Success in the NFL and in Building a Business with Chris Gronkowski

Are you thinking about how to grow your business with near and offshore staffing, but you're also wanting to make sure that it's reliable, cost effective and really well done. I think docsa talent is the way to go. Here's why. They don't just fill your jobs. They bring integrity, top talent and a people first approach that's hard to find. I've known the people at Doxa talent for over 20 years now and I say that you can count on them. I have talent to doxatant and you won't be disappointed. Go to doxatant.com Bill G. Again, that's doxatant.com Bill g. One more time. Docsatalent.com Bill G. Check it out. Today. We're sharing a great business story today, a really great business story with a great name. A name you'll know well. Ups and downs, lucky breaks, challenges, present past, lots to talk about today. It's good to have your own theme song, everybody. My name is Bill Gallagher, scaling coach and host of the Scaling Up Business Podcast. Our show comes to you every week, a couple times a week with something to do to help you grow and scale your business. Lessons from our clients from the authors, experts, gurus in the world of business growth and scaling up. We also bring to you lots of CEOs and folks who want to share their experience. Definitely nothing's ever handled and you're going to hear that today as we go through growing a business. There's nothing ever handed to you in any sustainable way anyway. All right. We're over 500 episodes now and you'll find all that back catalog and more wherever you get this, YouTube, Apple, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, even X whatever they call it, you find all that and more wherever you get that. Or you can go to scalingcoach.com scalingcoach.com is our website place where all of our tools and things like that, programs and then all the back catalog of our websites is available. So with that said, I want to welcome a Gronkowski to the show. Chris Gronkowski comes from a family big in sports and business and he's going to share with us some of his story and what's happening. Welcome to show Chris.

Hey, thanks for having me.

We're going to get into Chris's business. Obviously you know the name really well. One of the Gronkowski brothers. He played for the several years in the NFL, Cowboys, Colts, Broncos. There's like a whole theme there with sort of cowboy and horse names, a pattern. His brothers all played professional Sports. And so he did that and then he founded a company called Ice Shaker, got funded by Mark Cuban and others, and has had his ups and downs. He'll share what's happening, the latest breakthroughs and that kind of thing. We'll, we'll hear that as we get into later in the show. So, Chris, where are you today, man?

So I am in Dallas, Texas. Dallas, Texas area in a brand new house. So it's been three and a half years in the making and we're just getting into it this week, so didn't really have a spot to actually sit and record this. So I'm actually sitting upstairs and there's a lot of commotion going on around here.

I can hear it and I can tell it's a brand new house because the little echoes and reverberations in the absence of a lot of floor covering and wall art and things like that, I hear. How many kids do you have?

There's four.

Four.

So four kids.

What are the ages?

Six, five, three and one.

Yeah, that's a, that's a special age as well.

So it's, it's a little mayhem over here. But we're gonna have the holiday party tomorrow, so we got some family in town. Nice.

So you come from four or five kids in your family?

Yeah, so five brothers. So I'm one of five. And I was the middle. Middle of the five boys. Yeah.

And all professional sports, four base, four NFL, one baseball.

That's correct. Yeah. The oldest brother actually never played football. He. Shame. Yeah, he went out for one practice. My second oldest brother threw him a pass. It hurt his hands and he said that football wasn't for him. I think he regretted the decision later on.

Yeah, so. But also business in the family. Right. Growing up, you learned obviously something about business and sports along the way because there's a lot of business through the family, from Gronk Fitness to Ice Shaker and so on. Right?

For sure. For sure. So 32 years now, my dad's been in business with his fitness equipment company. So, yeah, it's been, it's been something that we grew up watching, seeing and then, you know, evolve into something much bigger than when it first started. So one store, one location to 17 different stores to a entire business that also has a commercial department now at this point, that takes over most of the Northeast. So dad kind of started it. I think we kind of saw it without really knowing what we were seeing. And I think it kind of just from there. Sorry. It's mayhem over here for our listeners.

You're gonna have to allow for some of that to get the gold in today's show. For sure.

For sure. But yeah, business. Early on, I was delivering fitness equipment. As a kid, I was in the back warehouse. I was seeing my dad grow it from, from one store to, to over 17 locations and didn't know at the time what I was really looking at, but, you know, had a great mentor later on when I wanted to do it myself. Yeah.

