How Jason Grew 3x & Crossed $250k/mo During The Pandemic

Hey guys and girls, welcome to capitalism.com today we have a really fun case study with Jason Franciosa. Now, if that name sounds familiar, it's because he made an appearance here on the podcast about a year ago when he was asking me a question about getting over the hump of a million dollars a year. Well, now he's back because he has more than 3 Xed since that time. So what the heck happened in the interim between when we last spoke and we break that down in this episode? One more thing that I want you to pay attention to is that Jason and I are kind of the head coaches at the Capitalism Incubator. So Jason is on the kind of day to day tactical stuff and I'm on vision and an advisory role for our students that are coming up through the Capitalism Incubator. So if you hear us talking about Cap Inc. Or the students or informally referencing the incubator, we're talking about the Capitalism Incubator, which is really our mentoring group for people who are building the foundation of a seven figure business. But if you want to get in line for the next round to work with Jason, myself and the rest of our team and the community, you can apply over@Capitalism.com Inc.Capitalism.com Inc. This is a case study with Jason Franciosa about crossing the first million and then scaling into over $3 million within a year's time. Enjoy.

Jason, welcome back, my friend. Good to see you.

Hey, Ryan, how you doing?

Not as good as you because you've had a couple milestones. You were on the show.

Last year sometime where you were just on the cusp of crossing the first million or pacing the first million. Right. You were like at just below that 83ish thousand a month, I think it was. And all we've done is turn around. Less than a year later.

You'Re pacing about $3 million. So first of all, congratulations, my friend.

Thank you. Yeah, it's, it's incredible. It's exciting. I think that's the really word that captures it. Like every day you wake up and you check, you're like, wow, those numbers are really big.

Besides that, not much is different, but the numbers are so cool.

Yeah. So that was actually my first question is, does anything feel different? And you're saying it's exciting but not all that different.

Yeah, well, so I think a lot's changed once we've got to this point where money is no longer like a constraint. So we built our business very efficiently. So considering the revenues we're doing and the profit margins we have and what we actually utilize our cash for. We have so much extra cash. We just did a big distribution like, two months ago. I talked to you about that a little while ago.

By distribution, I mean you paid yourself some money from the business along a little while ago.

Yeah, like a big chunk. Not just like what we do. Every payout from Amazon, it was like, wow, okay, this is crazy. We have so much extra cash. I don't know what to do with it. Let's just pay ourselves.

So that's new.

Now, before you keep going, because we had a conversation about exactly this, where you felt bad taking the distribution. You were like, what do I do with this money? I should do something productive with this. And I was like, the best thing you can do is to take the money for yourself because you'll be able to chill for half a second and run a better business. So you never did tell me that's what you did. So this is news to me that you did take the money and you're saying it did help you chill a little bit.

Yeah, and not only did it help me chill, but it made sure that I didn't go and blow a bunch of money on shiny objects.

In the business.

In the business. So, I mean, you and I work with multiple entrepreneurs every week, and the one thing we were always trying to do is, like, swat away shiny objects. And then I get this money and I'm sitting there looking at shiny objects. I got to take my own advice for the shiny objects, understand where I should focus my efforts and then utilize the capital for what is going to have a high roi. Don't just start experimenting and blowing money and then creating inefficient business when efficiency is what got us here.

So let's talk about that a little bit, because you are swatting away shiny objects, but you still went from under a million dollars to now pacing $3 million in about a year. I think a little bit under a year. So what is different? What have you done differently? Where have you made investments that have created that jump?

So doubling down on what's working and then not worrying so much about width is what I like to call it, and worrying more about depth. So instead of just worrying about, like, well, what product we launch this month or what opportunity is there or what sales channel are we going to go after thinking, like, this is working, how do we get the most out of what we're doing here and now? And I think that's what's really helped us escalate so quickly. And I think that's what kind of took us so long to get to the first. Well, not long, but it took us about two years to get the first million. But then we get to 3 million dollar run rate in one year. And it was those first two years was a huge learning experience of trying to figure everything out. So I was constantly taking trainings on different things and experimenting with different things and I was all over the place. But once I got clear and I saw success in one area, doubling down on that and then just dumping everything into that sales channel, into that marketing strategy, into that traffic source.

And bringing it all together and then having inventory to support that is kind of what allowed us to have such rapid growth. And then on top of that, I mean, just E Commerce in general, it is blue ocean again. Like all people talk about 2013, 2014, when anybody can make millions of dollars. It's that all over again right now. Because e commerce in 2019 was 11% of retail. This year it's 16%. I mean that's huge explosion of new customers coming to E commerce. And the amount of sellers that came on board increased as well, but not proportionally to the amount of customers. So I mean, there's so much opportunity right now.

