Crossfit Capitalism : Using Influencers and Athletes To Transition From Amazon to Shopify w/ Bear Komplex #BrandBuilderPodcast

It's a game. It really is, you know, and it's figuring out the game and putting yourself around a team of people that really understand how that stuff works, you know, and it's exciting because Nate and I have tried Facebook ads and done this stuff and, and I think it's very easy for people to try it and maybe throw $100 at it and say, oh, this shit doesn't work because they don't know how to do it and they just throw it to a wide bucket of people. But if you really know what you're doing or you find somebody on your team that knows what they're doing, that can really target in, it's very effective.

Hey one percenters and greedy capitalists. Ryan here and I'm really excited to bring to you this episode from a new podcast that we have launched@capitalism.com called the Brand Builder Podcast. I host it with my buddy and my partner Max Kerwick, and it's all about physical products brands. It's about Amazon, it's about branding, it's about funnels, it's about case studies of businesses that are doing this well. So this is one of the episodes from the Brand Builder podcast and we have some really cool stuff coming in 2019 here on the podcast and@Capitalism.com this is a taste of what is to come. You'll hear us talk about what is working in our businesses. You'll hear us interview students and other people that we admire who are doing some cool things. And you'll hear us feature some of the keynotes that we've had at past brand building events. You're really gonna enjoy this if you sell on Amazon, if you sell physical products, if you have an audience that you wanna monetize or if you want to do any of those things. So you can subscribe by searching Brand Builder Podcast or you can just listen to this episode here on the show. Thanks for listening.

Welcome to the Brand Builder podcast presented by capitalism.com I'm Max Kerwick and I advise physical product brands to find their story.

I'm Ryan Daniel Moran and I invest in physical products brands. A physical products brand is arguably the.

Most predictable path to a seven figure business.

And we advise them, build them, buy them and sell them.

The show goes behind them, tracks their success and hands you the keys to what's working.

Let's dive in.

Hey gang. Ryan Daniel Moran here. Welcome again to the Brand Builder Podcast. Today I'm going to be joined by a team that I really respect and a case study that is Going to provide a lot of value for those of you who are running low to mid seven figure companies. This is Jake and Nate from Bear Complex. And this duo took a product, one product, and turned that into a multi seven figure business in just a couple of years, about 24 months. And they did most of that heavy lifting while they were still working full time jobs until they finally went full time into the business just recently. And Jake and Nate did this by targeting a very specific audience. If you have followed my work@capitalism.com or on my other podcast, which is called the One Percent, I have really beaten it into my listeners and viewers heads that you must start with the person, you must start with the customer rather than focusing on the product. So what you'll hear Jake and Nate go through is how much of a difference it made in their business that they developed a product for a specific person and then a group of people. And they did it so that they could have an easier time attracting influencers and having high profit margins, which is kind of a recurring theme happening here on the Brand Builder podcast. Because having that loyal audience that pays a premium gives you the ability to invest in more products, more advertising and more people. And that helps you grow a really sustainable company.

So check this out.

Jake and Nate had a product they wanted to bring to the marketplace and it was in a really competitive space. So they made some improvements to it and focused on a passionate, loyal audience, the CrossFit community and one influencer to help them launch and get off the ground. That made all the difference. Rather than most entrepreneurs who just focus on a product and then hope and pray that it sells well in the world. Jake and Nate were a little bit more intentional and it made all the difference. This is going to have a significant impact on your business if you do what they talk about, which is focusing on the passionate, loyal audience, going after some key influencers and speaking directly to your ideal customer rather than trying to market like everyone else, rather than trying to go wide instead of deep, have low profit margins instead of high, try to get the biggest market rather than the most passionate market. Jake and Nate went after the best customers that were willing to pay the most and to get the credibility and the sustainability that they needed in order to have a really successful company. And the results have spoken for themselves. You are really going to benefit from this chat with the gents behind Bear Complex.

Welcome to the Brian Builder podcast. I'm Ryan Daniel Moran.

And I'm Max Kerwick.

And today we're joined by the men behind Bear Complex. Jake and Nate, thanks for hanging out with us.

Thanks for having us.

This is going to be super confusing because four white dudes all around the same age with fairly deep voices. No one is going to know who's talking at any point. So if any of you want to jump in and be Ryan Daniel Moran, the host for. I don't think anybody will be able to tell the difference.

I don't think so.

But tell us about Bear Complex. Obviously we work together fairly closely, but I'm curious to kind of go back to the beginning and how you got to this point, because you've worked with really impactful influencers, you have some really interesting sponsorships in a really crowded space. So I guess my first question is, I would like to hear about the first product that really established the brand because you did it just differently enough to where it allowed you to have a pivot point. So tell me about that.