What was it like? I mean, when you think back to the early kid lesson, what was your childhood like versus friends, family, people you grew up, what do you, what do you notice? Like, where did the early seeds of, of business and, and that in particular come in and how did that carry through?

Yeah, so, I mean, the big thing with us was we were always, always outside. We were always competing literally in everything we did. If my mom made dinner, it was who could eat more, who could eat the fastest in the basement. In my dad's business that he started was fitness equipment, but we had our own gym in the basement. And it was who can lift more, who's faster, who's stronger. But really everything we're competing against, our brothers, always trying to beat the older brother and then always making sure that the little brother didn't catch you Five boys, all of us were about two years apart and we were that neighborhood where it was just all kids. You know, you went to your neighbor's house, you played with them, the kids all came to our house. It was non stop. And you know, back then you kind of just walked over, you know, and you started playing and competing. And there'd be four or five different kids at our house every day, plus us. And I think it just bred really, it bred competition. It bred teamwork as well. And then at the same time, our parents just did a really good job with us, really teaching us the value of a dollar. You know, they came from nothing, you know, not much at all. I think my mom said my dad had $60 when they got married. And, you know, he had to go from that to working two jobs to try to get his business off the ground. My mom, you know, five kids, she did as much as she could work wise, until, you know, she just couldn't do it anymore because she had too many kids. But it was always about, hey, if you want something, you got to pay for it. You got to earn it yourself. So we had a paper route. I think I was 8 years old when we started a paper route. Had that for about eight years. I started umpiring when I was, I don't know, 12, 13 years old, whatever age you could umpire at. Started working for my dad at 15. And really it was, hey, if you want to go to college, awesome. You know, you're going to pay for it, you're going to get a scholarship, you want a new car, great. You know, go buy a car. So really it was all about if you want it, you got to earn it. And I think that, I think that's huge. You know, in a world where parents love to give their kids everything they want, it doesn't teach them that value of hard work and what a dollar is really worth. So I think that really helped us all excel. And then on top of that, just my mom would always make sure we were getting in there, getting our homework done, doing our work before we actually went outside and played. So when we got home, it was get your homework done, get the projects done, get everything done, and then you could go out and play. And so that really helped us in school as well. So we were actually all, for the most part, were pretty good students.

Mm. It's interesting, the paper route, right? That's, that's the thing that people can't comprehend today. News arriving on a printed paper. It's like, what is a newspaper? Well, we took the whole Internet and then we printed it out on a paper and we brought it to you every day, sometimes twice a day. And then you threw it away. We brought you a new one tomorrow.

Yep, it's exactly what it was.

You'd send somebody back. I. I was thinking about this this morning, early, like, what if I had an iPad in and I could see that at say, 10 years old or something like that, my 10 year old self, and it still had, like, it was connected to an Internet. Right. Like, it would have just been mind blowing to think about, like, how that was. Of course, if you sent back an iPad that couldn't connect anything, it'd be pretty amusing too. Yeah, but that whole notion. So what did you learn from the paper route?

So just from the paper route, it was, it was, you know, it was five brothers and we had to find a way to get it done every day. So it was teamwork. It was kind of what it came down to. You had to negotiate with the brothers, you had to find a way to either convince one of them to do it or you had to do it yourself. And really.

So you shared route for sure.

Yeah. So all five of us had to do it. We had to get it done by a certain time every day. And sometimes it'd be all of us doing it. Sometimes it'd be one and you know, it was, it was good battles. Like you found a way to get it done every single time. But at the same time you also found a way to work together so that you weren't doing it every day or if you would take a certain day, that was your day. And you really just started really just learning how to delegate and how to work as a team together.

Now in my paper route, it was a humbling lesson about being a middleman because we had to collect the money. Did you have to collect money for yours?

We did, so my mom helped us with that aspect of it. But we did have to collect the money and then we'd always go around and give out the calendars at the holiday season to try to, try to get a little extra tip or collect money that hadn't been paid yet for the year.

I couldn't believe people who'd be like, I could see you in there, like, why aren't you coming to the door to pay this 8 year old kid.

Happened all the time.

Realize you're stiff and an 8 year old, right?

Oh, yeah, Yep, that definitely happened. And those there was always, always the same people, you know, and then they would end up paying, you know, a couple months all at once.

Yeah, they're having tough times themselves probably.

They just were lazy, I think, and just didn't pay on time ever.

And then was your next job working for your dad or was it something else?

