Bing Howenstein - Behind The Scenes of a Shark Tank Pitch
6 Apr 2021 · 73 min
Bing Howenstein pitched his ergonomic All33 chair on Shark Tank after launching it on Kickstarter with a chiropractor and designer. He raised money during COVID quarantine, saw sales spike after the episode aired, and is now developing sensor-equipped gaming chairs and a nonprofit that connects donations to families in need.
Questions this episode answers
$799 (retail)
$20 million (stated ask/valuation)
10 days
January 8 (promo/air date referenced)
Chapters
The pitch is the thing that gets vetted through lawyers. The pitch is the thing that sets the tone of the whole.
Pitch. And you got to get right and you got to. When you get into the tank, you got to hit this mark and then the director says go. And you have to get it right. You don't want to screw it up because.
That screws up your whole pitch.
You're on the line.
That was the most nerve wracking thing of the whole. Of the whole experience.
This is an intro. Intro, intro, intro.
Hustle and Float, Shark with your boy.
My boy, Matt Wolf. Jo. Hey. Hey, what up?
Welcome back.
Oh, man, I'm excited for this one.
You're excited?
We've already recorded. But I'm excited to share this with y'. All.
Yeah.
Because it's like pulling back the curtain on a program. A television program on dc.
Yeah.
One where people step into the tank.
The shark Tank.
The shark Tank.
Yes. Today we're chatting with Bing Hauen Stein and he was recently on in the Tank.
He was recently in the tank.
In the tank. Swimming with the sharks themselves.
Yes. And he was in the tank promoting his new. Well, I don't know if it's new or not, but his chair, all 33.
Newish. Yeah. He was on there all 33. And.
And Joe and I both pointed at my chair in my office as we said.
That makes a lot of sense for this non visual part here. Yeah. And shout out to Lisa Byer for hooking and hooking us up with a couple these chairs, all 33s, which they are absolutely amazing. Especially when you have a hurt back like I do right now. And also being on the show to share his story and everything else going on.
Yeah, yeah. So this is really a behind the scenes of what it's like to go on Shark Tank. We ask him, you know, how he got on Shark Tank in the first place, how he made that connection, what it's like once you get there. What did quarantining look like doing Shark Tank during COVID How he structured his pitch, what he learned from the sharks, what happened, what was a result of the Shark Tank after he got off of it. We cover the gamut. Like this is a A to Z telling of his Shark Tank story.
Yeah, it's really cool. It's really fun. So I think you're going to learn a little bit here. A lot bit. Because you can apply what he learned in the tank to whatever you're doing outside of the tank or if you ever choose to venture into the tank, your Choice. Yes. Good luck with that. And he's also. So I wanted to shout out another. This is a nonprofit that he started last year when Covid started intellihelp.org that's I n t e l l I help h e l p dot org and what that is is basically helping a bunch of families in need Right now in Covid, in this crisis, not a lot of folks can. You know, there's a ton of folks that just don't have the resources to go get what they need. Food, diaper stuff to support their families. This is something he set up where 100% of anything donated. You know, all that stuff goes straight to the families and the people making it happen. And it's cool because another buddy of ours, Ron lynch, who's been on the show is. Is working with him on that. So go check out intellihelp.org we'll link all that stuff out there, and it'd be cool to go help him out. Go help some folks out. Doesn't take much, so.
Yeah.
And make sure you grab the notes. There's going to be some great notes on this one, all about, you know, structuring your pitch and also about how to actually have healthier habits at work. We do talk about relieving back pain and stuff on this episode as well.
Forgot about that. Yeah. And how that relates to. Yeah.
Working.
But also, like, we talked about video gaming and how it's like, it's really cool. So these chairs and back stuff, I mean, it's your performance and how you show up in life and work and feeling good. Yeah.
So again, go get the notes. Flowchartgroup.com that's gonna take you where you can sign up to the Facebook group. One of the questions we'll ask for your email. You give us that email, and if you do it within two weeks of this episode going live, you'll get the notes from this episode for free. So that is flowchartgroup.com let's go chat with Bing.
