Don't Give Up On "The American Dream" - R.T. Custer

Foreign. So we're talking about the value, the power of not giving up. We're sharing a story, tale from the front line, if you will, about not giving up on something you care about, not giving up on your dream, in this case, an American dream. You're a background, everybody. My name is Bill Gallagher, but if you listen, you already knew that. Scaling coach and host of the Scaling Up Business podcast. Our show comes to you every week with something to do with helping to grow your company. And we. Not only do we do over 500 of these podcasts now, but we also have workshops and coaching programs in Scaling Up. If your business is over a million dollars and you've got at least 10 people on your team, then we probably have a coaching program for you. So whether it's getting you, you know, into that, like over the $20 million mark and beyond, whether it's getting you to 100 million, we've even helped a few companies get over a billion. We've got programs for you to suit everything you want. You'll find all those programs and more@scalingcoach.com so scalingcoach.com is our website, also the place where you can find links to the back catalog of our 500 shows, tool downloads, things like that. About everything we can find@scalingcoach.com all right, that's enough yammering. I'm joined by R.T. custer now. It's a. It's a awesome name, R.T. custer. It's a.

Thanks, Bill.

Yeah, thanks for having me made or whatever. And, and so, folks, you should know RT is founder and CEO of a company called Vortic Watch, and he also runs a Fast Foundations mastermind, and he's been building this Made in the USA watch company. I bet you didn't realize we don't have watch companies in the United anymore where they actually make him here. And anyway, that's kind of his deal and he's going to tell us all about that.

Yeah, thank you. Thanks again for having me, Bill. I'm really excited.

So. Well, we're going to get into your whole story. Where are you today? And.

Yeah, all my. All my conversation pieces behind me. So I'm sitting in Fort Collins, Colorado, in the Vortex Watch Company office. We have 8,500 square feet of manufacturing here. And yeah, this is my zoom background. It's not a virtual background. These are like all my favorite things. A lot of alcohol bottles, but mostly because of branding. I just love branding and marketing, especially when you only have like 3 inches by 2 inches to tell your whole brand Story and convince someone to buy your thing and not the thing that's right next to it. So I just love luxury brands. And then I think the liquor industry is such a good example of that because, you know, you have that tiny little billboard to tell your story. Bunch of other stuff up here, but like I said, just kind of my favorite things behind me again, mostly in that luxury and branding space because that's where I live. That's why I talk about watches all day.

It's funny how watches have been displayed. We're going to talk about your battle with Swatch, the biggest watch company in the world. Although I kind of wonder now how they're doing relative to the Apple watch. Right. From out of nowhere, like Swatch became a powerhouse and. Have you ever been to the Basel show?

Yeah, yeah. I mean, it doesn't really exist now, unfortunately, but it went two, maybe three times back about eight years ago and yeah, just the largest watch trade show ever. I mean, it's, it was so cool just to see the expansiveness of the industry.

It's really impressive. So my old company, we produce some watches for a little while and as we got into that business, I went to Basel to kind of go learn the lay of the land and understand and meet people and talk to different suppliers and think about what movement we would use and what the range of options were and like, that kind of thing. It was a fascinating thing to, to go to. Like the, the, it's just so massive. Right? And this was before the Apple watch was out, before the smartwatches in general.

Yeah, yeah.

You know, they have got to be.

Well, I, I think I, the, the conversation is interesting because people, you know, 10 years ago when, when I was starting Vortic watch company, people were just like, why are you starting a watch company? Like, there's smartwatches now. Like what, like you can buy a Timex for $20 at Walmart. Like, what do you, why would you start a company that you're selling things that people don't need for thousands of dollars? That was really what they were asking. And I just, I knew at that time and I just couldn't prove that they were wrong and that, that mindset was, was incorrect. And I feel like I've proven it now. But we still get people that, that ask questions like that. My take on smartwatches in general, Bill, is that we, we as in like the world and Apple, especially with the, the Apple watch, is teaching people, especially young people, that they need to have something on their wrist that tells them the Time and that they interact with on a daily basis. And I think over the next 10, 20 years as like my kids who are really little now, but as they grow up and, and this next generation grows up, they're going to start wanting like, I think a lot of people like me want something on my wrist that doesn't vibrate. Every time I get a text message that's not connected to anything that is a dumb watch or that tells more of a story, it's more of a conversation piece. It's more of a statement. Whether it's a statement of wealth or a statement of status or a statement of like, I earned this, I built this. You know, there's all the stories that people who buy the Rolex when they sell their first company or you know, make their first business deal or whatever like that. And I think the purpose of all the stuff that I'm building and you mentioned the American dream is I want to own the American made side of that conversation. So when you're like, I want to replace this Apple watch with something nicer on my wrist and I want a really awesome mechanical wristwatch that's a heirloom that's going to last forever. That's a conversation piece of. And I value American made and I want to support an American company. You look to Vortic watch company or one of the future brands that I'm building and you buy something that's made in USA for that.