So we kind of went to like umpiring stuff like that. Um, so we were doing stuff for the local baseball team. And then after that. Yeah, when I was probably about 15 or 16, I started just doing weekends with my dad's company.

Huh, huh, yeah. And working with your dad, what were the lessons or impressions? What are your takeaways from that early experience?

Yeah, it was interesting, you know, because you're, you're doing pretty hard labor. You know, you're carrying heavy equipment into houses, sometimes really small houses. And it was, it was tough. So, you know, they were long days. I would work 10, 11 hours and be driving across the entire state. But for me, for the most part, what I learned was, you know, if you do the job and you show up and you know, you put the work in, everyone else wants to work with you. So the guys actually get to pick who they wanted to work with them that day. I didn't get to pick because I was, I was the youngest there. So like the older guys or the guys that have been there the longest, how my. My dad had it structured was they would get to pick who they wanted to work with, and within a couple weeks, they were picking me. Which was. Which was funny because I was the youngest one there. You know, I wouldn't say I was the biggest guy or the strongest, but they were picking me to work with them just because I was going to show up, I was going to do the work, I wasn't going to complain about anything. And. And they just enjoyed working with me. So that was pretty cool to see that. If you went there, you did your stuff, you know, other people are. They're going to respect it and they're going to respect you.

So you did go to college, you played some ball in college, and you went on in the NFL. You obviously developed some habits and things like that. What do you think is really important from all that sports experience in business?

A lot. Definitely learned a lot. Right off the bat, everyone's going to say teamwork. I would say it actually took me a little bit longer to realize how much it truly correlated. You go into a locker room and everyone knows the goal and the mission, and everyone's going to play hard because they know they're going to be cut the next day if they don't. And they know, like, right from the bat, you know, you've known your whole life that you're there to win a football game, and if you don't, it's a problem. Then you go into the business world and you start hiring people and you realize really quickly that they're not showing up to win. You know, there's a lot of times showing up to be there, just collect a paycheck and get through. It really took me really, a couple years and, you know, talking to mentors and my dad and other people and sitting back and really thinking how we could make this a team and take it to that next level. And took me a lot of different ways to do that and figure that out and build the right culture, but definitely learned teamwork, then had to apply it in a different way. Just the hard work of every day. The everyday grind of being an athlete definitely converted over, you know, waking up early, putting that work in. You'll be in there long days, hard work, it's kind of the same thing. But really, I think the biggest lessons I learned playing sports was in college, and it was really time management as a student athlete. It's one of those things where I say, I don't think I could go back and do it again after I finished it. Your Time's locked up all day. Every day. You wake up, you're at mandatory study halls, you have mandatory lifts, you're going to class, you know, right from class you're going to, you know, work out or to practice. Then you're going to a mandatory dinner and you're getting home and you have to study and then all that time too. You gotta actually be a, be a college student as well and have some fun too. So if you can manage that and get good grades and I ended up leaving school with A's and having a degree from the business school. But if you can do that, you've kind of figured it out, you know how to manage your time and you're very good at it. And being an entrepreneur is the same way. You know, it's, it's these crazy tasks that you're never going to ever expect to do. And you know, next thing you know you're, you're figuring it out, you're managing your time and you're, you're multitasking as well. Just, just these crazy tasks that you never thought you'd do. You're now, you're now pulling off. So I thought college, getting through college taught me a lot about how far I can really push myself and how much I could really manage.

Yeah, there's definitely something there about being smart with your use of time and how you blow time off and, and where you procrastinate and the whole world of, of that. So one of my favorite speaker some years ago was a, a baseball performance coach. And he's like, not like a team coach but like individual like psychology type performance coaching. And he's like the thing that separates the, the, the all players, you know, and major league baseball players is like an infinitesimally small number. And even like the rank and file pro baseball players from the serious players is a tiny difference in, in actual hits and runs. And he said, so the key thing is dealing with failure and setbacks and getting really great at it. What's your experience or thought about failure and setbacks in sports, in life and business and what's your sort of personal psychology around that?

