EntreLeadership - #380: Engaging With the Marketplace with Chris Ruder

Episode Date: June 22, 2020

In 2008, Spikeball founder and CEO Chris Ruder set out to create the next great American sport. But unfortunately, after a sizeable ad spend, Chris discovered that his number one target market—volleyball players—didn’t exactly share his passion for the game. Useful information for sure, but you know what was even more valuable? The way he learned it. Tune in to find out why talking to real live people changed everything and enabled Chris to turn Spikeball into a $21 million company—while expanding globally and creating a rock-solid culture along the way.   entreleadership.com/podcast Spikeball website Young Life website Unleashing the Ideavirus by Seth Godin How to Create Core Values Review this episode for a chance to win a $25 Amazon gift card   As an Amazon Associate EntreLeadership earns from qualifying purchases.   Want expert help with your business question? Call 844-944-1070 and leave a message or send an email to [e-mail]. You could be featured on a future podcast episode! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What are the prerequisites for starting and building a viral multi-million dollar international brand? A degree in business or finance? A 10-year strategic plan? An annual marketing strategy? Well, an MBA would probably be helpful. Maybe several high-profile investors in contacts? Well, that's a great list. But it turns out that while most of those things might be good, they aren't actually necessary.

From the Ramsey Network, this is the Entree Leadership podcast where we help business leaders grow themselves, their teams, and their profits. I'm your host Alex Judd, and today we are talking to the founder and CEO of a company that made just over 10,000 in revenue in 2008, 1 million in 2013, and 21 million in 2019. Chris Ruder leads the business known as Spikeball. Have you played it? It's the four-player round net game that is taking the nation and now the world by storm. Y'all, I am a huge fan of this game.

But here's what's funny about Chris's background. It isn't at all what you would expect. He didn't have some profoundly intentional planned, strategy or goal for Spike Ball. In fact, at the beginning, he wasn't even allowed to play. So I first saw Spike Ball in 1989. So I was about 14 years old at the time. And my older brother's friends who lived just down the street from us, they bought a couple sets from the local toy store,

brought it back to the neighborhood. and they started playing a bunch. And I remember thinking it was a super cool game, but I wasn't really allowed to play because I was just kind of like the annoying younger brother. So I kind of stood on the sidelines and got to watch. And they'd play over the years, and I'd play a little bit. And fast forward to 2003, me, my brother,

and those same childhood friends, we all went on a trip to Kauai together. You know, we were now adults out of college and kind of working. And that was where I really first got the bug for it. And when we were playing, strangers would stop and ask us, the same three questions. What's that game? How do you play? And where can I get it? And the where could I get it part we could never really answer, because from what little we knew,

spike ball was launched in 1989 and it was killed in 1991. So it had a very short shelf life. And I'm assuming they stopped selling it because it didn't sell well. I'm not really exactly sure why. But enough people ask that question where the light bulb kind of went off. And I was like, huh, I wonder if this is like the marketplace talking to you. It's sort of the saying goes. And I had such a blast on that game. You know, my brother and I were partners. It was he and I versus Tim and Pat Kennedy, who are two childhood friends and they're twin brothers.

So we just had this like brother rivalry thing going on on some of the world's most beautiful beaches. And, you know, my brother and I weren't all that close and we were kids. We were kind of rivals ourselves. So this was actually the first time we were competing together against two other guys. So I really, you know, that trip hit me hard

and that's where I really got the bug. And, you know, we started using sentences like, you know, wouldn't it be cool if we could like bring this thing back to life? Like, wouldn't that be fun? And, you know, none of us knew anything about starting a company or any of that. And it was a great idea to try and bring it back. But we did what I believe most people do with an idea is nothing. You know, you just talk about it.

And we did that for a couple of years. And I finally said, all right, I'm sick of the talk. I'm actually going to talk to an attorney and, you know, see if we can legally do this. I don't even know how that world works. And so the attorneys told us, yeah, we got good news. There was never a patent on the product. So the design and all that, you can kind of do whatever you want. And the trademark's been expired for, I don't know, 10 years or whatever.

And the trademark's what protects the name, Spikeball. So they're like, yeah, you can do what you want. We did reach out to the guy that invented it and talked about potentially relaunching together and, you know, didn't really find a way to make that work. So we went ahead and me, my brother, my cousin, and a few of those childhood friends chipped in, total amongst all of us, about $100,000. And we incorporated in 2007. and went into business in 2008.

Unreal. So up to that point, that's just a crazy story. Like, had you not gone on that beach vacation, this might not exist today. One other thing happened on that beach vacation, which was a major moment in my life, was I got engaged to my lovely wife's job now 15 years. I need to go to Hawaii more often. My God's start a business. It just works out pretty well.

Okay, leading up to that trip, did you have aspirations? to one day own your own business? Or where was your headspace out at that time in terms of your career, Chris? By the time I quit my job and went full-time. So I guess by that time, yeah, I was working, I think, at Monster.com at the time and had worked for big companies doing sales. And, you know, there were jobs that paid well. But there was nothing I was passionate about. I kind of did the job. It wasn't really that into the culture of the companies I worked for. And it was a paycheck, and that was about it. And, you know, my dad was an entrepreneur. My grandfather. was, my brother has his own company. Like, it's kind of in the family, and I was kind of the weird one

that was, you know, an employee for the big company. And I remember just like my dad ran a few small businesses, had some rental properties and stuff. And the thing that I love was he had control over his schedule. He got to make decisions and decide what he was going to do each day. And that was something that was a very foreign thing to me, you know, working at the big company, I really had no control. I was kind of told what to do and just go do it. And I think that's where this sense of apathy of like, yeah, I'll just do the job, but I'm not going to be excited about it or like it. And so I never thought that I'd actually launch a company. I think I always wanted to, but I wasn't like a creator and like, you know, even though Spike Ball has become as great a company as I believe

it is, I don't see myself ever becoming like a serial entrepreneur and like selling this and building another one selling going. Like, I love this and I hope to be doing it for a long, long time. But just having that freedom, I think, was what I really, really wanted. And if that was going to come in the form of starting my own company, great. If it was going to come in the form of something else, great. But having that freedom and that control was something that I'd wanted for a while. I just had no idea that this would be the form it would show up in. So you have that idea kind of sitting on the shelf of, man, wouldn't it be cool to do this one day? And like you said, it just stayed as an idea for a long time.

Can you identify a specific tipping point or what was the thing that made you say, okay, I'm going to reach out to legal advice and actually see if this could be possible? I need to go back and I'm sure I've got the emails, but I'm not sure if it was a bad day at the day job that I was just like, all right, I'm done. I'm going to start looking into this or I don't remember exactly what the motivation was. but I know in general I'm not a very patient person. A term that my team will hear me at Spike Ball say is, you know, I really don't like never-ending projects or just talking forever about things.

