Right About Now with Ryan Alford - 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 NewsletterFree Podcast Monetization CourseJoin The NetworkFollow Us On InstagramSubscribe To Our Youtube ChannelVibe Science MediaSUMMARYIn 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. Devin Klein, 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 Alfred here, host of Write About Now. On today's episode, we bring together really a master class 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 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 Cheap, Josh Snow from Snow Teeth Whitening, and Devin Klein from Burn Bootcamp. 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 1 million downloads a month. Taking the BS out of business for over six years and over 400 episodes.

You ready to start snapping necks and cashing checks? Well, it starts right about now. What's up guys? Welcome to Right About 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 a mix of both. My father is from Mexico. My mom is from Puerto Rico. My dad came over, was like 13, 14, and then enlisted in United States Marine Corps 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 having the hotspot 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, you're old Jack squat. 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, I'm owed nothing. I don't just because I started a business doesn't mean my business should be successful. Just because I started 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 Sinek 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 a year? If on the

back of it, you miss 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 the 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 wanna 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 curator. And then I get to create content. I get to do podcasts. 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? Why don't why do some people always think they're owed something? Why are we that way? And I'm not saying me. I don't think it was me.

Shit. But like what what makes is it just Americans being spoiled? And I'm not saying everybody's that way. But we know for being real, a lot of 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 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 that's not really a question that we're really going to quantify right now. But if you ask yourself, how might I get 1% better in this? Now we have a clear path to getting a result. Regardless of 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 an 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 a problem, the pandemic of emotions that we go through is we don't know what's going on behind the scenes. We have no idea. So when we say I'm doing the same work as that person, 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 JVs. 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 loss 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 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 could 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 I'm doing, but then also put some benchmarks on myself and the team being, 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 and we do the damn work. I think the biggest takeaway right there is you got to play your own game. Like, it's like, I like to listen to people talking like that clients come to me. They, I'm like a counselor, even though I'm a marketer, I listen to them talk and then it's like, I boil it down for them. Okay, let's just get to the brass tacks. You gotta play your own damn game. And it's hard because the irony of this, and irony of what I'm gonna 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, but there's a lot of show business going on. But the irony of it is the social media amplifies 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. 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 didn't have to get under the hood. 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've got to make it tangible. Like you have to set, oh, it's not working. Okay, well, what's not working? You know, like, you gotta have seven things

that ladder up to one thing. You know, like, but, and you gotta measure the seven things. But I don't know what, it still comes back to the reflection of what, you have to play your own game and learn and absorb from others, but you just can't get into the comparison game at all times. It's just, it's just, it's 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 let me, 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 too 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 uglier form. 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 a 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 in 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, if 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 the same, sharing 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 wanna know what? I'm the next NBA star. No, you're not, not FU510 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 a hundred thousand dollar 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, 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, I'll clap your head up. When I talk to entrepreneurs, 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's 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 were talking about real raw shit. And it's just airy fairy political things, reshares 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 in my videos, millions of followers, literally hundreds of millions of engagements

on my posts 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 what I found is my own little kind of recipe and I felt better. The marketplace resonated with it and I just kept fucking running it. I love it. I want to get into some nuts and bolts on the back half year on the e-commerce, but

I do have one follow-up because I feel like no matter how lost you may have felt, you know, kind of being what you categorized as a man that everybody wanted you to be and not the real, maybe you. Something has shaped Sean Whelan at some point in life, well before you got lost or you got found or anything like that. I feel like there has to be these opinions and these beliefs that formed all of this, something shaped that either early whenever I would think. I don't know, nobody's ever asked you that. I'm thinking back in 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 were going door to door, pitching God to people. And it was something I was really passionate about. It was something that like 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 to communication. There's an art form of being able to not just talk, so, hey, how's your water? Like, why do you like that water? Okay, great. You know, what are 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, is what's behind it. You know, this is why headlines and shit, I'm not like bouncing around like every other freaking bulls over like, oh my God, oh my God. I'm like, you know, what's talking about? I like to critically think.

