Right About Now - Legendary Business Advice - Priceless Advice for Being an Entrepreneur

Episode Date: May 13, 2025

Right About Now with Ryan AlfordJoin media personality and marketing expert Ryan Alford as he dives into dynamic conversations with top entrepreneurs, marketers, and influencers. "Right About Now" brings you actionable insights on business, marketing, and personal branding, helping you stay ahead in today's fast-paced digital world. Whether it's exploring how character and charisma can make millions or unveiling the strategies behind viral success, Ryan delivers a fresh perspective with every episode. Perfect for anyone looking to elevate their business game and unlock their full potential.Resources:Right About Now NewsletterJoin The NetworkFollow Us On InstagramSubscribe To Our Youtube ChannelSUMMARYIn this podcast episode, several prominent entrepreneurs share their insights on building and scaling a business. Jasmine Star, CEO of Social Curator, emphasizes the importance of hard work. Sean Whalen, founder of Lions Not Sheep, advocates for simplicity in business concepts. Jeff Dudan, CEO of Home Front Brands, discusses the challenges of obtaining trademarks, reassuring that not every good name is taken. Josh, founder and CEO of Snow, outlines initial business steps, highlighting Facebook ads and Shopify. Devan Kline, founder and CEO of Burn Bootcamp, advises investing in anticipation of growth to scale quickly.TAKEAWAYSImportance of hard work in achieving entrepreneurial successThe necessity of simplicity in business concepts and communicationChallenges and strategies for securing trademarks for business namesInitial steps for starting a business, including effective marketing toolsThe significance of having a small, dedicated team for customer support and operationsStrategies for scaling a business quickly and effectivelyThe role of creativity and persistence in branding and namingProactive investment in anticipation of growth and future demandsLessons learned from diverse entrepreneurial experiencesKey principles for navigating the complexities of starting and growing a businessIf you enjoyed this episode and want to learn more, join Ryan’s newsletter https://ryanalford.com/newsletter/ to get Ferrari level advice daily for FREE.Learn how to build a 7 figure business from your personal brand by signing up for a FREE introduction to personal branding https://ryanalford.com/personalbranding. Learn more by visiting our website at www.ryanisright.comSubscribe to our YouTube channel www.youtube.com/@RightAboutNowwithRyanAlford. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey guys, Ryan Alford here, host of Right About Now. On today's episode, we bring together really a masterclass in entrepreneurship. We've had over 500 episodes at this stage, and we really have started to aggregate some of the best business knowledge in the industry. And, you know, you can read books, you can listen to shows, but we want to aggregate what we think is some of the best advice, whether you're an entrepreneur that's just started out, or you're in the business for 10 plus years. These are tactics, techniques, actionable advice from some of the best. We've got five of my favorites here. Jasmine Starr, Jeff Duden from Homefront Brands,

Sean Whalen from Lions Not Sheep, Josh Snow from Snow, from Snow Teeth Whiting, and Devin Klein from Burn Boot Camp. These are some of my favorite entrepreneurs giving the best advice. That's what we do here. We take the BS out of business. in this masterclass series on entrepreneurship on Right About Now. This is Right About Now with Ryan Alford, a radcast network production.

We are the number one business show on the planet with over one million downloads a month. Taking the BS out of business for over six years and over 400 episodes. You ready to start snapping next and cash in checks? Well, it starts right about now. What's up, guys? Welcome to Write About That. now. Hey, we're always getting right. It's always about now. What makes you keep pushing forward? What got you? Something impacted you. Something made you that. Was it nature, nurture? What was it?

Perhaps mix of both. My father is from Mexico. My mom is from Puerto Rico. My dad came over. It was like 13, 14, and then enlisted in the United States Marine Court and earned his citizenship. So I think that growing up with that perspective, as a first generation, Latina, you see, your dad being given the golden ticket. And I think that, you know, I won the genetic lottery by being born in this country. But having a father who was drilled into us, like, we are so incredibly fortunate to live in a country where you don't have barriers to do the thing that you want. It is on the back end of people who are having the hutspot and the audacity to do something that they are unqualified to do. And so having that growing up, but then also realizing you're owed nothing.

getting into the country, congrats. Being born into this country, congrats your old jack squad. Everything that you have is on the back of your willingness to do the damn work. And so what it made me gritty knowing I'm owed nothing. I don't, just because I start a business doesn't mean my business should be successful. Just because I start a business and it's successful doesn't mean I'm going to be the top 1%. If I go in in my perspective, just like Simon Seneck says, that this is an infinite game, there's no such thing as winning in business. You can win your own game, but many of us don't even define what the game we're playing is.

And so all of a sudden, we play a game in our own mind where we move the goalpost. And so it's just like, all this year, you know, it's like, I'm going to do my 10 million. And the minute we get to 9.5, it's like, no, no, no. I see what I need, what I really meant was 11. And then we beat ourselves up at the end of the year because we didn't do the thing that we wanted to do. What game are you actually playing? Because the minute that we define our rubric of success, because sometimes money isn't always the goal. sometimes the goal is do I have more time to do the things I want to do with the people I want to do it with?

It's like what is the point of having an 11 million dollar a year if on the back of it you missed the people and the things that were the most important to you. You didn't win. You lost. You just didn't know what game you were playing. So for us to actually have a conversation of like what makes you gritty. Well, first and foremost, let's talk about what we're owed. Nothing. Let's talk about how we win. Setting some goals and then working like hell to get them, but not at the cost of compromising. thing that's the most important to you. So what makes me gritty?

The fact that I have simply chosen, this is the game I want to play. And every time I get punched in the gut, because we always do, that's the sport. We're literally playing emotional rugby all day, every day. We play rugby in our sleep. I don't know about you.

I play rugby in my sleep. I wake up and I'm like, oh my God, oh my God. This is the game we're voluntarily playing. We signed up for it. We can't complain about the thing that we want to do to get us to where we want to go. So I just think, what a privilege.

What a privilege that I get to wake up, go on a walk in Newport Beach, have breakfast with my daughter, have a conversation with somebody I find intellectually stimulating where we get to help and empower other people. And then I get to go in and do coaching on the inside of social period. And then I get to create content. I get to do podcast. What an honor and what a luxury. So if I want both sides of it, the lifestyle, the luxury, I better be able to wake up

after my teeth have been knocked out and say, okay, this is the game I'm playing. I'm chosen this. What an honor and what a privilege. I better show up that way. Man, I love it. I like you. Yeah. Why do some people always think they own something?

Why are we that way? And I'm not saying me. Don't be owes me shit. But like what makes, is it just Americans being spoiled? And I'm not saying everybody's that way. But we know if we're being real, a lot of people, people feel that way, which is why you stand out, like others stand out, because you don't, you don't, you work for it. You just keep going, no matter what it looks like. But I don't

understand what, but what bits of people, I don't know what something, a lot of people that way, though, they just, they throw it. And I want to be very clear. I don't want to pretend like I haven't struggled with that or I'm above that. There are times, for instance, I, I look at business a lot, very similar to parallel lines of working out and going to the gym. There are just some human composition that no matter what I do, I can work equally as hard as somebody else. I might not have the body type, the metabolism. I might not have the genes to ever look or be like somebody else, right?

