How I Built This with Guy Raz - Advice Line with Chris Ruder of Spikeball

Episode Date: November 21, 2024

Spikeball founder and CEO Chris Ruder joins Guy on the Advice Line, where they answer questions from three early-stage founders. Plus, Chris shares an early-days strategy that ended up revealing surprising intel about his core customers.First we meet Jimmy in California, who’s wondering how to find passionate managers as he scales his chain of parkour gyms. Then Cindy in Massachusetts, who’s looking to expand her running brand beyond its niche with a new product. And Nigel in New York, who’s poising himself for a comeback after his Rockaway Beach surf shop went under last year.Thank you to the founders of Freedom in Motion Gym, Pen and Paces, and Station RBNY Surf Shop for being a part of our show.If you’d like to be featured on a future Advice Line episode, leave us a one-minute message that tells us about your business and a specific question you’d like answered. Send a voice memo to [e-mail] or call 1-800-433-1298.And be sure to listen to Spikeball’s founding story as told by Chris on the show in 2023.This episode was produced by Sam Paulson, who also composed the music. It was edited by John Isabella. Our audio engineer was Neal Rauch.You can follow HIBT on X & Instagram and sign up for Guy’s free newsletter at guyraz.com.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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This Black Friday Cyber Monday, make every moment count with Clavio. Learn more at K-L-A-V-I-O dot com slash B-F-C-M. Hello and welcome to the advice line on how I built this lab. I'm Guy Raz. This is the place where we help try to solve your business challenges. Each week, I'm joined by a legendary founder, a former guest on the show who will help me try to help you. And if you're building something and you need advice, give us a call and you just might be the next guest on the show. Our number is 1-800-433-1298.

Send us a one-minute message that tells us about your business and the issues or questions that you'd like help with. You can also send us a voice memo at hibt at ID.wondry.com and make sure to tell us how to reach you. And also, don't forget to sign up for my newsletter. It's full of insights and ideas from the world's greatest entrepreneurs. You can sign up for free at gairoes.com. And we'll put all this info in the podcast description. All right. Let's get to it. Joining me this week is Chris Ruter, the founder and CEO of Spike Ball.

Chris, welcome back to the show. Thanks so much. Happy to be here. Chris, you were first on how I built this back in 2023. And you told us all about how you turned Spike Ball into a brand. and how you help turn the sport of Roundnet into a professional sport. And by the way, if you haven't heard that episode with Chris and Spikeball, we'll put a link in the show description. And I guess we should explain to people who haven't heard the episode that Spikeball is basically,

and you guys listening have seen it. If you're at the beach or at a lake or something or a park, it's basically four people standing around what looks like a little trampoline and spiking a ball into that trampoline. And it's like sort of a, how do you describe it's like volleyball meets? The one line I like to use is if volleyball and four square had a baby. Oh, yeah, that's it. That was it.

Yeah, it's essentially identical to two-on-two volleyball. Rather than hitting a ball over the net, you're spiking a ball off a net that looks a lot like a trampoline. Chris, you painstakingly built this brand into a mainstream game, starting with like PE teachers, ultimate frisbee players, Christian youth groups. You weren't connected to any of these groups. You just found that that's where the, the, the, pre-eathearts. product was resonating. How did that happen? And when that happened, how did you lean into those groups? Yeah, absolutely. When the first few years of the business, you could only buy spikeball on spikeball.com. Right. And we had the benefit of I was able to communicate literally

with 100% of our customers. I could email them and ask questions. And nearly every single customer, I replied saying, hey, thanks for buying spikeball. I'm going to mail it tonight or tomorrow. It should up in a few days. By the way, if you don't mind me asking, how did you hear about it? And that's where I heard a lot of people said, oh, I'm a PE teacher, and I'm always looking for new games. And new games are ways to engage kids that normally don't engage. Or I'd hear from people say, oh, I was at an ultimate tournament, and I saw some people playing there. Or I'm a camp director at a Christian camp, or something along those lines. But I asked the question, enough times over the years where I was able to identify these themes in these buckets.

And I also thought that when I launched it, I was like, yeah, volleyball players are going to love this game. And that was just what I thought. They wound up hating it. But it was these groups that I never would have thought of in a million years that loved it. And once I did identify those, then I started, you know, getting to know them. Some of them I'd say, hey, would you mind, can we get on a call? Like, you know, I've never heard of this thing called Young Life. like, what is it? And can we, can I learn from you? And, oh, by the way, do you have any other

friends in that community that I can maybe send a free set or two to? So that free product was really critical in the early days of spreading the word. Yeah. And Young Life is a massive Christian youth group, which, again, you weren't involved with this. It's not like something you came, it was just, it just kind of came to you. I know that since we've talked, and actually around the time we talked, you were introducing new products like paddles, which I think are interchangeable with pickleball, right? They're paddles that you can use to play spikeball, but you can also use them to play pickleball. They're designed for more casual play.

