Digital Social Hour - Reinventing Backyard Play with Crossnet Creator, Chris Meade | Digital Social Hour #45

Episode Date: July 12, 2023

Hey, there folks! Are you ready to dive into an exhilarating conversation about innovation, entrepreneurship and volleyball? Then you're in the right place. This week on the Digital Social Hour, we have none other than mastermind Chris Meade, co-inventor of CrossNet, the world's first four-way volleyball game. Join your host, Sean Kelly, as he humorously navigates the unique journey from corporate hustle to innovative success, one that saw a simple idea evolve into a hot-selling sensation across 5000 retailers. Who knew turning frustration with knockoffs into a quality product could revolutionize backyard games globally? This episode not only reveals the struggles of entrepreneurship and the thrill of invention but delves into topics of growth strategies, dealing with knockoffs, and even a cheeky patent story. From acquiring patents, the success of strategic partnerships to managing cash flows, every twist and turn will leave you in awe. And folks, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. As Chris shares about expanding into new ventures, namely their latest company GoodSport, you'll get to understand the importance of boldness, creativity, and integrity in business. Finally, don’t miss the poignant note on finding balance, work-life harmony and prioritizing personal time amidst all the hustle. It’s a story of not just work, but love, persistence, balance and success. So, why wait? Tune in now, enjoy the ride, and get ready to be inspired. Remember this is the Digital Social Hour, where conversations make waves. See you all there! --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/digitalsocialhour/support Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Have you ever pulled up to the beach and you saw a knockoff net? Bro, one time. I was so mad. And it's this like $15 junk one from China. We went back into the beach house and we took down their net and we gave them like the OG. I want you to, if you open up that product, I want you to be embarrassed and I want you to send it back to Amazon. Dude, I'm still pissed because you hit me up to invest and I just lost all my money in Celsius. So I was like, oh my God.

All right, welcome to the Digital Social Hour. I'm your host, Sean Kelly. I'm here with my guest today, Chris Mead. What's up, bro? How you doing, man? I'm good, dude. Thanks for having me. What, four years?

It's been a long time. Holy crap, you've come a long way. It's been a long time. We both have. Yeah, man. So give people the rundown on what you've done. I'll give you the rundown. First, Sean Kelly used to live on my couch about six years ago. We moved from Connecticut to Miami, and it was about what like we had like a hostel like

eight dudes living in this like two-bedroom apartment it was fun it was the come-up days but no it's been good we uh so people that don't know me Chris I invented CrossNet which is the world's first four-way volleyball game uh been out now for six years we sell into like over 5,000 retailers and uh fastest growing backyard game on the planet. Dude. Every time I go to a Walmart, I see it or Dick's. It's incredible, man. I literally watched you guys create it. Yeah, I know.

That was the early days. Yep. On the couch and then to Miami where we had the proof of purchase concept. So back when I met you though, you were working at Uber Eats, right? Yep. What was that like and what did you learn there? It was cool. It was a, so Uber E eats was my first technical sales job and so i was the first ever account executive or sales executive

at uber and my job was to build uber eats for rhode island and boston so those that don't know like essentially you're picking up a phone and you're cold calling for eight hours a day and you're like yo sean can i uh can i get your restaurant onto uber eats and i negotiate and eventually i get you on the platform so i did that every day for six months and i got like hundreds of restaurants which was really cool and rewarding but it was also the type of job and i don't think you've ever felt this way but when you live that corporate job you work a nine to five and you just get exhausted you're doing the same shit every single day and you're just completely burnt out and at this time i was like 20 i was

like 24 25. i was like dude is this all my life is gonna be like am i gonna wake up and call for the regret like and there's no knock to that like it's a great career like could have made a ton of money but that's just not i felt burnt out and i was 24 25 that's pretty pathetic so yeah at that age were you getting uh commission on each i was getting commission and i was getting a full-time like salary so for me like i mean i graduated school with like 200 000 of student loan debt Yeah, at that age. Were you getting commission on each restaurant? I was getting commission, and I was getting a full-time salary. So for me, I graduated school with $200,000 of student loan debt. Jesus. I tried to become a filmmaker.