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, on my mission is I was talking about God. I mean, God's such a me. And I found, you know, on 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, an arc form that I've just gotten better and better and better at is communicating with human beings. But you know, 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 end and the other. And you know, they care. He's a great community.

I said it as if I thought you're a great communicator, period. I mean, that's what I'm talking. I mean, when you, when you really give a shit about people, like when you really care, like I think it's, it's something that, I mean, we're not, we're, we're just so busy trying to get, believe me, I mean, we're not, we're just so busy trying to 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 a whiteboard, right? We should not have foreign policies that take 30,000 page freaking manuals to fucking explain. No one's interested in that, really. We could tie this into the marketing and the business and the whole thing. Copy is really important. You know what I mean? What are you telling me? Everybody knows they're being sold something, so we've already got that out of the way.

What are you trying to tell me? What are you trying to communicate with me? Yay, 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 it's just more, 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 liasnotcheap.com.

I mean, you know, we work, you know, we're at a digital agency here and we work with a lot of brands and you know, they come to us and they have great products, but they have no story. Right. And yeah, I will take a company that has a purpose and a story all day because it's organic.

Again, it just becomes about blocking and tackling. It's real hard to figure out the Hail Mary, the message, 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... Because I've heard you talk about it. 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 tactics and some of the ways with which you've seen growth. Can you talk about some of that? Yeah, for sure. I, first of all, you know, there's two philosophies in my opinion, like anybody who's a really, really, really good ad guy or copy guy or whatever, you can take any product and figure out a way to sell it.

There's a lot of people that do that. They take products from China, they're really good, they figured out the game, the algorithms, they can do that. Then there's people that have passion behind something. They live it, they breathe it, they sleep it. 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, this shirt is so badass and the saying, everybody's going to have that passion. I had to, this shirt is so bad ass and the saying, everybody's gonna 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, that I would want to read. And I think a lot of people need to realize, what do you want to wear? 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 how great your landing page is, how this, that, the other. So you're trying to tie in that story. Why is this relevant to you? Why do you're trying to tie in that story, like, why is this relevant to you? Why do you believe in this? And then I've literally, for the last couple of years,

I've been talking about Lies on a Sheep, but 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 have been really transparent. And I think people side with that. They resonate with it. Right. And so for me, lions not a sheep. Everybody's been telling me, dude, you're in the perfect storm now with the whole political climate and the overall, because it's like, we're all you're one or the other, right? You're picking up the line or you're the sheep, which is great. You know, but yeah, there's 175 million people on your side. We're right down the millions. Here's what's cool is everybody now wants to jump on that. We ought to plug into that emotion.

They want to plug into the political climate, whatever, whatever. 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. I think that's what really makes Lions and our Sheep unique. I think a lot of people need to wrap their head around this. 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 as 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. what the apparel brand was until the beginning of this year. But being able to sit in a story and deliver that to people that they believe without trying to sell them anything is massive. That's a huge tactic that I don't think very many people understand. I believe that the very best salespeople on planet Earth are never selling anything Like 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, if you're a Jeep guy, you want to start a brand around Jeeps, right? If you're driving a fucking Honda Accord, good it, right? And that's if you're a Jeep guy, you want to start a brand around Jeeps, right?

If you're driving a fucking Honda Accord, 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 and 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 marketer, 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 have my personal page? Am I this page? I got, I don't even know how many hundreds of thousands of followers on my personal page. I have way less

than my business page because I just, I'm always living this, talking about it, breathing it, eating it. And you'd 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 in my videos, I can now target some of those videos and you know what I'm saying? 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 a post. So like, I know that guy, that's his thing, right? And it's, it's really cool. What's the vision? I mean, where we're going, you know, you know, you're, you're, you're knee deep in a lot of things. I know this is open doors and you're coaching how to make shit happen is the book to everyone listening, go check it out on Amazon, Amazon or just your personal site. Amazon. But what's 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 on back in March. What I mean by that is I hired a team, we came in, we started running ads. I'd never run an ad before. I'd never put ads out there. We went from that to, we were doing $2,000 to $3,000 a month of just apparel sales. Oh, we did $463,000 last month.

I will pair up sales in basically 90 days. A lot of them. It sure is. And it, and it, 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 or roses, but, um, all my kids and their friends worked for me.