You know, I think. Right. They're different things. Men. It's going to be somewhat functional for the most part. But it is, it's like, I mean a watch in many ways was my male bracelet. Right. Like it's, it's. There's definitely a stock component. But I also wanted some function to it. I had, I still actually have in, in, in one of my drawers somewhere some mechanical watches. And then for years I wore various pilot styled watches, especially when I was more flying. But, but more than the like E6B bezel that let me calculate fuel and distance and that kind of thing was the style and the identification. Wanted people to know I was a pilot. Right. Like that communication. Yes. It could do alarms. Yes. It could do world time zones. Did I use it for that? Not a whole lot. Right.

Like, yep, yep.

But sometimes it had a lot of buttons and that kind of thing on it. But I love that. Right. And it's titanium and, and I find today I wear the other one more because it's integrated. But it's always fascinating to see industries disrupted and you're Gonna get into that a little bit. What is. Where did you first get this watch obsession? Where did you decide that was a thing that needed. Because you could focused on lots of things. Right. Many places of brand and luxury and like that.

Yeah, it's a great question. So my business partner Tyler and I had our first watch related idea on the golf course after school one day at Penn State. And like many golf course ideas, it took the whole rest of the round to kind of like figure out where we were headed with it. The initial idea was, or I guess was sparked by me just asking Tyler a simple question, which is like, how do you wear a watch while you play golf? Like, I was just fascinate that he had this thing on his wrist while he's swinging a club. Like, I, I can't, I can't wear anything on my wrist while I play. I, I take rings off. Like just any jewelry is, is a distraction. Even like, you know, a, a tight jacket or something. I feel like gets in the way when I play golf. And, And I would be totally naked.

While you play golf?

Basically. Yeah. That's why I have to go south to get warm enough to, to be in that environment. Yeah. But I, I don't make, Call me a purist, but like, I just, I want to like, actually play well, when I go play, I want to be focused on that. And I thought I saw him, you know, always wearing a watch.

Feel the grass on your toes. I think you should go there.

I haven't done that. I, I always wear, I always wear shoes. I have seen people play barefoot. And there is a reason for that, I'm sure, but not for me.

Hawaiian style, baby.

Exactly, exactly. But like, I was just like, Tyler, like, how is that not annoying, you know, because I could never get a watch and I still can. It's hard to, to fit perfectly, you know, it's always a little too loose, a little too tight, and then especially when you're outside, you're like sweating or whatever. And so it just started this really interesting conversation about how like, he doesn't think about it like that way. He loves wearing watches. And even though that is a problem and it is like this thing on his wrist, um, he explained like, all the different types of watches that there were, and there was like smaller ones and lighter ones and titanium feels more comfortable on the wrist than steel and all this kind of stuff. And I was studying engineering and so I just got really fascinated with like the supply chain and the manufacturing of just like, wow. Like the watch industry is so Big and there's so many options and there's all these features and functions. Like you're saying with pilot, like pilots watch is a whole other like entire side of the industry. That's fascinating. And basically by the end of the round of golf, we had decided like, okay, you know, after school, I think it'd be really cool to start a watch manufacturing company or at least like, let's see what's, what goes into that and let's see if we can make a watch. And we were both really passionate about Made in America and that was really popular. Like everyone was talking about made in USA in like the 2011, 2013 time frame. People still do today. But like back then I feel like it was even more popular for some reason.

And so we're like, okay, rises and falls, right? There are points of national pride and reaction to things where it kind of goes up and responds. And then there are people for whom it's like, I'm always Made in the usa, you know, like, yep.

And, and some of those people are my customers because, you know, that's great. Like you, they want to support Made in America. But that was, that was where the idea came from is like, okay, if we're going to start a business in the watch industry, like, let's try to make a watch in America. And we started asking, you know, why are all watches made in Switzerland and China? Because that's what everyone said. It's like, well, if you want to make a watch, at least the movement, you know, the guts of the watch, they're all made overseas. And we just kept asking why, you.

Know, we bought Chinese quartz movements and, and then we put them together with components from Bali and Thailand. Interesting to create a particular fashion look. Right?

Like, so, yeah, and that's, you know, we, we decided early on that we wanted to go for a more luxury product and, and go for a mechanical movement. And we've always been fascinated in the mechanical movements and, and basically, you know, you're looking at at least a thousand dollars retail price for a watch that has any sort of decent mechanical movement in it. And that seemed, that seemed more interesting for us is like a higher end. You know, as you know, Bill, there's like, there's multi million dollar watches. So we were, we were almost undershooting ourselves like only a thousand. But that was all interesting to us.

Around the Basel show and seeing these mind bogg. I mean they're just, they're amazing like functional art pieces. Right. And I think of fine watchmaking as being like inherently Swiss, like that's where they make up. I, and I think of luxury products. I think of in particular Italy a little bit Switzerland and France. Yeah. And there's different kind of like bespoke luxury that comes from other places. And, and we think of lvmh, things like that in the luxury brand.