But we're doing the same work. And so it's natural. It is human condition to say, I'm doing that level of work. Why am I not getting the same results? But the minute you dwell in the land of unknowns, like you ask a dead end, question, right? Like, why is my business not working? That's not really a question that we're really going to quantify right now. But if you ask yourself, how might I get one percent better in this? Now we have a clear path to getting a result. Regardless if it's a result that you want, at least you

can take the next step. And so I don't know if it's as much as in entitlement as in like, I deserve to be successful. As much as I see a lot more in the entrepreneurial realm is I'm doing the work, but I'm not getting the results. But the problem with that, and it is, you know, a problem. The pandemic of emotions that we in go through is we don't know what's going on behind the seats. We have no idea. So when we say, I'm doing the same work as that person, you, you know, Jack, squaw about that other person's business. Like, let's just take down all the curtains that people use to hide behind because I see a lot of people being like, oh, I just did a million dollar launch. And that's amazing. I clap it up. But what a lot of people don't know is you ran $750,000 in ads.

to get that number. So it's like, you know, oh, I did 10 million in business. Great. And a lot of your business, the majority of it is done on affiliates and jvies. So your revenue is not what you're posing as. You know, we don't know. We have no idea if somebody's business was inherited. We have no idea how much debt somebody has. We have no idea the byline of the revenue on their profit and law statement is taking up 82% of what they're bringing in. We know nothing about other people's businesses. So again, instead of saying, why don't I have if I'm doing the same, I want you to, I want you to come back and say, I don't know how they got there. I applaud the work they've done because they're proving that it is possible to get there. But I'm going to continue to run my own

race. Because even if at the end of the day, my business is smaller than somebody else's, but my profitability is higher and my working cash, my operating revenue is right where I need it to be. I've won. But the only reason why I can say I've won is because I've already defined it as my personal win. So I get to play my own damn game. I get to find some deep satisfaction, what is the time doing, but then also put some benchmarks on myself and the team big. How are we going to get to the next level? That's the game for us.

We clearly define it. We know we're owed nothing. We don't compare ourselves to somebody else because we don't know what's going on behind the scenes. And we show up when we do the damn work. I think the biggest takeaway right there is you got to play your own game. Absolutely. It's like, I like to listen to people talking like clients come to me. I'm like a counselor, even I'm a marketer, you know, like listen to them talk.

And then that's like, I boil it down for them. Like, okay, here's the, let's just get the brass tag. You got to play your own damn game. And, you know, it's hard because the irony of this, and the irony of what I'm going to say is social media amplifies everything that puts everyone else's game full force in your face. Whether it's fake or real or, you know, who knows, like you said, you don't know all the details behind. There's a lot of show business going on. But the irony of it is the social media amplified.

it when you really need to tune it out when it comes down to what you want to do. And I love what you're saying. People all the time, social media is not working. You know, like, I'm not, it's not doing this thing. And then I go look at it. And I'm like, you've posted four times in four months. What do you mean it's not working? It's like, you know, how many times are you see this?

You have people come to you and like they go, this or that or tactic or these things aren't working. And you just, you don't have to get under the hood. You like, you, you like lifted up one inch and there's like oil spilled everywhere. Like, you know, and it's like, come on, man. You know, are you serious? It's like, but you have to play your own game, but you got to make it, you got to make it tangible. You have to set, oh, it's not working.

Okay, well, what's not working? You know, like, you got to have seven things that ladder up to one thing. You know, like, but, and you got to measure the seven things. But I don't know what it. it still comes back to the reflection of what you get to play your own game and learn and absorb from others, but you just can't get into the comparison game at all time. It's just, it just is a road to nowhere. You know, I often discuss that the thing, the sneaky thing that stops most entrepreneurs from getting their business in front of others is comparison.

And once we start understanding comparison, so oftentimes whenever I give a presentation or whenever I do a coaching session or a consulting session, I am literally starting there. Because if I tell you this is on the horizon, when it slaps you across the face, it's not so much a shock. So anybody who's listening right now, let me predict your future. The thing that will stop you from doing the thing that you know you have been called to do is not lack of money, resources, or education. It is simply the fact of comparison.

But let's break down comparison because the way I see it is it takes on three manifestations. It takes on a mental manifestation. I am not. I am not that person. I am not Ryan. Therefore, I can't get that success. I am too old, too young, too fat, too skinny, too black, too white, too old, too young. We'll say, I'm to this, therefore I can't do that.

So that's an easy way out. The second one is emotional. And this one's very, very hard to identify because most of the time, People don't wake up and say, I'm not worthy. They don't say, I'm not worthy, but it takes on an ugly reform. It will say, I'm just not sure I'm capable of that big dream. I don't think that that's really going to happen. So we low-key keep a subversive thought in our mind that's actually stopping us from doing that thing.

And then the third one is going to be visual, right? I'm not on the Amalfi Coast this summer. I don't have a Ferrari. I'm not at that resort. I don't have that perfect house with those perfect kids and that perfect kitchen to do the perfect reel that I need. And so we have these visual, intellectual, emotional things that stop us. But if we were to turn it on its side and simply say,

you might be too old and you might be too white and you might be. But there is somebody out there who is just as white and just as old who needs to hear it your way. And in fact, even if, even if you were to say that person does it their own way, guess what? You might be saying the same message, but you're a different messenger. Beyond that, even if you are staring the same message and you have a twin brother or a triplet, guess what, the mechanism. You might be a great podcast host, writer, speaker. You might be great on social. We all do things different ways, and we need to do it in our own way so the person who needs what we do

the way we do it can get it. And for the other thing is, I think that this dream might be too big and I am not sure. Listen, you wouldn't have got the dream if it wasn't in you to succeed. You didn't wake up this morning being like, you want to know what? I'm the next NBA star. No, you're not, not Fee 510 and you're 37. Chances are it's not there, right? So we don't get dreams. We have desires like I love, would love to be an NBA player, but we don't get the dream. You got the dream because something in you deeply believes that you could do it. But if you talk yourself out of it, the only person who's stopping your success is you. And then we go back to the physical things. Well, I don't have that. Guess what? The vast majority of people don't. And just because

you're at that resort or you're on that vacation or you drive that car doesn't mean that everybody wants to be coached by a service or by a product from that type of person. So we have to say that your Honda Accord, living in the Midwest, with three kids who are just doing the dang thing in your own way with your $100,000 job and your side hustle of Etsy, somebody's like, that's what I want. So far be it from you to say that the way that you see the desires of the world is how other people do it. And so we can come here and talk all about comparison.

So when you're ready to get your business in front of other people, I want you to say, am I emotionally comparing? Am I physically comparing? What kind of comparison is it? Stop it in its tracks and tell yourself a different story. You get to choose your story. If you would like to fight for your limitations, go right ahead. But if you would like to fight for empowering statements of why somebody needs what it is to sell, I'll clap you right up.