And they were all part of our production team. And so we were doing heat transfers and the whole thing. And I ran 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 getting pallets delivered. One of the kids apparently got COVID and 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, ah, no problem. Get a temp agency and bring all these people. Well, they fucking take forever for them to learn and speed and well, they anyways, we got really far behind. We got about 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, go, go, let's go, let's go. And they're like, high on, bro, we got a fucking problem. Cause even if we work 24 hours a day, we can't get the numbers that we needed. So that wheel on the bike isn't working. You can't be a federal. Because I've got some guys, some dear friends of mine, they're big in the e-comm 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 happened to them. We have so many of our business owners that we put in business through VanaClean 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 last kind of question, you mentioned the trademark thing. It made me think, 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 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 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, no way. Yeah.

You're Smith Fitness, like Smith Fitness. And it's wonderful. You're making millions. You know that everything can be transitioned 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. I'm like, damn, how many people have started on this path and they've got an amazing business, but maybe they didn't either think about it or they just picked 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, catfishing somewhere.

Yeah, right. In a really, in a garbage-picked 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, you've just kind of built, not going to say you built it for nothing,

but that would be a non-starter if you can't get a trademark. I don't think anyone would do that. So yes, you would have to go through a rebrand and you would think that in this day and age that every good name's taken, but it's not true. There's all kinds of variations of things you can get. You can make up words, you know, there's get a little creative. Yeah. Google, Google,

Google, not anything 30 years ago or 25 years, I mean that long ago, but Jeff, I know you've had some incredible experiences, you know, through your success and what you've done. But Jeff, I know you've had some incredible experiences 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, they may have gone, I recognize that guy. He had to goatee and they were trying to put it together.

Talk about how that came about and just the overall experience. Yeah, it's still, 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, they were filming season eight 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? Yeah. Who was it? I think it was CBS. Pitch it to the network. Yeah. 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 in having 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 what I mean to pull this, it's such a well-known show, but I will tell you, the way that this is done, it is done so well and so over the top that you would not think, like people do, like, is this undercover boss? And then as this is going on, they're like, no, it's not. It's clearly not.

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, 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 in North Carolina, we 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 grill, dogs are swimming in the pool, 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 one of those things. And so then 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. Then, we go on the road. I was on the road for a total of 16 days.

It was a great experience. I will tell you that the producer said we had five episodes that we had to cut one that many shows would have killed to have. 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 could have picked at a few things here and there, but at the end of the day, we ended

up with four great segments. I got busted twice. They showed one of them. But it was really, 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 know if you've been here yet, but you know, we have a 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 kid's sports and we would do, you know, my daughter's basketball

team would practice in our warehouse. I lined the side yard as a football field and that's where I coached our Pee-wee football teams when the kids were growing up. And people didn't even know I owned 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 stuff. And so we were pretty under the radar. And I sat my kids down on the couch in our bonus room.

And above it is a quote on the wall we put, and it has kids' pictures of them doing whatever it is they did that 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, and all of that. And it's like, and I said, well, I said, guys, this is going to change things. And this is, I mean, it's, it might change things at your school. I mean, we're giving, 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, 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.

So that was cool. They got like a flash across the screen. Yeah, they're 15 seconds of fame. Yeah, they're 15 seconds of fame. And then when it showed, the night that it showed in January of 17, we ran it out in the 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. I'm telling you, it was a great show.

It did so much for the business and the brand and the franchisees, really just confirming really living the values that we knew that we lived within the four walls of the business. 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 wear me out, like early, late, late three times a day an hour in front of the camera asking me probing you know you know kind of questions that would be

incendiary you know trying to get me to break and I just said my I took the whole position that said if I don't they can't they can't use anything that I don't say yes that, that's smart. I've got media training before. That sounds like you did. No, I didn't. But I knew that I had an 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 when 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, like some upshot from that on some level. It was immediate. 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, but it wasn't massive. But being able to use that episode

kind of as a piece of content during the process to really exemplify what we stood for, how we rolled. 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 what it was worth, you know, $250,000. The first 100 million in sales that we generated were entirely bootstrapped. So 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. 2017, 2018, even 2019. When it was working. When it worked. Yeah. When it was, yeah, exactly. And even before that, right? If Snowden started even earlier, there were Mois Ali from Native. He talks about generating a dollar, dollar 50 subscription signups for

$12 a month to order it and just like infinite demand. And he sold that business for a hundred million cash in like two years from started, very successful. It's still very 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, chose Shopify and you Shopify was gonna be the platform we were gonna build on.