Yeah, for me. So I always go into it and if you failed but you truly did prepare to do it the right way and you know, you did everything that you could to win, but it just doesn't work out. It's completely different than going into it and knowing that you didn't put the effort in and then failing. So that's how I always looked at it. You know, if I Did this. If I did prepare and I did everything that I needed to to win, and it just didn't work out. I'm fine with it if I know that. It's kind of like studying for a test. You know, you didn't do the work, you go and you end up getting an F. You know, you could have actually done better. If you put the work in, then you feel terrible about it, and you got to figure it out and bounce back from that eventually. But that's, that's how I've always looked at that. And then if it is a failure, if you learn from it, you know, there's, there's a lot that could come from that as well. But, you know, if you keep on doing the same thing over and over again, then it truly is a failure.

At that point, it's not working, but I'm still doing it.

That's it. And you see a lot of people do that too.

All right, so the business, you know, NFL doesn't last forever. Whether you have an extraordinary career or an okay career or whatever it is, right? At some point you're out. And the most common thing I think most people think about, they're like, okay, sports players are gonna. Of one, any sport are gonna open a restaurant, right? If they develop a name, and today there's merchandise to be had. You found a company called Ice Shaker. How did you get that idea? Where'd that come from? How'd that develop? What did it look like in the beginning?

Yeah, for sure. So after I was done playing, I was actually working with my wife. She started a company. My third year, third season, three different moves. She decided that she didn't want to go for another job interview, so she wanted to find a way to work from home. So that ended up turning into a five year career for me. I guess after I was done playing, hopped into that business, realized there was a ton of potential there, started putting some of the NFL money into commercial grade laser engravers and other equipment, and scaled it up and did really well with it, actually, to the point where I was making more doing that than I was playing in the NFL. So five years into it, got a call from a friend. He asked me what I was currently doing, and I didn't really want to tell him that I was making wedding gifts and it just didn't seem like it was me. So I kind of told him I was doing my own thing and things have been good, but I didn't really go into depth with them and realized that, you know, that really Wasn't my passion. If you don't want to tell someone what you're doing, it's for a reason. It's not something that you love. And I wanted to find that passion, which I knew was sports and fitness and working out and health. So I was still going to the gym pretty much every day at that point. And this idea just hit me. I had a plastic shaker, it was warm by the time I got to the gym here in Dallas, took a sip of it, tasted awful, smelled awful. And it's kind of when it hit me, I just saw an opportunity to make something better. Something that was insulated, that could actually mix and blend. Powders actually went home that day. And I've thought of other ideas that I thought were good in the past. And you jump online and you find it really quickly and you realize they're just not great at marketing. But this product's already out there. I thought that would happen with this product. It was so simple. The technology for insulation was out there, the technology for blending powders was out there. But no one had put it together. You know, there hadn't been an insulated shaker bottle that had been made yet. So jumped at the opportunity and started working on this new side hustle project out of the upstairs in my house and within six months had product and just started hustling and selling it on side.

It's interesting. So you start doing it. And where did you get your first break? Where did you find any opening or success at all?

I mean, right off the bat, we were already sourcing product for my wife's business. So the biggest hurdle and the biggest step I think everyone has is finding a manufacturer, especially with something completely new, as they're not going to take you on. No one wants to be the first. They don't want to spend the time and energy for someone to buy, you know, a thousand units and never reorder. So right off the bat, definitely got a break, had to buy bigger quantities. But, you know, already had a manufacturer willing to make a product for us. So that was huge. And then, you know, already kind of knowing that process too was a huge hurdle that most people just stop at. So I was able to get through that pretty easily. And then really the big break was six months in. That was, I guess, a five year plan in the making. An email from my agent back in 2012 when I was with the Broncos, just saying that ABC Shark Tank is looking for any current or former NFL players. I saw this email. I loved the show. I started, I left it in my inbox and I thought in my mind, you know, one day I'm going to go back and I'm going to respond to this email with some really cool idea. And, you know, that moment ended up being almost five years later. So at six months, I reached back out to them, I guess. No, I guess it was three months in. I reached back out to them at that point had about $25,000 in sales. I thought I had a proof of concept. I thought there was enough there to at least get their interest. And I told them I had this cool project and I was really hoping at that point to get on the show just for exposure. So they ended up writing back saying they would love to hear about it, submit a video. I submitted a video a couple days later, they watched it and they hit me back and said that we'd love to have you on the show. So six months into the company, we were able to go on ABC Shark Tank and pitch the sharks and eventually got a deal, got offers from all five, closed the deal and the show aired. And you know, that's a, that's a huge break. You know, people really don't get that opportunity to get in front of millions of people on that type of platform just six months into their company. So it, it did what Shark Tank does and it shot us through the roof. And the exposure from the show was massive. And a ton of dollars came in that were marketing free. And it allowed me to take it from one product, you know, to over 60 different SKUs and eventually over 150. 50 different SKUs within the next two years.