So, Ryan, we started with the hand grips, the gymnastics hand grips, which anybody that does crossfits knows that it only takes a matter of time before you're blowing your hands up from pull ups, from chest to bar, pull ups, from muscle ups, toes to bar, all these gymnastics movements that are very important in the CrossFit game. And as you make progressions, the better you get, the more you tear your hands up. Nate and I have always been crossfitters. When we started this company basically out of my garage, and we were always using hand grips, and quite frankly, they sucked. They were very generic. They would rip apart at the seams, they would have buckles that would dig into your wrists. They would not last very long. So I was actually getting on Amazon, buying a pair of grips about once a month because I was blasting through them all the time. And one day we were sitting there working out in the gym and we had actually been listening to podcasts, one of which was yours, and we were trying to develop things that we could sell online. And we were sitting there one day and we're like, what about grips? Like, we use these every single day. Because one of the. One of the main things with, I think getting started in one of these businesses is finding something that you use and you touch and you feel like. You know, some people say, like, write down everything you touch throughout the whole day, you know, and that could be a potential product. Well, we're using the grips every single day. Like, why can't we make these better? So we, you know, started the whole manufacturing and reaching out to our manufacturers and this kind of thing. And once we found the manufacturing and the design, and we created the whole design and we got them back and we got a bunch of junk back. And then finally the ones that we actually had drawn up came back in a box. And it's like, you open the box and it, like, was glowing light coming out. There it is, you know, which was kind of like, okay, now we've got something, you know, and immediately we, you know, started testing them and sending out to people that we know that do way more than we do in the CrossFit space. And that's kind of how it started at the beginning. So.

And I would like to say I actually own a pair of their grips, and I didn't even know these guys before this weekend. And I can vouch for the quality.

They're good.

Yeah, you are nodding a lot.

I don't do. I'm not a crossfitter, except for maybe a few dozen times. But you were nodding like, yeah, they all suck.

And, oh, yeah, same, same issue just blowing through them and, you know, tearing your hands and all that kind of stuff.

So you basically started with a problem. The problem being that something that you were buying wasn't holding its weight, and so you decided to do something better. I always think that better is not good enough to be a differentiating factor. So what else did you bring to either the marketing or what. What else set you apart from everything else? What was the reason why this one hit as quickly as it did?

Well, I think the awakening moment for us was whenever we. We decided on that particular grip and we placed our first order, and I think it was for 500 at the time, and we put them up on Amazon and they started selling and we sold out really, really, really fast. And we kind of looked at each other at that point, knew, okay, this is a good problem, but it's not a problem you ever want to be in is to be selling out on Amazon. And we had to kind of make a decision there, what to do next and how to move forward. And I think what really propelled us was two things. One was actually listening to your guys podcast about building a brand and not being so selective on Amazon. And number two, was identifying influencers. And we were lucky and fortunate enough that we had an influencer, a CrossFit Games athlete that lived an hour away and our coach at our gym at the time, or it still is. Our coach knows him personally and he's like, you guys really need to go out there and see Nick, Nick Urankar and talk to him, see if you can't get him to you know, try your grips out. And we did that. I took him out there, showed him. He's like, these are awesome. These are great. But he goes, I actually need a couple more adjustments made. And we're like, what? We thought we had it all figured out. We thought these were ready to go. And we immediately started scrambling, got those. Those issues fixed. And it was some simple things of, like, buckle placements on the outside of the wrist, so that way they're not digging on the inside of the wrist. And we got those. We got those developed, got them back to him as quickly as possible, and he's like, man, I really didn't think I'd ever see you guys again. And we got him to him. He loved them. And from this day forward, I mean, he's been a big part of the process of us gaining credibility into the CrossFit space and the fitness space. And we've continued to build off of the influencers because, you know, because of him.

So what was the approach for getting more influencers? Or was the fact that you had one really good one kind of a domino that made it easier for others?

I think starting with Nick in this case, gave us a little bit of credibility because he had made the CrossFit Games two years in a row, which making the CrossFit Games is a huge, huge, huge accomplishment. So he had a pretty good following. I think at the time. He probably had, what, 70,000 followers or something like that on Instagram at the time. But when he was promoting our brand, it really gave some credibility right away from there. He actually made a couple introductions to a few other athletes we still work with to this day. And within that circle, there's only so many people that are at that high, highest level. Right. And there's tons of other people that are super competitive, but when they see somebody at that super high level doing it just like anything else. Well, I liken it to the Michael Jordan theory. You know, like, if I wear Michael Jordan shoes, then I'm going to jump higher, I'm going to run faster, I'm.

Going to shoot better, I'm going to.

Do all this thing. Well, if these athletes are wearing this. Well, if I wear that or I use that, then I can be better too. Right. Which actually our tagline kind of is to get better. Right. Because if you're not getting better, you're getting worse.