When I talk to entrepreneurs and business owners and people, I'm like, dude, you're a better father when you feel better. You're a better mother when you feel better. You're a better everything when you feel better. Lying doesn't feel good. lying is scary. It's do they know, do they know, do they know? Where you just fucking tell the truth, and you got nothing to worry about. So it was like, if this is the recipe for me connecting with people and me feeling better, then I'm just going to keep doing it. And at the time, you know, five years ago, and not that I was the only guy sharing shit on social media, but very few people

are talking about real raw shit. You know, it's just airy, fairy political things, re-shares of this. And so I just went on a mission like, I'm going to share me. And since then, I've literally have almost a billion views of my videos, millions of followers, I mean, literally hundreds of millions of engagements on my post from Instagram to Facebook. I mean, some of my videos have reached 150, 160, 170 million views of one video, which is just mind bending to me, right? But that's, that's what I found is my own little kind of recipe. And I felt better. The marketplace resonated with it. And I just can't fucking run of it. I love it. I want to get into some nuts and bolts on the back half here on the e-commerce.

But I do have one follow-up because I feel like no matter how a loss you may have felt, you know, kind of being what you'd categorize this, a man that everybody wanted you to be and not the real maybe you, um, something has shaped Sean Whalen at some point in life. Well, well before you got lost or you got found or anything like that, I feel like there has to be these shit, these are,

opinions and these beliefs, they kind of formed all of this. Something shaped that either early, whenever, I would think. I don't know. Nobody's ever asked you that. Thinking back on life, like my parents split up when I was an early teenager. I was actually a really quiet kid. I was really reserved. I was a chubby little kid. I was pretty good baseball player, but like I wasn't popular.

I wasn't the class valedictorian. I was really, really quiet, really reserved. And I think for me, when looking back at it, when I went on a Mormon mission, I went on a two-year Mormon mission, that was where I really started to kind of find my voice. I mean, you're out basically selling God. We're going door-to-door pitching God to people. And it was something I was really passionate about. It was something that I didn't grow up in the Mormon church. I grew up Catholic.

And so it was kind of a recent convert to the church. And I just started realizing that people love to connect. People love to talk. And I was really good at it. I was good at just talking to people. And I know that sounds really weird, but like there really is an art form of communication. There's an art form of being able to not just talk, oh, so, hey, how's your water? Like, why do you like that water?

Okay, great. You know, whatever, like really fucking listening to people and hearing them and knowing what's driving them. And something that I've always been fascinated about and with is what's behind it. You know, this is why headlines and shit, I'm not like bouncing around like every other freaking bullzo or like, my God, oh my God. I'm like, you know, let's talk about for a second. I like to critic these sake. And for me, being able to be in a place where I can ask deeper questions, it's fun for me. And I found, you know, all my mission is I was talking about God. I mean, God's such a crazy topic for so many people because you have people that are way over here and the people are way over here. People have no clue. And so it kind of forced me to really, number one, find my foundation, like what I really believed and how I really.

felt about life and who I was and purpose and the entire thing. But I found out like people just love to connect. And so it's just become almost a skill set and arc form that I've just gotten better and better at is communicating with human beings. But it definitely doesn't come from my youth. I mean, I was a quiet freaking kid, man. Well, I've shared some of your stuff with people and they go, oh, man, he's pretty hardcore on this, that, and the other. And, you know, they carry it. He's a great community.

I said it. I thought you're a great communicator, period. I mean, that's... I love talking. I mean, when you really give a shit about people, like, when you really care, like, I think it's something that, I mean, we're not, we're just so busy trying to, bleh, get, believe me, hear me, this is me. And it's like, I really, it sounds funny, but if it can't be explained on a whiteboard or like with crayons, it's too complicated. We should not have a tax policy in America that can't be explained on. on a fucking whiteboard, right?

We should not have foreign policies and that take 30,000 page freaking manuals to fucking explain, right? No one's interested in that, really. And so we tie this into the marketing and the business and the whole thing. Like, copy is really important. You know what I mean?

Like, what are you telling me? Everybody knows they're being sold something. So we've already got that out of the way. But what are you trying to tell me? What are you trying to communicate with me? Yeah, yay, nay, nay. Like, if the answer is a simple no, then just fucking say no, right?

But I love being able to look at complex things and I break it down in my brain to just like coloring book kind of conversations. Like, yeah, this is what this really is. And to me, it's more fun that way. I have more connection to stuff that way. You know what I mean? Well, absolutely.

And so let's talk about lion's not sheep.com. I mean, you know, we work, you know, we're at a digital agency here and we work a lot of brands. And they come to us and they have great products, but they have no story. Right. And I will take a company that has a purpose and a story all day because that's, it's organic, you know.

Again, it just becomes about blocking and tackling. It's real hard to figure out the hell marry, you know, the message, you know, the blocking and tackling you can do. But let's get to some of that blocking and tackling. What have been some of those mechanics of, you know, because I've heard you talk about it. You're like, you know, you started the company, you were selling T-shirts, you had a message, you had a plan, but something poured gas on the fire, you know, for the, for, for, for, for the tactics and the, in the, and some of the ways with which you've seen growth. You talk about some of that.

Yeah, for sure. I, I, I, first of all, you know, there's two philosophies in my opinion. Like, you, anybody who's a really, really, really good ad guy or copy guy or whatever, I mean, you can take any product and figure out a way to sell it, right? And there's a lot of people that do that. They take, you know, products from China, they're really good. They figured out the game. rhythms thing and do that. And then there's people that that have passion behind something. They live it, they breathe it, they sleep it. It's, it's big to them because their kid has cancer and

they want this product out there and they want this thing or that thing and there's a story and a connection behind it. And either one of those is phenomenal, right? But I think the people that struggle the most are the ones that they feel like they have that passion and they feel like everybody's supposed to have that passion. I had to, dude, this shirt is so badass and the saying and everybody's going to buy the saying and this entire thing. But like, I've found for me that I embodied lions, not sheep. It literally was for me. You know what I mean?

Like when I wrote my book, which is sold over half a million copies completely organically, I mean, I didn't even put page numbers in there. We forgot it. It was so basic and just put out there in the marketplace. I wrote a book that I wanted to read, like that I would want to read. And I think a lot of people need to realize, like, what do you want to wear? Right. It's easy to come up with slick marketing.

and slick products and whatever, whatever, but if there's no marketplace for it, it doesn't fucking matter out, create your landing pages, this, that, the other. So when you're trying to tie in that story, you know, like,

why is this relevant to you? Like, why do you believe in this? And I've literally, for the last couple of years, I've been talking about lines on sheep, it's become me, and people have watched my journey as a father,

as a business owner, as a man, as a divorced guy, as a dating guy, like all of these things, I've been really transparent. And I think people sighed with that. they resonate with it right and so for me lion's not a sheep it everybody's been telling me dude you're

in the perfect storm now with the whole political climate you know drop because it's like we're all you're one or the other right you're picking me like I do the lion or you're the sheep which is great you know but yeah there's a 175 million people on your side we're the right down the millions here it's cool as everybody now wants to jump on that right and we got to plug into that emotion they want to plug into the the political climate whatever whatever and and and you really don't have a track record, you don't have a tribe, you don't have any of that. I didn't set out to do that. And I think that's what really makes Lions and Not Sheep unique. And I think a lot of people need to wrap their head around this. And it's really difficult to do is having the consistency of

delivering content and messaging for the long game. Because now we're in a perfect fucking storm. Now we're crushing because so much content has been put out there over the last couple of years. And it wasn't with the objective of selling T-shirts or selling hats or selling any of that shit. My mom literally, she retired last year and she was bored of shit. I said, mom, come help me make t-shirts. And so we had one heat transfer. She was in the office and we'd sell 20 shirts a month, just people stumbling on the website. And she'd run down. She'd get the shirts and she'd make them. And she'd write a little note, package them all out. And that was really what the apparel brand was until the beginning of this year. But being able to like sit in a story and deliver that to people that

they believe without trying to sell them anything is massive. And that's a huge tactic that I don't think very many people understand is I believe that the very best salespeople on planet Earth are never selling anything. Like you go to my, you go to my Instagram or my Facebook, you will never see me selling anything. Yet I'm literally able to make millions of dollars through coaching and consulting and other companies that I have. But I'm not selling anything. So how does that work? It's unlimited. I'm breathing it. I'm exuding it. Right. And that's, you know, if you're a Jeep guy, you want to start a brand around jeeps, right? If you're driving a fucking hot and a core good luck, right? You better know the clicks in the algorithms, but it's like some of those dudes are like hardcore Jeep guys.

