Interview with Jeff Anderlite of Baja Llama and Ignite360 – Small Business Show 201

The Small business show episode 201 for Wednesday, December 12, 2018. Greetings folks and welcome to the Small Business show here at BusinessShow Co, the show that is by, for and about small business owners here in Durham, New Hampshire. I'm Dave Hamilton and here on the.

West coast, I'm Shannon Jean. How you doing, man?

I'm doing fine. Dealing with some technology issues today. But you know, that's kind of, that's sort of my life. So I, I think, I think I'm okay. I'll make it.

Anybody? Yeah. If anybody has to deal with it, it's good for it.

Might as well be me. That's right.

Cool. Hey, I want to jump right in and we have a guest here waiting in the wings if you will. And I want to talk about this. This. It's an interesting concept. You know, most of us create businesses kind of to support our lifestyle, but there's some people that live a lifestyle that seems to kind of, you know, lend itself to starting businesses, whether it's to support what they're doing or, you know, pay for trips or do whatever. And I love the concepts. Concept. We're going to talk to Jeff Anderlite today. He's a serial business owner, traveled around the world and what it looks like is. And one of the taglines to his company is to you pursuit of living a non boring life. And along the way, Jeff has started the Hostel in Nicaragua, a spice company, a clothing brand and of course a business to help other businesses succeed. So I'm sure you want to hear about the stories. I'm very eager to talk to Jeff. So thanks for joining us today, Jeff. We really appreciate it.

Thank you for having me on. I really appreciate it. Cool. How are you guys?

Good.

We're good, man. Yeah. We always love talking about this stuff.

So. Awesome.

Definitely. Good. So let's, let's jump right in. You know, I always read up on everyone and their companies and all this stuff. There's a lot going on with you. I'm not really sure where to start.

Typical.

Yeah, but that's okay. I can appreciate that. So let's talk about your motivation to start your first business and what is, or if there is an underlying theme that's kind of driven you've as you've continued to start other companies and get to where you are today.

Yeah, that's a good question. I think to start off with, you know, I've been creating things whether it's a physical product or coming up with ideas since I was young. You know, when I was probably five, six years old, maybe older than that. Eight, nine years old. I would take remote control cars apart, get the motors out of them, put them on pencils and attach an eraser and a 9 volt battery and create electric erasers.

Oh yeah, seriously.

And I would take paper towel rolls and get the cardboard out of it, go to the hobby shop, get the engines and create my own rockets, you know, so I'd always have the desire to try to create something, figure it out. So that's always an underlying theme of mine. And then also never wanting to work for anybody else and, you know, financially motivated. You always see the people with the most financial success are the ones that have an interest in the company. So I think all three of those things combined have always been a part of my life and kind of lended itself to me not being a nine to five type of person. You know, the first company I started in high school with my business partner Sean, who I've created a few companies with. It's pretty devious really. But we created a thing called the Bottle Buddy. And it's a thing you can put on the top of a bottle of beer to shotgun a beer out of a bottle.

High school priorities.

Yeah, exactly. Right. You know, pretty ridiculous. Not the most proud of products, but that's good. We were selling out of the back of our car and Sean was into video games, so he was leveraging video game forums to sell it on. And we created a website. Almost got kicked out of school for it. But you gave us a little taste of what it's like to create something and then sell it.

I am so curious. I'm going to ask you this in a specific way. Do you mind telling me what year that was? I don't necessarily mean to out your age.

I'm 32.

Okay.

Probably 2002, I think. 2003.

That's awesome.

Yeah. So we got into the local mall and my mom still has one in a package, which is probably the only one left in existence.

Sure.

You know, when that. That was in the shelf of a store in the mall and people around school were using it at parties, it was a pretty good feeling. So I think that it's kind of what solidified my desire to always be an entrepreneur and create things and. And start businesses.

That's awesome.

That is killer. I love that. If nothing else, you know, you got a great story to tell.

So we love here. That's why we get together.