Realized I didn't want to do that really quickly. And so I'm like, all right, how can I try to stack cash? But this was before Shopify and all this stuff. And I was probably making like $120,000, $140,000, which is good money. Out of college, yeah. Dude, for a 24-year-old, I was doing pretty well. But it just wasn't enough, and I knew I had to start thinking more long-term rather than just, what can I do for the next six months? Would you say going to college was worth it for you?

Yes. I would say it was worth it due to the connections I made. I would say the schooling was absolute shit. I'm sure that varies from school to school. Mine, it was not the best education, but the people that I met there were instrumental into my career, where the first job out of college was somebody I knew from college. Second job was somebody else. And it kind of just all led to the Uber job, which then led to, yeah, even I started working on amazon drop shipping business in college and that got me into olivie com right my first founder was my college roommate so it's like

if i hadn't gone to quinnipiac and it sucks that i spent two hundred thousand dollars to go to the school um i wouldn't have met the people to shape my life to where i am today yeah i'd say if you're taking advantage of the networking and the alumni it's definitely worth it yeah i mean it's kind of like you paying for masterminds right like if you're say if you're taking advantage of the networking and the alumni, it's definitely worth it. Yeah, I mean, it's kind of like you paying for masterminds, right? Like if you're not, if you're going to go there and be social and meet people, it's worth it.

If you're going to sit in the corner and not talk to anybody, you're just wasting your money. Yeah, let's dive into CrossNet because I'm just so fascinated by how you scaled that. So the first year was just e-commerce, right? Yep.

And then when did you start getting into the big retailers? So 2020, so we launched in 2018. I think those are the Miami days. And so 2018 was direct to consumer, only 2019 as well. And then 2020 came, So 2020, so we launched in 2018. I think those are the Miami days. And so 2018 was direct-to-consumer, only 2019 as well. And then 2020 came, which was a COVID year. And that's when the Walmart to the world started knocking at our door.

They were looking for, they were honestly just looking for any products at that point. They didn't even have toilet paper, let alone crossnets. But yeah, there's a massive spike in kind of just human interest. Like you're telling me on podcast number seven today yeah like you're banging out a ton you're so excited to get fresh air when we get out of here and just walk around like for me like my mindset is the best time outside is like my 20 minutes outside or my 30 minutes outside america's mindset has shifted to like time outside is more important than ever disconnecting from our phones disconnecting from our laptops and i know you don't get to do that too often but when you do you probably feel a lot better um so we're kind of selling to that narrative and the retailers have been on board so 2020 we started getting like the dicks the walmart's of the world and the orders keep coming

like they keep flowing and we keep making new skews to kind of build out like more of an ltv model and build out more shelf space i saw you guys just dropped a pickleball product. Yeah, we got four-way pickleball. So it's kind of like, I was trying to play pickleball tonight, actually, and there's no courts available. There's never courts. Right.

Because we're working all day, we get to the court, and there's that grandma who's retired, and she's been there since 2 o'clock, and she's hogging the court. So we're selling a four-way pickleball net that could easily be switched to a normal pickleball net. So middle America, they could just set it up in their driveway. Back home in Jersey, you could set it back in your driveway. We're selling a four-way pickleball net that could easily be switched to a normal pickleball net.

Middle America, they could just set it up in their driveway. Back home in Jersey, you could set it back in your driveway. But then you could also play the cross net spin and add another side of the net. It's super fun. We launched that two months ago, and it's doing really, really well for us. I bet, dude. Pickleball is hot. It's very hot. It's a heavy product, which is kind of interesting to work out the kick.