Let's do it. Hey, Bing. How you doing, my man?
Good afternoon.
How you guys doing?
Doing great. Feeling better. Sitting in this chair of yours. Is it all three three or all 33? How do you.
All 33.
33.
Okay.
Which is funny. It used to be the original naming is a whole thing. Right. So that came from months of debate.
Over what to call the company.
And all 33 we settled on. Because there are 33 vertebrae in your spine, and this is a chair, the technology actually moves all 33 of your vertebrae while you sit. So that was kind of a second generational name, but helped us sort of describe what was happening.
Yeah, well, just wanted to thank you because you hooked us up on a couple of chairs. And Lisa Buyer, I want to give her a shout out for making this all possible.
We love Lisa.
She gets a lot of shout outs on the show. Well deserved and also well timed with this thing. I was telling you, the back injury just happened the other day. I'm like, this is like the best feeling thing ever. That is not a joke. I was sitting in his chair earlier, Matt. I was like, we gotta swap, man.
Yeah, well, Joe does his own, like, chiropractory now.
He'll.
He'll use the little pivoting thing on the bottom to like crack his back.
I love it. Did it right now.
Well, so anybody listening? If the voice sounds familiar or if you're watching on YouTube, if the video, the face looks familiar, Bing. You were just recently on Shark Tank and I did catch that episode. We watch it live every time. My kids love the show and me and my wife always watch them. But what's your story up until all 33? How did you know? How did you get involved in the company and how did it lead to Shark Tank?
Yeah, it's funny.
Shark Tank was actually a kind of perfect confluence of everything I've sort of done.
Way back in the day.
I actually started in the movie business, sweeping floors all the way up to producing and writing movies and running a production company. And so I got to really learn that side of the business, which led to, at a happenstance, getting into products and launching products in consumer fashion. I think long before it was even kind of in vogue to do that. I was in the infomercial days of qvc. Basically it was a translation for making movies into products. Essentially the same thing, same totally translatable skill sets where a product is essentially just a movie. And what you're doing is starting a new company each time you're telling a story to help engage consumers.
And all eminently relatable. So.
I don't know. Quite some time ago, I got involved.
In a product that had no sales and met the inventor and was actually in the back care space. Totally different company than this one. That one's called backjoy. It's still around and sells around the world and is great, but that I.
Started in a garage back in California.
And built that up during that time.
And through movies and through that process.
I had gotten to know a chiropractor in Los Angeles, guy named Dennis colonello.
Who?
Back in the day, when I started seeing him 20 years ago, he had a little shack out in Ventura Boulevard.
But he was really good, and I.
Would go to him all the time. I've been going to him for 20 years. During that time, he was discovered by people in la. In fact, the guys who started Guess Jeans really discovered him, and they moved him over into Beverly Hills, put him in this fancy office, because he's that good. And because of what I had done. In fact, Joy, I literally got to travel around the world and meet people in this space. Healers, doctors, whatever, with different technologies and products. Dennis is this really unique guy. Who is that good. There's a reason why Elon Musk goes to him. There's a reason why people fly from Kuwait.
What's the thing? Because I've visited a lot of chiropractors, and a couple of them stand out in my experience, because I know there's some bad ones.
When he looks at you, he would literally say, hey, Joe.
Hey, Matt.
Just stand there like any chiropractor would lay down. He plays you the feet, but he's not thinking about. He's a real biomechanist. I mean, he thinks about an engineer. And interestingly enough, he's. He. During my course, knowing him over these years, we would trade stories about products because he actually had invented some fitness products and worked on them in the infomercial days. So all this kind of confluence was part of where we are right now. So he knows product, he knows body, he knows engineering. And he's been doing this for 45 years. And he's been working with everybody from guys like me who would sit at the desk all day, up to Shaq.
You know, the basketball player, like, moving his body.
He's got a shoe of Shaq's in his office that's bigger than my screen.
£30 or something.
Yeah, it's great.