They get it. They know what Jeep guys talk about. They know what Jeep guys want. And they're able to exude that message, right? And people instantly resonate with it. So I really do believe that it's, you're in a day to age where we're completely bombarded and flooded with products and things and ads and messages and if you want the short game you better freaking figure out how to become a really good market or a really good copywriter and buy ads better than anybody else but if you want to build a real brand like something that has legs that will be around for a long fucking time that resonate with people like why is it important to you and you better be fucking living it if you're living it and talking about it everybody's like do I my person

page or my this page. I don't even know how many hundreds of thousands of followers on my personal page. I've way less than my business page because I just, I'm always living this, talking about it, breathing it, eating it. And be surprised how many people could plug into that. And now that we're turning on ads and running ads and doing shit like that, where I have almost a billion views of my videos, I can now target some of those videos and, you know what I'm saying? So, but I've been playing the long game and consistently doing the content, consistently talking about it. People just know, like, some people will see the shirts.

I get messages where they're like, dude, that's the, that's the bearded guy. Like, that's the bearded guy. They don't know my name because they recognize my video or at post. They're like, I know that guy. That's his thing, right? And it's really cool. What's the vision? I mean, where are we going?

You know, I know you're, your knee deep in a lot of things. I know this is open doors and, you know, you're coaching. How to make shit happen is the book. Everyone listening. Go check it out on Amazon. is Amazon or just your personal site? Amazon. But where we headed?

Where are you going? Well, right now we're trying to put the wheels back on the bus. We got our asses kicked in production. We grew so fast. I turned everything all back in March. What I mean by that is I hired a team. We come in and started running ads. I'd never run an ad before.

I'd never put ads out there. And we went from that to, you know, we were doing $2,000 to $3,000 a month of just apparel sales. We did $463,000 last month of apparel sales in basically 90 days. A lot of them, they're shirts. And it fucked some things up. And I learned some very valuable, expensive lessons on production and being able to keep up. And it's kind of a funny story.

I mean, everybody thinks it's just sunshine of roses. But all my kids and their friends worked for me. And they were all part of our production team. And so we were doing the heat transfers and the whole thing. And I'd run all the numbers and I got all the production companies and all the big promotional companies. They were hitting me up. Let us do your shit. Let us do your shit. Long story short, we had 10 of them employed as we were just crushing. We went from literally like picking up one box of shirts and screen prints to get pallets delivered. One of the kids apparently got COVID

because they're all like my daughter's friends, nine out of the 10 kids, their parents made them quit. Their parents made them literally self-quarantine. And so we were doing 350 orders a day, which represents about six to 700. shirts. And so we were like, oh, no problem. Get a, you know, a temp agency and bring all these people, well, they fucking takes forever for them to learn and speed. And well, they, anyways, we got we got really far behind. We got about, uh, 6,000 shirts behind. Wow. And team came in and they're like, bro, we got a problem. And I'm over here like, go, though, go. Let's go. Let's go. And they're like, hi, on, bro. We got a fucking problem. Because even if we work 24 hours a day, we can't get the

numbers that we needed. So that is that wheel on the buy. And then we're like, you know, Why is it working? You can't be a federal. Because I've got some guys, some dear friends of mine, they're big in the e-com space. They do millions of dollars a month. And I've told them this and they all laugh and chuckle because they're like, yeah, dude, like, you know what I'm saying? Like, every single person has this happen to them. We have so many of our business owners that we put in business through Vanekleen

that I'm still connected with that are just doing incredible things out there. But the fundamental of what they are doing was all of the things that they learned by being an operator within our system. I love that. I want to pivot here shortly to some personal things, some experiences you've had, the podcast, a little TV show, maybe a few people have heard of. But let's last kind of question. You mentioned the trademark thing. It made me think, like, would you ever, would you ever start a friend?

Can you start a franchise if you don't have a trademark on your name? Like, is that just like, is that like rule one? Like, let's say you're someone that's, you've, you've built one or two locations and they're super successful and like, oh, I'm ready to franchise. But you just happen to have a name that you didn't trademark or can't trademark. Do you immediately need to trade, get a different name? Yeah, so those are two different things. So didn't trademark. Yes, you can start. You would disclose that in your disclosure documents that say we have a trademark applied for. Here is the application number. Here's the date that we filed for it. And now if you get denied on that, then that

requires an additional disclosure immediately. So you've got to do that. Now, if you went to a trademark attorney and they said, you know, no way. Yeah, you're Smith Fitness, like Smith Fitness. And it's wonderful. You're making millions. You know that it's a, everything can be, you know, transition to a successful franchise.

But Smith Fitness, what you started out with and what you built with just happens to be a non-trademark. It's like, well, do I need to change my name? I don't know. It made me think of that when you started on like, damn, how many people probably start down this path and they've got an amazing business, but maybe they didn't either think about it or do they just pick something too common? Look, Ryan, I learned a long time ago that if I'm going to be broke, I don't want to be tired too. Can you imagine, like, if I'm going to be broke, like, I'm going to be comfortably laid up on, you know, catfish in somewhere. Yeah, right. In a really, in a garbage pick lawn chair.

No, but like, look, I mean, you build this whole brand and then the equity is in the name. I mean, when you go to sell your franchise system, a lot of it has to do with what's the equity in the brand? People know the brand. So if you don't own it, I mean, it's just, you've just kind of built, I'm not going to say you built it for nothing, but it would, that would be a non-starter if you can't get a trademark. I don't think anyone would do that. Yes, you would have to go through a rebrand. And, you know, you would think that in this day and age that every good name, taken, but it's not true. There's all

different variations of things you can get. You can make up words, you know, there's get a little creative. Google. Google doesn't mean anything. You have 30 years ago or 25. You're probably that long ago. But Jeff, I know you've had some incredible experiences, you know,

through your success and what you've done. Let's go right at undercover boss. I know our audience has probably heard of that. Maybe even seen you. I may have gone, I recognize that guy. He had to go tea. And they were trying to put it together. Talk about how that came about and just the overall experience.