Yeah, we talk about it all the time. You know, it's like you get a Chance to tell your own story and make your own story. You know, why would you want it to be, to be boring? You know, make it, make it interesting? Yeah, yeah. So, you know, like me and I think Dave, you know, we have a lot of stuff going on too and there's all kinds of businesses, some that do great, some that don't really go anywhere where. And you know, one of the things we say and mention on the, on the show a lot is not to talk about stuff as much, especially do what I always call, you know, the regular people, the folks that get a check, the non business owners, because it kind of freaks them out. And I, and you know, I've had that kind of look, it's like, wow, you're kind of flaky, you know, or whatever, because you've got six different companies going on or whatever. So on your case, you know, what's been the reaction of those kind of people about starting all these different companies, jumping from one idea to the next and, and taking those risks that usually really scare people that you seem really comfortable with?

Yeah, you know, I, like I said, I've been doing weird stuff pretty much my whole life, whether it's starting a hostel, creating a ridiculous drinking apparatus, going to school at University of Alabama from California. So it's been kind of my M.O. so I'd say people closest to me are kind of numb to it and just see it as normal. You know, you'll get like anybody else, you'll get people that you don't know so well that are like, what are you doing? You know, you have a mortgage and responsibilities and you have no idea about clothing. Why are you getting into that? But at the end of the day, I have to do, you know, what's going to make me not feel completely violated to myself. And I guess the most important thing is the people that matter to me have all been supportive. I have an amazingly supportive wife, my parents, my brother, and they've never said anything but positive reaffirmation to me. So the people who do have those weird reactions don't matter to me. So, you know, it's, it's all good.

That's a really smart attitude. I mean, you know, it's following on to what Shannon was saying before you. You can't let yourself get dragged down by people that, that just aren't willing to see that, that there is potential and things like that. And, and sometimes there's not potential. Like sometimes they're right. And that's the, you know, that's the worst because it Gives those, those naysayers fuel. Right. Like, oh, right, I said he was going to fail at that stupid thing. And he did fail at that stupid thing. Yeah. But five other stupid things did really well. So, like, that's okay. It's good to fail at something. It shows that you're trying to.

Right. You are starting businesses. You're going to fail.

You are going to fail.

You just keep on going.

That's the thing. Bullheaded persistence. Yeah, man.

Yeah. You don't often hear the stories of people hitting a home run on their first try, right?

Rarely.

Yeah, rarely.

I want to go back to something you said here a minute ago, too. You said that if you didn't do this, you'd feel kind of, you know, violated to you.

Yeah.

Explain that a little bit.

Well, it goes back to your first question of my motivation. It's more just a deep seated desire that I have that if I'm not pursuing some entrepreneurial thing or creating something, then I feel like I'm not really being who I want to be, you know? So I sold my hostel, went traveling for eight months in Southeast Asia and came back completely broke. Well, I had to get a 9 to 5 job. Fine. Fair enough. My wife, girlfriend at the time, was pursuing school. She got into Cal Berkeley, which is amazing. You know, she pursued what she needed to do. Then she got a job. And at that point I was like, I was itching so bad. I was like, I can't do this. I will seriously freak out. And at that point I realized, you know, I didn't have much longer to go before I would explode. I had to. To go for broke no matter what I was trying to create. Clothing company, the Ignite360 marketing suites. It didn't matter. But yeah, that feeling of if I'm not pursuing my own business ventures, then I'm not being true to myself and essentially feeling like I'm violating myself. Yeah.

Makes sense.

Yeah. And that, that's the. Right. Like, if you don't have that attitude, you probably aren't going to stick with it enough to make your business succeed. Like, you need that go for broke attitude because.

Yeah, because when you do go for broke, if you don't have that attitude, then you'll probably stop.

Then you'll stop. Right? Exactly.

Yeah.

There are plenty of. Of, you know, I call them ripcords. Right. You know, there are plenty of escape hatches along the way that don't necessarily get you to the goal or the financial freedom or the flexibility of your life or any of those other Things that. That doing it on your own will, but you got to take that road.

And I listened to one of your other podcasts and you said that you're living your backup plan, right? You don't have another one.

There's.

And. But that's the truest thing, right? If. If you do have a backup plan, I wouldn't say this, you know, is 100% of the time, but for the most part, you know, if you have a backup plan, then you're going to use it as a crutch to. To escape when things go bad. Or a lot of people could, at least.

