Teddy Gillard, founder of Kanga Coolers and Giard & Co., doubled his contractors and formalized his operations using a specific program. He evaluated five options before choosing one for its lead automation and onboarding, and recommends it for freelancers scaling up.
Greenville, South Carolina.
Kanga Coolers.
Shark Tank.
Five.
January 23, 2024.
What's going on, guys? I'm here with one of our clients, Teddy, who scaled his operations and was able to actually double the amount of contractors you said in your business, in. In your freelance business. What's going on, Teddy?
How are you? Yeah, man. What's up? What's up, man? How are you?
I'm good. I guess for anybody who maybe doesn't know you or kind of your backstory, give us a little bit of background on you and kind of what you do, if you don't mind.
Yeah, absolutely. My name's Teddy Gillard. I currently live in Greenville, South Carolina. I have had a. Had a career running several businesses. My first one that really kind of got recognition was a company I started in college called Kanga Coolers where we appeared on Shark Tank, scaled the company to a multimillion dollar company. It's still rocking and rolling these days. The guys are doing a great job running it. I've since exited, went on to be a brand director for a company called Island Coastal Logger out in Charleston. Helped them raise capital through crowdfunding and digital marketing strategy. And since then I've been running my own marketing firm called Giard & Co. Where we specialize in real estate life launching and scaling lifestyle brands through digital marketing integration. What we do there is align the product development timeline with the marketing production timeline. A lot of times people don't look at your marketing, your marketing plan or your marketing calendar also having a production timeline. I think us as filmmakers, we know that that's the case. But most founders within a business that you know is heading towards multimillion dollars, maybe 1 to 2 million, is typically involved heavily in product. So if you're able to help them understand that, just like how your product timeline has product development cycle, there is a timeline. There's also one for marketing. It allows everybody to get on the same page. So with that being said, a large part of our business is building out. We first come and build out the strategy, but then the second part of it is the implementation. And that's really where I leverage this class was how do I streamline the implementation process so I can continue focusing on the strategy and business development side for my clients? For sure. Yeah, yeah.
Being able to stream that a bit more. I guess this may be kind of a weird question, but I guess what, what kind of drew you to our program over, you know, maybe some of the other programs out there outside of me just being annoying on Instagram ads and.
Well, what's really funny is I went and signed up for Five different programs. Okay. And I went and I monitored all of their automation flows. You guys had the best one. So that was how I made this.
Okay. So you became a lead of all these different.
Yeah. And I, cause I was like, was like, whatever I'm going to sign up for, I want the lead to be the strongest because whatever their lead system is is probably what they're going to teach me to do. And that was the case. So it was funny. Yeah. That, so that, that was what I did. I, I went and signed up for five different courses. You guys had the strongest lead system. You actually personally called me within 15 minutes of signing up. And I was at the gym and I was like, I don't want to take this call. And then you and I started talking about. I think I told you I had 10 minutes. Gave you 10 minutes. You asked me some great questions. Follow up email, follow up text. We scheduled another session. I had a great call with Danny.
Yep.
The sales onboarding, he explained more of the systems. I was asking him questions like what CRM are you guys using? What are you doing? Are the processes that you gave me throughout this entire, you know, onboarding sales funnel. Is this what I'm going to be learning? He explained me at the same thing and that's what led me to work with you guys for sure, man.
Absolutely. And I know you said you kind of, you doubled the amount of contractors that you've brought on. Like, do you feel like you have a little bit more peace of mind now that you, you have some systems in place, a little bit more clarity on that?
Absolutely. Yeah. The biggest thing for me was seeing what a scene, like behind the, the curtain of what a well oiled machine looks like.
Right.
You know, I loved working one on one with Ethan. He really helped me. Like, you know, I think even the sales offering that I was doing was a little bit out of scope of what your typical clients are doing. Ethan was able to help me like structure it and put it into like, you know, quantifiable packages, which I for, I was just having a hard time doing. Right. So that was, that was super valuable. And then understanding how I can still use the same sales processes you guys are doing in the same management structure.
Same concepts and same kind of ideas behind it.
Yeah, exactly, exactly. So that was extremely valuable all in all. Like now I can take a step back and I feel confident in the systems that I have in place. I have used some different softwares that. Softwares that make more sense for my specific needs industry. But being able to look at the framework that you guys have outlined. I basically just applied the similar framework to a system that was automated differently.
And I think you said it there. It's like it doesn't always like, it's not always about the specific softwares, it's about the concepts behind them. The follow up cadence, the flows, what it looks like. It's kind of like, you know, Sony versus Canon. At the end of the day they'll both do the same thing. It just comes down to how you use the tools and the concepts behind them. So that totally makes sense. Well, awesome, dude. Well, I really appreciate your time. One last question. I guess if maybe anybody's on the fence about just potentially booking a call and speaking with our team, what kind of advice would you give them? You know, knowing what you know now?
Absolutely. If you are a freelance, if you put it this way, if you are somebody that works in the film or media industry and you have recently jumped to full time freelance, this is 100% a good course to invest in. You'll see a return on it right away. Because odds are you're probably not pricing yourself. Right. You're probably not structuring yourself. Right. You're probably not positioning your skills or niching down and you probably don't have an operating system in place. This is just grassroots. Everything that you need to know to start. You even go into depth of like how to structure an escort versus an llc. That's stuff that you guys don't even need to be offering but you guys still are. So I would say that if you have recently made that jump into freelance and you are starting to realize that, wow, there's a lot more to this than I expected, which anyone that has made that jump has had that realization.
We all know it is.
Yeah, yeah, this is a great course to invest in.
Well, I appreciate it Teddy, and I'm excited to see where you're going from here and how you continue to scale, man, and appreciate your time.