Shipping it costs so much money. People's mindsets change. You don't want to spend $30 on shipping. Hell no. But you also don't want to spend an extra $30 into the product cost. So it's kind of hard to... Finding that balance. Yeah, especially when products are $150 already.

So it's like, whatever you pay, $ plus 30 and shipping or 180, no shipping. It's finding the fine balance for the customer's wallet. I love the story about how you guys acquired the patent. Could you tell that story? Oh yeah. In, in short, we, uh, so we have patent on cross net, uh, the four-way volleyball net system. So essentially we literally Google it all night long trying to find like does on the inception night, right, when we're brainstorming these ideas. We were writing down ideas all night long. We wrote four-way volleyball down. And we Googled it.

And we couldn't find a damn thing anywhere. Not on Google, not a photo, not anything on Instagram. We're like, this is too good to be true. So eventually we kind of searched through the patent database after we built our prototype. And we're like, oh, shit. There's this patent troll out there so we found this guy out in san diego uh we told them that we were like heading out to a meeting uh like we're gonna be out there anyway we had never even been to san diego at that point

we're like yo we're gonna be out in san diego and uh messaged him on linkedin he wrote back he's like cool let's talk so flew out to san diego and uh kind of wrote struck a deal for this patent that he wasn't using that he was just like kind of hoarding so that's kind of it but we've had it and it helped us really build a moat a lot of my friends are like yo do you think the patent like having a patent is worth it

and I think it is to an extent as long as you build velocity really quickly like there's always ways to get around patents nine times out of ten like unless you have a crazy indefensible patent. But it helped us build a moat for three years where people didn't want to deal with the bullshit of the litigation if we happen to have mommy, daddy money to back it up, which we didn't.

But it helped us build the moat and CrossNet became like a household name before any of these knockoffs tried to come into the space. I've seen the knockoffs. How do you deal with those? They suck, bro. I get Facebook ads for them. It's annoying. It's really annoying um do you go after them or you just

we've we've gone after them we've won a few cases but ultimately like brand always wins um i'm trying to think about it like what do you mean brand like brand wins or like our so i'm trying to you're actually you're not as bougie as JR is, but so we have a friend named JR, but there's a million Gucci knockoffs, right? Yeah. But you still go out and you buy the Gucci slides for a thousand dollars because they have Gucci attached to them. Right.

We're trying to have a brand that is so strong and CrossFit has been so strong for six years. Like we're the inventor of the product, inventor of the brand, inventor of the sport that I want you to be embarrassed if you had to save $10 and bought that red shitty knockoff. Gotcha. I want you to be so mad on Christmas morning that your mom had to be cheap and save $10 and they couldn't get you the original. So it's about having that strong brand

and our product is damn good. The Gucci knockoff is never going to be as good as the Gucci because it's just like the original Gucci, like cross-knit, the product's great, the design's great, it's sturdy, it holds up, up it's weather resistant everything else on the market that we've seen is absolute trash right and so i want you to if you open up that product i want you to be embarrassed and i want you to send it back to amazon have you ever pulled up to the beach and you saw a knockoff net bro one time i was so mad i was so mad dude because i saw it in the distance,

and I was like, oh, shit, that's our net. I run up, like, dap them up, say thank you for buying, thank you for supporting. And it's this, like, $15 junk one from China. So, no, we went back to this. This is when we were living in San Diego. We went back into the beach house, and we took down their net, and we gave them, like, the OG.

So it felt good. But, yeah, it does suck seeing that. But at the end of the day it does spread our sports still yeah because a lot of people aren't getting the nice thing about cross and why it was so viral back in miami when we moved here is nobody's seen a four-way volleyball net before yeah and so when you stop and stare you want to watch and look at it and learn yeah so even if there is a knockoff out there, you're more getting education around four-way volleyball than you are about Juju's volleyball net from China, right? The knockoff.