He's got these hands that are. That are ginormous. In any case, he had. You know, I was leading back Joy a few years back, and he's been pleading with me for years to, you know, I've got this chair idea. I really. I've got this idea that I really want to do, to do something, because everyone would come to my office. They just keep coming back for the same problems. They're going and they're sitting and just getting ruined.
And he'd taken that knowledge of his.
Uncanny ability, which really is unique, to figure out this new system that you're sitting on right now. And he paired up with another Guy named Jim Grove, who was a chair designer. He'd been doing it for years. And together they. For a long time. I don't know how many years, seven, 10 years, have been going through prototype after prototype, prototype, much like a Dyson story that you're familiar with, and getting all of Dennis's patients that would come through to keep trying. And people were like, dennis's crazy chair idea. For years and years and years, he.
Kept pleading with me, like, help me out here.
And I finally was like, look, Dennis, you're a friend. Let me see what you got. I went to the warehouse where they were, and I sat in the thing. I'm like, oh, my God. This thing actually really has some legs to it.
So I said, I'm going to help you out. Let's.
Let's do a Kickstarter, find out if the dogs are going to eat the proverbial dog food. Let's find out if people. And this is going back in about three, four years. And mattresses being sold online was hot at the time. It was like, people are doing that. They might do this for a chair. Let's see if that works. And so we went forth and put together this Kickstarter that ultimately performed really well.
And at that point, Dennis is like, dennis and Jim, these guys are.
I love them to death. And they're probably going to hear this. And so I'm not speaking out of school.
They're old guys who were not going.
To get this company off the ground. They built an amazing piece of technology and are continuing to help refine it. But from the marketing standpoint, the business standpoint, it wasn't going to happen. So it was just lucky that the timing met up that I was able.
To work with those guys to now.
Get to where we are, to get it launched, the Kickstarter, and then get it launched into the consumer space. Because it's a chair. You could probably describe it unlike any other. It's a chair inside of a chair. All the chair guys and all the companies were like, that's a crazy idea.
That's never going to work. Can't do that.
So, you know, it's all these things that make the story fun to kind of prove all that wrong and take their idea and get it built and find there's all sorts of people around the world who actually want to buy it to give us validation.
I'm very happy that all of y' all brought this to life, because, no joke, I mean, I don't know how many times I've complained to Matt. And just over the last like 15 years, sitting at a desk primarily, I mean, I moved to a standup desk because I'm like freaking chairs just give me these back problems. And typically upper back, mid back, thoracic spine, kind of area injured, the low back. But I know a lot of folks just sitting around, I mean, you have the same different back pain, but there's no really good one out there that I've ever felt. And yeah, this chair, it's like a bucket you can almost swing around in, but at the same time you're hitting all the, all the vertebrae like you said. So I think everyone needs to at least experience something like this.
Well, it is, I mean, you know.
The idea, I think in principle, and its most simple form is to try and replicate your standing posture while you're sitting. And that's, that's ultimately what.
Because it is about movements.
And you know, as you say, going from a standing desk to sitting, you should be moving all day, you should be standing up, you should be sitting down, you should be keeping your body moving throughout the course of the day. And pretty much every other chair that's been out there forever, it's, it's. And I use this actually in the Shark Tank pitch. I mean they're 3,000 year old designs. You can go online or into the museum, the British Museum, and see this 3,000 year old chair. It's the same thing we're all sitting on right now.
Yeah, it's an L, it's a post, it's a platform. You sit on that.
That's what's supposed to work and it's.
Just not good for you.
Yeah, well that's, I mean, it's fascinating because you have this storytelling background and I think I got it right. But you were one of the producers of the Bachelor, right? I was way back then.
Not the TV movie.
Yeah.
Ah, okay. I didn't know there's a. But either way, I was like, this is really cool. So you could say, yeah, the Bachelor, that was back in 99, I believe it was, but. And now it's translated into consumer packaged goods and Shark Tank. So Shark Tank I think is fascinating because it seems like the facade. I mean, there's a lot of amazing things happening and I know they kind of throw you into the tank and I want to kind of really, really examine what that looks like from your perspective going into it and how that also, you know, people listening might not be going to Shark Tank, they might watch it. But at least some of these things they can extract These lessons and apply to their own business.