Yeah, they're not like, if you're a hardcore pickleball player, you're going to get a real paddle, of course. But yeah, they're very versatile. And I was just at one of our tournaments this last weekend and watch some of our top players ever just kind of playing off on the side with paddles and laughing and diving. And we're just trying to find new fun ways to use our existing stuff. Yeah.

Chris, I think it's probably time that we take in our first call. What do you think? Let's do it. Let's do it. Okay. Hello, caller. Please introduce yourself. Tell us your name, where you're calling from, and just a tiny bit about your business.

Hi, Chris and Guy. My name is Jimmy Davidson. I'm calling in from Riverside in Southern California. I'm the founder of Freedom in Motion. We're a chain of parkour gyms where we teach kids, teens, and adults, the sport of parkour here in our indoor obstacle course gyms. Wow, parkour-like people dancing off walls and jumping and swinging. And this is like gymnastics meets like urban landscape. It's like Spider-Man without the webs.

It's like skateboarding without the skateboard. We actually try to distance ourselves from gymnastics pretty heavily. So we're not gymnastics at all. But, you know, we take the outdoor environment, the walls, the railings, the parking curbs. And our mission is to transform all of that into a playground. So cool. And you're based in Riverside, and how many gyms do you have? We have three gyms currently, one in Myrieta, California, Riverside, California, and Loma Linda, which is one of the Blue Zone cities. So that's kind of a cool mix right there.

And we intend on opening many more gyms, so hopefully. I actually live in Oakland, despite my gyms being down there, California. And I hope to have a gym up here soon, too. All right. So Jimmy, tell me how this started. I mean, it's a great idea. I think of, like, when my kids were little, we used to take them, like, Jimberie and, you know, and rock climbing walls, which are awesome, but I'd never heard of a parkour gym. How did you get this idea? So in high school, when I had first discovered parkour,

this is right around when YouTube kind of first came out, so found parkour through that. In high school, we had a parkour club, and it became the largest club on campus at 150 kids. So imagine like a wave of 150 kids coming to climb all over your stuff. It was a lot of fun. You would just go to like a park

or you would just go to anywhere, an outdoor space? Yeah, like the urban architecture in different areas provides different opportunities for movement and play, and you can work on balance on those handrails or you can work on climbing over walls on these walls over here. And here's kind of how we got to me opening a gym. It got to the point where I was teaching kids, like parents were paying me to coach their kids one-on-one,

and I would take them to just some parks outside. And you probably can imagine that sometimes the local city government didn't like us climbing all over there, city hall architecture in the front. So I had a meeting with the mayor at the time. This is when I was 19. I'm 31 now. And I had this adorable presentation on like, here's parkour. You know, I like printed stuff out of my mom's computer. And I was like, let's have a park or park just like a skate park. And the mayor at the time was like, I don't know what parkour is, never heard of it. Sounds like a liability nightmare. you're best off opening up in the private sector.

So after I went and Googled, what does private sector mean? I figured out we have to open up our own gym. And I'm 19. So then it was a whole hurdle of like business landlords, like taking me seriously as a 19 year old. They and also not knowing what parkour was. How do we find the money for that?

Like it was a whole challenge. But in 2014, by the time I was 21, we were able to open our first gym in Myriadah. Wow, how did you finance that? Yeah, a few ways. So I had been coaching a lot of kids doing a lot of private lessons and things. So I had a few thousand dollars from that. I had a job on the side, a few thousand dollars from that.

We had a couple people give us some money. We had an original investor give us some money. Our business had one iteration and then it failed and then we reopened. So like there's a little bit of play and how the financing worked out there. But yeah, so a few sources. and we were very scrappy with it. Wow. So then you are.

You open this gym and describe for me like what it looks. Actually, you know what? I'm on your website now so I can see it, freedom in motion. I see like all kinds of like bars to hang off and padded things to jump onto and off of and ramps. And yeah. It's like a 3D obstacle course. We have walls. We have different platforms.

And it's not like Ninja Warrior, where Ninja Warrior has like bungee. chords and weird, rotatey things. Parkour is actually a martial art, right? It's the martial art of movement, just not fighting. So our indoor gyms simulate the outside architecture of like walls and rails and things to jump and land on. And so our indoor parkour course just has all sorts of shapes and heights and things for us, our coaches, to train our students, the whole variety of movements that come with

parkour. That's so cool. And before I forget, what's your question that you brought for us today? Absolutely. So our parkour gyms thrive on a super passionate team. We need these passionate people to inspire a passion for movement and for play within our students. We have three gyms now. I personally plan on growing this to a hundred million dollar company with a lot of gyms.

So my question is, how can I invest in my most passionate employees to grow their skills? and how do I scale the recruitment of passionate and skilled people as we continue to open more parkour gym locations? All right, I've got some thoughts. I want to turn it over to Chris Ruter of Spikeball. Chris, um, thoughts, questions for Jimmy. Yeah, number one, congrats, Jimmy. This is such a cool concept. The fact that you don't have one, you've got three locations.