So. So it seems like that was a pretty lucky break, your initial lucky break of having the sourcing handled and then this is your catapult breakthrough. What do you feel like has been the darkest or most challenging time? When have you been scared or, you know, awake at three in the morning?

Oh, the first three years, every day. Yeah. My schedule is pretty much wake up at four, get to the warehouse, engrave, fulfill customer service, really everything at that point, then get back from, from the actual office and, you know, work from 9 to 5 on trying to grow and scale the business and market and all that. So it was tough in the biggest problem was that I just didn't know how to delegate. I didn't really know how to run a business. I didn't know how to build a team. So I was trying to do everything myself. You know, I knew I was good at multitasking and doing a lot of things. But when you do it at that level and your business continues to grow, you eventually you can't do it. There's just not enough time in the day. So the first three years was tough. I was trying to do everything. Even when I brought people in, I wouldn't truly delegate it to them. I asked them to take over marketing and then I'd do it all myself anyways. So it was a grind, absolute grind. And it got to points where, you know, I really didn't even know what was going on in certain aspects, you know, where the product was or when certain people were paying and all that stuff, because I just, I couldn't track it, I couldn't keep up with it. So it was kind of just get it done, get it out the door and, and, and move on to the next task as fast as possible. But those were tough days, man. I probably say I was working over 100 hours a week for weeks on a time. We'd have family parties sometimes on Sundays and I'd go over and everyone would be partying. I'd be sleeping on the couch. So that was my only time to really catch up on sleep. So it was, it was wild, but really took till Covid to hit to really slow me down. At that point I couldn't go to the warehouse because of the whole regulations with certain amount of people being there. I had my third kid at the same time, so I didn't have people to watch them. The kids weren't going to school. So it was just actually physically impossible for me to be there. And because of that, I actually for the first time had to sit back, put a game plan together and build a team.

Yeah, it's interesting how sometimes our best business breakthroughs get happened when our hand is forced, we get pushed into a corner, we get some constraint and that's what leads to the up leveling the innovation, that kind of thing. I've heard that a couple of times. I've experienced it myself. So talk about you go on Shark Tank. That's like your big breakthrough. You have a breakthrough in sales. Who are you selling to and what does it look like after you do that? Right, you get Mark Cuban and who else invested?

Yes, we got Mark Cuban and Alex Rodriguez both invested into the company. And then sales, I mean, for the most part, right off the bat, it's going to be B2C. Amazon exploded. We sold out on Amazon within 30 minutes. So got that restocked website. Sales were good. And then you would get, you know, you get. Right away we got GNC as one of our biggest Partners we got on shows like Good Morning America and qvc and for the most part just smaller, just specialty stores as well. So other nutrition shops and gyms, just smaller wholesale orders, stuff like that. But for the most part it was, it was just this B2C customer selling direct to them.

Direct, yeah. Margins are beautiful in the direct business. So you get QVC also in the mix. That can often be a huge deal. How is qvc and what was your. I've sold on QVC a bunch.

So, yeah, we got qvc, I guess later on down the road. But with that, like more recently, it. I don't think it's as powerful as it used to be. From my understanding, their audience unfortunately is declining, so it wasn't as powerful as we hoped with them. And it's also the product you're pushing as well. I mean, you product the time slot.

A lot of things.

Yeah, for sure. So it was good. I mean, it wasn't doing, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars good, but definitely great exposure. And anytime you're on tv, you're reaching a new audience that you would never reach otherwise. You know, you're not going to reach them at a fitness show, you're not going to reach them at a convention. And a lot of times you're not even going to reach them with social media ads. So you're getting in front of somebody that this is pretty much the only way you're going to reach them. So you're getting a whole new audience base by doing a show like that.

Yeah, it's. It's a. It's definitely an interesting thing. Our first show on QVC was like at three in the morning and, and you know, we're, we sold out of things. But it's a whole different animal. Right? That's a very different. The structure, the way they run their fulfillment, the qc, the qa, the approval, all the setup. There's a lot of overhead in the way that you run that kind of a business.

