stuff mixed with CrossFit. max pull-ups with weight, and some other basic stuff.

So it was like strength endurance type stuff mixed with CrossFit. Not for the sake of CrossFit, but CrossFit as like a conditioning tool. And dude, it worked great, man. I dip back and do it every once in a while, and it's like fucking crushing, dude. That's super cool. Yeah, you can apply that to so many different aspects.

Dude, I think there was some really good stuff in this. Definitely like the business side of things. I loved it. Brain grew again. Do you have anything else you wanted to add? No, I think that's pretty good. I love the whole business that you guys have going on. It's really, really cool.

And I think that if I had a big brand, I think I'd probably be reaching out to you right now. That sounded really good to me. I was like, damn. If people are reaching out, where can they find you? You said you were hiring some people too you guys take an application yeah i need i need a photographer i need a video over i need a social media guy i need as many sales reps as i can get um that's that's what i need like today um but we'll see yeah um our website is kind of there it's it's kind of like we get all our business

from referrals so like industrythreadworks.com is there but most of our stuff like the day to day like to actually get a feel for what we do

is mostly on social media so it's industry underscore threadworks on Instagram and then my personal one is invictus5326 which I posted on my IG

alright Yaya anything you have going on over there um been building out just the graphic design side of things so i don't know how much you guys know but i do all the chalk put all the chalk stuff not all the real chalk production side all the graphic design stuff everything you guys see on social media any picture video all that stuff that ryan's posts most likely i was involved in that at some point so i'm currently building more of like an agency side of that might hire a couple of people so we can get more work done and get that even quicker so if any of you guys love that kind of stuff and uh that design stuff you need any of that you guys can always hit me up on my instagram at yaya's view or just at yaya at crossfitchalk.com

either one of those options will work all right guys you know me uh crossfit chalk got my online programming going on if you guys have a business out there you don't want to program for your gym anymore that's where i come in we have a huge following got hundreds of hundreds of gyms that follow my programming and if you're an individual and you work out in your garage or something and you just need a little bit of inspiration, I got you. CrossFitChalk.com. Click on Chalk Online. You guys are good to go.

Thank you, Ryan Williams, for being on the show. Dude, thanks for having me, man. Giving people some motivation. Yo, seriously, I want to start a good business right now. Yeah, I hope you guys are fired up. I hope you guys are fired up like we are and getting on with your day. Alright. See you guys later. See you guys later. And that

will do it. If that didn't get you off your couch wanting to start your own business, then I don't know what will. Hope you guys enjoyed it. Hope you guys had a blast. As always, subscribe, record. That's not right. Comment. All that stuff. You know what I'm talking about you've heard this

a million times we still need you guys to interact with us or want you guys to interact with us it really helps the show grow it makes us know what you guys like what you guys dislike what you guys want to see except for ryan with the shirt off because we've all seen way too much of that so let's keep that away from everybody it's not pg anyways not that this show is but you guys know what i'm talking about so tell your friends tell your mom tell your dad tell everybody real chalk podcast is on the ball by shrug collective we're coming in hot see y'all next week