That's right. I heard it. Said it a little. A little different way, too. I was listening to a guy the other day, and I don't recall his name at the time, but he was saying, you'll never know what you're capable of. And until you put yourself in that position, you know, because it forces you to, oh, I have to act, you know, I can't. There's nothing coming in. I gotta hustle.

Exactly. So you won't know your limits till you're pushed there.

Yeah, you got it. So you recently sold one of your companies, the Legion of Spice. Can you talk about how that, how that went for you?

Yeah, well, a little backstory. That was right when I was getting Baja Lama, the Hawaiian shirt company, going, and we were selling or making apps for B level Instagram models and getting Ignite360 going. So we were just, you know, didn't have enough hours in the day, so basically just kind of stopped operation. And we had it on our. Our E commerce was hosted through Shopify.

Yeah, sure.

So they have a seller's part on the. On the platform, so you can put it up and then all the metrics for your sales are automatically uploaded there. So it's pretty good. That's cool. People can go on there, check it out. So we got a few offers, went back and forth with the guy a few times. Didn't work out. And then because I just want to get rid of it, basically give it away. So wasn't a big success, but again, who cares?

You learn it. I have your spices in my cabinet in my kitchen, so that's a success in my opinion. There's an actual container with a good label on it, so.

Well, and it frees your. At the very least, you no longer have to think about it. Right.

It's not exactly.

It's not a concern anymore.

I had to prioritize what I was going after.

Yep, for sure. For sure. Guys Actually, Shannon, I'm going to take a second here. Actually, I'm going to take a. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 90 and 200 of them. And I want to talk about our first sponsor, which is Textexpander from smile@textexpander.com podcast. If you are running a business where you have pieces of text, pieces of little snippets, right? It could be big pieces of text, big long email replies that you do every time somebody asks a certain question, or you want to put your address somewhere, or even if you're just filling out web forms and you want to have your email address, right? This is what textexpander is for. You put all that stuff in there, and then textexpander lets you pull it out either with a click of a mouse or even better, with the type of a keystroke. You can assign a short little keystroke to invoke one of these snippets, and boom, all this text comes out that you've previously created, you've honed, you've tweaked, you've perfected it, and now it's right there. In fact, you can even have textexpander and ask you to fill in form fields. So you might have, like, a boilerplate for something, but you got to fill in stuff like maybe the name of a product or their order number, or maybe you want it to take something from the clipboard and put it in a certain spot in the text. No problem. This is what textexpander does. And then it gets even better, because you can sync all of your textexpander snippets, not only with all your devices, your Macs, your Windows machines, your iOS devices, the web, all that good stuff, you can also sync with other members of your team. So everybody's got all the right stuff. So you got to check it out, because if you're on a team, textexpander will change your life. In fact, it's gonna change your life whether or not you're on a team. I can speak to that. And it leaves you more time to do what you do best. So check it out. Go to textexpander.com podcast and when you check out, it'll ask, which podcast. Of course, hopefully you'll, you know, you'll choose ours from that list that lets them know that this is working. Our thanks to textexpander and the folks at Smile for sponsoring this episode. All right, Shannon, there you go.

Yeah, it is a life changer. It's an incredible app. And if you're a solo entrepreneur especially, man. It's a killer.

It's a kill. Yeah. So thanks for your time on that. I appreciate it.

Yeah, of course.

Okay, so, Jeff, you're mentioning the Hawaiian trip company and Baja Llama and looking around, you know, doing some research for today's show, looking on the website, I see, you know, you. It looks like your brother, maybe some, you know, a bunch of good looking women, wife, girlfriends or whatever it is on your website and you know, in the cool places, and it looks like a great way to kind of fund your travels and promote your brand at the same time. Was that kind of the idea? You know, I mean, like, kind of like the Bottle Buddy, you know, we're gonna drink a few beers. Was that the idea when you guys got started?