Yeah.

So you got to go one way or the other. But aside from that, I think that immediately gave us credit credibility with somebody that has been at the highest level, and we've kind of taken that and gotten our grips. We've never been shy about getting our product in the hands of high level athletes because of that reason. Whether we work with them super close or just, you know, we want them wearing, wearing our stuff around, it works. It really does.

So top 1%.

So you establish a foothold with, you know, one really good product, you do a couple rounds of making that product better, really getting it, you know, as good as it possibly can be, you get credibility with these, you know, high level athletes and stuff like that. What did it look like to go from that base to scaling the company across other products and introducing things and growing the company that way?

Yeah, you know, that's, that's kind of the, you know, the nature of entrepreneurship. Right. We knew that we wanted to keep the, the hand grips, the flagship, and we still do this to this day because that, that's really what separates us from anything else at this point is we're going to have the best hand grip out there. But we also know to continue to grow and grow as a company that it's very important to bring on high quality products that high level athletes are going to continue to want to use. And we didn't want to do that in the sense of just putting anything out there. We maintain the approach, just like we did the grips, that if we're going to bring a product out, it's going to be elite, it's going to have, be a difference maker and it's going to be something that, you know, the, the top 1% of CrossFit athletes are going to want to wear. And we've maintained that approach. It's been successful to this point. And a lot of that, I think has to do with the continue, you know, the ability to continue to work with these influencers at a high level that, you know, they want to continue wearing those products because of where they're at and their ability.

So I know that you started on Amazon, but only like half of your revenue comes from Amazon. Would you tell me what the development of the other side of the business?

Yeah, I think one of the biggest things, and as Nate alluded to earlier, listening to actually your podcast, Ryan, one of the big things that drew us to you was that Amazon's gonna be there, right? So there's gonna be people shopping on there and whatnot. But if we can try to create that brand and differentiate ourselves and get on another platform where we have more control, where we have better margins, where we can better serve our customers, that has been very beneficial. For us, we've got wholesalers that we work with all across the world. We ship stuff all across the world all the time. Because there's people in all these countries that's very difficult for them to get high quality products. So that's been very good and that's been a constant focus for us as we built this brand is to try to move that needle away from Amazon and we've been very successful at it. Last month we were over 60% not Amazon, which is great. So we always wanted to get like to 50 50. And we just keep moving the needle the other way where we have just more control over everything we do away from Amazon.

Where does most of the time traffic come from?

Facebook ads, Facebook ads, Instagram ads. We're very heavy with all that. And it's a. We were talking to George last night. It's a game. Yeah, it really is, you know, and it's figuring out the game and putting yourself around a team of people that really understand how that stuff works, you know, and it's exciting because Nate and I have tried Facebook ads and done this stuff and, and I think it's very easy for people to try it and maybe throw $100 at it and say, oh, this shit doesn't work because they don't know how to do it and they just throw it to a wide bucket of people. But if you really know what you're doing or you find somebody on your team that knows what they're doing that can really target in, it's very effective.

Would you walk us through a bit of the overall strategy of how you're doing that? Because buying traffic to a physical product and giving that to ROI can be a challenge. So you've either got to have an ad that's really dialed in an upsell sequence that makes it it ROI or something else that makes it sustainable. So what has that been for you?

Well, I think, and one thing to add kind of goes hand in hand with that question, Ryan is. And when we started talking about this a few months back about really developing a very strong email campaign as well. So whenever we're going to launch a new product, we have a general audience to start with. And now we can utilize a very good email campaign to kind of get the ball rolling, especially, especially on let's say the Amazon side, because that's always the most difficult to really get, you know, to get going. And then you throw in hand in hand with the Facebook ads that's driving people back to could be Amazon. But normally we're Driving them back to our website. And then it's, you know, follow up sequences, whether it's an email campaign that's going to follow up or whether it's even just, you know, some of the feedback genius responses of, you know, hit those touch points. And from there I think it's just a matter of having very effective campaigns, very effective influencers, very effective advertising, using our faces in the space that are recognizable. And from there we've had the success of being able to launch a product, but then also not launch a product, but continuing to be able to maintain that product and keep it moving.

So you guys, I mean, I've heard you list out all of these different ways that you're coming into contact with your audience, right? You have Facebook ads, you're selling to wholesalers, you have events where you're going and you have a physical presence there. You have Amazon, you have your own website. How do you create a consistent brand experience when you're across all of those channels?

Good question.

That is a good question.

I was like silenced.