It's like, you know, I'd rather use two units of energy planning and that eight units of energy doing. I got a feeling I, you know, just having enough conversations with, you know, the guys saying, yeah, wouldn't it be cool if we did this or that? And enough of those. And I just lose my patience and I'm like, all right, I got to go into action. and let's just start exploring, seeing what's possible. That's something I've learned in having these conversations for this program is it seems like impatience is almost a positive asset or quality for an entrepreneur.

It seems like it's a common denominator. Yeah, I talk to friends that have considered starting their companies, and I'm more than happy to talk to anybody that either wants to hear my experience or whatever. But I do lose patience when I talk to them, and it's the second or third meeting, and they're still planning or just, oh, my gosh, I can't do anything. until I have a website designed. It's like, well, this is a service-based company. You can go to Shopify and for 150 bucks, build a website and be live in about two hours.

Like, just do it. And if you fail on that first call, make the second call. And you'll learn. You'll get smarter with every call you make and just start doing. And I think a lot of people are afraid. And, you know, the planning phase is great because you can't fail in planning, right? You're not really, I want to say you're not doing anything, but you're not really producing anything. You don't have a business.

it's on paper. And it is scary to make that first phone call or to actually tell a friend, yeah, I just launched my own company. And maybe you're going to fail. And if people know that you launch that company and you've failed, you know, nobody wants to be a part of that. But you have to, as the same goes, just do it. That's right. Man, you should trademark that phrase. That would be a great. That would be a great timeline. Nobody else's right. One of the common narratives in America in business today is once you have this idea, and especially if it involves manufacturing something and holding inventory, the first thing you have to do is go out and raise tons of capital to make this idea possible. That is not the route you took. Was that a super conscientious decision?

And if so, why? I don't think it ever crossed my mind to say, yeah, let's call up a venture capital or some angel investors or a bank and see if we can get money because I was really confident that they would just laugh me out of the room. So when we raised the $100,000, you know, I wrote a check, my brother, cousin, et cetera, I think it was maybe 10, 15 grand, each of us. We didn't even said $100,000 as the goal. The only rule was you can't write a check for a greater amount than you're comfortable losing because the chance that you are going to lose it are really, really high. I'd never done anything like this. None of them had done anything like this. I have a degree in photojournalism. What business do I have running a sporting goods company where we're manufacturing

a product in China and selling primarily via e-commerce? You know, if you look at that resume, I'm the last person that should be doing this. But I do think that that ignorance actually was fantastic for me and for the company and that I didn't know what I didn't know. So I was comfortable asking the dumb questions. I was comfortable reaching out and I still am comfortable reaching out to complete strangers, whether they be on Twitter, LinkedIn, et cetera, and just saying, hey, you seem to be an expert in this area. Any chance we could get on a phone call, and I'd love to ask you some questions, and most people would ignore. But if I send 10 of those, maybe one or two actually reply. And I learned from them, and one of our values at spikeball is surprise and delight.

So that would usually show up in the form of I'd mail them a spike ball set as a thank you. And yeah, it's been working. It's been fun so far. You say like you were kind of operating from a posture of what you now call ignorance. Were you at all intimidated? Were you looking in the mirror thinking like, what am I doing right now? Or where was your head space? And what were you feeling as all best was happening? There definitely was intimidation. But thankfully the pressure was relatively low because I had a day job. So even if this thing failed, me, my wife and kids were still going to eat. I was still going to be able to pay the mortgage. And had I been a.

able to accept money from a bank or from VC, etc. That is crazy pressure because let's say you get the million dollars in the bank. You now are more or less forced to spend that as fast as possible. And you need to turn that $1 million into $2 million into $3 million. I can't speak from experience of raising money. So my take from what little I know is when you do have that and you're more or less forced to do that, you're getting artificial results. You don't have the luxury to actually, you need time to learn. And I don't think when you're on that accelerated time frame, you actually have the ability to learn or to fail. So we thankfully had that. The main pressure I had was I didn't want to lose my friend's money. Yes, that would suck. It wouldn't be the end of the world. But, you know,

we all knew going into this. This was a huge gamble. And we're rolling the dice. And we're just going to see what works. And I think that, you know, since we had, you know, it's my brother. It's my cousins. Like, people have known my entire life, so they knew that I was very passionate about this. And, you know, I'd come home from my day job at, I don't know, six or so, hang out with wife and kids. They go to bed around eight or nine. Spikeball work begins at nine and goes until one or two in the morning. And that was kind of my schedule for five years. So they knew I was trying. They knew I was doing everything. And I was passionate. And I had literally zero income from spike ball those first couple of years. So the dedication was there and it was exhilarating. I'm still excited about it,

but, you know, the first couple of years or first chapter of anything, like literally shaking when you talk about it with excitement. Was the passion and the excitement at that time, was it for the game or was it for the building of the business? Or what was the passion specifically for, Chris? I loved the game. So, and I still do. Don't get to play as much anymore. But so loved the game, but I think it was the business and the building of the community that was just so much more exciting. Like, you know, I mentioned earlier, you know, at the day job, I really didn't get to make many decisions. The playbook was handed to me and said, here you go, Chris, go execute it. You know, when I was sitting at my desk alone in my living room those first couple of years,

I was making decisions. And that just felt really empowering. And some of the decisions were right. Some were wrong, but the ones that were wrong, I learned from. And I just had a genuine curiosity. I remember, like, in the early days, like, orders would start coming in from areas that I had, like an order would come from San Francisco.

I'm like, how in the world did someone from as far away, you know, I'm in Chicago, as far away San Francisco, how did somebody hear about this? So I'd just send an email to that customer asking them. How did you hear about it? And they'd tell me, like, oh, I'm a P.E. teacher, and I'm always looking for new games, or I'm a camp counselor, or I'm a member of young life,

or something like that. and that established a lot of relationships. You know, I sent that email to nearly 100% of our customers in those first five years. And that gave me the direction of where to go for marketing. You know, I first thought when we launched, it was like, okay, the rules, the equipment, everything to spikeball is so similar to volleyball. Volleyball players will, without a doubt, love spikeball. So I started spending a decent amount of money on like Google AdWords. and so anytime somebody would type up volleyball or a volleyball related term,

they'd see spikeball.com ads. And we saw a significant amount of traffic coming in from that. We saw traffic, but we didn't get sales. You cannot pay bills with traffic. So when I see companies that are, you know, putting out giganto press releases about how traffic is through the roof, it's a vanity metric. You can't pay your bills with that.