Like, that's incredible. So you're starting to scale. You're finding what's working, what's not. I love that you didn't give up after the first one didn't quite work. You've got that grit, which is absolutely required. And most importantly, you're getting kids moving and being social and together. That's, you know, spike ball, that's something we're trying to do as well. But I applaud anybody that is doing that.

So that's so cool. On the topic of how to engage employees, is it safe to assume a decent amount of your early employees were already into parkour? or kind of knew a decent amount about this before you showed up. Yeah, yeah. And you're totally right to clarify that. I opened the gym with a handful of my best friends, honestly. And so it's been a decade since we opened. So many of those friends have, like, trickled off.

A lot of those friends, none of us knew what we were doing, right? So we all had, like, giant expectations of that. We would be millionaires in six months or less. And when that didn't come to fruition, you know, like a lot of them just aren't around anymore. So it's like as we grow and we get multiple locations, I need managers who get the passion that we want to transform kids' lives that they see the world as a playground. But also they have the technical chops to like manage multi locations, run HR and train like integrity and a culture of high performance into the coaches below them. Like it's on that higher end that

it can be tricky like finding that skill passion balance. Jimmy, do you, you're CEO of this, right, of the business? Correct, yeah. And so, and you've got three locations. And I imagine that probably a significant number of your trainers are college-aged. Is that fair to say? Yeah, 20-year-olds, yeah. And so right now there's, I mean, decent turnover.

Maybe they might work for you for a year or two at most? It's like half and half. Some of them, yes, they come in, work for a while and then leave. And then the most passionate ones stick around for four, five, ten years. And the question is, how do you invest in those folks to really help them help you? There's a book, I mean, and some people might kind of recoil when I say it, but it's the most successful quick service restaurant in the world in terms of the yield sales per square foot is Chick-fil-A. They beat everybody, shake, shack in and out, McDonald's, even though they don't have as many locations. A typical Chick-fil-A does about $8 million in revenue.

massive. And the founder, Truitt Kathy, wrote a book many years ago. I think it's called Eat More Chicken, right? What's interesting about their approach, forget about everything else that you might think about Chick-fil-A. They have a system that basically develops talent from within. So if you go and work there as a checkout clerk and you say, hey, I want to manage the store, they will help you get there.

Or you say, I want to own one of these one day? They have a very, very specific program that develops, talent from within and grows people from within. In and Out Burger does a similar thing. It's worth looking at, even though you're doing a different kind of business because you're so young, right, still as a CEO, and you're still trying to figure out the model here. But basically, you need to create a system that identifies those people and then starts to give them incentives to stay. So equity in the business, some kind of ownership, as you, as you, as you, grow incentives to help you grow. So if you hit five locations or 10 locations, they get another

point of whatever it might be that creates value for them over time. And I think that for you, you want to really read widely about what other people have done and how they've done it to give you a framework. Because ultimately, you're going to have to go to lawyers and other people to help you actually codify this. But the principles are around. around it are not that complicated. It's identify great people, give them a clear path to succeed and to grow and incentivize them. So as they help you grow, they benefit as well. Okay. And I think you're spot on. Get like essentially an internal leadership university baked into our back end of the parkour business. Yeah, I think that's awesome. I think the world

of parkour could really benefit from having like a baked and kind of professional incubator. Jimmy, as you as you think about your march to a hundred million, and I love that you've got that goal. Is it a franchise model you're thinking? Is it corporate owned or how do you think about these future locations? Yeah. So I am right before kind of really needing to pick that that path, right? Like I see Starbucks as the corporate locations where I see, you know, Chick-Four. I see, you know, Filet, you know, lets an owner own a single location, like you just said, Guy. And there's a few different ways to splice it up. I don't know yet. Ideally, we do it all in corporate because it's working with kids. So I want to really make sure that it's safe and effective and has that

culture. The culture is so vital because if a parent walks into the gym and the culture is even just a little off, it doesn't work at all. So I guess my anxiety there is if we have franchises, I don't have like a total control over that. Yeah, Chick-fil-A's made it work, right? There's a million franchises that have done it. I understand the sensitivity around being with kids. So if I were in your shoes, I would study as many businesses that have physical locations, multi-location and work with kids, whether that's a nursery school or jump zones or the inflatable house places or whatever.

Like copy their playbook. And I also love Jimmy that you mentioned the like employee university. thing. Like I think of McDonald's is, you know, their hamburger university. So what is your version of that? And I think step one is, it sounds like you've already started, documenting everything that's working. If you think of that star employee right now, what is it that makes she or he great? Write that down. That is that persona. You want to try and multiply throughout your three locations and your fourth, fifth, sixth, then the more you can define that. that playbook, right?