I don't know. I think, Max, to answer your question, is we, we try to be very present. Nate and I work our ass off. We got a team of people that we continue to grow with us that are super supportive and really believe in the brand and growing the brand as well. Which is awesome because everybody like eats, sleeps, breathes it, you know. We just moved into a new warehouse here in February. And the first thing, like our wives who also work with us, we're kind of blown away because actually Nate and I's priority in this new warehouse was like, where are we gonna put the gym? Because we're a fitness brand, we gotta have a gym in here. We gotta be able to practice what we preach and work out. And one of the things is like, well, we recently put in a basketball hoop too. I mean, we're from Indiana, right? We gotta have basketball hoop. But it's like midday, I think two days ago, right before we came here, it was like 10:30am and we just start firing off a basketball game right in the middle of the day in the warehouse. And all the warehouse guys are there and Brooke, our customer service girl, is there and she's, you know, making little Instagram stories and things like that where we're playing a game of knockout because it's getting heated, you know. Yeah, but that, that's like the thing that's really fun for us to do, but I think we're so engulfed in this. We believe this. We love the community, we love doing the events we do about eight or nine major events. We just got done with all five regional, US regionals and the CrossFit Games, which are major events to be at. But it's, it's there where we're meeting our customer base, where we're interacting with them, which is just, it's so much fun to get to know these people and they come up and they give us feedback and they, you know, just love the brand and hey, what do you guys got next? You know, or you ever thought about this? You know, that. I mean, that's the fun thing part. And having a team that believes it just like we do, I think it's just diving in that team that believes.

It just like you guys do is such an amazing thing to be able to find. How do you recruit for that? Like, when you're interviewing, when you're looking for people, how can you tell the ones that are really bought in and the ones that are just kind of looking for a gig?

That's a tough question too, because we've been fortunate that so far the team that we have in place has really either been somebody that we've identified and have tried to, you know, move the ball forward and bringing them onto the team, or we got lucky on doing some interviews based on recommendations of people that, you know, thought they would be a good fit and they've been an absolute great fit. So moving forward from here, I don't know how we're going to approach, you know, bringing on new team members. Hopefully it'll be as easy as it has been up to the spot point. But I think what it ultimately comes down to is we're looking, we're looking for people that are going to be, you know, like us, hard working, going to enjoy the fitness space you got. I really think you have to enjoy the fitness space because it's, it's, it's something that we're living and breathing kind of every day at the office and in the warehouse and really just being able to grow with all the changes because we talk about it all the time with our, you know, with our employees. I mean, tomorrow is going to look different than it did yesterday, no doubt about it. I mean, it is changing, you know, every single day that we, that we're in there. So if you're okay with that, then we're going to, we're going to have.

A lot of fun.

If you need, you know, structure, it might be a little difficult place for you to work at. So, but, but to me, that's the fun part. Of it. We really enjoy that, you know, and then you got to be ready to throw down for a workout in the middle of the day.

So just, just to weave the story.

Together so far, you started with the grips. That was the first product, did fairly well and started to take off. But the inflection point was you brought on that first influencer because they bought into it, they started to promote it. From there. You had enough cash flow and you had enough of an audience to where you could start creating other products. And now you have a distribution model, a distribution process of combining the following that's coming from influencers and content. Using Amazon, using the previous customer base. And now it's starting to bubble up, now it's starting to grow. And then you start to bring on other influencers and then the whole pot started to get bigger. Is that fair up until this point?

Yeah, I think it is. And we continue to add new products too. So we started with the hand grips. Now We've got over 30 products. We've got over 300 SKUs. Unfortunately, almost everything that we've got has multiple sizes and colors and variations, which can be a nightmare. But it's good. You got to have multiple product offerings. And one other thing that, with this, that I think should be noted is when Nate and I started this whole thing kind of out of the garage, we were both full time in medical sales. I've got two kids, Nate's got three, you know, that are all like under.

The age of what?

Eight? Eight. All five kids under the age of eight. We got wives who had full time jobs. We were, like I said, in full time in medical sales. And we, we didn't know that this was all going to happen. You know, we just kind of started it and it just kind of took off. And last July 2017, we finally walked away from our jobs and stepped away and went full time with this, which, you know, Nate was pushing for and thank goodness he was, and I was a little more resistant. But it's. Fortunately it's all worked out and we've been able to really just dive in and focus on this whole thing, which has been. Doctors are great, they save people, but they can be real assholes.

Sure they can.

So calling on them all day, you know, this is, I mean, we're going.

From that to serving an audience that you're a member of, that you're really passionate about. I imagine that just, it's really fulfilling too.

Well, and I think one thing to add on that is, was very important for us to be able to scale was for those two years before we went full time, we didn't take a dollar out of the business and we were fortunate enough that we didn't need to.

But I think what that allowed us to do was like you were alluding to Ryan, was bring on more products, bring on more influencers, invest back into the business and continue scaling and growing and not worry about pulling money out of it. That could have slowed that growth down. And I really to this day believe that that's what has propelled us to get us to this point. And we still actually, what's funny is we still actually kind of approach it that way. We were very conservative and I think that that's what's going to be the payoff is because of having an approach and not being, you know, so apt to take money out of the business, keep it in the business, keep, keep it rolling, keeping it growing.

