Heroes in Business - GRANDtable Exclusive, Leejon Killingsworth, Chief Creative Officer Coyote Ugly Saloon

Episode Date: October 31, 2022

Steps to Keeping Your Brand Current. GRANDtable Exclusive, Leejon Killingsworth, Chief Creative Officer Coyote Ugly Saloon is interviewed by David Cogan famous host Eliances Heroes Show and founder Eliances entrepreneur community.   

Up in the sky, look, it's captivating, it's energizing, it's Eliance's Heroes. Eliance's is the destination for entrepreneurs, investors, CEOs, inventors, leaders, celebrities, and startups. We're our heroes in business aligned. Now here's your host flying in, David Kogan, founder of Eliance's. Welcome back to the Eliance's show. That's right. The only place where entrepreneurs align, and you can go to E-L-I-A-N-C-E-S.com. Next to me, boy, I got a celebrity. Doesn't he look like he belongs in all these movies? I got to tell you, you look like an action figure. And I mean that in the greatest compliment we have with us, Lee John Killingsworth. He can be reached

at coyoteuglysaloon.com. And you'll see it on our website. That's C-O-Y-O-T-E ugly, U-G-L-Y-S-A-L-O-O-N.com is a partner with Coyote Ugly. All right. So for those of you that may not know what Coyote Ugly is, certainly I've been there and have had some very memorable experiences. Why don't you steal the thunder, Lijon? So we're the world's most famous bar. Most famous bar on the planet is one of our taglines, but we are a origins of a dive bar chain that ended up having such a interesting brand story and concept that it became a movie that it became a reality

show we're in 10 countries worldwide we've done business selling merchandise in third-party stores like macy's we're now in the product game, developing our own products. So we're more than just a bar, but we're definitely the most famous bar on the planet. In fact, too, I heard a rumor that you are the first billion-dollar brand. We're the first billion-dollar bar brand, which when we started doing all the adding

of our income over the years, we realized, like, wow, we have a lot more money than I realized we generated with this brand. And we did it not just within the bar, hospitality, restaurant industry. We did it in a few other industries as well. The movie was a huge hit for Touchstone, which was a subsidiary of Disney. Jerry Bruckheimer produced it. And that really was the lightning strike that we used to go all over the world. I remember the movie. Yep.

And the reality show. And I remember seeing, it was just phenomenal. We said 51 million people saw the pilot episode of our reality show for MTV Networks, which at that time in 2004 was the highest viewed reality show they ever had they brought us into the offices of CMT in Nashville and I was blown away and it ended up carrying on for several more seasons it wasn't until the crash of 08 that it got shelved and it kind of has sat in limbo ever since. But we are in talks to start a new one. Oh, how exciting. Exciting stuff going on.

So what do you think the attraction is, though, to have grown like you've grown? I mean, there's a bazillion bars that are out there. It's the brand story. I mean, the reason we have our female customers come is different than the male customers. It's unlike any other bar that I've been to we've had a lot of people try to copy it but but never successfully you know the imitations never do what what we can do everybody tries to copy something they do and and we've out list lasted them

all yeah yeah so talk let's talk about, let's take one step back to is, first of all, it's not easy, right? And you've had certainly some challenges. For sure. Especially in the last couple of years, in March 15th, 2020, my entire system went down at once. It's like somebody turned a faucet off and I had no control of when that came back on. I never saw that vulnerability within the brick and mortar model. We survived 9-11. Our corporate offices were in the World Trade Center.

We moved them to New Orleans and then Katrina hit us a few years later, right? Yeah. And on each of these instances, we had a big enough system to be able to take our staff and move them to other locations. It didn't, it didn't hinder the whole company and we were able to, to take care of our family. With, with COVID, my whole system went down at once. There was nowhere to take anybody to. Having to lay off a bar, we lost some bars because of it. Some of our landlords didn't

want to work with us and having to do a layoff via Zoom was probably the hardest thing that forever has changed me ever since. You know, I've had to fire people before, but I've never seen 30 faces looking back at me with that can literally see the tears coming down their face. And it forever changed me. And I never wanted us to have to deal with this kind literally see the tears coming down their face and it forever changed me and i never wanted us to have to deal with this kind of vulnerability again which forced us to start looking at other ways for a bar to make money online which is how do you do that how can you even do that it's not easy but we found a way i love it i love it we're talking about that and then if that wasn't enough another thing happened to a bar of yours? Yeah, so not only did they close us out down system-wide in March of 2020,

that Christmas when we were finally coming back open and we were heading towards the busiest night of the year, which is New Year's Eve, Christmas morning, a guy packed an RV full of explosives and parked it right in front of my busiest and biggest location and detonated it at six in the morning on Christmas morning. He was targeting the AT&T building across the street from us. He felt that 5G gave him cancer, the 5G tower, so he wanted to take it out. What he ended up really doing is not hurting AT&T very much at all, but the entire block was decimated.