Yeah. The more you can document what's working, I think the better off you'll be. Okay. Jimmy Davidson, freedom and motion, Jim. Good luck, man. Congrats. All right, Chris, Guy, I really appreciate it. And Guy, when I hit 100 million, I have a straight on goal to come back as a...

All right. Sounds good. We're going to have you back. Okay. Thanks, Jimmy. All right, we're going to take a quick break, but we'll be right back with another caller and another round of Vice. Stay with us.

I'm Guy Raz. to the advice line right here on how I built this lab. Welcome back to the advice line on how I built this lab. I'm Guy Raz, and my guest today is Chris Ruder. He's the founder of the outdoor sports game Spike Ball. What do you say, Chris? Should we take another call? We love it.

Hello, caller, welcome to the advice line on how I built this you are on with me. Chris Ruder. Please introduce yourself. Tell us your name, where you're calling from, and just a little bit about your business. Hi, Guy. Hi, Chris. Thanks for having me today.

My name is Cindy Chin Smith. I'm calling in from the Boston, Massachusetts area. I am the founder of Penn and Paces. We create cheerful and uplifting products for runners. And we are best known for our yell my name bib kit, which allows marathoners to put their name on their shirts so they can encourage spectators to yell their name on the race course. I love it.

Okay, so Cindy, thank you for calling in. So basically, it's a kit that you can add to the bib. And the bib is like when you run a marathon, there's rules. You wear the bib that they give you, but you are allowed to attach your name to the bib? Yes, exactly. As long as it doesn't cover the number of the official bib, you can put it on top or on the back of your shirt or on your shorts.

Which I guess I imagine is super meaningful when you're like mile 18 and you're just dying. And someone's like, go Cindy, just a random person because they see your name. Absolutely. It's the best kind of motivator and the morale booster at the end. Yeah. Have you been in that situation? yourself? Yeah, I actually ran my fifth marathon last year in Chicago. And I absolutely, the crowds on the major marathons are electric. And when they yell your name, it's like nothing else.

How did you get, how did you get into this business? Have you been in apparel or in sports? Like, what's your story? No, yeah. I actually picked up running as an outlet to deal with stress and burnout out while working in the Bay Area in tech. Ah, yes. And it needed something to, you know, go get outside and not be in my computer screen. And I fell in love with the sport and the community, and so much so that I wanted to create a business out of it to uplift and support other runners. Where were you working in tech?

I worked at Google for a couple of years and then startups in FinTech since then. And so you completely left that behind and said, you know what? I'm going to start this running gear brand that has like positive. messages that you can basically attach or where or whatever. Exactly. I had my son two years ago, and that's when, you know, I had the choice of, you know, starting my own business or going back to, you know, just a corporate job. But, you know, it was kind of a, you only live once kind of thing. So I wanted to take this opportunity to see what I can do with this business. And what, so besides the name, like you can pin your name to your bib, what else, what other things do you guys sell?

Yeah, so our kind of next most popular line is shoe bags, because, you know, runners have these really expensive sneakers now. And so I have introduced a travel sneaker bag that is kind of more fun than traditional kind of, you know, just plastic bag that people put their sneakers in for travel. Got it. Okay. And Cindy, what's your question for us today? Yeah. So, you know, my initial product that YELL-My name Bibkit is very, very niche. even in the running community, you know, there's, it's only for, like, the major marathon. So I'm looking to expand into other products like these shoebags and, you know, other kind of race day travel kits. And so, you know, I want to make them just like not plain and boring, like running gear is currently. And so what advice would you have for me to market a product that's

like fun and uplifting and the designs are there kind of main differentiator? All right, cool. I'm going to bring you and Chris. You, you who has created a, light-up spike ball kit that enables people to play in the dark. So you know a little bit about accessorizing things. Do you have any questions for Cindy before we tackle her question? Number one, I wish this product was around years ago when I ran the Chicago Marathon, because if it were, maybe I would have broken the four-hour mark, which was my goal, and I did not, unfortunately. You know what? We shouldn't laugh. Four hours, super impressive. Super impressive, yes.

Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. I'll take it. Number one, I love it. Can you share a bit on the sales mix? So it is the vast majority of your sale, the name tag? Is it the shoe bag? Or what's the general breakout there? Yeah, I would say 95% is coming from the yell my name, Bib Kit. And I introduced other products, but the main next category are these shoe bags. But it's not very big right now. It's about 5%. Got it. And can you give us a sense of how have you broken $25,000 in sales? Yeah, we have. And so we're seeing a lot of growth this year, especially. We've grown year over year 50%. And then we're, you know, looking to grow a lot more in the future. And selling entirely direct to consumer? Entirely direct to consumer. I've done a little bit of pop-up shops, a little bit of wholesale, but mainly on my website, Instagram, and we started doing Amazon as well.

And you're financing this whole thing yourself. Exactly. And so presumably your budget is pretty tight, right? Because you can't spend tens of thousands of dollars or maybe even thousands of dollars on marketing. Yeah, exactly. I want to keep it lean and I don't want to overspend. I want to do, you know, kind of spend wisely as well. But it sounds like the shoe bag is really where you see the growth.