It's pretty impressive. They do train you really well. I went into the training course, I think it was three hours long. And I kind of went into it thinking, why? What is the point of this? And I left and I felt like they actually did a really good job and it was actually a great use of time. You learned about their demographic and how to actually speak to their demographic. When you're selling a shaker bottle and you're talking about things that guys would normally talk about, you're not going to hit their audience and you're not going to really translate. They did a great job of teaching that. So they, I mean, hands off to them. I was actually impressed with the whole process.

The Shark Tank thing. Did you end up working at all much with Mark Cuban and what was that like? What were your impressions?

Yeah, so Mark's still a part of the company to this day. So it's been 60, it's been over six years now. He's definitely got a nice return on his money, that's for sure. And he still has his ownership as well. But Mark, you know, going into it, you know, he invested $75,000. You know, he's a multi billionaire. And so I knew if someone put money in like that that, you know, they're going to be there to support, but they're not going to be there to, you know, take over the company, really dig in deep. So I've been impressed with. Mark's done what he's done though. He created a company called Mark Cuban Companies. He has a bunch of employees and their job is to help out his investment portfolio. So I do have an advisor assigned to me. Anytime I have any questions, I reach out to him. I actually reached out to him this week about a question that I had. He immediately connected me with a CPA actually to help me with some of our sales tax stuff in other states. And you have that type of just access to people that are very knowledgeable and are going to give you an unbiased opinion. So Mark's also going to answer questions if you need him to. But again, you know, his team knows a lot more than he does about the company. So, you know, you're, you're better off talking to his advisor who's been able to dig in with me since day one and really help me out with, with harder projects.

I spent most of the day with Mark, once visited his stadium, arena or whatever it is, nightclubs and things like that. And I, my walk away impressions were that he and, you know, some Q and A and, and like a mix of business and social conversation. And he presents as really like unpretentious and, but he's also pretty focused and intense. Like not, you know, there's a reason why he's a billionaire for sure.

For sure. No, absolutely. He's, he definitely wants, I mean, he wants his investment to do well, that's for sure. But he's not going to sit there and, and push me and question me on things that I do. How it seems is that he's there to help you live the American dream and make sure your company's doing well and if you don't need the help, he's going to let you go. But if you do need the help, and he does think that, you know, there's, there's opportunities to get better, he will, he will step in. I know that they have stepped in with other companies that needed more help and they are even willing to invest more money to help these companies stay afloat and get back on their feet. So overall, it's been an amazing experience and I'm glad to say, you know, that he's a part of our company and it's opened a lot of doors for us and it's brought a lot of benefits as well. One of the other things that he does is because he has this amazing portfolio of over 100 companies, he's actually able to go in and give us discounts on certain products that the portfolio uses. So it might be email marketing, SMS, you know, it might be something like HubSpot Spot or even shipping platforms like ShipStation. He's able to come in and just say, hey, you know, we have 30 companies currently on this portfolio. I have 70 more that I can bring in. You know, you can help us out, you know, with a discount as a group. And he's been able to get some of those for us. And, you know, you don't realize it, but that saves you thousands and thousands of dollars, sometimes monthly at this point that were benefiting just from being a part of his portfolio.

Being in any kind of network. Right. Is really useful. The relationships make such a difference than just dealing with everything cold and unknown and unproven and. Yeah, makes a big difference. What, what talk about the, I guess the NFL licensing, you know, we would think, I know you've got. Tell us what it is and what you got and how it took and like that kind of thing. You think, oh, coming from the NFL, that'd be an easy thing. But it wasn't that, was it?