Yeah. And we're still in like inning three, so it's getting real fun right now. Now, Jay, you're also. We work together on the capitalism incubator like you. You have helped craft some of our curriculum and you're kind of head coach around these parts. So you're seeing those early stages reflected back to you. And it was only, you know, two years ago that you were, you were in that grind. Right. You were scraping by to get the business going two years ago. And now you're helping people go through those early stages. So what are you seeing.

Happen in those early stages that's reminding you of your early stages?

I think it's just.

This takes time and people hear 12 months and they hear like all these crazy like sales pitches and stuff. And it's absolutely possible. Even 12 months is not like a week away. So you get really anxious when you don't see results like a week later or a month later. We just had one of the members pass $10,000 a month. And he's been really anxious for the last couple months because he just launched and he's like, I don't have $100,000 a month yet. Like, what's wrong with me? It hasn't even been like two months and you're worried about this. So I mean, I think there's a lot of that anxiety. And because you have that anxiety, you're looking for like, well, what am I doing wrong? What am I missing? What do I need to chase after? But in reality, you're doing everything right. It just takes some time. So I think we see a lot of that. And then it's really like, none of this is difficult. All right, sorry, Let me rephrase that. I said that wrong. None of this is complex.

Much better words.

Yes. So nothing that like we teach or really e commerce in general is all that complex.

It's just.

Takes a lot to understand that and just to be able to focus on what's important. So getting that mindset shift of like, stop trying to overcomplicate the whole process and understand that all you need to do is serve a person, provide products in front of them that truly help them along their journey, and then just be that outlet for them to express themselves and become who they want to be. And that's it.

Well, it reminds me of that conversation we had right when you were about to cross the million when you were on the show as a student, because I remember giving you the advice of going all in on the person rather than selling more weightlifting belts. And that was kind of a moment for you. And we kind of talked out some of the messaging around that. And I think I told you that your job is not to convince anybody that you're Yoda. It's to convince them that they're Luke Skywalker. And you getting clear and clear about who your person is, I think has allowed you to focus on serving that person, which has allowed you to create more raving fans, which has gotten you more reviews, which has allowed you to raise your prices, which has allowed you to increase your profit margins, which has allowed you to spend more on advertising. So it's not about doing anything different. It's just less but better.

Absolutely.

Yeah. We're seeing that a lot in Cap Inc. Where as soon as somebody gets the person nailed, product 1, 2, 3 and 4 is just obvious. And then they cast their vision and they can go all in. I'm curious. It's been fun for me helping this group at the early stages because we're forcing them to cast long term visions, which most people don't do.

You've been a part of that journey. I'm curious what it's been like for you seeing them cast those visions.

Well, the coolest part about it, so we did the pitches, so we basically made them present their business like they were presenting to an investor. Actually, they were presenting to investors. But the coolest part about forcing them to do that was there was a huge mindset shift and this could be a million dollar business to this could be a hundred million dollar business. And a lot of them didn't see that. They couldn't understand that or comprehend that what they're building is real and it's not just a cash flow play. It's not just, I'm going to get to a million, and that's like the thing. So that was really cool with the exercise. And I think even some of their businesses that initially we had thought about, and again, it's going to be a $10 million business. After hearing them pitch or working with them to craft what their differentiation in the marketplace is, it's like, wow, that's really cool.

Now, Jason, this happened for you too. I heard you talk about it on one of our calls a couple months ago where you had, I think you had crossed 200,000amonth for the first time. And all of a sudden, as we kind of ran the numbers, an eight figure exit wasn't such a crazy idea anymore. And you've got some room to grow still. But all of a sudden we started looking at the pace of growth that you were on and realizing that the numbers you would need to hit to have a very logical eight figure exit.

Were.

Not that far off. You could do it in a year and a half, two years if you kept up the growth that you were on. And. And.

You said something like, and I might not even want to, which would have been a crazy idea for you even a year ago. So tell me about that mindset shift that you went through.

Yeah, I think once we were able to really dial in who we're serving and really start truly caring about that person's journey, it made the business so much more rewarding.

So the option with the business is even if we get, say a $10 million exit, I mean, that would be enough money. I have business partners, so I'd walk away with a little bit less than half of that. We have multiple business partners now.