So I went down to the beach here in Chicago, and, you know, there's a bunch of volleyball players playing that. summer. And I've walked up with a spike ball set and introduced myself during one of their breaks. And I said, hey, I'm Chris. I'm starting this company. I've got this weird game called spike ball. And I think you guys would like it. Would you mind playing it for five, 10 minutes? And they were super nice. And they said, yeah, sure. And these guys were playing two-on-two volleyball. So you've got to be a pretty good volleyball player to play two-on-two competitively. Yeah. They played it, and they absolutely hated it. They were nice about it. But anybody

that's played, you know your first 10, 20 minutes. Everybody's awkward, right? You need, you got to kind of get used to it. And that was what I consider an example of me trying to light a fire. Right? The volleyball community had shown absolutely zero interest in this product, but I thought they'd be into it. So I went ahead and just started spending money going after them. But then after I realized that money wasn't being well spent, I decided to actually go and talk to them. And I had firsthand experience that they're not into this. I wish I would have reversed those two. But also when I emailed, you know, the woman in San Francisco or, you know, you and I were talking, I was telling you how the Young Life Group in Brentwood, Tennessee, was one of

the early adopters. I learned about those because I actually talked to a customer. And I said, hey, thanks for buying the set. If you don't mind me asking, how's you hear about it? And that, in hindsight, I learned was me identifying fires that had already been lit. It was not my idea to say faith-based youth groups will be a great market for us. That happened without me doing anything, but I at least asked the questions to where I was able to learn that. Same with PE teachers. Fantastic community for us. Ultimate Frisbee players.

I've never played a game of Ultimate in my life, but somehow the product, the seed got planted there. And once I heard enough ultimate players say, yeah, I'm into Spikeball, we started sponsoring their teams. Once we heard that PE teachers were way into us, we started giving them free sets. Once we heard that Young Life was into it, we started giving them free sets.

And the unique characteristic among those three groups is they're all really well-defined, tight-knit communities that communicate really well with each other. So if Young Life or any church or any faith group falls in love with your product, there's a pretty good chance they're going to tell other members in that community. That's so good, though. It's so funny. We literally, last week, we just taught a lesson within our coaching program for small business owners. We taught a lesson about customer feedback loops and just the idea that every time you send out a message or a product or a service, you are talking to the marketplace.

The question is not are you talking. The question is, are you listening to what they are saying back? And it's exactly what you're saying is you engaged in that conversation with the marketplace. But then what's really interesting. And I'd love for you to tell us a little bit more about what you did with Young Life to act on this. But you acted on what the marketplace told you. Like you didn't just sit there and say, okay, I'm just going to. to keep doubling down on volleyball. You went to the beach that day, talked to them, realized they

hated it and said, okay, new strategy. So can you talk about the positive side of listening to the customers? And specifically, can you use that example of Young Life? Absolutely. So, you know, I personally am not a member of any faith group. I had never heard of Young Life when, you know, I sent the email. I forget the woman's name. I need to look it up. She was just so, so nice. And it was because she had ordered a bunch of sets or something, or why did you send the email to her? I think she ordered one. Like literally 100% of our sales, those first five years, we're all at spikeball.com. Wow. So that also was a huge benefit because if we had gone into brick and mortar retail, I would have zero way to reach those customers.

Starting on dot com, I have access to 100% of the customers. So I was able to learn from them. Like, why is somebody from San Francisco? Why is somebody from Nashville? Why is somebody from Georgia? Like all these disparate groups were sort of raising their hands saying, hey, we're into this. So yeah, we got the order from the woman in Brentwood, and I sent her an email, and it wasn't automated. It was personalized. So forget exactly what, you know, for Brentwood would say, but it probably

would say something like, you know, hey, thanks for buying Spike Ball set. I see you live in Brentwood. I visited Nashville a couple years ago. What a beautiful city. By the way, if you don't mind me asking, how did you hear about Spike Ball? Oh, and I'd also put in there, I'll most likely be going to the post office later tonight to drop your set off. And when I sent that email, you know, you And that's kind of what most of the emails looked like. I think most people ignored them, but a few replied. And I think those that replied were also kind of intrigued, like, what kind of weirdo company has the CEO sending me a personal email,

and he's personally committing to drive to the post office to mail my package that night. Yeah, what the heck? What? He's probably sending this email at like 2 a.m. or something, too. Exactly. And there actually is a late-night post office near my house. I'd usually go around midnight every night. So that was when I'd go.

Oh, wow. I'd literally handwrite the labels early on. I didn't even know you could print labels. That's how little I knew. But yeah, to continue with the Young Life example, so she replied saying, I think she said something long lends. You know, I'm a Young Life leader. I'm involved with this group called Young Life.

It's all sorts of high school kids throughout the country. And we're always looking for activities to bring our community together and make it stronger. And the kids are having fun with it. So I needed a few of them for whatever meeting. And then I think I replied, she replied, she replied and then eventually it was like, hey, would you mind getting on a phone call? I'd love to learn more about kind of what's going on. We got on a call and then she gave me sort of the whole layout of young life.

And it's this huge organization. And at the time we did, you know, fast forward years later, we wound up with, we had a full-time employee in Nashville. And we could have gone after, you know, young life for the whole country. And, you know, if you go to their website, you know, there's a database and you can find like almost every group and it's public information. but rather than just randomly choosing all over the country, I said, no, let's focus on Nashville area first. You know, there's however many groups there, let's make sure we get those. Only when we feel that we've made a decent amount of contact within Nashville, then maybe we'll go to Chattanooga. And then maybe we'll go to Knoxville. But let's do this slow spiral where maybe after a couple years we will have eventually covered the entire country. But it's much easier.

I've read, I'm a fan of Seth Godin's books. and he had, I think he calls it an idea virus. So you want your, got to use the word virus carefully in these days, but, you know, he says you, you want your product to be an idea virus where it can kind of travel on its own. And people, you know, can kind of spread word for you. So I figured it'd be much easier for our, quote, virus to spread from Nashville to Chattanooga than it would be from Nashville to maybe San Francisco or Nashville to Portland, etc. So let's try and remain tight.

Let's start small. And then hopefully it can naturally travel on it. its own. So we started doing that and then we started getting inbound from, I'd keep sending more emails to customers. Oh, how'd you hear about us? And I kept hearing from more young life people and it was happening from all over the country now. And then eventually we saw an order for like six sets from Young Life Berlin coming in. And by that point, the machine was running and I didn't really need to push it that much more because the fire was raging on its own. I had given it all the oxygen. It needed to get started. But I had to identify that fire first. Yeah. Well, and it strikes me too, Chris,

that had you had your MBA, nothing against MBAs, obviously. They're great. Brilliant people. I get to work with a bunch and every time I'm in the room with them, I'm like, holy cow, you were like 10 times smarter than I am. But had you had your MBA, you would have invested a lot of money into creating a one year, two year, three year marketing strategy for going to market with this new product that probably would have not included young life. And so do you ever look in the mirror and just say, thank God, I didn't know anything about business? Absolutely. And I remember like early on feeling intimidated like, yeah, I've got my, I'm pretty good with a camera, but that's not going to do me much good here. I talked to my way out of my business

classes in my undergrad. From my day job, I learned how to be a pretty good salesperson. So So that definitely helps. Yeah, I have a feeling. Like, I look at a lot of companies when they're first getting started today, and I think if they've got that venture money or maybe if they have that MBA, when they realized that they failed

at the investment in going after volleyball, they would have stuck with it and say, our number one goal is to become the best paid advertiser going after volleyball players. We need to figure that out. And my goal is to never have to use paid advertising. I do not want to become the world's best at paid advertising. I want my advertising budget to be zero.