Yeah, we had a really good episode. It still plays a lot. It plays overseas. I'll know when it plays in Australia or in Europe somewhere because I'll get a bunch of weird Facebook messages. So, no. So in 2016, they were filming season 8 and they had somebody drop out at the last minute. So one of the things in life is if there's no reason to say no, then you say yes. So they came to us and said, we've got two weeks to do this.

We've got seven or eight people that we're talking to. We'd have to fly out from California tomorrow, shoot a sizzle reel, put it together, pitch it to NBC. And they would, or was it CBS. I think it was CBS, pitch it to the network. Yeah. Pitch it to CBS. And they would have to decide. So we did that.

And really quick it came back that they were interested. didn't have it us on. So then we went through the reams and reams and reams of paperwork. And it was, we went out on the show. I mean, we went out on the road maybe like a month later. And it was a surreal experience for those people that haven't been behind the scenes in a production like that. It was really cool. I know I signed a bunch of confidentiality stuff and I really don't want to do anything to, you know,

I don't want to say anything that makes it harder for them to do the show. Yeah. But it just, it seems to me, Ryan, like every year the show is canceled. Yeah. And then somehow it comes back for another. So, but I mean, to pull this, it's such a well-known show. But I will tell you, the way that this is done, there is, it is so, it is done so well and so over the top that you would not think, like, you people do, like, is this undercover boss? And then as this is going on, they're like, no, it's not.

It's clear not. But it really, but it really is. So, yeah, it was great. We ended up being on the road for, we had a couple of little hiccups with a couple of things that were going on politically where they, we shot some stuff in North Carolina. And then they're like, oh, well, we don't want to shoot north. They had to reshoot stuff. So I had to fly my family. We did all the family stuff, right?

We went, we did the office stuff. We did the B-roll at the office. And then we went to the house and, you know, I'm cooking hot dogs on the grill. dogs are swimming in the pool and all that and they're like we can't use any of that because there was some political thing going on so and it was a you know one of those things and so then they you know we go on the road for a week we film two or three segments they fly my family to this wonderful resort somewhere in Georgia and we reshoot all of the family stuff and then we go on the road so I was on the road for a total of like 16 days and and it was a great experience and I will tell you

that we had five episodes, the producer said we had five episodes that we had to cut one that many shows would have killed to have. I mean, our franchisees were absolutely amazing. They lived the values of our company. They were out there trying to do the best thing for the customer. They were highly empathetic. I mean, you know, I could have picked it a few things here and there, but at the end of the day, we had, we ended up with four great segments. I got busted twice. They showed one of them. And, but it was really, I think, I think what's interesting about the process is. So, you know, we have a, you haven't been here yet. I think you're coming, but I don't, you've been here yet. But, you know, we have 22,000 square foot building on a five acre campus.

It's kind of got broad shoulders. And, you know, we would, I would, I coached over 30 seasons of my kids sports. And we would do, you know, the, my daughter's basketball team would practice in our warehouse. We, I lined the side yard as a football field. And that's where I coached our, our pee wee football teams when the kids, kids were growing up. And people didn't even know I own the business. Like, that's kind of how we rolled. Like, we were, we never, we didn't, you know, people had no idea really what we did, the scale of the enterprise. They didn't know that, oh, it's nice. They let you practice here, that's stuff.

And so, like, we were pretty under the radar. And I sat my kids down on the couch in our, in our bonus room. And above it is a quote on the wall we put. And it has kids pictures of, you know, them doing whatever it is they did that, you know, we wanted them to think we were proud of them for. And then it had this quote from Jerry Moore, the football coach at Appalachian State. It said, always do more than is expected. And then we had our family values up on our little plaque there and stuff. And one of the family values is trust yourself to take chances, fail fast and move forward, always do more than is expected.

You know, and all of that. And it's like, and I said, well, I say, guys, this is going to change things. And this is, I mean, it might change things at your school. I mean, we're going to be giving away a quarter million dollars worth of stuff. I mean, people are clearly going to know that, you know, that, you know, whatever it is that makes the show. But when you looked at our values, it's like we couldn't say no. And they're just like, okay, well, we're willing to take the consequences of it.

And we did. And we ended up having a great show. And they all got a little bit of time on it, you know, so that was cool. They got like a flash across the screen. Yeah, they're 15. seconds of fame. Yeah. 15 seconds of fame.

And then when it showed, the night that it showed in January of 17, we rent it out an entire bar. There was 250. Oh, and I had my little football, the little football team was coaching at the time. Like, they were on it. So that was cool. So we had about 250 people came, kids that I've coached, their families, all the employees, their families, the local news.

And we saw it for the first time, along with 7.1 million other people. And I'm telling you, it was a great show. and it did so much for the for the business and the brand and the franchisees really just confirming like, you know, really living the values that we had that we knew that we lived within the four walls of the business. But, you know, being able to display it to the world and put the franchisees front and center was just an incredible opportunity. So I always encourage people to say yes. And there's risk because if you watch that show, some of them go very poorly and you have no control. And I will tell you, man, they tried to wait. Wear me out.

Like early, late, three times a day, an hour in front of the camera, asking me probing, you know, kind of questions that would be incendiary, you know, trying to get me to break. And I just said, I took the whole position that said, if I don't, they can't, they can't use anything that I don't say. Yeah, that's smart. I've got media training before. That sounds like you did. No, I didn't. but I knew that I had a irresponsibly quick mouth, and I needed to put a, you know, clap a lock on it.

But we did good. We did good. Two questions on that for transition. Like, first, and you mentioned it, it was good for the business. I tell people that they don't completely recognize, like, things like Shark Tank and things like these things, where you can get your company, like, out there, like the monetary and brand impact of that awareness that you can't buy, by the way, or you can. And it's just way more than you'd ever

spend. I'm assuming there was some rebound. I mean, I'm like some upshot from that on some level. It was immediate. You know, we ran a call center. We answered 250,000 inbound phone calls for our franchisees. And we did it very well. And I mean, there was, many, many jobs that said, I saw your company on undercover boss and I'm giving you this job for, you know, like they were touched by the episode and franchisees directly got work attributed to it. There was a spike in franchise sales. So, but it wasn't, I mean, it wasn't, it wasn't, it wasn't massive. It was, but also, but being able to use that episode kind of as a, as a piece of content during the process to, to really exemplify what we stood for, you know, how we rolled.

It tells, I mean, my gosh, it tells the story of our brand. They did obviously a great job with it and little graphics and little trucks and a map. And like, so you could watch the first four or five minutes of that thing and get our whole company history and in a high production quality. So just that would, you know, was worth, you know, $250,000. dollars. The first 100 million in sales that we generated were entirely bootstrapped. So the first, the first trance of our lifetime sales came from a big chunk of it was Facebook advertising. So 2016, 2017, 2018, even 2019. When it was working? When it worked.

Yeah. And even before then, right? If Snowy started even earlier, they're earlier, There were Mois Ali from Native. He talks about generating $1, $1.50 subscription signups for $12 a month the order and just like infinite demand. And he sold that business for $100 billion cash in like two years from started. Very successful. It's still around everywhere. And so in the beginning, it was I need to create a product that is different enough that would capture the attention to create a Shopify. I chose Shopify and you Shopify was going to be the platform we were going to build on.