So what do you focus on now at this point? You've been full time in this business for just over a year, meaning you both left your nine to five jobs and even full time at this for just over a year. You're starting to bring on more staff, you've moved into a warehouse. What do you folk like? Where do you put your attention now to keep growing?

Well, I, I think, you know, we're still very hungry. I mean, we're still, we consider ourselves ground level still. We're, there's a lot of growth still here, A lot of growth to be done in the United States, a lot of growth to be done with new products. One thing we're really excited about is we're really making a push now for Europe, Australia. So there's a lot of markets that are starting to experience the growth, especially in Crossfit that the United States did, you know, four or five years ago. And some of those are Europe and Australia and South America. And we've, we were in the very beginning stages of really getting the ball rolling and getting those countries and those areas of the world exposed our products to where they can actually access them without having to pay a lot higher of shipping and customs and duties fees. And we're really focused on doing that. In addition to that, we're definitely looking at other areas in terms of additions. What else can we bring on to the Behr Complex label? Whether it's another product, whether it's something that can go hand in hand with the fitness space, we're always open to looking at things that we can do to continue growing the company.

Yeah, I'm curious how big you want to get or if this is ground level, you've been doing a great job at ground level. So what does the staircase look like?

I'm not really sure, to be honest. I think as Nate alluded to there, there's a tremendous amount of potential in the rest of the world. And we've been serving those customers for years. You know, for two to three years since we've been started, we've been, we've been shipping all over the world, but really setting in and getting distribution within those different areas, I think is going to bring a large amount of growth here in the, in the coming year. Adding new products. We have a brand, we have people that really enjoy our brand, that give us feedback on ideas and new products as well. And just building that community and continuing to dive into that, I think is going to continue to bring new things because we were talking about it the other day. We probably work way harder than we should on some of this, but we're so passionate about it. We just dive in and throw in every single thing that we, that we have and sometimes we exhaust ourselves. But I'm pretty sure there's, there's not too many people that are working this thing as hard as we are, to be honest with you. So if we can continue to add new things and new offerings and just continue to build that brand and in our community, I think we're going to be in a good spot.

So.

Hey, podcast listeners. So, as you may or may not know, January 20th through the 23rd is the capitalism Conference in Dallas, Texas. It is going to be a really, really cool event and it always sells out. So have you been before? So great. If you have, then you already know how good of an event it is and you should have already bought your ticket. And if you haven't been, well, let me tell you, I've been to a lot of conferences and this is hands down one of the best. It has a really killer lineup of speakers. Ryan always does a good job of bringing in people who have built, you know, nine figure brands and, you know, the wealth strategists to the world's richest people and all that kind of stuff. But if possible, the networking is honestly even better than the content. Right? The content is going to help you move forward, but those connections can really, really be transformative to your business and you will not find a better group of entrepreneurs, investors and specialists congregating anywhere else. So I'm being 100% honest from my own experience. It's really likely that your biggest business changing connections are going to come out of this conference. So if you haven't bought your ticket yet, it's not too late. But just make sure to pick it up as soon as possible because like I said, this event does sell out and it's coming up soon, January 20th to 23rd in Dallas, Texas. So hopefully I will see you there.

Talking about work ethic and outworking everybody else. Do you have a strategy that you're following to go from where you are now to where you want to be or is that you are working and looking for the next breakthrough?

Yeah, so we're working on that. Actually. We're working with our team to be better about that because it's one of the things that we lack is the structure of this because there's so many pieces that are moving so quickly. And here in a couple weeks, we're sitting down and trying to have a strategy with our marketing team, with our email campaign guys, and just getting everybody on the same page because for the last four months, with all the events that we've done, it's just been like, we'll handle it after the CrossFit Games after all this, because we've been swimming, you know, and now we've got a window of four to five months here where we don't have any major events until January where we can really try to refocus and re, you know, ground ourselves and get ourselves in a position to continue that growth.

Yeah.

So I want to ask you, you.

Go to a lot of these events, tell me about the ROI or the net benefit, the gain that you get from going to the trade shows that are CrossFit related. I know you, you spent a lot of time and energy going, setting up booths and sponsoring them and going and being present there. That's a lot for a physical products brand. So tell me why you do it.