It's more than enough money to where I could literally just go retire on a beach and do nothing and just the cash flow would support my lifestyle. So the money's not the issue. The issue is, would I enjoy it? And if I'm going to invest this money somewhere else, am I going to A, get the same return I'm going to get by running my business and B, am I going to get the same enjoy out of where my money is being Placed and the impact that I have. So I've had this big mindset shift of like, why would I sell this thing? And to me, the question there is when I stop or the answer there is when I stop enjoying the business. But I just don't see that in the near future, next few years. And if this keeps growing to the point where it becomes almost bureaucratic and frustrating and I don't enjoy it more, that's when I know it's time to sell. Yeah, but yeah, I mean, originally when you open these businesses, like you're in it for you and you're like, oh, I just want to get a million bucks and I can retire and live the good life. This is the good life. Like the day to day working with our customers. You have people reach out to us and tell how much, you know, one of our products, especially our new hand grips, they're very unique in that they grip the bar really well. We've had multiple people reach out saying they got their first muscle up ever, they got their first, you know, strings of pull ups ever. Because we have a very differentiated product that truly solves a problem that no other hand grip on the market solves. You know, most of them are very slippery or they need a lot of chalk or this other stuff. So like seeing how we impact people's lives and seeing how, you know, we're building something more than just a cash flow play or an Amazon business, it just made it so much more rewarding. And like, I'm extremely, very happy with what I do. I wake up every day and I'm excited to hop on my computer and get to work Now.

Jay, there were several moments in the last year we talked through where you were not excited, where you had a couple of oh crap moments. And I remember one of them being right when quarantine hit and your numbers took a dive. So walk me through what your mindset was around that time.

Yeah, it was March 16, the exact day our sales got cut by 50% overnight. And that was like a heart stopping moment. And you start going into that fight or flight response of, you know, how do I get this back? You know, you start thinking very short term, you start looking for other income sources just for stability. And you know, but we have a baby on the way and you know, my wife's pregnant and everything. So it's like things need to be stable or I'm going to fail as a father, as a husband. So everything comes crashing down irrationally. So and it's difficult, like I'm not going to sit here and lie to you and be like, oh, you know, you just suck it up. And I mean, looking back on it, even 50% of our sales were okay. Like 50% of our sales. I still have enough money coming to me and to my business partners. The business continues, everything's okay. But it's almost that cognitive dissonance of this is where we are. When we lose it, even though we're still fine, that fear just sinks in and it really crushes you. So, yeah, that was really challenging. And then we had a bunch of issues with inventory in June and July.

We had a shipment coming from our manufacturers and it took 30 days more than it was expected. Ran out of stock, and we had, we were doing like, we were going from like $5,000 a day in sales at the time down to about $1,000 a day. And I mean, again, just that like pucker moment. Like, oh, crap. So there's quite a few this year with that. But then we're like, okay, well, the worst thing that could happen to us is we run out of stock. And we experienced that. So we're going to take a crap ton of money. We took out a loan from the idl, which is the best loan ever. I mean, if you didn't take it, I feel bad for you. Because it was a 30 year fixed rate loan at 3.75% and a business loan with no personal guarantee. Like, it doesn't get better than that. So we took $140,000 and dumped all of it into inventory. We stocked it for about three months and now I have like a three month lead always. It is insane the amount of inventory that we have now.

What's beautiful about that is you'll never have that problem again because you had the problem.

Right.

It's like this silent thing in your brain that is, what if that happens? What if that happens? What if that happens? It happened, you dealt with it, it sucked, and now you'll never have that problem again. And now you're bigger and more profitable than you've ever been.

Absolutely. And if it does happen again, I'll be able to remember that everything will be okay and get through it much. Probably much more relaxed.

Yeah, you kind of like build up some muscle to it, which allows you to take more strategic risks without feeling like, well, if this goes wrong, the whole world is going to collapse. Like, I think you just hired your first full time employee, which is a risk in some way. It's a calculated investment and some people overanalyze that hire because they're afraid of what could happen if it goes wrong. But you've had much worse things happen than hiring a bad employee. You've run out of stock. You've had Covid hit, you've had sales go down, and yet you've still grown 300% in the last year. You can deal with a higher not going exactly as you wanted. And I imagine that gives you kind of the strength to take more strategic risks, which is why you've been able to accelerate your growth.

Absolutely. One thing I do want to bring up that I think I need to stress a little bit, is we get really obsessed about influencers, and influencers are extremely important. However.

If you don't get the perfect influence right away, like, don't overstress it. We just partnered with the number two CrossFit athlete in the world. He literally just took number two fittest athlete in the world. And the way that we partnered with him was we provided such great. Such a great brand experience to one of his good friends that his good friend put us in touch with them, had him reach out to us.

And, like, was a huge brand supporter and brand fan and pushed for us to have that connection. But that wouldn't have happened if we were just trying to be needy and grab him and chase him. Right.

I'm so glad you brought this up. So you didn't go to this person in a needy. In a needy way. You were giving to your sphere of influence, which opened up the door to the person that is now one of the faces of the brand.

Absolutely. Yeah. And I feel like that's one of the mistakes that I was always stressed about when I was starting out. And I see a lot happening with some of the new guys. The newer entrepreneurs as well, is like, oh, you know, I have to partner with Jessica Alba. Well, it's probably not going to happen, I mean, unless you have a direct connection or something like that. So there's nothing wrong starting small with very targeted and impactful influencers with smaller followings or. Or maybe not as reputable as, like, your dream.