I started developing the product by talking to my dentist, my orthodontist, 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 sensitivity is important. Then I saw that sensitivity is important. 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 bucks and it was a battery powered light.

I 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 said 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 at 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 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 too. You want to preserve your enamel, but you also have a wedding next week. And it's like boom, boom, boom, boom. So we just kept tweaking that formula, percentages, wedding agents, what can we do to help us sensitivity. And so continuing to tweak that then it became a device business as well with our LED 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 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 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 verbiage teeth whitening wands, the teeth whitening system, just a lot of these verbiages that were a little more seen in professional, but that people could buy with free shipping, two days, three days, it's in your hands.

So that was a very, very start. And the 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, mouthwash, a toothbrush, a water flosser, aligners, all kinds of these products, mints, gums, breath sprays, all those products couldn't still 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 SKUs, multiple award winners, with multiple of them winning multiple awards across the board. We have the 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 pushed that out.

Once that 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 companies beforehand. I was, you know, 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, Saks, 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 said, I want to see kind of if this could be my next thing, you know?

And sure enough, it certainly did. Is you know, as you expanded past Facebook and started to get the broader, I mean, Facebook has people, I don't think realize how many billion people are on Facebook and how broad the awareness is. But what was the percentage of like US first non-US and was it, we talking pretty much 95, I mean, majorly US based. And what were the channels that kind of, 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, so 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 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 funnel as well on those platforms. And then we're doing everything from YouTube. We're doing a relaunch of TikTok. We've been hiring. We 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 as 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 in 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 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 it 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, your 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 D2C, 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, it's hard to ignore. 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, it's hard to ignore. I was the same way, man. I like 10 years ago told two of my best friends

on tough to needle the mattress company. They have the number one most loved and most popular on Amazon mattress. And then 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 gotta pay them 15, 20%.

Everyone gets refunds. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. You gotta lean into Amazon. Over 50% 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 rates 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 and 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 kinds of things that they're doing, they cannot, I think it's like 47%, 46, you can Google it, it's like somewhere around 47.

So they can't scale it much higher. 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 for antitrust, they'd kick us all off. So like, that'd be my guess, right? Like, why would you go on Amazon? Yeah, they just make all the products and copy everybody and they'd be in a lot of patent trademark lawsuits, but they'd manage those 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, I, last year was our biggest year on Amazon. Every year is a big start 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. We need to really double down our partnerships in that direction. We need to really tweak our affiliate marketing efforts in that direction.

So we went through it and 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 list, 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, etc. Because you what happens in a recession, and this is fact proven, I read this, they said, they said, you know, during COVID, people went back to what they felt most comfortable and safe and secure with. So they went back to Walmart. They went back to Target. They stopped venturing out so much onto all these DTC 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 gonna go to Targeting and everything. I'm gonna go to Walmart and everything. I'm gonna go to this website, Amazon, let me just, it's convenient, it's cheaper, I'm just gonna do it on Amazon. So you gotta now play in that direction. Five, 10 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 try to direct your sales, like if Snow directed all of our sales to Amazon today, which is maybe 15 to 20% of our US digital revenue. So let's say we put all of our US digital revenue into 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 of 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 a long 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 were from Amazon. Look up Hero Cosmetics. They have a miracle patch for Acne. 20 bucks. 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 well. You can literally see an estimate of what everyone's selling. You can go look at Snow stuff and be like, 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. Because we couldn't have our product be our differentiator if we weren't focused on longevity. We tell people 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 not going to wake up one day and 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? 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 anyway. Do it fast. Join the membership. You can lose 30 pounds real quick. And it's like, Hey,

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... You 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-winded. I simplify for a bit in marketing dialogues. I like acronyms and simplicity. Yeah, but it's, it's great. I mean, but that sounds like the building blocks of a long term program and not, like you said, a gimmick, um, 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. I, they get fired 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 killing yourself and not recovering at all, then 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 burn whatever, whatever.