I think the most important thing, Ryan, is it's that presence we were talking about a little while ago. We don't go to those looking like, okay, we're going to these shows because we're going to try to make a lot of money today. Right. We look at it more as it's going to be a presence. We're going to be out in front of our direct consumer, our direct target audience. We're going to shake hands with people that, you know, are our fans, people that may not know who we are. And where I think the growth comes from going to the events is whenever somebody buys, say, a pair of grips or a pair of knee sleeves or a weight belt and then they go back to their gym after, say the CrossFit games. And they use the product and they love the product and they start talking to other gym members and they're like, yeah, you know what? Got these new pair of grips. They're awesome on the bar. I can hang on for five more toto bars. You know, I've never been able to do that. And all of a sudden I think you start to see the spider, you know, the spider legs come out. And we always see a jump in sales after these major events. And we truly believe it's because of that presence of, you know, athletes taking these things back home to their gyms. Usually they're probably some of the more athletic or better crossfitters in their gym. That's what I was going to ask.

About is you're going to these, you know, these are high level events, right? The people who travel to regionals. A lot of times, you know, if they're not athletes in participating themselves, they're still, they're the ones that are really into it. They're super engaged. They're kind of like you're, you're most likely to be advocates. So do you focus on them and then kind of let them carry the message out or how does that work?

Yeah, and I think that's exactly what it is. I think, you know, even you just go to your local gym and you have, you definitely have different levels of athletes, right? You have some of your beginners, you have some intermediate, you have some that have been doing it for a couple of years and you have some that are really advanced and you have some that are elite. And some of the beginners and intermediate, they really look up to some of those advanced and elite athletes. And that's typically what you're going to find that come to some of these events that we're at is some of those advanced and elite athletes. And you know, when people come back with those products and they start talking to gym members and I think you really start to see the marketing piece take off. And it's kind of indirect marketing piece, which if you think about it, it's probably our cheapest marketing, you know, that we spend is just the word of mouth. And I think that's the biggest thing, the biggest reason why we go to those. It's not so much, you know, again, just you're looking for a sale. Yeah, we go to those. Yeah, we're like, if we can break even at this thing, it's a win, right? And it's more of getting the product out there in as many hands as possible and allowing it to spread, you know, through the other gyms throughout the world.

So I guess the other thing on those events, right, is at this point, you know, you're talking about the growth of CrossFit four or five years ago, right. At this point, CrossFit's pretty big in the U.S. right? These events, they're not cheap to set up boots at. I'm sure you've got a bunch of other brands that have also paid. How. How does Bear Complex stand out in that crowd in a pretty saturated market?

We give koozies away.

Yes.

This sounds ridiculous, Max, I got to tell you. But don't tell our secrets, man. Maybe we shouldn't dive into this. But everybody that goes to one of these knows anyway, so we really try to. It sounds so ridiculous because we bring thousands and thousands of koozies, and nobody's gonna beat us at the koozie game. Okay? We've had other brands that have tried to beat us at the koozie game. They run out, like, the first day they blow their wad. Right. So you would be. People love free stuff, right?

Yep.

Can we agree?

Yeah, absolutely.

All right. So we have these koozies, and we'll have. Oftentimes, we'll have some friends and stuff that'll help us at the booths. And, you know, they don't know anything else to do in the booth besides maybe hand out koozies. But how many times we've. People will be walking by, you hand them a koozie because they've got, like, a Fit Aid or a Killcliffe drink or whatever. And our koozies are made to fit the little slender cans, okay.

Like the ones.

And people light up like a Christmas light bulb when you give them a little koozie. And the next thing they know, they look at the koozie, and then they kind of look up and they're like, oh. And then they just walk right in.

Right?

So little things like that. But it allows us to engage with those customers. And look, if you come in and buy something, great. If you come in, I guarantee you're going to laugh or have a good time, because we've got people in there that are just, like, having a good time. Like, we're hanging out, shooting the shit. We're asking you where you're from. We're making it an experience, you know, And I think that's one of the big things that we do with these booths. And what makes it so much fun is it's an experience like, hey, I stopped by the Bear complex booth. Those dudes are a little wild.

Yeah.

You know, from time to time or Nate's brother was riding. Have you ever seen the one wheel?

Yeah. Yes.

So we have, like one of the one wheels. So people come by and like, ride the one wheel, like in front of our booth and like, do stuff like that. And they just want to, like, hang out, you know, which is really fun for us. But we just try to make an experience for everybody, you know, so.

Yeah, like what? Once again, a recurring theme on these discussions is how it often it always comes back to connections with people and the person behind the purchase of the product. And so many people just think about the product and had you just done another grip.

Yep.

Somebody would have knocked. Like somebody would have undercut you.

Yeah.

Or had you just done the grip and not worried about the connection between people, then you probably never would have scaled. You never gotten to this point. It was. It's the. The intent behind the connection of the customer. And that's something that is hard to create a system out of. You have to actually care.

Yeah. And I think. You know what, Ryan? I think that's the fun part, actually. We enjoy. We're people persons. We've been in sales our whole lives, our whole careers leading up to this point of bear complex. We enjoy meeting people, talking to people, listening to them, learning about their lives. One of the fun things we had the opportunity to do at the CrossFit Games two weeks ago is we actually sponsored happy hour.