I started developing the product by talking to my dentist, my opodontist, my oral surgeon. What do you sell in office? What products? I went and bought as many products as I could. I analyzed all of the Amazon reviews, negative reviews, focusing on that area so that you can find some pockets. Then I saw that your sensitivity is important. You know, the whitening formula had some opportunity to be improved upon. The delivery method of being able to plug.

it into their phone, which we invented that ability to power it by the phone because the very first vision version of Snow was $95 and it was a battery powered light. It did not like it very much, but we needed some delivery system for the serum to be able to test it out on the customers. So I started running ads and it was pretty quickly a success. I set up the first version of the website and I had an agency come in and publish it. So we got it up on Shopify very quickly. And then that was after about six to nine months of talking to my dentist, reaching out to suppliers, searching who makes toothpaste, who makes this, who makes gel, and then getting samples and then tweaking those formulas and then getting some testing. So that took, you know,

six to nine months, at least going back and forth, maybe 50 to 100,000 bucks to buy the first order of the system that I had created for Snow 1.0, I guess. That was 95 bucks. So we started running ads on there, gave free shipping. And the focus was professional level whitening at home without the sensitivity of other systems. So, you know, really designing around the sensitive tooth customer, but also the one who wants to max out whitening. So it's like, you want to cake and you want to eat it to. You want to preserve your enamel, but you also have a wedding next week. And it's like, boom, boom, boom. So we just kept tweaking that formula percentages, whitening agents, what can we do to help us sensitivity? And so continue to tweak that.

Then it became a device business as well with our LID technology, which we now have multiple versions of. We have a wireless version, colors, lilac, special edition. We have a black one limited at best buy, I mean, just all kinds of colors and types. And so at the very beginning, it was one product, which was really a couple products in one. And that's what we now have sold nearly two million times of, of that system, which has evolved now to wireless, our current wired system today, which is the number one made in America teeth whitening system in the world. And so that's still our most known product was that original teeth whitening. kit all in one at home. We invented the verbiades, teeth whitening wands, the teeth fighting system,

just a lot of these verbiages that were a little more seen in professional, but that people could buy free shipping, two days, three days, it's in your hands. So that was a very, very start. And their goal was if that works out, then if you walk down the oral care aisle, couldn't snow have a version of everything in there, flossers, toothpaste, mouthwashers, and, A toothbrush, a water flosser, a liners, all kinds of these products, mints, gums, breath sprays. All those products couldn't snow. I have a version of that if this is successful. And now today our product portfolio represents an oral care and personal care portfolio of 30 plus individual skews, multiple award winners with multiple of them winning multiple awards across the board.

We have the best, best whitening strips, best toothbrush. all of these awards that are decorated on the site. And so now that has expanded, but that's about seven years later. So in the very beginning, it was Facebook ads, $95 system that we put together, or that I put together with help, and then push that out. Once that's sold, upgraded every single time that we reordered. The goal was how do we upgrade the formula, take the feedback. I was calling customers myself.

And now I had built and sold many customers. companies beforehand. I was independently wealthy. I could have poured a lot more money into the business, but I was still ruminating on, is this something that has legs? Is this something that I think it is? Like, am I crazy? And once I started to see that, then it became hiring more products, different versions of the products, more channels to acquire customers. Now we're in CVS, Walgreens, Best Buy, Neiman Marcus, Sacks, Macy's. So now we're in about a dozen premier top retail partners today.

But in the very beginning, it's Facebook ads, Shopify, one system, one person or two to help on customer support and shipping it out. And I shipped it from my spare bedroom of the house because the inventory, I didn't want to get an office yet. I wasn't sure, right? And I was investing at the time. I had just sold a couple of companies. So I want to see kind of if this could be able.

my next thing, you know? And sure enough, it, uh, it certainly did. Is, uh, you know, as you expanded past Facebook and started to get the broader, I mean, it's, Facebook has people I don't think realize how many billion people are on Facebook and how broad, you know, the awareness is. But was it, what was the, the percentage of like US first non-US? And was we talking pretty much 95, I mean, majorly U.S. based? And what were the channels that? What were the awareness channels that they kind of flowed after Facebook other than just distribution itself? Yeah. So it was, you know, Google, YouTube, sold the whole Google suite, the whole meta suite, Amazon advertising that whole suite. Actually, retail media networks. So also Spotify, audio, right? So there's every, so retail media is, if we're in Best Buy, we want to buy, well, web,

banner ads and we want to be the sponsored on Best Buy for anything teeth related. And so we're spending inside of the trade marketing to push those things, but they drive awareness top of funnels while on those platforms. And then we're doing everything from YouTube. We're doing a relaunch of TikTok. We've been hiring. We're still are hiring like crazy for TikTok on the snow side. So TikTok is top of funnel. We're really excited about relaunching that. Instagram, Facebook are still very heavy on the front end. We do a lot of affiliate marketing, well. I actually acquired the affiliate marketing.com domain name about a year ago to build more reach in that space because it's a it's a big portion across all of our brand, all the brands

of my portfolio and all the brands that I've invested in affiliate marketing is a very profitable channel across the board. So affiliate marketing is another area because a lot of these bloggers, vloggers, Amazon editorial affiliates, they're putting us in front of an audience for the very first time, listicles, things like that. So, you know, about maybe. 15% of our sales online come from our online affiliates. And that's 100% non-Facebook and Instagram because we don't allow it in the program since we run that internally. So it diversifies.

It forces the diversification of that traffic. So that's kind of the stack from the top level. And then that, of course, as you mentioned to distribution funnels to marketplace first, right, marketplace, then to retail actual locations. then we also sell to professional dermatology, dentists, kind of local clinic kind of style stuff. So that kind of whittles all the way down, then it repeats from the top.

But let's say before you went into retail, what was your mix? Like, you know, because everybody hears Amazon, they get scared, like margins and all that stuff. How did you tackle? I mean, you obviously started D to C, which is the smartest place, best margins, all that.

What was your balance with taking on Amazon? and what's your perspective there with just overall mix and things? A lot of people get scared of that. But it's such a behemoth that's hard to ignore. I was the same way, man. I like 10 years ago told two of my best friends on Tufton Neal, the mattress company, they have the number one most loved and most popular on Amazon mattress. And they had a very successful exit and huge success.

They bootstrapped it. But they leaned into Amazon. And back then I was. anti-Amazon. You don't own the data. You got to pay them 15, 20 percent. Everyone gets refunds. No, no, no, no, no. You got to lean into Amazon over 50 percent of retail searches online start on Amazon and they end there because people go straight there to search for shoes, white sneakers, like they're going directly to search. They're buying there. The conversion rate's always going to be higher than your website. It is what it is. I mean, they've invested tens of billions of dollars

into infrastructure because Jeff's a genius and they know that if they can outsmart logistics and get the customers hooked on two-hour delivery, that that's going to put a lot of pressure on merchants. But I know that Amazon's a public company. Because they're a public company in the U.S., there are antitrust laws, which means that Amazon cannot get more than 51% of its revenue or 50% of its revenue from its own products. So all the private label they do, all the kind of things. that they're doing, they cannot.

I think it's like 47%, 46, you can Google it. It's like somewhere on 46, 47. They can't scale up much higher. Line there. They just keep it going. They got to keep that 51% marketplace revenue, which allows people like us to take advantage of what Amazon built. If it weren't frantic trust, they kick us all off.