Influencer, but they will come. Like, if you build an incredible brand experience and you build that brand reputation. And people love your brand because you're helping them and serving them and constantly giving. When there is that connection, they're going to push for you. It's just so cool. Even within our Facebook group, every single day, people are posting amazing amounts of content and support each other. Our job just gets easier and easier every year as we just build that relationship with those customers.

So that was A big focus of yours in the last year or so was building the relationship with those customers. Somewhere along your journey, you shifted from how do I make more sales? To how do I really be a great resource for these customers? So practically what switched in how you operate the business once you started to make that mindset shift?

So I gotta give a lot of credit to my business partner on this. He is a genius when it comes to like exercise science. And he's so passionate about physical fitness. And I mean, he has a doctor of physical therapy in the Haunting Yards. So the big shift to me happened when he, when I allowed him to really step into that role and be the person that he loves being with our customers. And he does this through Instagram DMs when people are reaching out to us there. He does this every single day in our Facebook group. He's just posting really supportive and help, not like teaching, but like, hey, how was your day today? How was your workouts today? What did you do today? And then kind of like helping people through their specific struggles. And then our emails, our emails are just so good. Now.

Most of our competitors, actually, I'm pretty sure all of them, if you sign up for their email list, it would be 95 to 99% new product launches, promotions or sales. Ours is probably closer to about 2% new product launches, promotions and sales. And the rest are like probably 4 to 5 paragraph interestingly written stories about customer experiences, journeys, tips, tricks, really just doing everything we can or everything that he enjoys in a servitude mentality.

So explain this to me because this has come up a lot inside of the capitalism incubator of things like what do you say to a person who is on your email list? Okay, we have people build launch lists in order to be able to ensure that they get sales from day one. But the question comes up, what do I say? And I kind of have my style for it that I teach people, but you have my attention. What do you and your business partner do in those four to five word or four to five paragraph emails that are so engaging?

So, I mean, a lot of storytelling and a lot of really understanding the journey that the customer's on and then connecting with them. So both my business partner and I are now doing CrossFit every single day. So there's a lot of like daily things that we go through and then he'll talk about that. Or you could talk about everything from like specific workouts that you come up throughout the year. It could be talking about things like the CrossFit games. It could be talking about different injuries that are very specific to types of training. It could be talking about some like even highlighting a lot of our customers. Actually yesterday we had a customer reach out who hit a PR. It was a 350 pound back squat priority. Just super excited. And he reached out to us because he totally forgot to Velcro his belt. So it was literally just what we call our self locking buckle supporting him on his biggest PR ever. He was just pumped. He was absolutely excited about that. So I mean, that right there is an amazing email just telling his story and about the excitement that he has and the motion that he felt being able to do that and not have to worry about his belt coming apart. And that will get us way more sales than if we just said, hey, Black Friday is coming up 30% off.

That will get you more sales than a discount. Is that what you said?

Absolutely.

Tell me why that is.

Because people can relate directly with the experience that person has on their journey, using our gear, our gear as the catalyst for them to achieve those goals. As opposed to, great, it's a little bit cheaper, I might as well test it.

Yeah, and I bet that the customers who buy are much more likely to be raving fans, reviewers and referrers than somebody who buys on a discount. And you couldn't do that if you weren't thinking about the person. If you were thinking about just selling more product, you're likely to get buyers. But they're not raving fans like those who buy when you tell a customer story.

Absolutely.

So tell me how important that email list has been for the growth of the business and the expansion of sales.

It's critical. So just so people understand our general business model, we still rely on Amazon for the majority of our traffic. To win on Amazon, you need to have reviews, ranking and optimized listings. Amazing product. If you don't have an amazing product, you're gonna suck. But in order to get those things, the easiest way to do it in the least expensive way is having a raving fan base. Because they're gonna become your push, your spearhead to be excellent Amazon. You don't ever have to break the rules. You don't ever have to do black hat tactics. You don't ever have to do rebates or use like tricks and hacks and all this other crap. You just have to have a rating fan base who loves the product because you actually care about them. So that's kind of like our business model wrapped into a very simplistic ball. But it's really not complicated. Like, like we said earlier, there's nothing about this is complex. It just takes time and effort and energy to build that momentum.

How did you build that email list that has now impacted your sales so much?

So first, at first we did a lot of stuff like giveaways and everything else. And that was a terrible idea. Like I, if I could go back and change one thing, it would be obsessing over numbers of emails and not the quality. And then to get the quality emails that when we first started out, a lot of it came down to just excellent customer service. Reaching out to our customers as much as possible and having that the framework for them to have somewhere to go. So having our Instagram set up, having our Facebook page set up, because they will come to you once they start getting the products and then partnering with local influencers. We started out a lot of influencers that only had maybe 5,000 followers, 10,000 followers, something about 30,000 followers.