At a bar in Madison, which is kind of like. I think it's a college bar actually, called Whiskey Jacks Plug.

Whiskey Jacks. Yeah.

You're in the greater Madison area.

Go. So, yeah, so we. We sponsored happy hour Whiskey Jacks for five nights. And it was so cool to be able to get a lot of the bear complex fans and. And customers out there just to come in and say hello, have a couple drinks with us and just have a good time. And. And that's. To us, that's what it's all about. You know, it's not so much we. It's not all about buying a pair of grips or buying, you know, something for your fitness journey. It's more about, you know, it's more about the relationships like you're talking about that we enjoy. So it's definitely one of the reasons that we do this.

Do you ever see your products being used in CrossFit gyms when you travel?

That's the best part.

So I want you to tell me about an experience that that happens.

It happens so this weekend's gonna be a little tough to get into a drop in because we're kind of outside of the Austin city limits and there's not much in between. But we always make it focus to drop into a gym and goes without feeling. Well, usually we go in branded. Yeah. And when two or three guys walk in with the same T shirt or a bear complex, you know, they start to wonder like, you know, why is everybody matching?

Yeah.

But I can't remember the last time we've been in a gym where we haven't seen somebody with like a pair of grips or knee sleeves or a belt or something like that. And when we first started, you know, we didn't see all that. But nowadays, like, I think we've been out there enough that we've made a name that people have it in one capacity or another. And that's the coolest part. And what does that feel like? Usually it's, you know, hey, give them a hand pound give them a handshake, like, hey man, thank you for your business kind of thing. And usually when we drop into these places, we've got a backpack full of stuff anyway that we're leaving. We'll leave a banner with the gym. We'll leave a bunch of grips that they can give for, like, their next competition.

You know, whatever it may be. And we leave it with the gym so they can give them out however they feel. And usually if we're sweating with a bunch of people in a workout, you know, we'll give them free pairs of grips or knee sleeves or whatever we got on us. And people love that. They absolutely love that. You know, to be out there sweating with them, going through the trend. Max, you do CrossFit, you know, I got you. It's like a bomb, though.

Yeah, there is. I mean, there's something after you've done a workout with somebody, especially if it just sucks. Yeah, right. You finish that and you're like, there's.

A bond there that you wouldn't have otherwise.

Right.

Like, Max, please pick me up off the ground.

Yeah, yeah. Like, I'm making my sweat ankle. Yeah.

But, yeah, we always. We always try to make a point to do that whenever we drop in. And. And I mean, seeing that, though, to answer your question, is like so humbling because it's like, man, we. We just appreciate. We appreciate so much everybody that, you know, hangs out with us that is part of the community and enjoys our products, like, it's. It's really a cool thing.

And I will say, on the flip side, of that is whenever we do do these drop ins. We do a lot of drop ins.

You said doo doo.

Do a lot.

You said doo doo.

I did, sorry. Is seeing somebody with a competitor grip or a competitor belt or, you know, and being able to actually have a discussion with them and talk to them about being able to try what we would consider a, you know, a more elite product and be able to bring that to the, you know, to the limelight for them. I think that's also, you know, a lot of fun whenever we do these drop ins is just being able to spread the word and. And that goes hand in hand with being able to give them a pair right then and there, say, hey, here's a brand new pair of grips. You gotta try these. Once you like and love them, tell everybody.

So Max, something that you have helped.

Me with and something that you focus.

On so much is really dialing in the target and best customer.

And what's interesting about this space is CrossFit has matured to some extent, certainly grown, but it's still a tight community. It's still like everyone who does who's serious about CrossFit is your ideal customer.

Which I imagine makes the targeting process a lot simpler or at least clearer.

To be able to advertise and build up the audience. And I'm just curious your thoughts.

Yeah, and I guess I actually disagree with that as someone who is in the community. Right. There's not everyone is gonna be the type of person that is gonna use grips.

Right.

Not everyone is at that level. I mean, if you're just hanging from the bar for the first time. So there's definitely. I think you guys are exactly the right strategy by targeting that kind of like top 1% first and then letting it kind of spread down from there based on people who are interested and stuff like that. But I guess I'm interested in that as well. And I'll turn it back over to you guys is CrossFitters are brand people branded across the shirt, branded across the knee sleeves.

Right.

They want the bright colors, they want the grips, they show off the brand. So how do you encourage that behavior or do you find that you have to do people just do it naturally?

I think people definitely like the loud within the space, so different ways you can do that. And we try to have a mix, you know, because not everybody likes loud stuff. So we have plain, you know, black or plain blue. We have reversible knee sleeves that are like look like a saved by the bell party on one side, but you flip them inside. Out and.