Yeah, I do see there's potential there. And it's also a bigger market opportunity, right? There's not a ton of marathoners out there who are running the major marathon. But everybody has shoes, like even, you know, non-runners, like, travel with sneakers and things like that. But I do see that there's a opportunity for demand and also, you know, for gifting. Yeah, I mean, this is actually a not, it's not an uncommon problem. I would say this is in the focus group of one, namely me, which is every time I pack and travel, I'm like, oh, do I put my shoes this way?

Do I want the bottom of my shoes touching my clothes? So, like, how do I pack them? And I know people listening to this right now are picturing this because they're going through the same thing. You're packing your suitcase and you're like, I don't want the bottom of my shoes that sticky gum or dirt on them to touch my clothing. So I'm going to angle them like this. But a shoe bag, a proper shoe bag that would still give me a room in my suitcase, that makes a lot of sense. Absolutely. And the other trend that I'm trying to hop on is that their grocery bags are being banned from stores.

and most people put them in grocery bags, but really to be more sustainable and kind of eco-friendly, like a reusable, like travel shoe bag makes a lot of sense. All right. So Chris, as somebody who cultivated these niche groups, you know, found out

who's buying at church youth groups, and you're like, well, let's lean into that. And PE teachers, let's lean into that. I mean, right now we're thinking about runners, because Cindy's a runner, but, I mean, there's got to be other folks you should be targeting. Yeah. I mean, I would, I don't want to say go deep and wide, but I guess as you're still in the early days

in exploring, I think that's probably the route. So one, how many marathon runners are there in the U.S., let alone worldwide, but I'd say start in the U.S. I'm assuming it's massive. I was just in Chicago recently, and it was a few days after the marathon, and seeing the amount of people walking around with branded gear. Yeah. It was even like four or five days after the race, and people, you know, people were.

were still wearing it. I was seeing it everywhere. So just like you go to a concert and you have no problem spending $50 on a t-shirt because it's this special event, I think like people are in a different frame of mind where on these events, especially when it's a massive thing like a marathon. So can you do more on-site sales there? Or maybe go there and witness with a pen and a paper. Like what other product ideas can you get. That would be my version of going deep. And then the wide is, what other events have bibs or like the name kit? I think of mountain bike races.

All triathlons, all kinds of things. All that, yeah. So is that the wide version? And with the shoe carrier, I mean, my God, any place that has cleats, running shoes, whatever, can you make a different version for each sport? And I think as long as you're making something where you've identified a need and you're not like, oh, I think this could be cool. I'll just do it because I like it. In my experience, identify needs that other people have or a problem that you think you can solve and run straight in that direction.

Yeah, I agree. I also think that, and Cindy, you probably already thought of this, but I do think that runners are a tribe, a really powerful. As you know, you're a runner yourself. And I feel like to get to that tribe, you've got to be in the shops too. You've got to be able to get into those shops. And many of these shops are independently owned. Yeah. You know, the proprietors in there, they're interested in showcasing things that are going to be interesting to their customers.

And I would really, you're in Boston. I imagine they're amazing running stores there. Have you gone to any of them? Yes. I've reached out to probably half of the running stores in the United States, and there's been some good reception on some of my smaller products. But yeah, I guess the question would be is like, you know, any kind of tips in getting into these stores that, you know, may not initially show interest. We weren't in any stores for our first five years, 100% spikeball.com.

For us, we were so focused on building the brand, building. The brand, building. the community and building sales at spikeball.com, eventually all the stores called us. When Dick's sporting goods reached out and said, we'd like to carry your product, I thought it was a joke or somebody messing with me. Same thing when Walmart did it, when Target did it, and all sorts of these small mom-and-pop toy shops and sporting goods stores. So from what I understand, that's not normal, but man, did it work for us? Because I think if I would have called them in the early days, They would have said, what is this trampoline? Nobody knows what it is. And I think what resulted in them calling us, they saw this sort of cult-like following. They saw this quirky thing that people were into it. It wasn't Chris Ruter trying to tell them the store that this was an amazing thing. There was all this outside validation on social media and elsewhere proving that the world is into this. The more of that you can get, the easier it will be to get into it. to stores. Yeah, that makes sense. It sounds like build the brand and they will come.

I also think there's value in seeing if you can just meet somebody face to face. If one of these store owners locally, we would be willing to meet with you. Just to see you and to understand your passion and that you're legit, you're a runner. You're not like some, you know, dilettante coming into this. This is your passion. And this is a problem that you are solving for yourself and you believe for other runners. And I think there's a lot of value in just trying to go one start of time in person, at least initially. I love that idea. I got to try that. Absolutely. Thank you. Cindy, the brand is called Penn and Paces. Thanks so much for calling in. Congrats. Thank you. Thanks, Cindy. All right, we're going to take another quick break,

but we'll be right back with another caller. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to the advice line right here. how I built this lab. Welcome back to the advice line on how I built this lab. I'm Guy Raz, and today I'm taking calls with Chris Ruter, the founder of Spike Ball. So Chris, let's bring in our next caller. Sounds great. Hello, welcome to the advice line.

