Tusca Outdoors Co-founder Adam Janney

Business Brain, episode 605 for Casual Friday, December 6th National Microwave Oven Day 2024. Greetings, folks, and welcome to Business Brain, the show where we take some ideas, we crunch them, we dissect, we analyze them, we use them to tune our business brains so that each and every one of us can keep on living that charmed life. Sponsors for this episode include legalzoom.com where promo code bbshow gets you 10% off any business formation product, and notion.com businessbrain. That's where you can go to try notion for free Project management docs, knowledge base, AI. It's so cool. We'll talk more in depth about both of those in a little bit. For now here in Durham, New Hampshire, on this lovely casual Friday, I'm Dave Hamilton.

And I'm Shannon Jean up here in Northern California. You know, Dave, if I talk about hunting, fishing, being outdoors all the time, if you're watching the live stream, I'm actually wearing a camouflage all over.

Not atypical for you. That's right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Not atypical of my. My invisible clothes. And I came across. I don't know how we got connected, but Adam Janney, Tusca outdoors. And I was looking at their site. They make these wild blinds that you can put up in a tree or up on a stand. And then I saw this camper thing they make. That's just crazy. It's called the Hitchhiker. And so I reached out, you know, Adam and I connected on a call. I love this kind of stuff, you know, building this amazing thing. And so we're going to learn more about this today and figure out how this business works. So, Adam, thanks for being with us today.

Yeah, thanks for having us.

Yeah, man.

Yeah. I think I was trying to remember, too, how we met, and I think it had. I follow a lot of small business guys, but then your stuff about the Costco liquidation, you know, started showing up on my Twitter. So I think I followed you from that. And I actually started doing that a little bit for things I needed.

See, this is what happens. You're an entrepreneur. You can't stop. You got one successful business and you got the shiny object. Like, wait, I could do this. I could buy this stuff, this liquidation stuff. So this is cool. So tell us about Tusca, how you got started, you know, and then how you wound up making these really innovative campers, these shells. It's amazing.

Yeah. Yeah. Josh and I started this company a few years ago, and we really fell in love with this, like, material combination that we started Using So everything we make is out of like a high density EPS foam and it's a hard coat, almost like a truck bed liner. And we found all these different manufacturing processes. We found, you know, all different kinds of companies that were building really unique stuff with it. And Josh and I met, we played college baseball together and he was a few years older than I was, but we had actually done some freelance work. I had done freelance design work in the gun industry as just a part time side hustle thing and grew up around, you know, around guns and, and was always fascinated with them, went to school for mechanical engineering. But so I started doing some freelance work in that Josh and I met back up because he's an avid hunter and he had some ideas for some hunting products. And at the time I worked full time at a metal fabrication shop. And so I helped him develop and design and prototype one of our first inventions not even related to Tusca blinds or campers. And then we just kind of kept building and developing products and really enjoying that space and meeting people in the outdoor and hunting industry. And then we, we got connected with this type of material and just kind of took it from there.

Terrific.

Yeah. So we started with just the blinds. Him and I went, I mean about as dumb as you could. Went, you know, full into it. Sold our house. Both of us sold our houses. Wow.

You have to be a little delusional.

Yeah, 100% work, right? Yeah. And we like manufacturing especially like, you know, big products is. Takes a lot of space, takes a lot of equipment. And it was kind of on the back end of COVID where nobody was really handing out money to startups. Everyone was kind of tightening it up and so yeah, we went, tried to self fund as much as we could. Went private, you know, for the first year and yeah, we were, we're very flat. Yeah. We joked about just, you know, calling our company Blind Faith because that's really what it felt like that started.

That's really funny. So you actually like, you sold your house for seed capital.

Yeah.

And, and like earn the boats man. Did you? That's amazing. I think the only other I'm reminded we might have had somebody else like this Shannon, but a couple of years ago we had a guy named Gary Arndt on who because of COVID had to change from being a. Well did change from being a travel photographer to a podcaster, a daily podcaster, which is its own kind of grind. And the way he, the part of the way he funded it was he relocated to the least expensive area he could Find that he could live. And so he moved from, like, one of the edges of the country to the middle of the country somewhere. And like, well, you say dang and shake your head, but, like, you did the same kind of. You did something arguably even crazier. Did you move into an apartment? Like, is that so?