I think that's a big, big difference. I was talking to somebody a few weeks ago. They were getting ready to start a company, and 80% of his questions were around optimizing Facebook ad spend. They had already done a Kickstarter, and I think they got about 300 customers, maybe sold about $15,000 worth of product or something like that, before they'd even launched.

His entire focus was on Facebook ad spend, and I got to ask some questions. I said, tell me about the Kickstarter. These 300 people, they've given you their money. They're not raising one hand saying they love your product. They're raising two hands because your product doesn't even exist yet. And they're already giving you their money. Like, these people are worth their weight in gold.

So tell me about some conversations you've had with these 300. And it was like, dead silence. He hadn't spoken with one. And I shared my experience. It's like, all right, here's what I've been doing. I don't want to, you know, I can be. be allergic to advice when people say, you should do this. And so I'm careful to say that. But in my mind, I think a great idea for him would have been to send a note to those 300 people and not a mass

email, an individual email to each person so they know he's speaking to them individually and just ask them, why did they give them his money? What was it about the product or the story or whatever? hopefully by doing that, he's going to learn so much more about people and why they're into his product. He'll learn way more doing that than he ever will optimizing Facebook ad spend. And if you optimize Facebook ad spend, you come, and I'm beating up on Facebook, but any ad spend. Once you optimize it, the platform's going to realize it, and they're going to bring their rates up a little bit. And then tomorrow they're going to bring them up a little bit more. And you are now addicted to that drug, and that will become a very expensive drug.

and a very difficult drug to try and get off. So that's the goal for us to avoid that. We do spend. We do have an advertising budget, but it's not guaranteed that it's going up every year. I push my marketing team back and say, I know you wanted to go up 20% this year, but what would happen if we went down 20% this year?

As you are talking about that, Chris, I don't know how familiar you are with our organization, but we were started by our founder, Dave Ramsey, about 30 years ago. And since then, he's grown this company from a card table in his living room to what is now a 950-person company. We're a $250 million organization. And it's crazy. In the past three years, we have started to put our thumb on the pulse of one of the things that has driven our sustained success.

And it's the fact that when this company started, Dave started doing a daily radio show. And it started as just an hour show. Now it's the third most listened to radio show in the country, 16 million. and listeners a week, but he's on there every single day for three hours a day. And what he is doing is taking phone calls from customers every single day. Three years ago, we had this epiphany as a company that it's like, our secret weapon is that our CEO talks to our front of line customer every day for three hours. He is making decisions about where we're going based on the phone calls he had earlier today on the radio. And it sounds like it's exactly what you're talking about. So I'd be

curious to know, as you have grown to what is now a much larger organization, how have you kept that customer-centric focus at the core and center of your team's culture? As we scale, you know, unfortunately, I can't email every customer anymore. I'd love to, but I can't. We have tournaments all over the world. Well, they've all been temporarily canceled for now, but they'll be back someday. But that's a fantastic place. You know, our tournaments are almost always on Saturdays, and there's probably a couple hundred people at them during normal times. There's probably a tournament nearly every Saturday happening throughout the year. Some we host, some are hosted by independent directors or just kind of non-employees, etc.

So I'll go to those and sometimes I'll play in them. And if I play in them, I usually don't register beforehand. I will just kind of wander around. And if somebody's partner didn't show up and they're kind of looking for a fill in, I'll raise my hand. And they're like, wait. Do the people that are at these tournaments know who you are, like within those communities? Do they kind of have an idea like, this is the guy that built this?

Some do, some don't. You know, I don't want to be that guy that kind of walks up, you know, chest inflated, and I'm the CEO. But it has been funny. You know who I am. It has been a few times. Like, I've played with a few partners and, you know, maybe we're two, three hours into the tournament. and they think I'm just a random player.

And then one of their buddies, like, taps him on the shoulder and like, dude, you know that's the CEO? And the guy's like, wait, what? I had no idea. So, I have fun with that. But I get to learn so much. The way our tournaments are set up, you know, you're playing against tons of different opponents for those eight hours you're playing or so.

So I get to ask every single one of those people, like in between points, like, oh, how long you've been playing? Where do you normally play? What do you like about it? Who do you play with? And I'm just, like, just fascinated by that stuff. So I get to learn about that. Social media I love. I'm fairly active on Twitter. You know, at Spikeball Chris. And the other day,

somebody tweeted, so bummed, my Spikeball's debt got stolen. He didn't tag us. He didn't do anything. I just kind of hunted and, like, found it. And I replied, ugh, so sorry to hear that. DM me your address and I'll hook you up with a new one. And he was like blown away. Like, are you kidding me? Not only getting a free one, but wait, the CEO out of nowhere, like just sent me this. and I think he thought I was like trying to scam him or something or like wasn't who I was or whatever, but he was very appreciative. And I have a feeling he's now going to go tell 10 friends about that experience. Oh, and every person that he ever plays spike ball with, that story will come up without a shadow of a doubt. And the value of that is worth 100x whatever we'd get on a Google AdWords spend.

Now, I can't do that at scale, right? I'm one person. But, you know, when I do go into, you know, we've got our spike ball app. So we've got tens of thousands of people. You know, it's got sort of a news feed and posting your pictures and all that. I'll go in there and engage with people. And maybe it's just scrolling and just liking as much as I can, right? When people are posting on social media, I believe what they're really looking for is just some recognition. Just some sort of pat on the back that says, I recognize what you're doing and I think it's pretty cool. So I'll try and just like as many things as I can.