Just to get that initial push. But what I've learned is so critical is making sure that the people you're attracting are the people that want to be there. So when someone signs up for our email list, whether they do it from our website, whether they do it through a promotion that's very targeted, we do a lot with very functional fitness, crossfit specific.

Traffic sources to make sure that we're getting who we want to be there. But the first email that goes out, there's a big red button that says unsubscribe and there's literally half the emails trying to convince them to unsubscribe. If you don't want to be here, you don't expect emails from us. You don't want to be part of this journey. You just came here for whatever reason, that is totally fine with us. We have no hard feelings. You have no hard feelings. We don't want to clutter your inbox. So that's allowed us to filter who comes into our journey experience and it allows us to give the best experience possible for the people who come into our ecosystem and then they become super rating fans and they refer us to the top athletes in the world and all their buddies. And I mean, very rarely does someone purchase something from us. Doesn't get goes into our email list, then doesn't refer three to four more people. So it just compounds so quickly over time when you have that framework and you have that foundation.

So are you doing lead magnets and lead captures and driving traffic to it or is it building a little bit simpler than that?

So there's a mixture of a lot of things, product inserts of course, because those are customers and want to bring them in. But a lot of our customers may not be our ideal customer and we'll serve them, but we don't care if they're going to be our core audience or not because they might not be interested in kind of what we're preaching. So Amazon's kind of a mixed bag with that because you have some people who like buy weight and belt and they're just a general gym go. They're not really crossfit. They don't really care about learning how to do muscle ups or learning how to handsome push up. And that's fine. Like we'll serve them, but they're not ideal. But then we go deep to find those traffic sources that are ideal to us. So whether that be like certain websites or certain newsletters or certain blogs that are very specific to who we want to attract. And I mean these are the hardcore people. Like if you're reading this specific blog or you're, you're, you know, signed up to this specific newsletter or whatever it is, but you're hardcore. Like you are our ideal customer, we can help you. We want to be part of your journey. So that's when we'll do lead magnets.

And we'll gladly pay for that traffic. It's almost always profitable too because it's such a niche, because we really understand who we're targeting to. So our messaging is dead on. Our products are what they want and need. It's just so easy when you get in front of the right person. You're not just obsessive numbers and then just attracting them in. And of course we try and get back as much of the customers as possible. And then of course our website sales are not bad now either. So that's just a lot of nice customer data.

Yeah. Where are those website sales coming from? Since the majority of traffic comes from Amazon, how are you building the on site sales as well?

So we're not trying to build it at all, it just happens we intentionally try and divert all traffic to Amazon right now because we're doubling down on that platform. But we still get a decent amount of website sales just from people searching us on Google recommendations, referrals. We're not going to turn down the sale, but once we get the customer data, like if we do a big sales push, we'll still send that just to Amazon because Amazon rewards is so heavily in return for every person I send to them.

And it'd be really nice. I think that's a shiny object. How do we build up our our website sales? It's something that we probably could do fairly easy, especially all the assets we have now.

But I think that's a little bit higher up in the tree for those low hanging fruits.

Yeah, makes, makes total sense to me. And as you're talking this out, it is very clear that it is simple, not necessarily easy. Because what you've done is you've optimized for one platform and you know your customer extremely well. And what you have also done well is you have avoided the temptation to go optimize for Shopify or to become a list buyer. But you are doing some of those things in the ancillary to support the main business which is getting your ideal customers and sending them to Amazon. And the more that you can get back to that core thing, the faster your growth is accelerated from 1 million to $3 million in a year and you continue to climb. Is this going to be a record month for you by the way?

Oh, no doubt. I mean right now sales have pulled back a little bit from the week prior, but it's just because we're going into the Black Friday start Monday month. Black Friday start Monday, we're going to blow out of the park. Going through December is going to be absolutely insane. And then January and February are huge months for us as well. So the next few months, I mean, I didn't know what to do with the money we had two months ago.

Maybe I'll finally buy that Tesla.

Well that's great. I mean so you tripled in the last year and the fun event where you triple again, you can have an eight figure exit, right? We could be having this conversation a year from now. Are you asking me if it's time for you to go to market? Which would be a really fun conversation. I'm curious. You know Jason, one of the things that has been fun about our relationship is you started back when we did the brand builder boot camp, right? When we had this little course that I sold doing my goofy ads while I was trying to be a guru on the Internet. Acting like I wasn't trying to be a guru on the Internet, right? I was lost myself like teaching people this business model and how to product that you went through and that's how you got your start. And now you're coming out through the, through your growth into several million dollars. And I can already see where in a year from now we might be having the conversation about you going to market to sell Your business. So all of that preamble to say, what advice do you wish you had had back when you discovered this model, when you were going through the brand builder boot camp, now the capitalism incubator, but you had gone through it a couple of years ago. So what advice would you give yourself?