And sorry, if you can hear my slack is going nuts. I'm trying to turn that off.
That's why I say it's kind of that perfect compliments.
Because I was fortunate to have kind of this Hollywood background. Um, so I knew a little bit of the game as it relates to how it would be shot and could engineer towards that a little bit. But at the end of the day, I'm a Shark Tank fan. And like, like most of us who are entrepreneurs, start businesses, whatever. It's something you watch because it's fun. It's great.
And let me tell you something.
It's. It's really easy to sit on that couch and say how smart or dumb somebody is or what they should be doing or should be saying.
What kind of valuation is that? Come on. Yeah.
And that all changes, trust me, because.
I've been watching the show since it started. I watch it too, with my kids, and we would always kind of pause it and say, what's the valuation? And all that kind of stuff.
For me, it all certainly changed. When you're waiting for that door to open and walk down that hallway, it's all of a sudden like, whoa, this is real. And it's one and done. This is your chance. There's no cut, stop. Do this. You got to get right. So that was a very surreal moment for me where you're kind of hearing the music. And this year, particularly because of COVID it was a very surreal.
Setup because we were sent to Las Vegas. Typically, you go to Los Angeles and you go in there that day, and you go in and you do it, you leave. Well, in this case, I was there 10 days before in Las Vegas. Set up a. Holed up in a room by myself for 10 days quarantining to get in the bubble.
And then you get brought down in the bubble and then you're thrown in and there you go.
So everything in Vegas. Yeah, so they're doing all the shooting there. And I think I saw a picture of you preparing in a. Had the wind in the background and you had all the faces of the sharks on the window. And that's how I think you were practicing. What, during quarantine? I guess I did.
There was no one else to practice with. I literally didn't see a person for 10 days. Except for one day a nurse came and give me a test. That was it.
So, yeah, I did.
I brought.
Sharks were in our episode. So I got pictures of them. I put them up on the wall and we had an interesting thing because we were able to, if you saw our episode, we were able to get Justin Bieber to participate with us.
Working with someone like Justin Bieber is amazing. But you get the challenge of, are you going to get them or you're not? And with the whole Covid thing, you know, where it wasn't as easy, quote unquote, as Justin showing up on the set one day, you know, it's like, hey, we're gonna. We're gonna film you. We can go to your house. And Justin's like, well, I'm gonna be in Arizona this day, that day. And we're getting down to the wire. And ABC is like, are you doing them? Are you not? So we didn't have a script. And because of that, and it wasn't until, you know, six days before we actually taped our episode that we got Justin taped. What that meant for me was that I didn't know what our pitch was gonna be. So where Most people get six months to practice their pitch, I had literally 48 hours to kind of rewrite our pitch based on having Justin, Ian and what he said. So that was me in the hotel room with the pictures on the wall and walking down my fake hallway 100 times until I could try and get it right. Because the pitch is the thing that gets vetted through lawyers. The pitch is the thing that sets the tone of the whole.
Pitch. And you got to get it right. And when you get into the tank, you got to hit this mark, and then the director says, go. And you have to get it right. You don't want to screw it up because.
That screws up your whole pitch.
You're on the line.
That was the most nerve wracking thing of the whole experience.
Wow.
What was the process like of actually getting on Shark Tank? Did they approach you? Did you approach them? Did you apply? How did that all work?