And I'll make sure I actually do like what they're posting in order to like it. But I'm a firm believer in sort of the flywheel kind. So one of those isn't going to do much. But if I do that consistently over the years, enough turns of that flywheel is actually going to turn into some momentum. So, you know, I can't bring the scale that, you know, a Facebook or a huge YouTube ad campaign well. But the engagement that I can get from that one on one and the word of mouth that the customers are going to share, you know, one of our values at Spikeball is surprise and delight. And we don't advertise this, but we don't advertise this, but we're going to share, you know, we're going to share. We, we don't advertise this. But we don't advertise this. But we we do have a lifetime warranty on our product. So if you bought a spike ball set eight years ago and you played yesterday and your friend landed on it and it broke, you may send us an email saying, hey, you know, my knucklehead friend landed on the spike ball set and broke the rem. Can I buy a new spike ball rem, please? And we'll reply, hey, thanks, sorry to hear about your buddy. Unfortunately, we don't sell replacement parts. We only ship them for free. Can you please

give us your address? I love that email, though. Like, you could just say, no, we'll just send you one. But the way you phrased that email, like, that just amps the experience even more. Absolutely. When is the last time you tried offering a company money? You had your wallet out. You're trying to hand it to them. And the company's like, eh, no thanks. We're good. So every time that experience happens, we can't prove it. We can't measure it. But I do have a feeling people are telling their friends and family like, hey, remember we broke that set like a week or two ago? Listen to this. I tried paying Spikewell for a part. They said no. They shipped it to me. And not only did they ship it to me, you know, it was the broken leg. When the package showed up. The package was big and there was a big image on the front of the box and it looked like one of those like funeral memorial cards and it said two leg, a life well lived, RIP, right? And just fun stuff like that. I want our customers in our community to know that there are humans having fun and there's a personality to the brand. So our customer service folks, they rarely use the word hi. They use the word hey. I want them to be casual.

and type to the customer as if they were talking to their friends, unless the customer is upset. If the customer is upset, be very formal and solve that problem as fast as you can. But just to make sure there's personality. So if you look at any of our social posts, the way we interact, you'll see that, you know, sometimes we're talking trash

and just kind of busting the balls of some of the fans, and they're cool with it. We have fun, and it's kind of the exact opposite of what Nike's doing, right? Nike, everything is perfectly polished. It's the world's best athlete. a photo and there's a drop of sweat, getting ready to fall off the chin. That's planned. It's perfectly choreographed. That works for them. That's not us. We're almost all about the community, user-generated content, everything being authentic, organic, et cetera. And that's not right

for everybody. But for us, it's worked, and I think people like it because they can see themselves in our photos. They can see themselves at our tournaments. And we're a very inclusive, not exclusive community. Anybody can come compete in our tournaments. You don't have to be great to compete in them. That's right. Sometimes you see, actually, I think CrossFit just went through this. I'm not sure if you're super connected to the CrossFit community, but if I'm thinking

correctly, they started diminishing the amount of publicity they're doing around elite CrossFit athletes. And it was exactly because of what you're talking about. They wanted CrossFit to be more inclusive and they realized they were starting to be associated with a brand that is only for the most elite athletes in the world. And they said, well, that's not a very good business model because there's only so many of those. But they almost had to make that shift.

I'd love for you to pull out what are the core principles that you're talking about with? The surprise and delight that I think it could be easy for the business owner to say, okay, well, they've got a very communal sport. It's a very unique sport. Maybe these things just apply to them. But if I own an HVAC business or if I own a plumbing company, or if I even own a marketing agency, how do I take what he's talking about

and apply it to my business? What are the principles that are at the core of all this, Chris? They're all based on just my experience as a consumer, our marketing and kind of our way of going about business. The way I'm building the culture and wanting us to actually do things at the company itself is largely based on my experience

as an employee at a big company. And those experiences were pretty negative. So I'm almost, to a T doing the exact opposite of what I learned at the day job to what I'm doing at Spike Ball. So, you know, I really had no autonomy at the day job. The amount of autonomy that our employees have is insane. So we have 28 employees now. It's a remote workforce. So even before COVID, everybody worked from home. We do have an office in Chicago here, but it's optional if you want to come in. Usually it's me sitting alone there. But whether you've been in the

workforce for 20 years, or this is your first job out of college, you are going to be making decisions. You're going to be the one deciding what we should do and how we should do it. We'll give you some guidance and occasionally I'll say, yeah, I need you to do A, B, or C, but 90% of the time, you know, I believe that people want to make decisions and have some ownership around what it is they're doing. You know, to your point around, you know, how could like an HVAC company do surprise and delight? I just think of my own experience. It wasn't an HVAC company, but I had to get a dishwasher part replaced a few months ago.

It would have been really nice if they would have called me maybe six weeks after, maybe a month after the work, and you say, hey, we're just checking in. Just want to make sure everything's still good. They didn't. If they did, I probably would be able to tell you the name of that company. But it was just a dishwasher repair company. It wasn't.

I had no real connection to them. Did they leave three lullipops behind for my kids after they did the work. No. But if they kept a bag of lullipops always on them at all times, and if they see that as they're doing their work, they know it's a household with kids, maybe leave a couple behind. Just what can we do to surprise and delight? You know, it may have absolutely nothing to do with your product or your service, but your customer is a human being. So what can you do to get them on your side? You know, I read an article about how I believe Trader Joe's employees are trained and encouraged.

to really interact with kids. And usually a parent bringing kids to the grocery store. That's the worst thing in the world, right? Like, the kids always want to buy stuff. But the Trader Joe employees are making it more comfortable for them. So if the kids are comfortable at the grocery store, the parents are going to be comfortable at the grocery store. The parents are going to be more likely to come back.

It has nothing to do with food, but it has to do with the experience. So, yeah, and our values, these were not values that I just sat down one day, wrote up and said, hey everybody, here they are. These are our values. We review them once a year as an entire company. We're a remote work team, but we get together on retreats twice a year. And the retreats are 90% fun and 10% work. So it's basically just so we can keep our relationship strong with each other. And it's usually in some great location.

You know, we were on the beach in Florida last time. We're actually all supposed to be in Zion National Park right now, but had to get canceled. But usually at those, once a year, we will. You know, basically we run a giant house that has literally the house has 28 beds in it. Well, it's kind of hard to find houses that big, but they exist. We'll spend a week there and we'll all hang out in the living room maybe for an hour a day. And up on the TV, we'll put the values. And we'll say, all right, everybody, we're going to go through the values and we want to review these and make sure that these are still important. Do we still believe in these?

Maybe we want to delete one, add one, or just modify them a little bit. But the example I like to share is, you know, Enron had values. And look what happened to them. They had values. They just didn't actually use them. They didn't live by them. The line I love is you should hire, fire, and manage according to your values. So somebody doesn't get fired for not doing their job.

They get fired for violating some of your values on a repeated basis. Somebody doesn't get a pat on the back for doing a good job. They get a good job for exemplifying a certain value. That means a lot more. So by keeping the values front and center, that keeps us all on the same page. And it helps a lot. And I remember when I first started Spikeball, I hear people talk about values and mission. I'd kind of roll my eyes and like, oh, it just sounds like some fuzzy like Hallmark card kind of a stuff.

Like, I don't need that. I actually have a real business to run. And then I learned. It's a very important thing. And it's not just to write them, that's one thing, but to actually live them. That's the important part. And I didn't want it to be just something that, oh, this is something Chris wrote and he believes. So the rest of us have to live by this.

No, we all are the authors of this. So our fingerprints are over all of them. Is the culture of the organization self-policing around those values, Chris? It is. I do encourage people, like if somebody, you know, we use base camp for our internal communication. And if somebody says, good job on something, you know, I'll try and say, good job. that was a great job of exemplifying value of have fun. Or another one of our values is don't be a jerk.