So I wouldn't say I started it for traveling. Well, I guess, you know, to create some profit which would always pay for me traveling. So I guess if you want to put it that way, then yes. But for instance, where all the photos are on our website, they're from the Mongol Rally. So this is this 11,000mile charity rally where you get the biggest piece of car you can find under 72 horsepower, and you drive from London to Mongolia. And I found out about that about two years ago and. Which was six months before the Bottle Buddy came as an idea. And so I was always going to do it. And, you know, it was two years, three years after I left the hostel, so I was really itching for a pretty big adventure. So I signed up for that, got my brother signed up, and then Baja Lama started coming to fruition. So as we were getting that going, I'm like, all right, well, let's just name our team. See, you come up with crazy names or you find sponsors for your car. So I was like, all right, well, we're Team Baha Lama, and this is gonna be a perfect way to bring some shirts along and get awesome content for the website, social media. We actually didn't even launch Baja Lama until after I left, but luckily I got a few sample shirts made, so brought some sample shirts, drove along, went some insane places, and got good content. So it all worked out perfectly. But, yeah, I guess to answer your question, anything I start is to fund my travels. Really? Yeah.

That's cool. Yeah.

Right? Why not?

Yeah. Great.

That's a great story. Okay, so I want to talk for a few minutes about business partners. We talk a lot on the show about them. And I, I believe you've had a few. What would you say the most important Part of, you know, the most important thing about having a healthy relationship with a business partner is, you know, what's worked for you and what hasn't.

Yeah. I've had three real significant business partners. One, Sean Kalina. I've been business partners with him since high school. He did the bottle buddy with me all the way till now with Baja Lama. He did Legion of Spice and now Ignite 360 and two other guys, one of them didn't work out at the hostel. That's what ultimately led to the demise of. Of my part of it. And so what didn't work out for that? You know, everybody talks about communication, right? It's. That's a common knowledge. You gotta have good communication. More than that, not being aligned on your ideology and where you foresee everything going, you know, if that starts to really take a hold, then it's going to creep up and ultimately become too big of a thing to handle. So making sure that you and your business partner have the same idea of where you want to go with things. You can have your fights, big deal. Everybody does. But. But if your ideology and your vision of where things are going to go, I think that can be too much to handle sometimes. Yeah.

Makes sense.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's important to learn how to suss that out too.

Yeah, that's.

That.

That was going to be. My comment is where along the way, you know, if you're like me, you start talking about something with somebody and you kind of get rolling and, you know, before you know it, you're married and then you realize, you know, I mean, do you have those conversations about the ideology and stuff beforehand or, you know.

Well, I think you should. Right? I mean, let's be honest. From ideation of anything from a physical product to a service, by the time you come up with a concept to the time that it launches to three years later is going to probably be significantly different. So, you know, coming up originally with what your ideas compared to how it ends is not going to be the same. But along the transition, communication and trying to align yourself along the way, I think is probably the biggest thing that makes sense.

That's cool. So since I know you have a lot going on, how do you prioritize the, you know, your workload each day? You know, managing multiple small businesses at the same time, you know, walk us through that a little bit.

Yeah, it's something that I'm still trying to work on, honestly, but I'm a big proponent of writing everything down. So I'm. I'm not very good at managing a. A digital calendar, so I have an old school planner for my day to day tasks. Overarching. First of all, I look at both companies and I say, all right, what do we want to achieve overall? And try to break it down into what needs to happen in the next month. What are the steps that need to happen to get to that end goal this month and then do the same for the other company and then prioritize it by importance and date that it needs to be completed. And then once, you know, that's a list of maybe 100 things, but once it's all written down, then I can put it in order and say, okay, this week I have 20 things for this company, this week, 20 things for this company. Order of 1 through 20. And then I can just knock them out one at a time. But I have to have it written down, otherwise I lose focus. I'm a huge ADD person, so my mind wanders. And if it's not written down and organized, then.

It sounds like that not just having it written down, but the process of writing it down is part of your organizational. Like it's part of your weeding down of how to. How to do what, how to get to where you need to go. It's not just now you have the plan, but you've built the plan through this process that, that engages you in a way that you can actually focus and you're using your hands and, and writing and seeing and all of that. Yep.

And a lot of times if I'm not writing it down, then it doesn't happen.

Yeah.