Yep. Yeah, exactly. And when, when you said Italy, I, I was going to bring up lvmh, you know, and just all the different brands that they make and, and, and just in general, most of those, most of these liquor companies that make the bottles behind me and most of the watch companies are all owned by some huge conglomerate. But, and that, that was, that was a learning. And we'll, we'll get back to the Swatch story that you mentioned. But to finish the story, I mean basically we were just like, okay, why aren't watches made in usa? Like what, what, what's the point? And we stumbled on the history of the, what I call the great American watch companies. And most people don't know, Bill, that most like millions of pocket watches. Over 100 million pocket watches were made in USA back between about 1850 and 1950 and America. And that time frame was the Switzerland of the world. And I love manufacturing, but I love history more like I am a history nerd, especially military history and American history. And, and Tyler and I just went down this rabbit hole of like, okay, if they figured out how to make millions of pocket watch like mechanical Mechanisms in America 100 years ago, why can't we do it today? And, and we, we basically just started buying all these pocket watches to see if we could reverse engineer them and figure out how they work and figure out how we could make them ourselves and why aren't they made in us? And one of these guys that we walked into a pawn shop and he said most pocket watches today are scrapped for the gold and silver, the case, the outside of the pocket watch, leaving the inside just, you know, homeless and, and scrapped. Right. And light bulb went off and we're like, what if we use the inside of the pocket watch that was made in America 100 years ago and then we make the outside, the case and the crown, all the bigger stuff in America that's easier to make. We'd have 100% American made wristwatch. And that was the idea we put on Kickstarter back in 2014, was 100% made in America wristwatch using an antique American pocket watch inside. So a pocket watch turned into a.

Wristwatch and we call it a vortic upcycling the movement.

Yep, yep. Fully refurbishing and restoring these old pocket watches, including the mechanical mechanism. They're all manually wounded movements. And the dial or the face of the watch and the hands. So what I say, if you look at a vortex watch, which, you know I'm wearing them, they're a little bit bigger of a watch since the pocket watch turned to wristwatch. But everything inside is old and everything outside is new. And so, yeah, it's the definition of upcycling.

It's a resto mod.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Yep.

The rest of my car is all new mechanicals. But the classic appearance. Right?

Yeah, it's inverted. Totally. It's funny you say that because I actually like here on my desk I have some pocket watches that I've been collecting for the Barrett Jackson show. So we're going to the Barrett Jackson show as an exhibitor mostly because those people are my customers. You know, that target demographic is like 100% my people. And I found a few pocket watches and dials of pocket watches and it's going to be impossible to see it. But on the, on the face of it, yeah, lots of glare. But on the face of it, that is the Packard logo. The Packard Car Company. It says ask the man who owns one. And these were made by Hamilton Watch Co. About 100 years ago. And so I'm collecting all these like car related. I have a couple of Chevy dials too. So all these car related watches and we're going to build them into wristwatches, you know, for late January for that show.

That's super cool. So, so that all sounds good, like you're gonna go do that. But it didn't go well. I know it didn't go smooth. The Swatch Company and talk about that.

Well, so I just mentioned Hamilton so that what I just held up the. The pocket watch was manufactured by a company called Hamilton Watch Company in Lancaster, Pennsylvania roughly 100 years ago. Hamilton was one of the great American watch companies. I call them the Rolex of America. They made most of the military pocket watches that, that we use. And they were about like 10% of the production. But it's a famous brand. And they built this, this great American watch Company in Pennsylvania back then. And unfortunately they went out of business in 1969 and the trademark was purchased by the Swatch group in the 70s. And you know, 10 years ago when Tyler and I started our Tic watch company, we had no idea of any of this stuff. I had no idea what Swatch even was. I associated Swatch with a Cheap watch. I had no idea they owned omega and like 28 other brands and were half the watch industry or whatever in Switzerland. And, and we're, we're just taking old pocket watches and turn them into wristwatches. So, you know, we're just a couple of kids trying to figure out how to do that. And all of a sudden we got a cease and desist from the world's largest watch conglomerate. Scared the shit out of us. And basically they accused us of counterfeiting and trademark infringement because we were taking a Hamilton pocket watch made 100 years ago and turning it into a wristwatch, meaning that it still says Hamilton on the face of the watch and it says Vortic on the back. And so basically, you know, with all the legalese taken out, they accused us of using their name to make money. And, and it was one of the judges, one of the federal judges in the, in the case. It took about six years to, to go through the legal system and properly defend ourselves.

And this was like, stay alive.

Yeah, yeah, this was 2005. So, so what's, what's interesting, Bill, is, is. And, and this is why I talk about all the time, because I feel like, especially in a David and Aglaya story, like, it's not often that the David kind of comes out alive and like, also doesn't have a gag order. So, like, I'm allowed to talk about all this stuff because we won. But we got, we got the cease and desist about three months before we ever shipped a single watch to our, our first customers from our Kickstarter campaign. And the reason we got the CC is. Yeah, because basically we put ourselves out there on its crowdfunding platform and said, hey, you can take pre orders. And so we were still working on producing those pre orders when we got sued. And so I had yet to make a single thing before I got sued by the biggest company, our industry. And you know, it's funny looking back at it, but at the time, you know, we're in our early 20s, no idea what we were doing, still trying to figure out if this was a viable business. And then we got hit with this, this, this lawsuit. So I learned a lot in that six years. I'll tell you what.

So you're fighting them for six years. I'm curious, how did you fund your legal battle and what were you doing in that time?