You know, that kind of stuff to make it fun. But within regards to, you know, the different levels you were discussing there. Yeah. Not everybody's gonna need a pair of hand grips, right? But we have all these other products that can work for them too, like resistance bands, for example. Maybe you've never got a pull up on your own, you know, with nothing. We have the resistance bands you can tie around the bar that you can, you know, continually try to elevate your game and get up above the bar. And by starting with a thicker band and working through that, you know, maybe the next week you can move down a size to get to a little bit thinner band. And those are all part of the progressions in the CrossFit space. The good part about all this is the community is behind you. As Nate said earlier, there's, you know, like four or five different levels, levels of athlete in the gym and we can in some way, you know, help all of those, those people. You know, if it's a six year old grandmother that is getting in there for the first time, but she's had knee pain her whole life. You know, we've got light knee sleeves that are good for her. She doesn't need the big bulky knee sleeves that power lifters are using to squat 500 pounds, but we have a nice thin knee sleeve that they can use for that kind of stuff. So there's various different levels of athletes and there's various different levels of the products that they're going to use throughout the thing. And that's kind of one of our evolutions with this whole thing is to be able to accommodate everybody in different aspects of their progression.

So when it comes to brand though, I think that there's a lot of benefit in having specificity who you're serving. Right. So if you had to boil it down to like your, your core customer, right, the one who's going to be most predictive of your success now and going forward.

Right.

Who does that person look like to you?

I think that looks like the athlete that is in the gym five days a week. Right. You know, again, it comes down to you. Call it four levels. You got beginner, intermediate, advanced, elite. It's going to be more of that intermediate, advanced. Somebody that's in there five days a week. They're really serious, serious about their fitness. Doesn't matter how good they are, but they're really serious about their fitness and taking care of themselves and, and getting a workout in and taking care of their bodies. Those are the people that are probably Identifying products that can help them in the gym every single day, from anything from hand grips to weight belts to knee sleeves to elbow sleeves to jump ropes to resistance bands. Doesn't matter. They know that they. They need this product for them to continue to get better and better at CrossFit.

Okay. And I'm gonna keep pushing you here just because I'm having a good time.

Okay?

But that person that you described, right, Totally makes sense. Again, there are a shitload of other companies that are out there selling to that person. Right. So what does it say about that person that they choose Bear complex over rogue over fringe over any of the other two dozen brands that are out there selling the same stuff to these people?

Yeah, I think, again, you alluded to it earlier about starting from the top down, you stopping starting at the top 1%. We've been fortunate enough to work with some of, I mean, the greatest CrossFit athletes in the game, and I think that that has allowed us to build that specific credibility. And it kind of goes back to the spider legs effect. It's, you know, you start with some of those athletes, and then it kind of triggers down to some of the top athletes that are just in their particular local gym. And then it triggers down even further into some of those, you know, advanced athletes and intermediate. Intermediate athletes. And I don't know if you can do anything better than having the top 1% say, you know what, these are the best scripts on the planet, or these are. This is the best weight belt on the planet, and this is why I use it. I mean, this is why. And give that testimonial of why they're using it. I mean, we can run all the Facebook ads, we can run all the email campaigns, we can go to these events and, you know, say hi to everybody. But at the end of the day, I don't know if you can replace that influencer that is behind you 100%. And it's. It's authentic. Yeah, it's authentic. And that's the best part about it. All the influencers we work with, we go, we meet with them face to face and we have a conversation with them. And it's because they've typically already been using our product and they really want to jump on board and be a part of the. The team. And I don't think that. I don't think we could ask for a better sales pitch of our brand, of our products. And it's been. It's been great for the growth of us to continue this process.

Well, dudes, I agree with you that you're on the ground floor of something massive. I'm so proud to have a small part in it. Congratulations on what you've done. I'm so excited on where you're going next. Just stoked for the two of you and all that you have done up into this point, all the blood, sweat and tears putting into it. And I know it's just the beginning of what will continue to be something great. Congratulations. Thanks for hanging out with us guys.

Thanks for having us.

Thanks.

Appreciate it. Hey Brand Builders, we hope you enjoyed this podcast by capitalism.com check out our website for upcoming events and additional content about building businesses, building brands and investing. My name is Max Herwick and my my mission in life is to transform businesses into brands. Do you have any feedback about the show, any guests you want to see, case studies covered, topics explored, or frankly, just any questions about branding in general, just shoot me an email@maxmaxrandbuilderstrategy.com again, that's maxrandbuilderstrategy.com and I'd love to hear from you. One quick note if you could subscribe to the podcast or even leave us a review on itunes. These things really do make a big difference if you helping us book amazing guests and then also helping people just like you find the podcast. So thanks and we'll see you next time.