Probably the most important is think long term, don't overstress the short term and don't over complicate it. Now with that said, it's easy to look back and say, yeah, I should have done this. But I have to also understand where I was coming from, where I had never built an E commerce business, I built other businesses. And I've been through a lot of formal entrepreneurship training and I should have known better because those mostly teach the long term vision. But when you come into E commerce for the first time, there is just so many gurus and there's so many different strategies and there's so many different methods and ways and tips and tricks and tactics that it can just blow your mind. So I think there's just that portion where you, it's very difficult not to go through that journey of, you know, falling down the shiny object trap. But I think that's just the journey of an entrepreneur. Like it's going to be a roller coaster. You're going to make a lot of mistakes, but you know, fail fast if something's not working, you know, figure out what is working and double down on that and then don't overstress if you don't see like exponential growth day over day. Right. It takes time.

Yeah. I was just having this conversation with one of our new team members. We brought on two new team members in the last, in the last two months. And one of them is in charge of content, specifically video. And we were talking about how our content strategy up until recently has been planting a lot of seeds and now we have one that is growing roots. And our strategy needs to be not planting seeds anymore. It needs to be watering this tree. And it kind of sucks because the tree is tiny, but I know that if I keep watering this tree, eventually it's going to grow fruit and then I won't have to plant seeds anymore. The fruit will just fall off the tree and plant itself and things will start to grow exponentially. And that's kind of what I'm hearing you say is that at the beginning of your journey in selling products on the Internet, you were planting seeds all over the place and every idea is just as good as the other idea, but eventually you see enough of a sprout to say, all right, look, I gotta water this seed, I gotta water this tree. And what has happened for you is now that is at the point where a piece of fruit falls off that tree and it goes and gets you the number two crossfitter in the world. And it goes out and brings in other people who are recommending you and it's getting you sponsorships in places that you would have only dreamed of a few years ago. And now that tree is big enough to produce its own fruit. That's what I'm hearing you say.

One other thing I think we did very well from the beginning. That I'm glad we did was in terms of thinking along tour. So differentiation, having a true difference with our products, with our branding, with how we serve our audience. Because you're just a copycat of someone else, it's going to be a very difficult, brutal journey. You're going to end up in the pricing game and that sucks. And the other thing is being okay with saying no, not only to opportunities, but to people.

So we had some previous influencers that had good sized followings, but we just didn't jive with them. Like, you know, they were very ego centered and everything else.

And we cut those relationships off even though, like they had big followings and they're well known and everything else. And we've only focused on relationships with people that we really enjoy. And that's what I'm so excited about with this, with the number two CrossFit world right now. He's just the coolest guy ever, like super humble, really personable and everything else. And everyone we work with looks like that. Like everyone on our team is super awesome. All my business partners are absolutely incredible. So don't sacrifice short term.

Don't just follow the numbers. If it's not a relationship that you're going to be okay with in the long term, or having to work with that person every single day or every single week or every single month and then make sure that you truly have a difference. You're bringing some value to the marketplace. Not just another white label brand of the same product that you're slapping your label on.

How many products do you have now in the brand, Jason?

Seven.

Seven.

Like two or three of them drive the majority of your revenue, Is that right?

One.

One does, Yep. Okay, so the grips that you just launched, how long have you been selling the grips?

So the grips have been a crazy journey. It's been about two years, but they are very different today than what they were two years ago. And to Be fair, they are our second best selling product right now, but they have so much potential and we've been able to think long term that we haven't pushed them super hard until they are an amazing product.

So like us doubling next year and I still want to say on your point, but before we get too sidetracked, but next year the plan is literally just to not launch anything else, just get all of our other products up and selling as well as our primary product. And I don't think we'll have any issue doing that because we've spent the last two years refining them to be amazing products for our first sale.

Yeah, that is actually where I was going with this. So I know that your weightlifting belt is kind of your home run product and it's different than everything else that's on the market. I didn't realize that you had gone back and re, what's the word? Reinvented or retooled the product line that wasn't selling as well to now be different in the marketplace. And so I predict the exact same thing that you're saying is that those are now going to become the hero products that helped the company double again.

Well, this is an important point too. Our weightlifting belt has had about 25 changes since we launched it. We actually just changed it about two weeks ago. And those changes won't actually push through inventory about two months. But we don't ever stop innovating. We don't ever stop improving. When we get feedback, when we get negative reviews, I love it. Because if there's a truly good point in there, I'll make the change overnight. And that person just lost their complaint. It might take two months for that to push through. But no one else is going to complain about that because we're constantly saying, how can we make this better? How can we improve this? Or how can we make our customers happier?