Or, or to say that, you know, if I have, okay, this needs to be done, but you know, it's an end goal that might have 10 steps, but I don't write the 10 steps down, then finishing that end goal is twice as hard as it would be if I write all 10 steps down. And then I can accomplish all 10 smaller steps to get to that end goal.

I always joke, I say I use calculus every day. And really what I do is I. The thing that I learned when I took calculus was you take this monstrous problem and you break it down into all the little steps and then you just do the steps. And when you finish all the steps, as long as you do them right, you finish the problem. You know, it's like more manageable. It just happens automatically. Like. Yeah, if you break it down into those steps and that's.

Yeah, man, that's overwhelming.

It's. Oh yeah, it's less overwhelming.

That's it.

Yes.

Exactly. Yeah. And then it's easier to see what needs priority.

Yes.

There's 10 steps to finish a problem, but maybe one step's not too important for me. At least if they're not written down, I can't identify them and say, all right, well, this is the most important. I try to accomplish the most important task first, or maybe even the hardest task, and the other ones fall into place a lot easier.

This is a hard lesson for a lot of people to learn, especially smart people that are used to being able to remember things. You think, oh, right, I know I need to do that. I won't forget that. Of course you're going to forget that. You know, if you don't write it down, why wouldn't you forget it? You've got other things that you're going to think of. You're thinking all the time. Of course you're going to forget it.

You got to write back to your other statement. I think you're right. Physical act of me writing it helps.

Yeah. I find I'm add like you, and if I. If my hands are involved in something, I have a much easier time focusing on it, um, than I do if I'm just. If I'm just thinking about it or whatever. I. Yeah, I'll wander. Otherwise.

Yep. Yeah. Don't get me wrong, this is something I'm still practicing, trying to get better at.

Welcome to the club.

Believe us.

Yeah.

Yeah. You let us know when you get it figured out.

Yeah.

So we can do whatever you're doing. I mean, I love the writing down, too, but that. What doesn't work for me as well is I need it to be, you know, indexed so I can quickly search it and come up. So it's like I've tried so many different things, and it can even be now as simple as, like the notes app on my computer because it syncs on across all my devices and I can search it and check things off and all that kind of stuff, but I love the analog way, too.

And, you know, that might work for me too, but I just probably haven't gotten there.

Yeah. Well, I think what we all need is a much higher bandwidth interface to our digital devices. Like, if it could. If. And of course, there's privacy. Privacy issues with all of this. But if our devices could capture those thoughts as we had them, then we wouldn't have to worry about writing it down. And then we could look at this list of things that we created without actually creating anything, you know, but that's, you know, I guess that's what, what Elon Musk's what's that Neuralink company is, is working on in some way, shape or form?

I don't know. Yeah, well, I mean, like for me, the, the reminders app on my Mac or on my phone, I mean I'm constantly, all day long, you know, the minute I get oh, remind me, do this later, remind me. Just, I mean it's just, and then it's popping up all day long and it's a lifesaver for me, you know?

Yeah.

Yeah, perfect. I definitely use the reminders on the computer.

Yeah, that's cool. Right on. So if you've listened to the show before, you probably know we're big fans of mistakes here. Probably because I've made so many in my life. But really, because they teach us so much and if you could pick one thing out, one best, you know, and I'm making quotes in air here. Best mistake that you've made with one of your businesses that taught you the most, what would you say that is?

Wow. Yeah, I make probably 10 to 100 mistakes a day. But the most overarching thing I would say what I, what I've learned from and try to take from the most would be my biggest failure within a company. That's the reason I got out of the hostel was because of a partnership breakdown. And there, you know, there's a lot of things that go into that. A lot my fault, I would still say a lot his fault, whatever. But what I've learned from that is self reflection and observance and to see, you know, I was young at the time, 24, thought I knew what was going on. But once I had time to step away and see how everything broke down and become empathetic to how my actions and decisions led to reactions, it was a big wake up call. And now, you know, I think I'm a much better business partner because of it for all the other ventures that I'm working on. And so I'd say, you know, the biggest mistake I made was not realizing who I was or what I was doing day to day and how that was affecting other people within the hostel and taking from that a way to reflect and observe and use that to go forward for all that the business ventures.