Please tell us your name, where you're calling from, just a little bit about your business. Hey, Guy, hi, Chris. I hope you guys are both doing well. My name is Nigel Lewis, and I'm calling from Rockaway Beach, New York currently. I'm the founder of Station Surf Shop, started back in 2016, and we're a traditional surf shop catering to the New York City Surfer. We sell surfboards, wetsuits, wax, leashes, everything you would find at a normal surf shop if you lived in southern or northern California or Hawaii you would find here. You can take the subway to the beach here. So we do rentals like you would expect.

We do a unique thing called surfboard lockers because a lot of people in New York have small. apartments or husbands or wives that don't want surfboards in the apartment. But what I'm most proud of with the shop has been just the ability for people who kind of look like me to walk in and see someone that doesn't traditionally look like who they would see behind a surf shop counter. So that's been what I'm most proud of and being able to facilitate that a little bit for this community. Awesome. Well, thank you for calling into the show, Nigel. All right, so Rockaway Beach Surf Shop, sounds like an awesome community. Tell me how long have you been surfing?

Yeah, so I grew up surfing. I'm originally from Barbados, been surfing as I was 10. And it's slightly different there because in Barbados, it's a water lifestyle. So I'm actually very used to being in the ocean and swim and diving, surfing, that type of stuff. And I always think of the Ramones when I think of Rockaway Beach. Yeah, I think everybody does. Everybody does. Yeah, I'm probably the only one.

And so and what's your question for us today? So I started this business and brought in some partners to help me just kind of financially get it going. My background is pretty deep in the surf and skate world. I've worked for a lot of brands. I've been a sales rep and been into a lot of surf doors up and down the East Coast. That's what I did for work for quite a number of years. So I understand what that looks like. But I financially just, you know, I grew up pretty poor and kind of just grind it to make what I had.

So when I opened the shop, we did pretty well, but my partners always seem to leave. Just because they have other interests that they're involved in and they're not committed to the grind. So my last partner left and I had to buy him out and get it done, but it put me into a spot where I unfortunately had to close the shop. I'm in a process now of reopening. We were lucky enough to secure a partnership with Paragon Sports in New York City in Union Square to do a pop-up. Like they liked what we were doing. They heard the story and they were like, hey, we'd love to give you a home until you figure it. out. But this was a pretty important space for me and for the community and for all the

organization that we supported and it's gone. And it hit me very hard. And I have the drive to kind of get it going again, but I'm just starting over, you know, like financially trying to get the money back up. And this time I'm looking to do it with no partner. So how do you deal with loss? Our numbers were good and it didn't close due to lack of business being good. It's it's more just the amount of payout I had to do. I couldn't sustain it after giving out that much money. How do you deal with that to where you feel motivated, you know? So you had the store.

Yes. The station surf shop in Rockaway Beach. You closed it. When did you close it? In December. In December. Okay. And now you're trying to reopen it.

Yes. And it was successful and people loved it. And you had, you sold apparel and stuff. and I'm actually, I see you have an Instagram page up still. But now you're trying to figure out how to reopen it. And your question is, how do you kind of plow through failure? So first of all, I just, I really appreciate you calling it. Because, you know, people call into the show with like, hey, how do I scale this?

And how do I market this? And you're like, we failed. And how do I recover from that? And it's such a critical question because, you know, a lot of people think how I built this is about. success oh success it's not it's actually about setbacks mistakes and failures and I say this over and over again because I think the best entrepreneurs Chris Rood is one of them who's had many failures on his path to success without those failures you don't you don't learn yeah a lot of big shows and media you'll see you'll only hear the

the positive and oh our growth chart was nothing but up until the right the entire time that's that's BS that's BS yeah Yeah, yeah. So I could do a couple episodes of just the last couple of years what we've been going through. And holy smokes, is it, it's hard. And not everybody is cut out to be an entrepreneur. So I applaud you for giving a shot. And seemingly you're dusting yourself off and saying, I'm going to try it again. And that's incredible. Nigel, the first thing they need is a pep talk. Okay. And then we're going to get down the brass tacks here. I think about John Foley. John Foley was on. our show in 2019. Okay. And he founded Peloton. And Peloton was the hottest company during the pandemic. You couldn't get a Peloton. At one point, he was worth almost a billion dollars. And he lost almost all of it, actually. And I recently read an article where he, in the Wall Street Journal where he basically said, look, I'm, you know, I lost virtually all my money. But he has started a new company around rugs, around sort of disrupting that market. And I love the energy