Yes. And like, we. I got lucky in the sense that we had bought my wife and I had bought Josh and I. Same way he actually owned a duplex at the time. And then I had bought a house that we had fixed up about a few years before COVID And then the housing market went nuts, and we kind of knew we were getting into this thing, so we were like. And, you know, very. Both of us are very blessed. We had amazing wives that were, you know, willing. Willing to let us.

The right spouse.

Yeah. Yeah. Shannon calls it, I think, the force multiplier.

Yeah. For sure.

Live it. Living proof of that, both of us, I think. And so, yeah, we sold our houses and. And kind of downsized and went sideways into like a townhouse.

Okay.

So I can't say I'm living horrible. Like, but it was. It was a very strategic sideways down move to. In order to. To help kind of fund this.

I love it. That's. It's commitment. So, okay, so you build this. You're building these blinds. You're having some success with this material. Where did the idea for the hitchhiker camper thing? Because it's really unique and I've never seen. This is what attracted to me first. I've never seen anything like it. And how easy it is to use now. Lightweight it is. And, you know, I don't need one of these, but I really want one. And that's always a good sign to me. It's like, okay, you know, a lot.

Of the conversations we have with customers that's.

Yeah, yeah. So how did you wind up on the. On this thing?

Yeah, so we. We knew how insulated the material was, and that's the biggest factor for our blinds. Obviously, lightweight's huge, but being completely sealed and insulated, there just wasn't a lot of products out there like it. And so there have been handful of people that have always give you ideas. You know, we. Hundreds of ideas of things to build with this material. But it was actually funny. We. We joked around about we were too cheap to buy a teardrop trailer, a teardrop camper for like trade shows and stuff. And so we had. We had toyed around with the idea of building a camper. And then I'll give A lot of the credit to Josh, who's my partner in it, but he. They have a group of guys that go on a hunting trip every year in Ohio. Usually during the rut in Ohio, and they hunt public land. There's like a group of nine to 10 of them that go. And so he was like, dude, I'll sleep in one of these if we build them. And so we built the first two last fall. And, you know, you built it for.

Yourself, you're solving a problem for yourself, which is correct. I love it, man.

And so they took him out. He slept in like it was nine degrees at night. He threw like a space heater in it. It was like our deer blind windows. It doesn't look quite like what our one does now, but yeah, night, it was nine degrees at night. He threw a little heater in for like a couple minutes, took it out, and then like body heat. The rest of the night he was fine. And they were at a deer camp. And so they were, you know, in and out with a lot of people, and people loved it. And they were like, what the heck is this thing? You know, fit right on this trailer. They were picking it up, they were taking it off, they were rolling it out in the woods. And so people were like, what? You know, they. So from then we were like, maybe we're onto something. And then we still didn't quite know because we hadn't really advertised it. And we have a show out here in Pennsylvania called the Great American Outdoor Show. It's like the largest consumer outdoor show in the country. And it's the first weekend, it's nine days long. It's an incredibly long show. And we were already there for the hunting blind. So we're like, we'll make some space and we'll bring a camper and just see how it goes. And so we launched this, like, crappy. You know, you can still see it. It's a three minute overview video of the camper. It was our first ever YouTube video. So we had zero subscribers, nothing. And as we're at that show, it's just like couple thousand, 10,000, 50,000. And it just like, the views kept piling up and we did a pre, pre order sale for it and like 500 off or whatever just to kind of see if we could drive some traffic. And we got like 45 orders in the first, like all over the country. And we were like, what the heck? We hadn't sold a single blind online. And like, so we're like, what the heck is going on? So it just like, it really snowballed from there, and we were like, dude, we had to figure out a lot of things fast. And we. We did a long lead time. We did like eight to 10 weeks from when the pre order started to. When we'd start shipping them out. But we were just incredibly thankful and like, you know, it's a lot of money for, I feel like, for us for people to spend and sure, it was at a really critical time for us, and I'll be, you know, very transparent. It was like we build seasonal products with hunting blinds. So that winter time, you know, your revenue starts to dip and. And you start, you know, thinking about the future, and we got to go get line of credit and all those things. So it was a really good jumpstart for us to make it through that season. And so we were incredibly grateful for. For all the people that started, but, you know, just. Just the traction that we got from was incredible. And we were just cranking them out as fast as we can and trying to get them to people and, you know, be the best customer service that we can. And. And I was telling Shannon a little bit, you know, earlier in the. Before we started here, but, like, we quickly realized, like, we're in the distribution game selling big products. And so, you know, we had some damages the first couple. We had to refine our shipping process and still refine, you know, still trying to do the best we can to ship them effectively. But that's the one unique thing about these campers, is they're light enough and the size works that we can ship them direct to consumer, directly to people's door. And there's. I don't know of any other camper company that can do that.