We were closed for a year and a half, and we were one of the first places to open back up, and that just happened in June of this year. So, you know, with businesses, we all have different issues and stuff. But, boy, you shine a light on your type of business. issues and stuff but boy you shine a light on your type of business and even when there's you know with a lot of especially with a lot of startups and you know mid-sized growth companies and even you know that something like that happens how do you just go i've had enough fun it's time to just leave and figure out what i'm going to do next with each one of those things that you had that must've crossed your mind. And then how did you get past that to continue? Cause most would have said, Hey, it's enough. And if all that, and you said it

finalized with a bomb, how much further can you get? Listen, a lot of people in my industry did quit. A lot of the big heavy hitters in the restaurant game left the entire industry. For us, it was more about, there's this famous Rocky quote that is, it's not about how hard you hit. It's about how hard you can get hit and still get up and keep going. And that's my team. We're all, we're all came up in the hard way. Nothing was ever handed to any of us. And we just had that mindset that we could keep going, and we did. We didn't lose a single management team member during this whole period. Everybody stayed in.

As hard as it was, we did. And now we're coming on the back end of that, benefiting from that mindset. Phenomenal. And again, we have with us Lijan Killingsworth. He is the partner with Coyote Ugly. He can be reached at coyoteuglysaloon.com. Of course, you can also catch it on alliances.com, E-L-I-A-N-C-S.com. So talk to us, Lijan, about the products and different things that you're doing.

about the projects and products and different things that you're going. Cause you know, if it's not enough plus full time to run a bar, you're building more on top of it, building more on top. All right. Steal the thunder. Is there a question? Nope. Oh, okay. So, so yeah, the, the experience we dealt with with COVID, you know, it's about how do you pivot, right? You know, I ended up in this industry pivoting away from fighting in the UFC. My goal to move to Vegas was to be a MMA fighter because I wanted to open my own school. And I did the nightclub business as a way to just pay the bills.

And then it turned out that I was actually pretty good at that. I was pretty good at getting people to walk through a specific door. And I didn't have to get hit in the face and I made way more money. So that was a pivot that changed my life. It took me all over the world. I've been to 400 cities in 28 countries worldwide doing market research. Now with COVID, we were forced to look at the same thing. How can a bar make money online? Well, it can't.

You know, people in my industry tried doing a virtual bar. They tried doing virtual parties and it just never really took off. And I feel like where our business is, you know, we make money off of selling the shop here, $5 shots, but that's not our product. Our product is the experience that you have within those four doors. We create an entire universe. As soon as you walk past that front door threshold. It's not what was outside anymore. Now you're in the Coyote Ugly universe and your problems outside are now outside. You're in this new world and that's our real product. That's what we do. So I couldn't figure out a way to put that online.

But products, products is something that you can sell online. So we started looking at how can we leverage our brand in the product space. And we are now about to launch a nice tea line. We have our own bourbon. We're about to help launch a preventative hangover remedy that really works. And we found a veteran-owned company. They developed this formula working in undercover. And, you know, they would have to, these guys are amazing. They're former tier one and tier two special

force operators. And after the military, they went and started doing work, saving kids that are sex trafficked. They started helping the CIA find pedophiles. They helped people get out of Ukraine. They helped people get out of Afghanistan. These guys are amazing. But because they do so much undercover work, they have to go out and party with a lot of these people all night long, and they drink heavy. That next morning, they couldn't afford to be hungover.

So they came up with this formula that you take before you drink, and it's vitamins and minerals. It's nothing exotic. But the way drink and it's vitamins and minerals. It's nothing exotic, but the way they put it together, it works. It's going to end hangovers for most people, I think. We're really excited about this product and we're excited that we can do things like that within our brand to help change what we do, the way we do business. Well, congratulations on everything. And also to thank you, you recently came and flew in again because you're part of the alliances community to attend the grand table the grandest of grand uh hundreds upon hundreds of entrepreneurs and leaders and

all various industries and that plus many thousands plus online and that what was uh talk to us uh maybe somebody out there who doesn't know what Eliance is, what it's like to be part of the Eliance's community. It's literally my favorite event I go to every year. There's no way to explain the energy level in a room full of motivated, successful, intelligent people, all with the goal to not only help themselves get more successful, but to help each other get more successful. I have been inspired by the people in that room so many times that we started a whole consulting company because of it. And because of that consulting company, I've got to work with the Academy Award winning producers of the Lord of the Rings films. I've worked with Perry Farrell.

I worked with, I'm working with Chris Pratt right now on a bourbon. And that wouldn't have happened had I not been exposed to this E-Liances group and saw that this opportunity was sitting there for us, that I didn't see before. Phenomenal, phenomenal. Well, again, we're honored. We're honored to have you part of the community. Honored, certainly, when you come in and attend in person. And we're all here to help.

So make sure, again, make sure you go to Alliances. Make sure you go to coyoteugliesaloon.com. This has been David Kogan with the Alliances Hero Show with Lijan Killingsworth. Because you know at Alliances, right, Lijan, it is the only place where entrepreneurs align. We'll be you next time.