So a little bit of both. I mean, I will say we did not join the cast of literally 40,000 people at one of the stadiums, which I don't even know how they're doing that now, but we did through somebody in Dennis office, knew somebody who had related to the show. And we worked those angles as much as we could to ultimately get in front of a producer. And it was literally a year prior to our airing that I was able to get on the phone with somebody. And it was a true vetting of what's the deal? And some of the initial questions that you might expect to see on the show. Are you doing this because you need money? Are you doing this for marketing? All this kind of stuff? It's kind of like the first test and we passed that test. But at that point, I think we're basically in the pool with thousands and thousands of other possibles that continually get whittled down through a variety and a number of tests and little diligence tests and paperwork like you don't even know. Throughout the process. It's not easy. And. And they vet you out pretty well to make it through these ultimate hurdles. Up to the point at which when you're walking on the show to go into tape, you're constantly reminded, hope you make it, because you might not. Because even if you make it through all from the 40,000 to the 180 that actually tape, not all make it on the air. And so you can go through all this work, which is an incredible amount of work to get there, and still not make it. So it's a constant audition, but it's ultimately good because it really helps you make your business better. It makes you ask the questions you might not be spending the time to ask. So ultimately, from a hygiene point of view, totally invaluable experience all around.
I mean, I can only relate because I've gone on some of the sets in Hollywood and we're in San Diego and Wipeout, I made it a few stages in, did the whole rehearsal thing. It was very weird. And we weren't offered that. But it was offered some other gig that was very scary. And we were like, nope, some new show. And let's Make a Deal. Totally different, but did that too. But I know that process. But thinking about what you went through. Cause it is. It's a show, obviously, it's entertainment. But at the same time, there's gotta be this crazy due diligence process that's happening kind of in tandem. And like you said, all the paperwork and all these things and you're running a business at the same time. So what does that.
Well, the other thing you have to remember. And yeah, I think the key point is it is a show. It's Friday night entertainment, right? So it's gotta be good for the family, it's gotta be good for the kids. So there's a couple things about that. Number one, is anybody in the company got a. Got a, you know, a dui? Does anybody have, you know, something that might show up that, you know, could be an issue where, you know, puts a black mark on the show or abc just start from there. And then we're in a position where, you know, we had Some momentum. So we're gonna be making a big ask and for our valuation. So that ups the ante in our requirements to make sure we kind of know what we're talking about, to make sure that what we're saying is valid, that we're not full of hot air. I think sometimes for pure entertainment value, it's kind of like on the singing shows. People who don't know that they're a good singer will go up thinking they're a good singer. So they kind of want, you know, some train wreck to happen to a degree. But it's got to be, you know, it's got to be okay for them, right? So you're kind of threading that line. But, you know, they go through. Who are your investors? They go through the cap table. They go through, you know, and we're a more mature company than just like a 14 year old kid with a great idea coming on. We have, you know, a lot going on. So there's a lot of nook and crannies such that what they want is if you do get a deal and you walk off the set at the end of that thing, there's basically a package that would go to that Shark's team that is their diligence package that's.
Basically ready to go.
So that's kind of the readiness, the state of readiness you have to be in.
So do the sharks know anything about the business before you step in or. They're totally blind until you start pitching.
They're totally blind as far as we know. And that's. We're definitely. ABC makes that pledge and promise. The producers make that pledge and promise. In fact, they go so far as to say they've got cameras that make sure that the Sharks aren't trying to Google what it is before.
The pitch because your set might be out there first and they can kind of see that. But that's it. And the reason for that is it's a game show. So game show rules dictate fairness for anybody that you can't get a leg up. So the show could get in trouble. The producers get in trouble if they provide any kind of allegiance. That's why it's very important for them to know, like, have you ever had any dealings with a shark? Has a shark introduce you? All that kind of stuff is carefully vetted out. And then even on the set thing, like I thought when we were going to do it, oh, the ABC will help us with the pitch. ABC will help us with the set. No, no, no. That's all on your own, on your dime, because it's game show and they don't. They can't show any favoritism. So they keep a pretty tight ship around that, which is. Which is fascinating.
Yeah. Well, I want to go back to the pitch portion really quick because it always depends on who you're pitching, you know, of course. And most people are just pitching one person at a time, not five at once. How did that go down or how did you prepare for each one of the sharks? Because obviously you knew not all of them are going to be a good fit for you, most likely. How do you approach that?