Yeah, that's great, man. I mean that, the, the ability to look back and to put yourself in that position where you're taking responsibility, you know, for six. Because I, I, I've just found the people that point fingers or blame, they don't seem to be as successful. The, the Folks that look back and go, yeah, you know, I realize I screwed up here and this is what I caused. And this kind of thing, it took.

Me a while, but once, once I got it, I, I think that was probably the, the largest single take away from a mistake.

Our egos are the things that hold us back the most. I mean at times they are the things that drive us. Right. And perhaps sometimes the only thing you've got. But yeah, it's a double edged sword for sure.

Yeah, that's cool. Yeah, it's good advice. That's why I asked that question because we always get good stuff out of it. So it looks like you're working on, you know, two main companies right now. Is your plan going forward, you know, to focus on growing those two or do you have other things in the works as well?

Oh no, nothing else in the works. Now those two are just really getting going. I mean the shirt company, we just did a test run basically because I never had any previous experience in apparel. So we ran out of most of those shirts. So we actually just have the second round waiting in customs right now. So I'm trying to get that out. But the Ignite 360, which is our second end to end marketing suite for small businesses, we secured a pretty big partnership with one of the biggest direct sales companies in the United States to do a test pilot. So that starts in mid and January. So we've got going on with that.

That's great. And is the Ignite360, you know, kind of accumulation of things you've learned over the years, you and your partner that you've worked with for a long time and trying to help other companies from that.

So this was so Sean, my business partner lived in Australia, worked with a guy named Spiro. Spiro is a tech guy, had a company, sold it, you know, made good money, smart dude. And he really created this and brought us on board.

I see.

So this is his baby and he got us on board. We did a test pilot in Australia, a proof of concept, successful, used all that money to build out the platform we have now. And then, you know, then we have been working with a pretty different distribution model for a software as a service company where you know, a lot of people just do direct advertising online. And we're going and using a direct sales company for having these sales reps go door to door to sell it, which is pretty different I think. But yeah, it's that change your question. Accumulation of everything I've done? No, not really. It's more I Was lucky or you know, kept hustling until I got involved in the right project and accumulation of that.

It's great. And who's your target market for the Ignite360 products.

So really it's any company. So what we do is we have a few products, reputation management, social media management, there's SMS marketing. So our target would be any company smaller, I would say 2 to 4 million in annual revenue that wouldn't have somebody on board that would handle these day to day tasks. And so the platform is meant to have the business owner or maybe just the manager be able to handle these tests in a much more time efficient manner. So, you know, we're not going after big companies. Sure, that's great.

Yeah, it sounds like a good, a good sweet spot. So as we wrap things up here, you know, we've got thousands of small business owners that are listening to you right now. If you could offer your single best piece of advice about running a small business, what would that be? Ooh, no pressure.

I would say two part. Number one, don't stop learning. So listen to podcasts like this, read, watch interviews, whatever you can to, to keep learning. You know, it doesn't even have to be industry specific. A lot of things transfer over ideas, techniques, whatever. And then also it, I, I think, you know, a lot of business owners get pigeonholed into their day to day tasks because they're just trying to survive. So if they can take a step away, you know, so that you can try to identify opportunities or see missed opportunities or where they're having problems or even better yet, have somebody else do it for you that you trust that's a smart business owner. And then once you can identify your missed opportunities, your opportunities, your problems, your deficiencies, take what you've been learning because you're hopefully constantly learning and then you can apply it to hopefully grow and improve.

Awesome. That's great. So what's the best way for our listeners to learn more about your companies? How do they find you?

You know, I'd say my personal email address would be. I'd be honored to have anybody reach out to me. I'd love to have conversation. So Anderlite J at Gmail A N D E R L I t e j mail.com or you can find me on Facebook at jeffrey r.anderlite.

Awesome. It's an inspiring story man. And it sounds like you're just getting started. So we'll definitely have you back and keep us posted on things. And thank you again for sharing your story and coming on the show today.

Thank you so much. I really appreciate it, guys.

Such cool stuff, man. Thank you so much. This has been great. Yeah. Folks, you know where to find. Jeff, you know where to find us. Business show and see you next time. Keep living that charmed life. Thanks again, Jeff.