So, like, that'd be my guess, right? Like, if you on Amazon, why would, you know, they just make all the products and copy everybody. and, you know, they'd be a lot of patent trademark lawsuits, but they'd manage those with, you know, with all the lawyers, but they'd get it done, right? And I think it's like, look at it. It goes, you know, I, last year was our biggest year on Amazon. I mean, every year is a biggest year on Amazon, but last year was a significantly good year for Amazon.

So we go, wow, we need to really hire in that direction. We need to really double down our partnerships in that direction. We need to really tweak our affiliate marketing efforts in that direction. And so we went through it. said, we want to double down on Amazon and utilize our strengths, utilize our thousands of reviews, utilize our millions on our email and SMS lists, like utilize our assets and our retail placements that are very unique to us in our industry to be able to show off on Amazon and build that business. So we have a goal for Amazon on its own to be a nine figure business for us in the

next three years from an Amazon very focused scale plan, hiring plan, partnership plan that allows us to take advantage of the Amazon platform and marketplaces, Walmart.com, et cetera, because what happens in a recession, and this is fact-proof, and I read this, they said, during COVID, people went back to what they felt most comfortable and safe and secure with. So they went back to Walmart. Walmart. They went back to Target. They stopped venturing out so much until all these D-DIC websites

and all these unknown things, all these unknown subscriptions. Recession hits or money gets tight inflation. People are more likely to just, I'm just going to go to Target and get everything. I'm going to go to Walmart and get everything. I'm going to go to this website. Amazon. Let me just, it's convenient. It's cheaper.

I'm just going to do it on Amazon. So you got to now play in that direction. Five, ten years ago, you could get away without having to lead into it, although I wish I could go back five and 10 years. And I would have built an army of team members and partners on our Amazon channel. And we would have been totally dominating that channel. So I love it. You do get access to email your customers now.

They've got some new things. There's all kinds of stuff. But it's the only platform that's driven by sales. So you can become the number one in your category, even above the big companies, by sales volume. So you can drive, you direct your sales, like if Snow directed all of our sales to Amazon today, which is maybe 15 to 20% of our U.S. digital revenue. So let's say we put all of our U.S. digital revenue to Amazon, we would be the number one in every single category above all of the incumbent brands just because of velocity.

But we would give up 15% at least margin based off versus our own. You give up some data. But I got to tell you, there are days. where I go, that's not the worst idea, but, you know, there's a better way to go about it. You know, build up the Amazon presence and build up the traffic and build up the list. So, in a lot story short, anyone listening, I would like triple down and look up a company called Hero Cosmetics. Look up a company called Zesty Paws by one of my good friends. And they're a half a billion dollar pet supplement brand, 100% of their sales pretty much for from Amazon.

Look up Hero Cosmetics. They have a miracle patch for Acme. $20.20. They sold for $630 million, I think the beginning of this year in January, $40 million in profit just through Amazon. It was an Amazon-driven business. So these Amazon businesses are getting very strong multiples. They're raising money.

They're TikTok-friendly. So I would say lean into Amazon harder than you ever have and really figure out how to dominate that platform in your category because it's the only place you can see sales as Wow, you can literally see an estimate of what everyone's selling. You can go look at snow stuff and maybe, oh, they're selling an estimate of this much from this skew. It's a great platform to build on. You take pitching specifically and there's a lot of recovery nuances, a lot of longevity nuances, a lot of, we really care about that stuff, right?

Because we couldn't be, we couldn't have our product be our differentiator if we weren't focused on longevity. We tell people like, this is going to be long, hard, and difficult. and it's going to take consistency and discipline and dedication. You're not going to do it in 30, 60, 90 days. You're likely you're not going to like, you know, wake up one day and like, you know, be strong as an ox. It's going to take five years. And are you in for this ride? Or do you believe that you're worth it, right?

And so we have that recovery element built in because what we're telling people is that it's the opposite of what everyone else is saying, really, in the macro sense of like, hey, come do this fast. like, oh, you're not okay, that's okay. Let's come in any leg, do it fast, join your membership. You can lose 30 pounds real quick. And it's like, okay, well, that's flat. You know, you get companies that say one day it says they're signed on their building.

The next day it says for lease and you're like, why is that happening? So, yeah, I think that's, yeah, that's a combination of. Sounds like to sprinkle a little bit of bigger. You do sprinkle a little bit of bigger, faster, stronger in there from my high school days too, if anybody's ever heard of that program. Oh, yeah. I remember I was sitting here thinking as you were talking. ICR, intensity, community, recovery.

That is right. That's in a nutshell. My answer was real long-witted. I simplify for my, for a bit in marketing G-Logs. I like acronyms and simplicity. Yeah, but it's great. I mean, but that sounds like the building blocks of a long-term program. and not, like you said, a gimmick.

Because everybody gets that fire, you know, when they're ready to, okay, I need to lose some weight. I've got an event coming up, whatever. They get fire in their belly, but then it dies if you don't have the building blocks of something broader. You need the community to kind of keep you in it. You need the recovery because if you're chilling yourself and not recovering at all, Did they get down and out, like you said?

So I can see, and all I know is the periphery, you know, I've heard, I've had people many times, you do perj, whatever, whatever. So I'm going to make a promise to you that I'll go, I'm going to go hit burn up here at Grigville eventually. But what's it been like growing the business, man? I mean, just that kind of scale, you know, is incredible. What's that roller coaster been like?

Definitely won, right? You went at 2015 when we announced that we are going to franchise in all 50 states, you know, we thought hitting all run might be awarding 10 units in our first year and really getting those stood up. And you were always concerned with unit economics. I'll talk about that in a minute. But I had no idea that we would do 200 in the first 18 months. And, you know, Fram Dad did this article out of Franchise Times Magazine. It was like one of our first, it was one of our first.

It was one of our first earned media pieces that was talking about business that I was super proud of. And it said that we were in the 99th percent of all growth from all franchises of any franchise that entered the market since 2010. And this was like 18 months in.

And I'm like, okay, well, we better not screw this up then. So how do we get all of these gyms open? Right? We've got to focus on, we call ULEs unit level economics. You had a guest on Jeff Duden, who is from this area. He taught me this actually. He's been a good friend and mentor

of mine throughout the years. He taught me validation in franchising. And that's invalidation really in any business. It's not a franchise particular concept. But it's the stakeholders of your business being happy. It's your debt promoters score. How likely are they to recommend this business or doing business with you to somebody else?

And number one, number one thing is to number one box the check, if you will, is are they making money? And what type of money are they making? So I'm always looking for a, this might be something and people want to write down because I'll give you a strategy. What I'm looking for in any business I grow is an investment. Let's say the investment is at $500,000. I need to make a million dollars in year one in order for that investment to be considered an A plus investment for me.

So it's a two to one investment cash to year one revenue ratio. And that's how we, that's how we want to get every location out of the gate. Do all of them do that? No. But what that's really done, having that expectation, is we've aligned. clearly and early with our franchise partners who are really driving the unit level economics. We've learned that when we have that expectation,

they start higher, they start with more members, they start better off, and getting to that place of having world-class economics and boutique fitness was a long road, but definitely a doable one, because that was our focus the whole time

from the very beginning. So the big, what the hell are we going to do moment was when we had 200 and we had like 10 open. you know, like in franchising, it's the similar. It's kind of similar to fitness what we were just talking about. Like everyone wants to just go fast, fast, scale, scale, scale. It is a vehicle per scale.