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All right, Adam, now I gotta put you on the spot. So we love talking about success and I'm, you know, I love hearing the stories, but I want to problem solving is is critical for all of us and kind of getting that mindset you alluded to it when you talked about, you realized that we're not just this product company. We're also a. You're a logistics company, right? Because you got to get this. And I know when you talk, she's like, yeah. Wow. Had no idea people so far away from us wanted to buy these things. Tell us about some of the problems you've had to solve either, you know, with product development or getting stuff out there and how you've overcome those. And I'm particularly interested in like working with a partner in solving those problems because I know that can be challenging sometimes.

Yeah. I'll start with the partner part first. So Josh and I could, I couldn't ask for a better partner in it. We have.

That's also a force multiplier.

Big time.

I mean. Yeah. Humongous. We both tackle different part, like almost split the business down the middle. Like, I, I love product design. He's. He does a little bit of that too as well. But like I handle all of our vendors ordering, you know, everything front half, even the front half of the shop up until like build an assembly. And then he's, you know, assembly, spray, finish. And he handles all of our, for the most part, handles the majority of our customers. So we have this like very good split of like, of talents and skills and what we like to do. And so I'm very thankful. And he's the one that, like when push comes to shove and crap hits the fan, I guess he's the one that is really good at getting dirty and helping out. So, very, very thankful for that. And so. But we still butt heads and I think it's a good thing. I'm like, I'm like almost thankful we joked about it the first year. I'm like, if we agreed on everything, I think I hate you. Yeah.

Work.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it works out and we, there are times where, you know, we need to bring in a third party. Not on an anger thing or anything like that, but just for decision making things. And we've been.

So wait, wait, I want to, I want to tug on that thread a little bit here because I agree with you. The value, especially early, early on in a business partnership, of splitting the responsibilities and really articulating the fact that, okay, you know, you're responsible for A, B and C. I'm responsible for D, E and F. Here's how we'll figure out how to merge these things together and all of that. Not only is that key to success, but sort of the predecessor is finding a partner that's interested in doing abc. But when you're interested in doing def, that's the force multiplier. Right. Because then everybody's doing things that they're interested in. But I want to Hear about this third party thing. How, who do you bring in? How do you bring them in?

And if you can give us her phone number.

Yeah, if you can give us an example.

Silent partner.

Well, if you can give us an example of, of like a problem that they've helped you solve, that I think I, I would love all of that.

Yeah. So Josh was actually a, his full time role. He was actually a youth pastor before out of college, but he had a member of his church and we had actually gotten started who had, who he had known a little bit. But when he told his, when Josh told his head pastor, hey, you know, I'm planning to do this, he's like, you know, you should talk to this guy. He had bought and sold, you know, he had built a lot of manufacturing businesses and just a tremendous guy, just a phenomenal person to work with. And so he's like more of an ear most of the times. Like he lets us kind of like divulge what we're going through and he's, and he's a question asker. So he like picks up, you know, what we, what we want to do. But he's been kind of this like third party that we're like, hey, this is what we're, you know, facing right now. Do you have any advice, do you have any things that we should think about that we're not thinking about? And he never is one to like, you need to do this, this and this. But he really just lets us. I wouldn't even call it like a therapist, but like just coming out and just be like, all right, here's where we're at.

It sounds, oh yeah, it is therapy. The words, the words I wrote down were, find yourself a third party business therapist. Yeah.

Yeah. And because we're new, like Josh and I were, you know, we started, I was 26 and he was 28. Like we hadn't done on anything like this before.

Sure.

Good for you.

And super smart. Having someone like that in our corner has just been, I couldn't, you know, we've, like I said that blind faith was, was no joke. I mean, we've just been very lucky, even just from choosing ourselves when we got started, like, we didn't know what our strengths were and what our, you know, we knew each other somewhat well, but we've been, we've been very, very, you know, blessed to kind of have each other, especially for that first year, that survival mode. And we actually, I, I won't say his name. He's, he's a young kid, but when we got started, we actually hired a kid, like, immediately. And he was 19 at the time, and I had worked with him. I worked at a metal fabrication shop. And he was this, like, farm kid that was like, a better welder than anybody that I ever said. Like, who is this kid? And so he, like, was doing that while he was in school. And then when he was done school, I was like, you write your number. Like, I will. I want to hire you. Because, like, we had so many things to figure out in our shop. Yeah, it's a manufacturing facility, you know, getting it all set up. And he was tremendous when we first got started. So, like, just the. The random pieces that we kind of had getting started, you know, all worked out really well. So I went away from the question.