Yeah, every time we played back in the day, a huge crowd. There would be a line of people wanting to play. Oh, dude, 30, 40 people. And that narrative still exists. So this year, it's been more about spending less on Facebook ads and hoping that the six years of overspending on Facebook ads has done good to the brand has enough customers out there so now hopefully there's a million Sean Kelly's out there playing in the spring and summer yeah creating that line of 30 or 40 people right dude I used to get your face we got literally every day for like a year so so hard now we're toning that

back just I mean it just needs you based on the economy and how things are so yeah facts how did you get that usa volleyball partnership street reaching out dude one of the good things about uber and the sales jobs like before and after were just learning how to get in contact with people that you probably shouldn't be getting in contact with so we were able to strike up a conversation with the ceo of usa volleyball which is like a massive deal. And you just cold reach out to him? Cold reach out to him on LinkedIn. And crazy enough, he was a fan of CrossNet

and already had one in his backyard with his kid. That's dope. So it's always easy to sell somebody when they have your product. So we're like, yo, we want to make things more professional. We're trying to tap into volleyball players. Because for CrossNet, the ideal persona is not a volleyball player. It's a mom in their backyard looking to get their kid off of TikTok and to have them do something in the backyard and be a kid again.

So we wanted to become a little bit closer with the volleyball world. So what better way than making it with the NBA of the volleyball world? So yeah, we built a three-year partnership with them. We have access to their email list and their social media. So we could send a bunch of content, like make money off of that. And then we have co-branded products nationwide now in Academy Sports, which is like 254 locations. Yeah, that's massive.

And you're probably one of the best people I know at LinkedIn. Yeah. So what's your strategy there? Like say you want to get a product in Target. Are you just reaching out to people that work there? Yeah. I mean, essentially yes. But, uh, first and foremost, like getting sales navigator, it's like, uh, I think it's like 70 bucks a month or something like that, which gives you a lot more DMS than just the basic plan that you run out of really quickly. Right. But then going from there and going into for, so for target specifically, I'd be searching target buyer and then trying to find the demo that I'm in.

So sporting goods for us. And hitting them with a connection, and on the connection is a short note. For us, I try to keep it really casual. Like, hey, man, I created the world's first four-way volleyball net. We're played on ESPN and have over a million players. We're also going to do X amount of sales this year. Let's talk. And so something that casual and not robotic,

how many emails you get a day? You could disqualify them in half a second just looking at it. So it needs to be sharp there. But then also getting after the assistant buyers. These are people who have just started with the store and are trying to make a name for themselves. And just like any other type of employee, you want to move up, you want to impress your boss.

What better way to impress your boss than bringing a hot product that they may not have seen? And then you look good right at the end of the year. You're doing your review. Oh, CrossNet was one of the top. I brought CrossNet. Okay, let's talk about that bonus, right? So reaching out to them and also marketers.

Like I remember when I was at my first job, I spent so much time on LinkedIn. One, because I was looking for another job. But two, because I was bored as hell and I was trying to find... LinkedIn kind of looked like I was working, but I wasn't really working. So sharing my story on there every day.

And so LinkedIn's my biggest platform. I post on there two to three times a day. I try to. And it's cool because the buyers have seen crossnet grow in their newsflip feed just from when we were hustling it on the beach five years ago to where it is today like there's been buyers who have been along for that entire story that's insane and one of the things you guys also did was bootstrap the company yeah we bootstrapped the whole thing man i mean I mean, how did you pull that off?

Grit, perseverance, not buying stupid shit that we didn't need. But it was as simple as, man, we pulled out our 401k. You know the story. We pulled out our 401k. We put maybe $20,000 between me, Greg, and Mike into a bank account. We bought 50 units, moved down here, and we sold the 50. We would take that money for beer money for the night or for rent, and then we'd invest the money back into buying the next 100.