I imagine that your connection with your customers makes your review rate a lot higher and makes your conversion rate a lot higher as well, which allows you to game the game.

Without being a gamer.

Without you doing anything weird. So have you found that to be the case that your review rates are higher than normal and as a result your conversion rate goes up and your rankings go up? Has that been the case?

Absolutely. When we ask for reviews interesting. What's really cool is we, we actually have pretty reviews, review rates without asking. But whenever we like need reviews, we could just shoot an email and be like, you know, to people who purchase our products and just say, hey, how are you liking it? And they say, you know, they love it, or whatever they say we can just say, you know, hey, would you mind leaving a review? And we'll get a bunch of reviews within a week.

To be honest, there's a lot of stuff that we could be doing a lot better.

There's like, I have a huge list of things that we have on our to do list that would be able to grow our business. I just haven't done them yet. But we're growing so fast, I'm like, I'm scared to do them because how much faster can we grow right now? So, I mean, there's a lot of things that we could easily optimize, make even better and get things going faster. And that's, I think, where next year comes in. Instead of going wide like we talked about earlier, going deep. So getting all the other products to be, you know, in the top three bestsellers on Amazon. I mean, literally, if we just get two more products will be, you know, two to three times where now.

I also know that. I also know that there was a point in which you did some price experimentation and it went differently than you expected. Tell me that story.

Yes, that was actually in January.

We experimented with raising our price. It wasn't a significant raise, about 15%, but it put us as the most expensive non leather weightlifting belt on Amazon that had decent sales. And our sales went up significantly, like 20% almost within a week. So I was not expecting that.

And we probably could push them even higher.

What do you mean by that? You could have pushed them higher?

I'm saying we still can.

Oh, yeah, okay.

Like, we pushed them maybe a little over 10% from where we were. So not a huge jump. But our reviews right now are still saying what a great value this is. This belt's really inexpensive, like, so customers are telling us it's really cheap.

Yeah.

What's cool when you're in the higher price bracket is you get rid of a lot of the terrible customers.

Absolutely. You do.

The worst customers are the ones that just want a deal and a discount, everything. And they're gonna be very needy and complain about everything. You know, a lot of it's hard.

To turn them into raving fans.

Yes.

And it's taken. I'm glad you said this because I bark so loud about building a premium brand, about building it for a person. And that allows you to charge higher prices and it makes it easier to get raving fans and easier to get reviews and easier to make a profit. And there's just this switch of if you're selling a product, it's really hard to go premium. But if you're marketing to a person, it becomes really easy. Jason, I want to do a quick pitch for what we're doing because you're our head coach. Your head coach. I'm head advisor.

Point before we move on.

Go ahead.

Just from your previous conversation there, not only is it better for you as a business owner, it's better for your customer.

Yes.

By paying a higher premium, they're going to get much more out of that product and they're going to appreciate it more and they're going to use it more. So there's this mentality of this is better for me because my customers are going to be higher quality. And it's also better for your customers because they're going to get much better brand experience and they're going to be much more likely to use the product properly to reach out to you to be part of the experience and get the full value of what you're selling as opposed to just the product.

That's right.

So I just want to add that in before we hop on.

Yeah, beautiful. All right, so now let's do a pitch for what we're doing because you are head coach and I am head advisor, which means that you're involved in people's kind of day to day decisions. And I am involved in helping them cast a vision and the plan for building a seven figure business. And that's something that we do inside the capitalism incubator. And what we're experiencing, what we're seeing is that at the beginning people come in with a very loose idea of what they want to do. And sometimes it's just, I want to have a million dollar business. And then we totally change their mindset to do exactly what Jason is saying, which is build a brand, focus on the long term, choose your customer, cast the vision. And that makes it really easy for us to come in and dial in the knobs to be able to build that foundation of a seven figure business. Jay, you're on almost every coaching call and you, you work with the students on a, on a regular basis. I do too, but in a different capacity. So I'm curious what you have seen the biggest breakthroughs be as people are going through that experience.

Every week. There's major breakthroughs. I mean, no question about it. One thing you said was to help them build a seven figure business. But I think that's cutting yourself short. I think what we're building is closer to eight figure businesses and I think that light Bulb going off is one of the biggest shifts that we've seen because it makes them stop for a second and really think like, wow, I'm building something humongous like I am the hot girl at the dance like you always like.

And then once they can have that mentality shift like I'm not just here for, to hit.

The million dollar mark in 12 months. I'm here to build a brand, build a business, then they start thinking differently and they start planning differently and they start choosing products differently, they start choosing messaging who they want to work with differently. And seeing all of those light bulbs go off every single Friday, you know, it's just, it's, it's fun.