Yeah, so I went through three different attorneys, mostly because I couldn't afford an attorney and I couldn't afford to have somebody on retainer. And so I always tried to set up, like, payment plans and just kind of stretch everything out as much as possible in order to financially survive. And we just had to sell watches and make the company profitable in order to keep going and fund the lawsuit on the back end, too. And I, I'm very grateful to have Tyler, my business partner, because at some point, I forget when we had this conversation or if we even had the conversation, but at some point we decided that I would focus on selling watches and defending this lawsuit and having the conversations with the attorneys, and he would focus on managing the team and making the watches, and only that. And so he was always, you know, producing watches, and I was always selling as many watches as he gave me to sell. And then, and then I insulated him and the team and the other people helping us make watches from all the legal stuff because, honestly, it was heavy, you know, and it was negative and it was a lot to think about. And so I mostly internalized that, which is one of my biggest takeaways, is I should have asked for help sooner. Maybe I would have, you know, save some time or money. But, but yeah, we, we tried to finance it just through operations of, of the company and just tried to keep running the company and growing the company and pretend it wasn't happening from, like, a marketing standpoint, if that makes sense.

Yeah, it's interesting how people get by. So what are some of the ways that you funded your company and your operations over the time?

Yeah, so I've done every type of financing available from the SBA and banks except for an SBA 504 loan. I, I have some, like, plaques from the bank because, like, they said I was the first customer to like, basically do every single loan program they had. And I almost, I, I, well, I almost completed the, the trifecta or whatever with the 504, but we ended up doing an owner carry on this building to purchase the commercial real estate instead of a 504. But, you know, it's just about like, trying to, trying to grow the business, trying to make sales, trying to be profitable. I mean, the watch industry, like, if you do it right, the gross margins are really nice. And so, you know, running a luxury company was one of the reasons we saved ourselves, was just trying to run a profitable business. But, yeah, loans, investors. I've raised a couple million dollars in equity financing, and it was very hard to get a loan and very hard to find investors when we had a federal lawsuit on our back. But I just had to find people that believed in the American dream and also believe that we hadn't done anything wrong and we weren't doing anything wrong. And this was just case of corporate bullying basically. And I was able to find, you know, attorneys and bankers and investors that believed in us. And like I said, I'm very, very grateful for my business partner and, and all of those people that believed in us because, you know, we're on the back side of it now and we're doing great. So knock on wood, everything's, everything's gone pretty smooth once we finish that lawsuit.

We have this notion that law is pretty clear cut, but it's anything but clear cut. And the potential for bullying to be a bigger player, either a government entity or a larger company to harass someone, to grab their brands from them, to do things like that is extraordinary. And the flip side is true. It's also easy for people to take things out from under you. So we have this whole world of especially IP law, intellectual property law, and yet, like the potentials for abuse and misuse are so significant. It's not a clear cut case. I'm in the right, I'm in the wrong, right?

Yeah, yeah. And that's why the judge said it was an interesting case. And she said, you never want to be the defendant in an interesting case because we, she, she said we as in the, the government, the, the federal government needs a decision here. Like, she's like, you need to get it all the way through and have a judge slam a gavel and say, this is the ruling. Because now they can use that ruling as case law for future similar cases, of which currently there are almost none. You know, there, there really hasn't been any case law of, of upcycling in general. So like that's, that's. You use that word, but like, there's really not a whole lot of that stuff going on from a legal standpoint. And there's not a lot of cases that have reached finality and have rulings. And so we were reaching all the way back to Champion Spark Plugs case like almost 80 years ago or something crazy where people were refurbishing Champion spark plugs and selling them as authentic Champion spark plugs. There was a few more recent cases, but like, there was one in golf balls, for instance. You know, Titleist refurbished golf balls that you see everywhere. Titleist sued the first company that tried to do that. And so there was some similar, like in terms of refurbishing cases, but nothing in watches, nothing in jewelry, nothing in, like luxury. And it was all about, you know, consumer confusion or lack Thereof and so I just had to prove that my customers who are buying this watch, this Vortic watch, which is a, an old Hamilton pocket watch or other brand. You know, again, there's only a small percentage of our brands that we use. But even though it said Hamilton on the face of the watch, it was actually a Vortec watch built in Colorado using an antique Hamilton pocket watch. And as long as I could prove that the consumer wasn't confused, then we were good to go. And thankfully we were able to prove that. And like I said, it took six years. We almost made it to the Supreme Court. But I feel like I got an MBA in IP law and business finance and just the grind, you know, trying to figure out how to survive like you said.

Well, you, you hear overlaps with things like right to repair. You think about the automotive restomod world where people are taking an old Jaguar and then putting a new electrical inside or some new engine and brakes and better cooling and things like that. You know, like there's amazingly, there's old Mustangs, there's in fact a company that work with now does essentially tuning and new versions of current cars. So you can bring them, you know, whatever your new Raptor truck or whatever and they'll do a cool thing and they do a car of their own. But they also do, you know, a bunch of other things. Like I think this is a really common thing. This is the special edition, this is the tuner, this is. I was driving behind somebody's dine in BMW the other day. I'm like, that's a cool ass like thing that from the 80s that they were driving. I'm like, God, that you could tell that guy really takes care of that car. And there's something cool about that. But the, the freedom to do stuff. And yet, you know, like you also don't want confusion for your brand. You don't want somebody saying this is a Hamilton watch. If you in fact paid for Hamilton as a company, a version of it, built on it. Yeah, it's, it's a fascinating, interesting kind of thing. So there. How many American watch companies of note were there ever?