From there, we'd sell 100, buy back 250. Sell 250, buy back 500. And we just kept scaling it like that. And didn't pull out money to buy Lamborghinis or fancy nights out in Miami. It was just, how much money do we need to pay our rent? How much money do we need for $8 sandwiches for dinner? And that was it. And that was a grind. So it worked up until a point where it didn't.

Our first Walmart order for almost a million dollars, we did that all on our own with our cash, without banks or anything like that. You had to float that? Yeah. We floated that for about a year oh well not a year sorry uh six months damn so we have to put up the money to manufacture it put up the money to store it then to ship it and then you have to wait 90 days to

get your money whoa so uh that's insane yeah that was tough but then we started pairing on walmart dicks academy paired on like 10 different retailers. Right. So you had cash flow. That's when the banks kind of started, we had to start working with banks for that. Right. What do you mean with, oh, like you got financing? Yeah, we had to get financing. I mean, at that point, there's just way too much inventory we had to make. And then we were just out of the cash for so long. Yeah, it would have been too risky. It would have been way too risky.

And then last year you recently partnered with Danny Duncan, right? How did that happen? So yeah, we launched this new company called Good Sport. And the way I think about it is there's very little innovation in backyard sports or in sports overall. Why are we still buying the same baseball glove from Franklin that you did when you were a kid and when your parents were kids, they were buying from the same company. Wilson, Spalding, Franklin. It's like the big three. There's nothing else. But every day there's a new happy dad or a new coffee company or a new clothing brand nothing in sports um so that's what we're trying to do with good sport and so we partnered with danny who's one of the biggest youtubers like in

our in the country yeah and his prime demo is 16 to 24 year old kids boys yeah like 98 male demo which is perfect for us and he gives us access to this like almost for lack of better word like cult-like audience that follows him every every time he drops a video a million views in the first 10 minutes like he does a meet and greet there's 5 000 kids at the mall waiting for him yeah it's it's absolutely insane so being able to we've done so good at building incredible products and knowing facebook marketing really well and driving traffic he does something we've never been able to do which is organic organic which organic combined with you guys combined with us it should be yeah so so we we roll out to walmart in may

uh with our first already in walmart walmart three months in. That was fast. Yeah. So that was kind of our agreement with Danny was like, yo, you bring the organic, I'm going to bring the retailers and the good products, and we'll do it together. So yeah, we launched in Walmart, Dillard's, Wegmans, and Shields. I love Wegmans, bro. Yeah, so we're in nationwide at Wegmans. Isn't that mainly groceries, though?

It is, but they have a backyard section. And if Danny could drive traffic to their store, and they'll buy a smash net, and then they'll go buy $100 worth of groceries, it's good for them. Dude, that's sick. What advice would you give to someone looking to work with a creator and start a brand with them? I think for us, so giving you the backstory of how it actually happened. I didn't know Danny. Danny's a massive, massive famous YouTuber, and I'm just a nerd in my bedroom. So I reached out to our social media team,

reached out to Danny being like, yo, we want to do a video with you. We want to offer you like $45,000. And he's like, nah, like $250,000. Whoa. I was like, yeah, exactly. Whoa, that's Russian roulette with my own money. Not a shot.

That's happening. I don't care if it is profitable. But he's like, yo, if you ever want to come over, meet me somewhere. I'll call your bluff. I'll come over. So I went to his house in LA, and we showed him this product we were working on.

And he loved it. We sat outside in his backyard playing for a couple hours. Manager came over, and right then he's like, dude, let's start a company together. Whoa. I was like, say less say less damn which product was that uh actually product we haven't even launched yet oh so tbd on that one all right but um yeah so that was about a year and a half ago working every day together with him as manager stefan and uh yeah we're just staying up to date like talking every day grinding building their products like going through the rD, which we did back in the day with CrossNet.

Yeah. And yeah, so we built this brand new company called Good Sport. Essentially, it's all the products that don't fit under CrossNet, but fit under this new sporting goods company. Right. And we want to change the way like backyard sports are created and played. That's sick, man. Dude, I'm still pissed because you hit me up to invest and I just lost all my money in Celsius. Yeah. So I was like, oh my God, I was so pissed.