Like for us it is really fun. And I'm really glad you said what you did because I have a little kind of hesitation around saying build an eight figure business because I just assume people are going to be turned off by that or say that it's not possible for them. But the first thing I do when they come in is break that down and get them to think bigger. So I should probably just own that and take more pride in the fact that yes, one of the first things we do is get you to see how the heck it's possible for you to have a frickin eight figure exit. Because most people, if you're listening to that and you're going, that's absolutely impossible. Great, you're right on pace.

You'Re right on pace with everybody else who comes in. Just like Jason did when he was going through the brand frickin builder boot camp back in what, the stone age. And now, now is on the cusp of it and it's been like three years or something. So I think thank you for that. I should probably delete that thought of people can't believe that they're gonna have an eight figure exit. Because I just get that feedback from the, from the cheap buyers like you said, who are my problem customers that don't believe that they can actually have one.

Well even just that word exit. Yeah, I'm not even happily saying that because once you can build an eight figure brand.

There'S no better feeling. It's like your child, it's your baby, your child just won the Nobel Prize. I mean, feels that good.

Jason, you are about to go through a life change yourself. You're about to become a dad. So how is your mindset changing on the cusp of this change?

I've been practicing dad jokes for the last 20 years.

I'm really excited. So like for me I've always wanted to be a dad. I'm glad I didn't do it too early. I'm 31 now. Um, so for me, this is, like, everything is just lined up. Like, I'm not really nervous about it. I'm excited. You know, sometimes a lot of followers are very nervous or anxious. And my wife, she's much more nervous than I am, but she's really excited. But, like, she's read every book and she watches YouTube channels, and she knows everything about Montessori cloth diapers versus regular diapers and what all this stuff, which maybe that's why I'm so relaxed. Cause she's so, you know, worried about it. I'm super excited. Like, to me, that's my next big journey.

That's awesome. And it's kind of like starting a business in which, like, you can prepare for all of the how to things, and then you jump in and then you figure it out, and you're like, what was a cloth diaper again? And you Forget all the YouTube videos that you watch. It's very much like starting a business. So, hey, if you want to work with Jason and myself and justice, who is one of our coaches that we just brought on board, and some of the other people that we are thinking about graduating into more of a coach role that have succeeded inside of our trainings, we're coming full of dad jokes and full of highs and lows that we'd love to share with you. And we don't take everybody. You can't just buy your way in. This is real scarcity. We really do have, like, a limited capacity because there's only so many coaches and there's only so much attention that we can give at this point. So our second round is opening, and you can apply for a spot over@Capitalism.com Inc. That's Inc. So, Jason, we've done this once. Now we're one semester in, and I'm really proud of what we've done, and kind of the undercurrent has been our own journeys through it. Like, you're growing as an entrepreneur. I'm growing as a leader, and it's been really fun growing alongside you. So congratulations on all your success, and thank you for serving the incubator and the capitalism.com community, my friend.

Yeah, thank you for everything. I mean, your brand Builder Bootcamp, is what got me into this world, and it was literally at the point where I was about to give up and just go get a job. It was really amazing how the time worked out, and I had literally just made $2,500, which was the cost of the time on a final contracting deal with drones down in Columbia and literally just took that money and gave it to you. It was the best decision I've ever made.

That last thing that Jason said hit me right in the feels, especially since I didn't know that part of the story. And it just goes to show you something that I learned early on when I started teaching this stuff. Never count anybody out. I remember a story of an individual who joined one of my very first coaching groups. He was a truck driver and he had built up this business that was, you know, the thing that he thought he had no business doing. And he kept saying this over and over again. He's like, I'm a truck driver. I don't know this stuff. I'm a truck driver. I'm a truck driver. And I kept telling him, you got to stop counting yourself out. And then he showed up to when we did an in person, an in person workshop together and he was selling like 30 or $40,000 a month and that had absolutely blown his mind. And at the time, he was already getting offers for from people wanting to buy the business for. It was a mid six figure offer. And at the time, that was completely life changing for him. And I remember having this big aha of like, I'll never count anybody out ever again. And Jason reminded me of that. You know, I didn't know that part of his story, that he was down to 2500 bucks and that he used it to join one of our courses, which I never recommend people do. And he did it and is now building a, you know, multimillion dollar business. Business makes me feel very proud. Makes me feel really proud and it makes me really excited to keep doing this. And so if you want to get in the next round, come on over and apply@Capitalism.com Inc.Capitalism.com Inc. For the Capitalism Incubator. We'll be starting February 1st and if you're hearing this episode after that, you can still go to that link and sign up for the notification list for the next time that we open the doors. I hope to see you there. Thanks for listening.