Right. I love the vehicle for scale. But you can also scale yourself right into the ground. And you see that happen all the time in this industry, particularly the industry that I'm in, the boutique fitness franchising industry. So, yeah, it's a, I mean, think about it. It's logical, right, right?

I mean, like, I care about my people so much. Like this isn't about money for me. This is about my franchise partners who invested their 401k, who invested their life savings, who, you know, liquidated their stocks 10 years before they wanted to, sold their house and moved across the state, who left their family in North Carolina and moved to Missouri

and stayed in a hotel room for three months away from their children so they could go chase their dream. This is all about returning an ROI for them. And so, you know, with that type of mindset, that real people first core value, you know, we're able to take what's in the gym, translate that up to a franchise. partner network, translate that into an HQ culture.

You know, now we're on the East Coast or on the West Coast by coastal headquarters operating the business that way. And we're economics are better than they've ever been. We use annual unit volumes as a measure in franchising, how much each individual gym makes on average. And we'll be up near the 600s at the end of the year, which is, you know, top three in our space. So people first, like people first. And I'm going to preach that to the day that Morgan and I hang them up,

which we're in the big leagues now, so I'm going to stay as long as we can. You take care of people that take care of you. That's usually reciprocation is powerful just when you're trying to do the right thing. You said you started a lot. I heard licensing in there. I talked to Jeff about this a little bit, like licensing versus franchising versus, you know, like the thought process there. And, you know, you mentioned it. if you aren't serving your franchisees,

you know, then what are you doing? You know, it's hard as buying the business. Because, again, if you're servicing them, they're making money, they're happy. You get more franchisees and you grow. But what's it like, like truly, what's been some of the secret sauce to scaling like that? Like, now that you've done it,

was there stuff that you would have gone, damn, I wish I'd had done that sooner. Or, you know, like, what are some of those learning lessons? I think definitely the number one thing is you're going to scale your business fast. You want to invest ahead of that growth curve. You've got to anticipate that, you know, I heard Tony Robbins

once say that anticipation is the ultimate power for any entrepreneur and you're able to see over the hill before anyone else can. You can see the horizon when no other horizon when no one else can. Well, your ability to navigate your way there is geometrically enhanced. And so

what I always try to do is set big goals for the system, starting with unit economic goals, and then set more broad range targets. So I stepped on the stage at our summit in 2021, and I said, we're going to build 10,000 units to the mood. And half my system was like, you know, because we're a competitive culture, they were like, let's go. They're all pumped up.

And the other half was like, how on the hell are we going to do that? Like, I don't know. Like, I trust you, but, you know, that's a lot of units, right? It's like, how are we going to do that? The beauty is like, I don't need to know how we're going to do it. I just need to know that's a big enough why. There's a big enough purpose because the people you're impacting in your community are also in other countries and they deserve the same thing.

They deserve a people first fitness product. And so, you know, but we're only going to do that through you guys, right? How we're going to do that is focus all of our energy on putting more money into your pockets so that as a franchisee, you're able to get those AUVs up and then reinvest into the brand. So for us, just to give you a lay of the landscape, like, Byr Brands is like, that's Burrub Camp and that's the run. That's the frontrunner. That's the spearhead.

Franchising really is about distribution, right? So now we come in and we have a nutrition business underneath, an activeware business underneath, a real estate business underneath, an investment company underneath that takes passive, non-control and companies that were partnered with. And, you know, you start to, you know, think about secular franchises and other opportunities now that you have the infrastructure and the distribution. And it's like that makes the return on an investment for the franchisees even more important, right? And putting more chips in our baskets.

So our opportunities get bigger as we go forward. Yeah. I mean, because that's what it is. Like, just for everybody listening, Bird Boot Camp as a brand or Bird is a brand, the way you grow brand awareness isn't always just advertising. When you have 200, 400, 500,000 locations and thus signage and thus in-market marketing and word of mouth, it rose the brand. It's rich in frequency at the highest level with that distribution.

There's a lot of way to grow brand recognition and brand awareness that's not always just advertising in its truest sense. because every new location that throws up a sign and, you know, community for Byrd builds the bird brand, right? Yeah, you know, I love your marketing mind. And, you know, if I had to pick a, if I had to, I'm an entrepreneur, right? But if I had to pick a vertical that I'm most confident, definitely be branding, I think, as a more specific term than marketing.

And what I say branding, what I really mean is measuring things like brand equity. Pier 1 imports is a good example. here when imports went out of business and then their logos sold for $50 million and they were I mean they were just burning cash right if your real estate portfolio is burning cash unless you have some brand equity is some recognizable logo or something that's going to

sustain it, it just crashes. There's nothing, there's no recovery element there. So what I think of being, you know, I think of the people that are listening to this and they're all entrepreneurs, you know, it's obvious that owning your own business, right? Number one, a brand or number two real estate portfolio, arguably are one of the two best ways to build the wealth

initially. And I always put brand equity just slightly ahead because I've got something, I've got a logo that means something to people, even though the brick and mortars aren't there anymore. And, you know, so for me, it's always been about the, you know, and marketers try to, they try to measure this, but I think it's just them trying to be smart. It's like smoking mirrors. And I said, try to measure like brand lip. It's like, well, okay, yes, what you're talking about, right, is, okay, all the impressions from the signage, all the impressions from social media, all the impressions from word of mouth or one time in the mountains when Aunt Susie said something to Uncle Tim and Uncle Tim then takes his family in Seattle,

Washington. Like, you can't really measure a brand lift unless you isolate variables so, so finitely that it disregards all the things that actually create the brand lift. So I don't know if anybody has ever confused by brand lift. I love the branding expert and I still don't get it. But that's what you're talking about is how does the collective touch points or the collective eyeballs on your brand? Gary V says attention is currency, right? And he's so right.

What he's really saying is that brand awareness is your currency. And once I got all of the different units up rocking and rolling, you'd be surprised who comes out of the woodwork. My buddies from like my junior high baseball team text me a picture of that, you know, logo. It said my wife just joined. So, yeah, and then you layer the digital paid advertising and organic social media and all the contemporary marketing stuff on top of that like we did. And I think that's the recipe. So you've got to have the layer over the top. You've got to have the brand lift elements and then the hyper local community where you're in the field.

Our FPs are in the field with their team shaking hands, kissing babies, running for mayor, like just making sure that they're the conversation when it comes. to fitness in the town. Yep. We call it, you got to drive brand and demand. It's, uh, Brandon. It's those two things. That's what we first do clients.

And sometimes all clients, they just want to drive the demand. I'm like, you got to invest in the brand, baby. You know, that's what's going to pay over time. Everybody wants sales overnight, but brands built over time.

We're taking the BS out of business, baby. We'll see you next time. We'll write about now. This has been right about now with Ryan Alford, a Radcast Network production. Visit Ryanisright.com for full audio and video versions of the show or to inquire about sponsorship opportunities. Thanks for listening.