So I talk about 10. I call them the 10 Great American Watch companies. And those were just single watchmaker, right? Like yeah. So I mean if you think like the 8020 rule, like the most of the pocket watches made in America were made by a couple of brands. So Elgin outside Chicago was the biggest one. They made about 50 million pocket watches. And then Waltham, which is right Outside of Boston, Massachusetts, Waltham is Waltham, Massachusetts, is still called Watch City because they made 40 million pocket watches in that factory. Those were the big two, and they were most of the industry. And they both existed for about 100 years, like the mid-1800s. Mid-1900s. And then the third one was Illinois Watch Company in Springfield, Illinois. And then fourth was Hamilton. And by reference, Hamilton made like 5 million pocket watches. So they were much, much smaller than the other ones. And then there was, you know, five or six other ones that are of note to your point, but much, much smaller. You know, hundreds of thousands or barely a million in total production. And they were around for decades, not a century. But like I said, we were the Switzerland of the world at that time.

So I definitely know the Hamilton watch. And I also. I think that I. I remember a lot of other Hamilton products. I wonder if they still sell them. I think they made, like, popcorn makers and various kitchen and home appliances under the brand for a while.

You know, I'm not. And I'm not sure there is. Is it Hamilton Beach? Is that maybe the. The appliance? It's. It's probably a different. A different brand. And it's funny because, like, when. When all this was going on, I mean, the lawsuit is Hamilton v. Vortic. Technically, it was the Swatch Group, you know, in the Swatch Group, attorneys and people that we were talking to since they owned everything. But when, like, the height of the lawsuit is when the Hamilton play came out in New York on Broadway. And. And so the. The judge. The judge brought that up, and she was like, you know, she was just like, basically, Hamilton and Swatch Group was trying to prove that Hamilton Watches was a famous brand. And by being a famous brand and me, you know, using their brand to make money, that's why the case was so significant. And she was like, the judge wasn't a Watch person. And so she was just like, well, we have to think about this in the eyes of the general consumer. The person just walking down the streets of New York, if you tell them the word Hamilton, what do they think of? And she's like, personally, I think about Broadway. And most of the people in the room laughed. Their attorneys didn't. But, you know, trademarks are really interesting. And what I've. What I've learned, the biggest thing I've learned about trademarks and just IP in general, is a trademark in a patent is only worth the money that you have and use to defend it. And that's the point. You know, I don't blame Swatch for defending their trademark. Because that's what they have to do. If, if they didn't come after everyone that used the word Hamilton to make money, then people would do what I was doing maliciously and they would try to use that word to make money. And so it's all just part of the process, you know, in the legal process. I do wish we could have come to terms a little faster and a little cheaper, you know, but like I said, I learned a lot. And it's a good story.

We got with a past company threatened with some trademark and copyright on some design, some look and feel, and then we got called to task by a bigger name brand out there. And this person alleged that they had invented all of these things and like that, that they were going to sue us. And they were trying to be all co about like, I want you the hell out of my territory. And I consider this my territory. And then without being too confrontational, because that always elevates and adds things. We just said, you know, you're known for this, but you didn't invent it. And I don't think you want the world to have to see, but we're going to have to defend ourselves also, and we're going to have to talk about how you're taking ownership of something that's hundreds of years old.

Right.

It doesn't look good on you, and that makes you look like just some derivative hack. And, you know, I don't think you want to come across that way in the public. And that actually that pressure was pretty useful because they realized that that was going to bring scrutiny to the fact that their designs weren't that original.

Yep. And I think that exact motivation is why Swatch Group dropped the case before it went to the Supreme Court. Because I think they realized if you go public at that scale, like if something's shown before the Supreme Court, like that's national headlines and stuff like that. And I think they realized that would be a really bad look is, you know, the origination of the Hamilton brand was an American watch company. And they, you know, a lot of their branding is like American Spirit and you know, designed based on this company that was an American company and now it's all Swiss and Swiss made and probably not a good look to sue one of the only startup American watch companies who is literally just trying to preserve pieces of American history. And I think they finally that kind of prevailed, hopefully. And I'll never know why they decided to drop the case right before that, that level. But if I have to speculate, that's Probably a big thing, because what you're saying is very real. The consumer was it. The court of the public opinion is a big thing.

Yeah, it definitely matters. And if you can sway some of that and bring some pressure and another angle, like, it's, it's, it's all part of the calculation. It's interesting because I, I mean, swatch was quite a disruptive force in the 80s in particular, when they brought out the plastic swatch watch with all of the different infl. Influences. And I had, I don't know, half a dozen of them that I Wore in the 80s and thought I was super cool with my different swatch watches. And that was the fashion of the moment. I had the Keith Haring watch and I had like a bullseye watch and I had an olive drab watch. And, you know, I had like all super fun, like, you know, just. And the idea that you'd buy a whole bunch of different watches and wear them, you know, from a fashion standpoint was like super fun in those days. And then of course, that. It's funny that that became the, the main brand, right. On which everything else. But it was disruptive in its time for sure.