It was good. But yeah, I mean, back to your question though about what advice I'd give. I think it's really important to you're bringing something new and different to the table because they could get, they could get the infrastructure for a cross net or, or like sporting goods from somebody else. And somebody that does it better than me or somebody that's richer than me. Yeah. But the ideas that I'm bringing to the table and the sports that we're creating is so new

and innovative that other people aren't doing that. Right. And also backing it up with a track record. Yeah. Like if you're a new entrepreneur, like why are the milk boy is gonna want to work with you you know they have access to the smartest people in the world yeah so it's kind of like being also very realistic and building something for yourself before you try to even take that leap with facts I feel like people try to just jump straight to

the celebrity yeah like that's that's not gonna happen why would the celebrity everyone you know you gotta you gotta prove yourself and cross net we proved it for six years we built the fastest growing backyard game and yeah yeah that's everywhere and i think that's why prime did so well 100 because those guys already did it exactly with alani new guys yeah um so what's next are you focused on cross net and the company with danny yeah it's really just parlaying both of those cross net is much more of a b2b play these days where we just have orders from dicks and the academies it's really focused on b2b where good sport is like it's very energetic right now we have danny we're rolling out to walmart i as the marketer like i'm the

cmo for both companies like yeah it's my dream to be able to create these activations where i could actually get a thousand people to show up i know they're going to show up right so that's really really fun so we're that's sick we're thinking about doing like creator backyard leads leagues in the summer like danny has this massive property i get all these celebrities out there playing the games yeah great content for us like yeah it's super fun so the energy has been restored after grinding on the same product for six years yeah so we're stoked to be dropping like in by this time next year we should have like 10 or 15 games out for good sport which i'm really pumped for that's dope yeah how do you balance all this with your personal life oh it's a good

question sean i think uh i think it's having the the non-negotiables are really important and for me that's going to the gym almost every day uh so i have a trainer i work out with three times a week have a beautiful wife at home i do my best to try to disconnect by five or six every night and that's laptops down right um i am not like i'll be on my phone answering emails throughout the night but i am not in my office tucked away i'm spending time with my wife and our dog and just being in the world whatever work i get done from nine to five or nine to six, that's enough for today. Right.

And I'll get to it tomorrow. That's awesome. And I mean, maybe crossing it would be 20% better if I worked till 11 o'clock at night, but I'd also be miserable, depressed, and probably single. And so I'll take that trade off.

Yeah. Yeah. That's awesome, man. You got married in Italy. How was that? It was great. It was a great wedding.

83 people. A lot of my best friends were there. Again, it happened during the Celsius. I'm so sorry. It was, it was great. It was a great wedding. 83 people. A lot of my best friends were there. Again, it happened during the Celsius. I'm so sorry. It was awesome. We had a great time. So I saw the photo. That was really jealous. It was unreal. Yeah. We had a shut down this little town in the Amalfi coast for three days and it was just like, it was just awesome. 83 people. And it was fucking, it was amazing. That's literally a dream. Six month anniversary today, actually. Wow. Congrats.

Damn, it's only been six months? Yeah, it is. Whoa. Yeah. I thought it was longer. Life goes quick. Yeah. Man, any closing thoughts on where people can find you?

Yeah. So you can find myself on LinkedIn, Chris Mead. I write a weekly newsletter, actually, called Cross Commerce. It's pretty much, I've been really a big advocate of building in public and sharing the good and the bad uh which i think is really important because we typically only glamorize the good stuff yeah so i've been writing this weekly newsletter which means a lot to me so go follow that there's like 10 000 readers at this point which is great and if you want to support the games good sport at playgood sport.com or crossnet at crossnetgame.com you heard it here guys digital social hour i'll see you guys next week