So there's plenty of examples where people are jerks to us. And it'd probably feel pretty good to be jerks back to them. But more often than not, we don't. And we're good about that. So rather than just saying, oh, good job on biting your tongue there. Good job on supporting our value of don't be a jerk. That means a lot more. Well, and that's one of the things we talk about a lot here that we've seen as the success

behind our culture here within this business that we've then seen other small businesses succeed with is coach people towards the principle, not the policy. And the example that I'm thinking of that you kind of already shared with us is I would assume y'all aren't coaching people, hey, you need to be a little bit more casual in this email because that feels like micromanagement. But if it's, hey, remember, one of our core values is have fun. So make sure that's reflected in the language we're using. That feels a lot more. I feel like I have a lot more autonomy than you telling me how to write an email if you say that. Absolutely.

And your version of Have Fun, maybe different than my version of Have Fun. And that's fine. Just as long as whomever you're communicating with can feel that they know it's not just this automated bot that they're swapping notes with that it's a human that may actually include in their email. Like, by the way, I hope you have a nice day.

Or it's a sunny day here in Chicago. Just something that just allows people to relate and connect. So, yeah, we try not to be. too prescriptive. Of course, we fail from time to time. But yeah, I think for the most part, you know, we're a very hands-off company. And yeah, we just, we hire people that we can trust. You know, another one of our values is trust until you shouldn't. And, you know, we've had a decent amount of our employees. Their first job out of college has been spike ball. And, you know, the first day on the job, they're sitting at home in their living room with a laptop. And nobody's peering over

their shoulder like, oh, did you open the laptop at 9 a.m. And have you been working? You better been working until 5 p.m. because that's how we do things. Like, no, we don't care when you work. We just care that the work gets done. We care that it gets done on time. If you're more of a night person and you want to work late but sleep in until 11 a.m., that's fine. It took me a while to get there. You know, when I was first starting, I remember thinking like, well, no, normal business. Everybody starts at 9 and you work until 5, and that's how it does. So, but eventually I kind of, and I still struggle with this, but I try to push my ego out of the way. And it's like, wait, yeah, I may feel powerful by being able to dictate that. And I'm the CEO. So yeah, I can do that. But just because

I can do it doesn't mean I should do it. And I think that's, you know, a lot of companies obviously being forced to do work from home right now. And a lot of CEOs are very uncomfortable because like, wait, I don't, I can't see my employees. How do I know they're actually going to be working? And I think that's based on just a, I don't think they have that level of trust. why do you actually need to see somebody to know they're working? You should know they're working because you just, you knew them well enough to hire them, to bring them into your company and to,

hopefully if you hired them, you trust them enough to know that they're going to do the right thing when nobody's watching. How is retention at Spikeball, Chris? We've literally had two people quit ever. Oh, my word. Actually, funny you asked today. Today is the second person's last day.

Oh, my word. So literally, if we had recorded this yesterday, We would have been one. Yes. I mean, and you're at 28 people now. The company has had team members since 2013. Yeah, so seven years. And the first person that quit actually was about to get fired.

So when that happened, I kind of breathed a sigh of relief because I didn't have to fire them. But yeah, you know, of course we've had to let people go. But, yeah, we've only had two people leave on their own. That's unreal. So if someone, if a small business owner comes to you and says, I want to. want retention like that, what is the first thing you would encourage them to focus on just as a principle or as a generality to start creating that type of culture where people want to be around your business? Give the employees, give the team more power, let them make decisions,

trust them. You hired them because they're really smart people in whatever area it is. I think of Izzy. We hired her, I think, just under a year ago. She's fresh out of college. She's running our TikTok and doing a lot of social media stuff and just killing it. She knows way more about that than I do. Way more. I'm CEO, though. If I want to wag my finger and tell her what to do and how to do it, yeah, I can do it. But we hired her because, you know, she's the perfect age for our community.

She's super smart. She wants to help. She's driven, all this stuff. And I just want to get out of her way. Give her the freedom to do the work she wants to do. And, you know, doing this for all of our employees. and if they raise their hand and say, I need some help or I need some more resource to do whatever, absolutely the answer is going to be yes. I want to make sure that we're living in an environment

where the employees do feel comfortable raising their hands saying, I need help. And also on the flip side, that we're actually asking them often, how can we help you? What are you trying to achieve? What's in the way? So, yeah, you know, just speaking from my experiences, you know, again, I said I was at Monster, I was at Microsoft and other big, big companies where I just, nobody really asked my opinion or said, Chris, what do you think we should do? But when... That's what blows my mind is you were in, you were in kind of like a corporate sales role at Monster, correct? Yep, yep. Okay, and you said you weren't really making decisions, you didn't have a ton of autonomy, no one really cared about your opinion. They didn't know this, but in their building,

making those phone calls was the CEO of what is now a $21 million company. Like, you had that inside of you at that time. They were just massively underutilizing it. That's like a wake-up call for me. It's like, holy cow, who are the people that I'm around right now that because I'm not giving them the autonomy to run, it's a CEO of a company that is just sitting there being untapped potential. Yeah, and from their perspective,

I probably looked like this sort of C-student, employee that just doesn't really care. And they're probably right, but I was reflecting what I was receiving. They don't really care about me, so I'm probably not going to care much about them. You know, they're nice people. They're paying me well. The work day was pleasant enough, but I'm not motivated. I'm not like, yeah, I'm going to like really go deep and try and figure this thing out. There was like a one-year window, especially during my time at Monster, where there was like this sort of new startup division that I was a part of. And I actually got to make decisions. And I was like, I remember I literally stayed at the office past midnight a couple times and

it was just like so pumped about this. And we put up good numbers, but that startup got baked into the broader machine eventually. And that's when it went back to just cubicle life and just kind of just do your job. And so, yeah. When I had that say, when I had, when I was at, asked Chris, we've got a problem. We're not sure how to figure it out. Can you help? That's when I really get, when my juices really got flowing. So if you're running that HVAC company and you've got some employees that are showing up late or not doing whatever, rather than just thinking, they're knuckleheads and they got to go, maybe just also kind of look in the mirror and say, you know, what am I doing to actually engage them? Am I just barking

orders at them? Like, all right, we've got three stops today. Make sure you're there early, do it and go. Now I don't want to hear any complaining. All right, if that's going to be the environment, then you're not going to get any employee that's like, you know, motivated and wanting to do better and help you build your business. You're the captain of the ship. You're steering it, but you're not, you know, building the engine. There's so many other things that are happening, and it's your employees that are doing that. You just need to help give that guidance. You share with me some of the numbers before we started today. 2008, when you started the business, $10,882 in revenue.