No, I mean, it's, it's tough to get it. The NFL is a big business and they're, they're very successful for a reason. So when you approach them, they're going to want to know how much they can make off your category and they're also going to protect those categories. So approaching them with a bottle company, you know, they already have multiple different licensors with, with bottles. So to bring me in, they're stepping really on the toes of these other partners that are doing very well for them already. So I reached out and it was kind of like, yeah, we'll we'll do it, but we'll give you a very small part of it, you know, shaker bottles only. And at this point we have everything from jugs to, you know, tumblers to sports bottles to shakers. So just being able just to get that would have been pretty tough. And they're also asking for six figures, you know, in royalties up front. So, you know, that's, that's a steep kind of hill to hit. And also on top of that, like you're bringing in probably product for 32 teams. You know, that's a lot of inventory to carry right off the bat when you have to carry that many different SKUs for all these different teams. So we went to them, we tried and then, you know, one of the suggestions from talking to other people was try to find someone that already has a license. So we tried to find some of the bigger partners in the space, went to some of the shows, reached out to some of them, got turned down and thought that there was really no chance for it. At that point I was going to look at pulling the trigger on just getting the license just for the shaker bottle. And luckily one of the companies that I'd been trying to reach for a while ended up calling me out of the blue and asking me if I wanted to work with them. And I absolutely did at that point. So we actually made a really beneficial deal, I think for both sides where we both benefit. They're really good at selling retail. You know, they'll get us into all the big retail chains with these licensed bottles like the, you know, the Dick's Sporting goods, the academies, the rally houses, all the pro shops. And then for us and what they are great at is, is B2C and that's what we excel in. So, you know, giving us the ability to still sell the product on our website is. Is huge for us. So pretty cool deal where we both benefit from each other's sales and we're both really good at two different aspects of the business. So we do have the NFL license now and really just soft launched it at this point and we have full four color 4D bottles coming. So really cool new printing process that our manufacturer has where the logos will actually pop on the bottles. You can actually feel the texture on them and we should launch those next week actually. So we're pretty excited for it.

Well, it's interesting if you look at it, would you do. How do you feel about the B2C or B2B? Ultimately it's a consumer product, but working through a retail Partner with the margins and the account management and all that stuff. Talk to me about that tension and if you did it over, would you do it that way again?

So for us, I mean, retail's tough. So we're definitely. I have no experience, I have no experience with anyone on my team in retail as well. So we've done it. Yeah, we're in different retailers, but it's a hard game. I mean, if. If you go in there and you don't know what you're doing, you think you're getting good margin, you end up with almost nothing at the end of the day, after the sales and the chargebacks and, you know, the shipping errors that, you know, you didn't send it in with the right 100. Yes. So we went through that and it, you know, things are tough. It ends up almost being more of a break even at that point. So when this deal came up and a royalty deal came up and they were already, you know, professionals at selling to retail and already had all the connections, it felt like a home run for me. So I jumped on that right away. And I feel like at this point in the game, that's by far the best play for our company to do. And it's going to guarantee profit. You're not going to have to worry about chargebacks or losing money. You don't have to worry about inventory and stocking it as well. And you don't have to worry about negotiating contracts and letting them take advantage of you because it's your first time and you're not a known supplier. So also just free fills. Getting on that shelf for the first time is extremely expensive. So I'm sure a partner who has experience and already has shelf space doesn't have to pay that as well. So just so many benefits to do it this way that as of right now, I feel like this was the best partnership that we could establish. You're glad about it. Yeah.

When I talk to companies that sell kind of related products, I'm usually saying, how much can we do direct? Like, how much can you sell by Instagram and other channels through your own means, on your own website? Even avoiding Amazon where possible? Like, how much more direct can we be? Because all the cost of sale, the marketing is higher, the control of the relationship, the overhead of the platform are totally different, 100%.

And that was our game plan actually going on Shark Tank. We sold out so fast on Amazon because we wanted to get our customers data. We wanted to know who our customer was. We were so early on in the company that we truly didn't know at that point. And we wanted to build a database so that we can retarget and control our audience. The one big thing with my wife's company was that it was through Etsy. And at one point they actually shut down all three of our shops because they said we weren't following their policies. And at that point we had about 10 employees shutting down all three shops because they went public and they changed the rules and they said that you can only have one shop, you couldn't have duplicates. And out of nowhere they shut down all three of ours. It killed their revenue for over a week. So we found out really quickly that we have to control our own audience. If we rely on Amazon, we rely on someone else. We're just putting ourselves at risk. You know, at any point we can be completely shut down or, you know, you have someone like Amazon who comes in and they make the Amazon Basic. You know, if your product does that well and they realize there's a lot of margin there, they're going to make the Amazon Basic ice shaker. You know, it's, it's just bound to happen. So if that happens and that's your only, you know, source of customers, you're done. Like, your company is pretty much worthless at that point.

Yeah. What companies do you admire in closer related things? Do you model? Look after, study?