And I mean, you know, branding is everything, right? Like, you have to pick something and stick with it. But. But also at the same point now it's apparent, you know, and Omega is their probably most profitable, largest and famous brand. And whether you think of an Omega watch as the watch that went to the moon or James Bond's watch or something like that, they've obviously done amazing things with the Omega brand. And several of their other brands in their portfolio are wildly famous. And Hamilton is a famous brand and obviously is an old American brand. But Hamilton and the way they run it is still American inspired and has really great designs and is Swiss made now. And it's just part of, part of the group and back to like LVMH and these other, these other groups and big corporations, you know, they've found value in not just putting everything under one brand and having multiple brands that have different niches and focuses. And I see the value in that too. And that's like, about a month ago, we just released our second brand in the Vortech portfolio because that's what I want to do too. And we call it Colorado Watch Company. And so now I have. I have two brands under my own company because I just. I think that's a smart thing, and I think that's a really smart play. Oh, that's. Yeah.

Well, Colorado Watch is clearly American, right? Like and unique and new Vortech, like if I didn't know, I could think that that was European or some other kind of thing. Like it wouldn't, it wouldn't be hard to think of that. It's interesting though, like all of those brands, they all kind of represent something, right? Omega, Rolex, Breitling, Audemars, Piaget, Alma Macier, like all of these things, like they evoke something. They're like, there's a bit of that, you know, there's some luxury to it. There's some and for sure look and feel.

Yeah, yeah. And they focus, they focus on either a certain demographic, a certain, you know, type of, of customer that they're after. One of my favorite favorites is. Yeah, I, I was gonna say for, for women's watches, especially Cartier. I mean they make men's and women's, but their, their women's line is just phenomenal and so well done. Just.

Really wanted that Panther tank watch that was, I thought is a badass watch.

And they're known for the tank, you know, like that's, that's amazing. The other one that I love is Panerai. You know, and Panerai is very like military inspired and all of the watches have like cool like vintage inspiration and things like that. But what's, what's interesting about this, the Swatch Group brand is one of, one of their biggest manufacturing companies that's part of the portfolio is ETA or eta. And the ETA company is a movement manufacturer that manufactures movements for most of the Swiss watch industry, including pretty much every brand we just mentioned. And so the heart of it or the engine behind all these watches and all these brands is made by Swatch. And so it's interesting to see like Swatch went the manufacturing side and so they own, they own a diamond mine, right? They own the movement manufacturer, they own gold and platinum facilities, right? And they own a bunch of brands. And then LVMH went just brand, right? They don't own a whole lot of manufacturing stuff. They were just like, we just want the high end super luxury brands. And I think that's that kind of like business strategy is fascinating as far as, you know, talking about scaling. How are you going to scale? Do you take one brand and just go straight or do you, you know, make a portfolio and try to scale a bunch of brands at the same time? Or do you go buy everything in the supply chain and have all your manufacturing that you own too to increase margin?

Brands, sub brands, affiliate brands, up brands, down brands, right? We've Seen this in every category people come out with different things, whether it be a sub brand or another brand of car companies did it. We've got Lexus, got Infinity, we've got. What am I forgetting then you've got the small things like you've got the AMG and you've got the Polestar and you've got the, you know, all the different, like in, in so many categories there are these range of things and then in apparel you've got the same kind of thing. Right. They, they're all designed to say something like I have this, not that. So you also, maybe you were doing this the other time. People could bring in movements to you and then you would do something with them. Are these like one off projects that you would do?

Yeah. So we call it convert your watch. So it's just the number one question we always get. They're like, you know, our customers or people at shows or, you know, they listen to me on a podcast like this and like, okay, vortic watch company, take pocket watches, turn them into wristwatches. What if I have one? You know, what if can you take my grandpa's pocket watch and make it a wristwatch?

Grandpa's pocket watch.

Exactly, exactly. It's the number one question I get. And the answer is yes. We're the only company that has a whole system and process and method behind that. You don't even have to remember the company name. You just Google convert to your watch. And we convert pocket watches into wristwatches. We do, gosh, last time I looked, we get one or two requests for that service every single day. 365. There are so many people that have, you know, grandpa's pocket watch and it's sitting in a drawer and they don't know what to do with it. Obviously we can't do all of them. You know, I got one, but, but, but pretty much everyone I meet has one. So do you, do you know what brand it is? Is it one of the American watch companies?

Well, I don't know.

I'd have to go. Well, you have to, you'll have to send it to me. Because honestly Bill, that's the most fun process is people just send us emails with pictures of what they have and it's like a history lesson. Like it feels like, feels like Antiques Roadshow.

It would be a large diameter watch, but I'm assuming the movement inside is smaller and that you have a little more freedom than the face would indicate.