2013, whenever you stepped out on your own, you were a $1 million company. 2016, you're now a $13 million company. 2018, $18.5, 2019, you all did $21 million. For someone that majored in photojournalism, that sounds a lot like business, Chris. That's pretty impressive. How do you stay on top of it growing that fast over the course of what is? is it 11 years growing to a $21 million organization? It's a great question.

I'm as shocked as anybody about how far we've grown. And I still kind of look at my pinch myself. And I'm like, wait, is this real? But, you know, a lot of people ask the question like, what's next? Or like, you know, what's the next big thing? And my answer, I think, usually disappoints in that I want to keep doing what we've been doing. Yeah, we've got some cool stuff in the works. But we've got this, the flywheel, the momentum is just gargantuan.

So if I have to talk tactics about what's next, you know, international growth is huge for us right now. You know, South America, Europe, Australia, those are fantastic. We're supposed to be hosting our first ever world championship tournament in Belgium. You know, we're expecting between 20 and 30 countries to be represented there. But we didn't just one day decide, let's host a world championship. We had been pushing that flywheel, you know, going years, back to, I think, our first tournament in maybe 2010 or 12, something like that, it was like 15, 20 of my friends on the beach in Chicago. And we had a clipboard and a pencil, and we called it a

tournament. Now we have tournaments showing up on ESPN. We have, you know, world championships happening. And so as long as we remain close to the customer, as long as we live by our values, I think we'll still, we'll keep doing an amazing job. And, you know, listening to the the customer may show up in the form of a new product. It may show up in the form of a world championship or something else. But if we stop doing that, we're going to get in trouble, you know, because when I wasn't listening to the customer, that's when I spent a lot of time and money chasing volleyball. And that was a failure. So doing more of the same, but it sounds boring. More of the same doesn't typically make you think like this is a super fast-growing company, but it is.

And a lot of times we see that people are under-resourcing the things that are already succeeding. And it sounds like y'all are taking an opposite approach where it's like, let's just dump fuel on the fire of what's already working. Why would we change track? Why would we lose focus right now? You've alluded to the mission of the organization up to this point. But can you share with us what is the core mission of spike ball? To create the next great global sport. I love the audacious.

and the concision behind that. That's legit to create the next great global sport. Okay, so one of the things we always teach here is that when you have a clear vision, it really crystallizes this is who we are, but it also crystallizes this is who we're not. And I felt like the greatest example of that whenever I was researching you was your appearance on Shark Tank, whenever, I think it was Damon John, who we've had on this program before. He offered you, I believe, believe it was $500,000 for 20% of the business plus licensing and manufacturing rights and decision-making power around all of that. That deal ended up fizzling out, correct? Correct. And so does that tie into the mission? I'm just curious to know, is that related to kind of your

mission saying, no, that's just not in our lane? Or can you explain to us why you didn't jump on that, Chris? Yeah, so the Shark Take experience as a whole was fantastic. Damon was super nice. The rest of the sharks were super nice. We did the deal with him on the show, but yeah, a few months after we filmed, the deal was dead. And oddly enough, you know, the deal was dead before the show actually aired. So we filmed in September of 2014, I think, or maybe October, 2014. And it didn't air until May of 2015. So it was super long time. Maybe like seven, eight months or something like that. But yeah, we were talking to Damon afterwards, and he said, yeah, Chris, I've got some friends at Marvel comics. Let's make a Spider-Man branded spikeball set. And I was like, eh, you know, that kind of makes it

feel like it's going to be a toy. And at the time, our mission was to create the next great American sport. We have now modified it to be the next great global sport. But I remember thinking about that, and I was like, it feels like a toy. And is that actually going to get us closer to our mission? I didn't see how it would. And then he said, all right, you know, I've got friends at the NHL. Let's make, like, some NHL-branded spike ball sets. And his basic go-to idea was a licensing play, and let's get another logo on your product. And I just didn't see how that was going to get us closer

to where we wanted to go. That's where he wanted to go. And that doesn't necessarily mean it was wrong. You know, it's not wrong for him, but for what we wanted to accomplish and what we want to accomplish, that wasn't going to get us there. What I love to somehow work with the team at Marvel,

and I think that'd be so much fun. It'd be great. but I don't see how doing that is going to get us there. So, you know, you talked earlier about how, you know, CrossFit, it sounds like they used to focus on sort of the super high caliber athlete, and now they're kind of focusing more on the everyday kind of person going to their boxes. We struggle with that as well, right? We've got, you know, our top players in the country, and then we also have backyard players. The backyard players are probably 99.9% of people that play. 0.1% are the people that actually get on airplanes and fly to tournaments and are sponsored by companies and train and do all of that.

We need to give both a ton of attention, but something has to give, which one is going to get it? So we need to build that foundation. If we want to become the next great global sport, you know, I don't know, let's say there's 10 million people playing in their backyards right now. We need that to be a hundred million in order to be a great global sport. So how can we do that? but how can we also keep our top players happy? And developing this sport, that wasn't something that Damon was really that interested in. So it's actually funny, you know, we never officially called the deal off. You know, the relationship kind of went the way as I'm assuming maybe some of your listeners have experienced, you know, you and the significant other never officially break up. You just kind of stop calling each other.

That's kind of what happened. So, you know, no hard feelings on either side. But, you know, what happens on the show is, a handshake. Neither side is legally bound for the deal to close. And when I first had the first call with Damon, we chatted for a bit and he was nice. And he said, Chris, you actually said, I don't even remember the deal, the specific deal we did on the show. I'll have my team look it up. But he said, if you want to do that deal, we can. If you want to come up with something wildly different, I'm open to that as well. So we kind of started with a blank slate when sort of real world

negotiations began, but... It just feels like, though, if you don't have your clear mission and values established going into that conversation, then shiny object syndrome takes over and $500,000

and the opportunity to work with Marvel becomes the next great thing. And in doing so, you might actually create something that you didn't actually want to be a part of. And you end up hijacking the thing that you were building. And so I guess can you speak to the value from a leadership perspective of having that

clear mission, vision, and values, and what that gives you as a leader, Chris? It gives me peace of mind because I essentially have a rulebook when I'm faced with a tough decision. I can look at the values. I can look at the mission and say, does this support it? A while ago we considered, you know, there's a lot of what we consider sort of knockoff sets in the marketplace. And I don't know, I think there's over 30 of them now or something like that. And they're priced really, really low. And the quality is really, really low.

If we wanted to get in that marketplace, we could. And we could probably do well. And the idea was floated around, and it just felt like, I was like, all right, how's this going to support our mission? And how's this going to support our values? And it just, when we kind of went line item by line item, it aligned with some, but not with all. and that was what we used to help make the decision.

If the mission of the company was to make as much money as humanly possible, then yes, we would have done it. We would have done the deal with Damon. And maybe we would have made a lot of money on the short-term basis with both of those. But I don't see them as surviving the test of time. And I don't see either of them as helping us create the next great global sport. So it is sort of that the counselor in the form of a list of rules that you kind of follow. So it's, yeah, it helps.