and the spirit there, you know, because a lot of people laughed at him. Oh, John Foley, he doesn't care. He's like, no, no, it's fine. I had a setback. Peloton is amazing. Lost it all. But I'm, I learned a lot. I'm going to bounce back and I'm going to build this next thing. And he's fully into it. I actually think that's really inspiring because a lot of people are rooting against him, but I wouldn't, you know, especially given his track record. And it sounds. It sounds like, like you had a really good track record here. I mean, seven years in business, sustainable store, okay, you had you set back. It was, you know, there are a variety of reasons. Most businesses don't make it past five years. But the fact that you've got a second chance now,

that's really exciting. And so what I would say is really think about what you learned, really spend time doing a self-critique in a very constructive way. Write down the things that you don't want to do again. Right. And really use that seven years, those seven years, as a gift that you were given, this gift to know what not to do in the second coming of this, right? The rebirth of it, right? Does that make sense?

Yeah, yeah. I mean, it makes complete sense. And the thing with myself is that I'm, I call my philosophy, I'm a realist. So if this thing wasn't working, I get it, right? And I'm smart enough to understand that there's many factors that affect a brick and mortar retail store. And I address those in my business plan and so on. And I really appreciate what you said because it does feel like I've learned a lot. And I am looking to dust myself off and come back, honestly, because the community is asking for it.

I mean, there's three other surf shops here. And everyone is like, when are you reopening? And the emails are coming in, and Paragon is doing relatively well with the pop-up that we're doing there. So, you know, I feel like the write-ins on the wall. It's like, hey, this is just a step back up and keep going. But, you know, sometimes just the motivation for that, you know, like the pep talk was helpful. And I definitely will take your advice and literally write down the things that I think maybe I could do better going forward. But, yeah, it's just, I was just always curious what the mindset is from people who are currently successful having failed to get back on that horse.

really kind of not feel just beaten down on it. And then also too, like financially, too, how do you deal with that? You know, because once you fail, like everything crumbles, right? Like your business, your personal credit is tied into the business part of it if you're just a single person doing it. And there are all these things I'm trying to navigate. And it's a little bit harder, but it's almost, it's weird that you said have something to prove. But it's almost like I have something to prove to everyone who thought, oh, well, I knew this wasn't going to work. There's way more people that think it will and will work. So I'm just, again, trying to navigate that and understand the best way to go about it.

I so love that you have a community rallying around you. I love that you have a partner like Paragon. Our product has been in Paragon for years, and they are fantastic. I so love that store. If you've never been, it's this quirky, massive sporting goods store in Manhattan. and what you have is I think what most brands would kill for. You have people asking for the product, essentially your store. You're down.

They're rallying around you. And this comeback is not this like fabricated thing that a fancy ad campaign brings you back. It's going to be the will of the people. So I think the big, the question going through my mind is, how can you leverage this group of people that want, you to come back. You know, on one, one area my mind goes to financially. So is there a Kickstarter or something that you get started? Or is it a private conversation with a few of these folks that become shareholders? Yeah, may be able to buy a chunk of the company. And, you know,

you're asking about finances. Is there a CFO that works for some other company but loves your store that would be your wingman or wing woman to kind of help you? And I'm guessing there's a lot of gold in this community. And if you start asking questions, it sounds like they'd love to help you out. Nigel, I think, let me ask you a question, because we're probably about the same age. And I think, I think oftentimes people in our generation have a harder time asking for help. Is that fair to say? It is. I mean, we did a go fund me, and we got, you know, we raised, I think, like, $26,000 within the first week of it. And that covered any, like, past due rent. I paid off some vendors.

And I'm stubborn in the sense that I didn't want to file for bankruptcy because I have been a sales trap. And I know how that affects accounts. But yes, I have a hard time asking because in my mind. And, you know, everyone works hard for their money. So I don't want to be like, hey, why don't you help me? When obviously. No, no, but that's not what you're asking. You're saying, I'm going to give you an – you're not saying, why don't you help me?

You're going to say, I have an opportunity for you. Right. It's to be a shareholder in this. See, what's so cool about what you're talking about is surfing is – to me, and I'm I'm in California. It's very intimidating, right? I wouldn't feel comfortable walking into a surf shop and saying, hey, I don't really know what I'm doing.

Can he help me? I want a place that's like, awesome, cool, let's go. And that's what you're talking about. You're saying this is like, it's like, what was that movie, Dodgeball? It's like the gym for everyone else. It is. And also, the other part of this that I didn't really think about, Because, again, in Barbados, the majority of surfers are blacks.

I don't think about this. But in America and in New York, we're the minority in the surfing community. So my aesthetic of the store wasn't, you know, this California-based. You'd walk in and it would be Bob Marley playing in the background, and we'd have a little bit of rock and a little bit of souls and James Brown. And I think people walked in and like you said, they didn't feel intimidated. And whenever we spoke to them, it was like, hey, station family. It was always a family conversation because I wanted you to walk in.