So I'm going to make a promise to you that I'll go, uh, I'm going to go hit burn up here at Greeneville, uh, eventually. But what's it been like growing the business, man? I mean, going, I mean, just that kind of scale is incredible. What's that road coaster been like? Definitely one, right? In 2015, when we announced that we were going to franchise in all 50 states, 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, Framdead did this article out of a franchise magazine. It was one of our first like earned media pieces that was talking about business that I was super proud of. And it said that we were in the 99% 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 what we call ULEs, Unit Level Economics. You had a guest on Jeff Duden, uh, who is from this area. He taught me this actually. He's been a good friend and mentor of mine, uh, throughout the years. He taught me validation and 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 promoter 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, 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, this might be something people want to write down because I'll give you like a strategy. What I'm looking for in any business I grow is an investment. Hey, 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 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. 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 just go fast, scale, scale, scale.

It is a vehicle per scale. I love the vehicle per 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 logical. I care about my people so much. This isn't about money for me. 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, with that type of mindset, that real people first core value, we're able to take what's in the gym, translate that up to a franchise partner network, translate that into an HQ culture.

Now we're on the East Coast, we're on the West Coast, bi-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 top three in our space. So people first. 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 how, that's usually, uh, that's right. Reciprocation is powerful. Just when you're trying to do the right thing. You said you started a lot. It like I heard licensing in there. I've talked to Jeff about this a little bit, like licensing versus franchising

versus, you know, like the thought process there. And, you know, you, you mentioned it. If you aren't serving your franchisees, you know, then what are you doing? You know, as hard as going to business. Cause 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, like now that you've done it, was there stuff that you would have gone, damn, I wish I had done that sooner or, you know, like, what are some of those learning lessons?

Like, definitely the number one thing is that 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 one else can well Your your your ability to navigate your way there, you know is geometrically enhanced And so what I always try to do is set big goals

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

And the other half was like, how the hell are we going to do that? Like, I don't know. 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 there'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 business product. And so, you know, um, but we're only going to do that through you guys, right? That 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 Burn Brands is like that's Burn Bootcamp and that's the front runner. That's the spearhead. Franchising really is about distribution. So now we come in and we have a nutrition business underneath, an activewear business underneath, a real estate business underneath,

an investment company underneath that takes non passive, non-control and stakes and companies that we're 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 investment for the franchisees even more important, right? And putting more chips in our basket.

So our opportunities get bigger as we go forward. Yeah. I mean, that's what it is. Like just for you to by listening, Bird Bootcamp 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 a thousand locations and the signage and thus in market marketing and Word of mouth it grows the brand it's reaching 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 Bird builds the Bird brand, right? Yeah, you know, I love, I love your marketing mind. And you know, if I had to pick a... I'm an entrepreneur, right? But if I had to pick a vertical that I'm most confident in, 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 One Imports is a good example. Pier One Imports went out of business and then their logo sold for $50 million. And they were just burning cash. If your real estate portfolio is burning cash, unless you have some brand equity, some recognizable logo or something that's going to sustain it, it just crashes.

There's no recovery element there. So when I think of being... I think of the people that are listening to this and they're all entrepreneurs. I mean, you know, it's obvious that only your own business, right? Number one, a brand or number two, real estate portfolio, arguably are the 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 smoke and 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.

You can't really measure a brand lift unless you isolate variables so finitely that it disregards all the things that actually create the brand lift. So I don't know if anybody is ever confused by brand lift. I'm a 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 Vee 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 my junior high baseball team text me a picture of that logo and 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 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 teams shaking hands, in the field, our FPs are in the field with their teams, 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 a brand and it's those two things. That's what we preach to clients. And sometimes our clients, they just

want to drive the demand. I'm like, you got to invest in the brand, baby. 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. Right about now. This has been Right About Now with Ryan Ulford, 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!