Yeah. So most pocket watches, they're going to be in a Solid gold or solid silver case. And, and the is pretty thick. So just because it's a big pocket watch doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be that size of a wristwatch. Especially the weight of it. You know, gold and silver is really heavy. And that's, that's why we do, what we do is pawn shops are scrapping that part and we just get the, the inside. But you know, there's, I made this YouTube video that just answers the question of how to open my pocket watch because there's so many different types of pocket watches. And what I need to see is the back, like inside the back cover and see the movement itself. And once I see that, I can tell right away if it's going to be a good wristwatch or not. But on sizing, I mean our watches are larger. I mean the smallest watch we can make at Vortic is 43 millimeters for reference, like most average watches, like 40 to 42. And then the largest one we make is what I'm wearing. That's a 49 millimeter watch. And it's not for everyone. But this is, this is a military pocket watch that was flown on a B17 in World War II. So you know, you talk about nostalgia, you talk about like selling with story. Like these watches all have a story. And so you have a story about.

I don't know that one, but Black faced watch, 24 hour dial. Yeah, tell us about that.

Yeah, so that we call it the Military Edition. And the one I'm wearing is like a, a limited version of that with a white dial. Most of them have black dials, they're 24 hours. And the, the Military Edition is a World War II pocket watch that was used by the Army Air Corps specifically by the navigators on the bomber aircraft. I say B17, but any bomber aircraft in World War II that had a navigator on board would have had one of these pocket watches. And it's kind of ironic because Hamilton is the manufacturer that made all of these. It doesn't say Hamilton on the dial. But to answer a previous question, when we were trying to figure out how to finance the company through this lawsuit, we realized like all they cared about was their name on the front. All these Military Edition watches say GCT on the front, which is Greenwich civil time. And it's a standard black dial. And so it wasn't wrong in anyone's eyes to take these and turn these into wristwatches. And so we released the Military Edition really in order to raise money for the lawsuit. And like defend ourselves. And like I said, it's a little ironic that it was made by Hamilton back then. But these are pieces of military history that were flown in World War II as a pocket watch, figuring out where we were in the sky. And Hamilton made about a hundred thousand of them for the war, and we do about 50 of them a year that we call the military Edition. And it's just, I don't know, I'm biased, but I think it's the coolest watch in the world.

Not one to 12, but one to 24.

Exactly. You have a true 24 hour dial, which gets a. It takes a little getting used to if you wear it every day. Yeah. You glance down in the early afternoon, you're like, it's not like 7pm right now, like what's going on. Right. But once you get used to it, it's super cool. And, and that's, that's what we do, you know, whether it's somebody's family heirloom, whether it's something we found in an estate, or whether it's a piece of military history. We, we say we preserve American history one watch at a time. And so there's a story in there.

All right, I want to talk about in just a minute, your mastermind and like, how you got through this and like that personally. But before we do that, let me remind folks that we got something for you. If you want to grow and scale your company, we can help. There are two things that people come to us on the regular with. The first one, most, the biggest thing with a slight edge, maybe 60% of people are like they're not growing enough or they were growing and they stopped growing. So really the problem is growth. They want to get growing faster, bigger. They have a big goal and it's just not happening. And that's generally some strategy work that we'll do with them. We'll take them through all of our strategy tools and get a clear, clean, differentiated strategy. The other one is Overwhelm. And the overwhelm is a combination of execution and people. So getting in a good, proven, consistent execution and not trying to do everything in your own unique, special way because you didn't run a bunch of companies before. But like, you know, we've worked with thousands of companies now, and not just me, but all of our coaches across decades. And there are some universal things and we want to put those to work in your company, get the execution straightened out. And the other part of Overwhelm is people. Right? Like getting the right people, getting people engaged in the right way. And by far people is the hardest problem because people are not rational, people are irrational, they're psychological, not logical. And so, so, and then along the way, you know, there's often work to do in cash. But the, but the big problems are overwhelm and growth. And we, we end up tackling first either the execution people side of things or the strategy side of things to get to work on this. We do all that work in. So we give you an accountability coach, accountability groups, a peer group. You've got a whole bunch of people in the community with you. We've got lessons, we've got guest speakers, we've got quarterly planning. We deal with the founder, CEO and the senior leadership team in this program. And that's kind of our core, biggest, highest value coaching program. And we work with you every single week. A little bit every week on Wednesday morning is our typical cadence. So that program is called Growth Navigator. But you'll find that in all our shows and everything else@scalingcoach.com so scalingcoach.com is our website. There's a link there prominently for the Growth Navigator where you can find out about it. You could sign up for it. You have to apply, we have to review, make sure that you're right. You want to be over a million dollars in sales. This isn't to get you to a million, it's to get you above 20. And you want to have at least 10 people on your team. You want to have a little bit of a team to work with at least. And you know, the average in the program right now is prob. 4 million in sales. And something like, I'm guessing off the top of my head, but I'm guessing it's about 60 people. But you're in there as little as 10, as little as a million dollars in sales. You can benefit from this growth navigator@scalingcoach.com enough with my infomercial. Got to pay the bills. Yep. Let's talk about your. You've got a mastermind right now. I assume that this either use this or this evol. This helped you tell us about what you do.