For sure. Some of them in the nutrition space I really looked after. First form is one of them. Andy Fruschella, his podcast MF CEO project was something I listened to pretty much every day when I started this business. Really his whole philosophy is just get really good at the basics. Know, get in there, get the work done, do the, do the things that are going to make you better every day. And you know, most people just don't do the work. So, you know, if you do the work, if you keep doing, you keep grinding, keep getting better every single day, you're eventually going to be successful. So it was, it was, it's awesome to watch them. They've grown to this massive company. I think they do close to a billion in revenue now at this point. And, you know, a lot of it is, is just really actually caring about your customer. One of his big philosophies was you can grow the fastest one person at a time. You know, if you do a great job, one person tells another person, they tell another person, two goes to four, four goes to eight, eight goes to 16. And you multiply a lot quicker by word of mouth than any other way. So take care of your customers now and they'll take care of you. It's kind of his philosophy on it. And you know, we really started digging into that and you see it, you see, you know, great returns from it. You hear people talking and when they hear referral from someone that they trust, they're going to believe it and they're going to come and they're going to buy. So we really bought into that mentality and once we did, our sales really started taking off. And for a product that really isn't a reoccurring purchase, we have a great returning customer rate.

You know, in your category, I think about. Or related. Right. I think about YETI for a quality product, insulated bottle cup and, and, but brand power. What do you, what do you think about them? What do you try to draw from that, from that company's example?

Yeah, very, very impressive what they've done. I mean they, they for quality. You know, they up this market so much, you know, they demanded a price that no one could even think, think about before they started. So ton of respect for them. And then they grew, you know, from really from a cooler to an entire, you know, lifestyle brand of everything. I mean it's, it's crazy what they're able to offer now at this point. You know, the one thing that we see happen over and over though is, you know, the customer service, especially for custom items just isn't at the same level that it used to be because they are so big now.

They're big.

Yeah. The one thing that we pull from that is they also, I mean, they protect their own product as well, which is good and they have the ability to do so. So, you know, the promo market and custom and grade bottle market, they're doing it themselves and they're protecting it, which, you know, limits the stock that's out there, which helps companies like us play into it. You know, we're the next, sometimes the next best alternative to a quality brand name product when they can't get their stock from yeti. So it's worked well for us. The one thing we've, we've known to do really well too is customization. We turn all of our stuff in three to five business days. When you reach out and contact us, we're writing back with usually within an hour with proofs and pricing. And then when someone gets their, their, their bottles that they ordered on a Monday and it's Friday now, and they have custom bottles in their hands for their event, it just can't be beat. So that goes again to Just the word of mouth, you know, do a great job, really take care of your customers. And they might put a small order in for 10 for an event this weekend, but that next order or their friend of theirs might put in an order for a thousand bottles. Next.

I want to talk in just a minute about advice you'd give your younger self or your do overs changes you'd make if you could go back in time with what you know. Now before I do that, let me just some shout outs. If you would like to know more about our programs or see any of the past 500 plus plus shows in the series. You'll find all that and more@scalingcoach.com ScalingCoach.com has our business growth coaching workshops, all kinds of things like that, plus all the back shows on everything to do with getting your people strategy, execution, cash right as well as our Growth Navigator coaching program. That is the easiest, best way to get started with scaling up coaching meets every week. You get peers, accountability, a whole bunch of learning and coaching support for your company. Scan coach.com and our growth Navigator program. Let me also say shout outs to the folks at Store on productions, Seth and Cameron and Christelle and Podfly who gets our show distributed every week and to my friend and mentor Vern Harnish who produces our show, who's responsible for creating the scaling up framework that we rely on. So if you had to go back and do it over or if you give your younger self advice, what would you say?

Yeah, a lot. A lot for sure. Really More of just having structure, business game plan, forecast, budget, something I didn't have at all until probably year four. My dad would tell me over and over, you know, where's, where's your forecast for the year? Where's your budgets? And you know, I just had the same answer. You know, you know, it's just working. So I'm doing what I'm doing and you know, repeatedly told me to do it. And after, you know, that fourth year I finally did and when I did we three X's our profit. So actually knowing where your money's coming from, where the profit's coming from, also where the, where, where all the money's going, you know, where all the costs are, it's huge as well. You know, dad showed me how to break everything down into different profit centers and loss centers. You know, this part of the company might be making money, but this part is, you know, is you got to reduce your costs instead of trying to increase your revenue on it. So absolutely huge. And I wish I actually listened at the beginning and it took more advice and feedback from my dad earlier on.

I hear your background music kicking in. Ice Shaker Chris Gronkowski, founder CEO of iceshaker.com check it out. Find it there. Thanks again everyone for watching. For listening. Talk to you again next week.

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