I have two more questions for you. My first one is what is the biggest challenge, leadership challenge you are facing right now in the growth of this company, Chris? I'm torn about how involved I should be on the day-to-day operation of the business. I'm curious. I want to know what everybody's doing. Not because I don't trust them, but just because I'm fascinated. When I do peek under the hood, I will start offering ideas. And I need to remember the weight that my words carry. It's an idea in my head. But maybe when the employee hears it, they're saying, Chris absolutely wants me to do this, so I have to do it. I have a hard time biting my tongue and not saying, oh, have you thought about blah, blah, blah?

And even though I'm asking the question, have you thought about, I get the feeling, sometimes they're translating that as, you know, Chris is trying to be nice, but he's telling me I should do this. Sometimes I am telling people they need to do things. but I need to make sure that my curiosity or my ideas are ideas, and I want the team to feel comfortable telling me no. It's really hard to tell the boss no. You need to have a pretty good relationship for people to do that. So getting back to my original point of how involved in the business should I be,

how close should I be? You know, the last six, maybe 12 months, I've been feeling like I've kind of flying blind and the machine's running, and I know for the most part what's going on. So I've now been talking to the team like, hey, guys, I'd love to have, like, just like a weekly call of just quick updates, just so I can learn. Let's do it for a few weeks. For the most part, I'm very allergic to scheduled recurring calls, you know, just sort of that check-in call or whatever. We can do that on base camp. There's no need for everybody to get on a phone call for that.

But if we do that check-in and that results in meaningful conversation, then, okay, there's value being. created there. So we're going to schedule this call. We're going to start having it. And as long as everybody sees value in it, we'll do it maybe every two weeks. And that's going to bring me a little closer. I'll get to listen. I'm not going to say, oh, we should be doing A, B, and C. So I'm hoping that that'll bring me closer. But I do think a lot of either managers or CEOs, they will get a little too involved and just as the employee is starting to gain some confidence that they can do things on their own, the boss rolls in, taps them on the shoulder and says, no, no, no, here's what you should be doing. And now you're just, you know, taking all the wind out of the sales of the employee.

What is the thing you're most excited about with regard to spike ball, Chris? Just seeing how much bigger it can get, you know, like I, when the weather's nice, you know, I'll go down to the beach in Chicago, and I'll literally see 20, 30 sets being played. If it's 30 people, there's four on each. That's over 100 people that I just randomly stumbled upon. And I'll walk up and I'll introduce myself and I'll just tell them, thanks for being a customer. And hearing those stories, knowing that I had a little something to do

with people having a good time on a Saturday or on whenever it is. there's a handful of people that have met their spouses playing spikeball. Actually, two of our employees have met their spouses playing. Oh, my gosh. There are people that have spikeball tattoos. Oh, my word. I've seen photos of newborn babies that are maybe 90 minutes old, wrapped up, you know, little burrito style. And the spike ball net is in the delivery room and the baby's sitting on the net.

That is just insane. Nothing makes me feel better. and knowing again that me and my team had a little something to do. Like the fact that they're bringing this and making this a part of some of life's most important moments, there is no higher compliment to what we're doing than that. That's not going to show up in any spreadsheet. It's not going to show up in our financials. But, you know, whether it's something like that or just getting a random text from my aunt,

who's very proud of what we've been doing and she stumbled on a player somewhere, and just sent me a picture. And she walked up to those players and said, oh, Christopher is my nephew. He's the CEO. I'm so proud. And I love that. You know, that just feels amazing. So that's, you know, I hope I don't leave the company for a long, long time.

But when I do, that's going to be something that I really, really miss. But for now, I love it. And it's great. It's pretty crazy to think it started in 1989 with a kid that wasn't allowed to play. and then a beach trip that changed the trajectory of your life and a lot of other lives. I'll tell you, Chris, I told you before this, I've been a fan of Spikeball the Game for a long time. But as you were talking about this, I was thinking about the fact that there are a handful of brands that I interact with, that I've loved the product or service, but then I go on to love it more whenever I find out about the business and the team and the leadership behind the product or service.

I think of Patagonia, I think of Disney, I think of Chick-fil-A, and now I'm adding spike ball to that list because y'all have an incredible product. But beyond that incredible product, y'all are running a remarkable world-class business. So we're grateful for your time today. We're grateful for what you're doing to create the next great global sport. Thanks so much, Chris. Thank you so much. It's been a pleasure. Man, that conversation was incredibly tough for me because I was absolutely enjoying spending time with Chris.

I think his story is absolutely fascinating. But the whole time I simultaneously wanted to be playing spike ball, y'all, if you have not played this game, you have to play this game. It is an absolute blast. Great way to get to know people. Your kids will love it. So you need to go get a spike ball set. Find four people to play with and get after it. I play like two or three times a week right now.

It is so much fun, and they've done such a great job. And it's one of those things, too, that it's like, yes, I love the game before. I love it even more now because I know the heart behind the business. And, man, isn't that a takeaway for all of us that when we bring our heart, when we bring our personality, when we bring our humanity into the work that we do, it absolutely makes a difference and makes an impact on the way our customers perceive us? And that connects directly to one of the things that we coach on here at Entree Leadership all the time. It's that businesses that thrive can always answer three powerful questions.

Why do we exist? Where are we going? And what do we stand for? And specifically, that last question, what do we stand for is answered in your organization's core values? Do you have core values for your business? Do you have it for your team? Because these are going to lay out for you, really, what is your line in the sand? it really tells you this is who we are. This is what we exist for, and this is what we embody day in and day out.

And so if you don't have core values, this is a great opportunity to create those as a business owner. So our team created a free resource that walks you through the process of identifying and then communicating your business's core values. So if you want to get that resource, just text create core values to 3344. Again, that's create core values, all one word, no spaces to 33444 or just click the length that's in the show notes. I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Entree Leadership podcast. If you did, please give us a five-star review and tell your friends to subscribe. For a chance to win a $25 Amazon gift card, you can review this episode by clicking the length that's in the show notes. And be sure to follow us on social media at Entree Leadership.

This episode is produced by Tim Hull, and it was edited and mixed by Will Rutter. I'm Alex Judd and on behalf of the entire Entree leadership team, thanks for listening. We'll talk with you again very soon. If you enjoy this podcast, you should check out other great podcasts from the Ramsey Network, like Borrowed Future. Not so fun fact, America has a $1.6 trillion student loan crisis and it's out of control. I'm George Camel, host of the Borrowed Future podcast where we uncover the underbelly of the student loan industry and show you what you can do about it.

It'll inspire you to see that it is possible to avoid student loans and graduate college debt-free. Listen to borrowed future wherever you listen to podcasts.