Yeah. So I joined Fast Foundations mastermind in 2019 for honestly, a lot of the reasons that, you know, you just shared in your infomercial. You know, like I was, I was vortic at that time. Like 2018, I think we did three quarters of a million in sales and I wasn't paying myself. You know, like there, there, there was profit, but most of the profit was either going towards that lawsuit we talked about or, you know, just paying the bills in general. And I wasn't making a whole lot of money personally. And one of my customers at that time had this mastermind that he called Fast Foundations, and he let me trade him a watch for a seat in the Mastermind, which was super awesome. I love the trade economy. I couldn't afford it. You know, I couldn't afford to. Or I thought I couldn't afford to, like, invest in myself, my own, like, you know, development. At that point, it had to all be like, like, for the business. And so I justified in that way of, like, okay, I can trade. Like, I can do this. I can get in the room. And the concept of masterminds has always been fascinating to me. I love the idea of helping people just as much as I'm getting help. As the tide rises, all ships rise. Like, that whole concept of a mastermind has always been fun. And so I joined Fast Foundations as a member originally back then. And through that program, I came up with some of the ideas that we use today. So the military edition that we launch, I launched that for the first time while I was in that Mastermind. And having, like, 40 other people as my peers in this mastermind while I went through a launch was awesome from, like, a learning, like, hey, let's bounce ideas off each other. But also just like a support standpoint of like, yeah, rt, like, let's go, let's do it. Like, everyone's celebrating. You know, when I. When I successfully sold out of all the watches in the first year, in the first day, like, it was the biggest launch that the Mastermind had that year. And so everyone's, like, celebrating me. And that just felt so good. And I used a lot of the things I learned to grow my business. And when the Pandemic hit, my mentor at that time, the original leader of the Mastermind, his name's Chris Harder, he told me he was just like, I don't really want to. I don't really want to go virtual with this mastermind. So I'm just going to pause it for a little while and, like, I'm not sure what I'm going to do with it.

Yeah.

And. And post Pandemic, my friend Jim and I were like, hey, Chris, like, are you going to do anything with the Mastermind? Like, we either want to join or, like, be part of it, or can we be coaches? Like, we were just so excited to, like, be part of the group again and especially get back in person. And we ended up just taking over the Mastermind and having that brand because Kristen, you know, he moved on to some other like bigger and more awesome stuff. And we've, we've run that mastermind since. And yeah, it's called Fast foundations because really it's, it's trying to figure out how to get those foundational skill sets as fast as possible and scale to a million. Because you know, it sounds like Bill, what you do is like once you're at a million, then you can, you know, and it's important to niche down in that way. Right. I really enjoy that. Exactly. Yep. And I love coaching people through that initial startup of like how do you get from a couple hundred thousand, like one or two employees, you're just kind of getting, you know, getting your feet off the ground to the seven figure mark. That's super fun. And I've done it several times. And I don't know about you, but like, I only feel confident coaching people and like consulting people or giving people advice if I've done something at least similar to what they're doing. And so the fact that I've done that and I've built a business to seven figures makes me feel confident that I can help people at least do what, not necessarily what I did, but like avoid the mistakes that I made and maybe go a little faster than I went.

I'm gonna, I'm gonna push back just a little bit on that. I do think that you need to know the game. Right. But remember that Michael Jordan had a coach, Tiger woods had a coach. Pick anybody, pick any elite athlete. They were all coached by somebody who never did what they did. So in business we do that a lot. Like, oh, I can't coach anybody above a million because I haven't gotten 10 million or 100 million or whatever. Like I've coached several companies now past a billion in value and I only ever grew a business over 550 million and I didn't own it. Right. I did that for somebody else. So I've coached many companies now through hundreds of millions. And I think that you need to know enough of the game. Right. You have to have some foundation and you have to be willing to stand for them to win and look with humility at what can serve them. But do you understand the problem and that kind of thing? I bet you could go beyond where you go. That limit is maybe a little bit self imposed.

No, I, I appreciate that because I agree with everything you just said. And, and I have, I have experienced that in, in the other way too. Like, you know, more recently I was In a Vistage room, you know, in the Vista Mastermind. And, and I had the smallest business in that room. But they, they kept inviting me back because they were just like, you know, they were like, like rt, we just love your energy and we love your perspective. Like, I just, I don't know, I, I looked at their businesses differently because my business was so different. And like I've grown vortic mostly on digital marketing and email marketing and some like nerdy, like, nerdy tech is what they kept saying, you know, And I was like, yeah, okay, cool. Like if that's helpful to you guys. Like I, I feel small, like I haven't, you know, done that. But like with your scale, if you implement the things that I've done, man, like you could, you could make 100 million. Like if you just send emails once a week. Like I always find it fascinating that even people with big businesses don't do the, the basics of like, you know, marketing and email marketing like that. So you're totally right. Like I, I am capable of helping other people. And I think, I didn't think about it in the sports analogy, but that's tech watches.

Vortic watches.com is the link to go to. To check out RT's company, visit vortic watches.com I'm going to turn into a pumpkin here. We're out of time. Thank you so much for coming on. I hope we keep in touch. I look forward to hearing more about it. I look forward to checking out your thing. I'll have to send you a picture of my grandpa's pocket watch. I want to thank Seth Silvers for producing the show, the folks at Starion and Podfly who get our show prepared, produced, edited, distributed every week. And to my friend and mentor Vern Harnish who created the whole scaling up a Rockefeller habits. Thanks again everyone for watching, for listening. We'll talk to you again next time.

Bye.