But, no, no, you gave us that feedback. No, I think the. The smart part of that is really identifying, you know, you don't know what you don't know.

Right.

And bringing in somebody else to help up something. Like, I. I have a problem where I'm. I. I often, you know, oh, I'm going to figure this out. I'll take. I'll do it. I don't want to hire somebody else. I'm going to do this. I'm a fit. But that's not often the right way to do it. You know, where you have this young guy come in and depp. He set things up. Or you have someone who's built businesses before give you their feedback. That. That's. Those are all crucial things that you already are looking back on, even though you've only been doing this for a couple years and saying, wow, this was so To. To get to where we are today. Yeah, it's a big deal. Okay, so what's next for you guys? What. What's the, you know, are you. Yeah. What's. What are the next challenges for you?

Growth.

And I think managing that, Managing that. Well, we haven't. Like, we've been a very small team. It's been at most four of us. And so we, you know, especially with these campers, we quickly kind of maximized our space. And so it's now that next step of growing the employees, growing the space. And they all kind of, you know, you need one to do the other, and so we need to market more to justify getting bigger space. And so, you know, you're gonna need.

Some more of that blind faith, my friend. That is it. There's no. I always say the hardest thing to do in business is hiring that first employee. Right. Because, you know, you finally start Making enough money to pay somebody else. You're like, but I could pay me. I haven't been paid yet. You know, and I could go buy a house again maybe someday. Right. You know, and so. But the second hardest thing to do is once you've sort of done that first plateau. Okay, okay, I have my team now. We can make a little more money and we can do some other things. And then it's the same problem again, but it's an even bigger thing because you're like, well, wait, now I'm gonna have to get bigger space and even more people. It's not just hiring one person. Now I gotta hire three more people. Oh, man, I don't know that I'm.

Gonna.

You need blind faith. That's the only thing.

Yeah, it's that tough part of like, we were on a really tremendous growth and then it's like, we know we're gonna have to, in, I guess, profit, but like, you know, you're gonna have to dip back down to build that infrastructure back up to really grow. And so I think that's where, you know, this spring is going to be big for us as far as making those decisions. So, yeah, any. And I. I watch some of your guys stuff on Notion, but like, that's even just little things like that. Like, because we do. Because we do everything.

Yes.

Or we did for the first year. It's like, all right, now we need to systemize. This is how you do this process.

Yeah, sops.

Yep.

And you know, one of the guys, it's in my group, they. They have barcodes all over their shop.

Yeah, that's a really good idea.

Guy just walks up, grabs her phone. How do I do this job? What should this look like when it's complete? What is this area? How do you clean it up or whatever. And they scan those and have it playing in Notion. I love that concept.

You know, it's incredible. Those things are really, really incredible. I think tools for. For us. So, yeah, I think, yeah, year one was survive. I think this year was now we have really good products and now it's build a business, I think is the goal for year three.

So I love this. I love the story. What's the best way for people to learn more about your business?

Facebook and Instagram for sure. So Tusk outdoors. Yeah, I'm on Twitter, but I used it for a way different reason, I think, than this. Sure. And so, yeah, Facebook and Instagram, we post a lot and we love connecting with our customers. So we're very DIY friendly. Camper, especially with the hitchhiker. So we always post ways that customers are adding, you know, modifications to their trailer or their truck or adding solar panels. So, you know, we, we love kind of promoting our customers in that. And. Yeah, so we've been very. We enjoy it. Yeah. Facebook, Instagram.

Okay, great. And then the website is tusca T U S C A outdoors dot com. Adam, thank you so much for coming on, talking about it. I'm totally, you know, I love this thing. I don't know why. It just grabs my attention.

It's cool. It's lightweight. It's insulated. I mean, it. I, I, as soon as you sent it to me, Shannon, I was like, wait a minute. I want to find out about that. Amazing. Adam. Thank you so much, everybody. Thank you for listening. Feedback at BusinessBrain show is how you can find us. And if you've got a cool thing you're doing, let us know. We all want to learn how you're doing your version of the Charmed Life. We'll see you next week.