Your feet are wet and Sandy? Yes. You know, you have your board stripping of water because I'll just mop it up after. It's not that serious. And I think that connected. And I know it did. I can't say I think it did. And that's why I'm so like gung-ho to do it.

But, you know, sometimes it's just good to hear the feedback from people who've kind of been through it. And, you know, you just need that pep talk, like you said. Yeah. And as Chris said, now you've got to start to harness that energy from the people. Like, we want you back. And so every time you hear that, you've got to say, okay, can we have a conversation? I'm thinking about raising money from the community as stakeholders, everybody who have a stake in this business. You know, you don't even have to make an ask or we can just say, what do you think about this idea?

And just start to have that conversation with people. I really want people to own this with me because this is an opportunity to serve the community and to build a sustainable business that everybody can benefit from. Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay. One point and one, I guess, thing to consider. I loved how you mentioned earlier, the surfboard lockers. I'd never heard of such a thing, but man, that sounds cool. And do you, if you think of when the store was open, what parts of it worked really well and what parts didn't? I'm assuming you've already thought of all this, but obviously whatever didn't work, okay, maybe trim that.

but, you know, is there a way to expand the lockers? I don't know if that's a moneymaker or not, but I love it. I love the vibe that you describe of the shop also. You know, people with sandy feet walking in, music playing, Bob Marley. Like, that seems very unique for the surf culture. And, you know, New York being one of the fashion hubs of the world, where my mind is going is merch and apparel. Like there's kids in South Dakota

wearing Quicksilver and all sorts of other surf brands that aren't within a thousand miles of an ocean, but they just love that culture. And so is there a fashion designer you could work with that could learn your vibe, your brand, everything? And is that a new channel? I'm assuming you had t-shirts and hoodies and stuff.

But could you multiply that times 100 and really run with that? I don't know. That kind of excites me. Yeah, no, it's great that you said that because that is, because I'm like, like you guys have said, this is what I've been jotting down for the next iteration. And exactly what you said is what I'm thinking is people came to get station merchandise, you know, and the lockers are a great business because it's almost like a subscription model.

You leave your board, we charge 150 a month, and we have 200 lockers, you know. And when they're full, it's awesome. And when they're half full, like it's still okay. But yes, I really appreciate the conversation. And a lot of these things that you guys have mentioned have been thinking about it, but to hear qualified people like yourselves kind of co-signate, kind of. I don't know, qualify we are. Well, I will say, guy, I am so honored to be on the show. I listen to almost every episode when I was starting my business because it gave me the motivation to understand that everyone started from somewhere.

You know, some of these amazing guys that are multimillionaires now, you hear, oh, yeah, I lost my first shipment. like it got held up in customs and you're like what you know so um i really appreciate it and i never thought that i would be on here but i really appreciate um but here you are yes there you are yep nigel lewis of station surf shop um good luck congrats on on this i'm cheering you on this i'm cheering you on and when i get to to rockaway beach yes i'm going right to the station surf shop surf lesson on me surf lesson all right you too cool thanks nigel have a great day thank you thank you Nigel. Chris, before I let you go, I question I ask a lot of people who come on to join me on the advice. What do you wish you knew at the beginning of starting your business that you now know

that would have been helpful for you? Spend less, save more. That's great advice because it's very actionable. I love that. Chris, thank you so much for coming back onto the show. Great to have you. Thank you so much. This is fun. That's Chris Ruter, founder and CEO Spike Ball. And by the way, If you haven't heard Chris's original how I built this episode, you've got to go back and give it a listen. You can find a link to it in the podcast description. And here is one of my favorite moments from that interview. At that time, I had no idea how much it was going to cost to manufacture. I had no idea how much to make a website.

You know, back then all websites were hand-coded, so they're really expensive to make packaging, marketing, et cetera. What did you think you needed? How much money did you think you needed to raise? We actually didn't set a number. We kind of just said invest whatever you're comfortable losing, because chances are very good that you're going to lose it. Thanks so much for listening to the show this week. Please make sure to check out my newsletter.

You can sign up for it for free at gairozz.com. Each week, it's packed with tons of insights from entrepreneurs and my own observations and experiences interviewing some of the greatest entrepreneurs ever. And if you're working on a business and you'd like to be on this show, send us a one-minute message that tells us about your business, the issues or questions you'd like help with, and hopefully we can help you with them. And make sure to tell us how to reach you. You can send us a voice memo at hivt at id.wondery.com or call us at 1-800-433-1298 and leave a message there. and we'll put all this in the podcast description as well. This episode was produced by Sam Paulson, who also composed the music.

It was edited by John Isabella, and our audio engineer was Neil Rout. Our production team at How I Built This also includes Alex Chung, Carla Estevez, Chris Messini, Devin Schwartz, Elaine Coates, J.C. Howard, Catherine Seifer, Carrie Thompson, and Neva Grant. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to The Advice Line on How I Built This Lab.