So we did a lot of research. We went through and looked at all the deals that we could find that any shark had done and looked at cross reference that with kind of valuations that they would go for, how much money they put into deals on an average, what kind of areas they might do, just to see what kind of patterns might show up. For example, we knew that there was not a chance Lori, not Laurie, but Barbara would ever go in on our deal. Real estate, because.
That'S a longer story, obviously, if you see the show. But there's not a chance, based on how much she's paid and what her average valuation that she would go after for, we could easily discount that. Now, on the other hand, somebody like Mark definitely could. We looked at all those permutations from there online. The beauty of the world today is you find all these people who have been on before. You find people who have indexed every question that's ever been asked on Shark Tank.
Get answers to it all. So we created preparation like that. The valuation piece, I'll leave in a bucket because we can talk about that for a second. But as far as that prep work, that's really what it all boils down to when you walk out there. So you walk down the hallway and you kind of hear the music in the head. You actually have to go hit this mark and you stand there, and you're supposed to stand there for 30 seconds smiling like this. Because what they want to do is get camera angles. Now, film days tell me, okay, here's what they're doing. They're getting the camera angles so they can cut in and around to take the hour plus that I'm in there into the eight minutes and use my reactions as editing fodder. So I know that I have to make sure I maintain this smile. If I get nervous, if I grimace, if I do this, it's going to be probably used against me or for the benefit of the Editor. So you have to just sit there and smile. Well, something broke and my 30 seconds turned into two and a half minutes or more, which honestly felt like half an hour. It was so long. I knew something was wrong because even the sharks, they did actually start looking at their phones, like texting their friends, like, what's going on? And then.
The voice of God up there and the speaker all of a sudden says, go. And you got to jump into your pitch and make it happen. That was, that was brutal.
But I can imagine, yeah, the anticipation. I mean, obviously knowing what's on the other side of the door and what you're going to be kind of knowing, I guess. But yeah, it's totally different scenario than any other pitch I would imagine you ever did.
Well, it is. And I think the real kind of other part of your question is I'm not. It's like you're asking me a question directly right now. There's five people throwing questions to you at the same time. You don't really see it on a show because you're trying to answer one. But someone over here is this at one point, Mark, and this didn't. They cut this out of the show. But he's like, hey, hey, over here, I'm talking to you. And you're trying to balance without pissing anybody off. And that was unlike any other pitch I've done before. Because usually it's a one to one or one and there's some cordiality.
Well, there would be, yeah. If it's two of us, we're probably on the same page. Similar line of questioning motivation. And then you have five sharks or so and you're like, oh my God.
When all of these sharks are celebrities as well, who all want camera time. So all of them are trying to get their fair share into each conversation.
Well beyond fair share. They want their sound bite because they want to look good. They want something that's going to make them look. So that is all part of the game.
I'm curious on the valuation part, because that's a huge piece of it. So how do you approach that? Because you said you had a big ask.
We did, yeah. And we put our valuation out there based on.
Valuation, particularly in a shark tank level, in any private company, in any startup is totally finger in the wind.
Right.
So what kind of metrics can you possibly use to value this other than the generalities? Now, you know that, you know Mr. Wonderful is going to use any kind of piece of data he has against you to kind of rip it down, whatever you can do. So we had sales and meaningful and real sales and a strong run rate and an industry that's changing, all these different things. We did a lot of research. We spoke to professional money, meaning private equity guys and some of our investors. We canvassed everywhere we could to try and get an eye line on our growth rate. And if this were a normal meeting with either an investment bank or a sophisticated investor, what would that conversation be and how would we peg into it? And that's what we tried to follow. Now, even with that, we knew it was going to be high because the shark tank valuation is not a real world valuation and there's always going to be a significant discount. They are always looking for much more of a company because they're sharks that you might normally want to get. So where we said, hey, we're going to come out with this $20 million valuation that we knew they were going to scoff at. And the ask then for how much money becomes the key, because that's another trigger level of then producers calling you and saying, we think your valuation should be here and there because they want good tv. There's a marrying of that even before you get into the tank. And then what we did is we created basically a matrix that to. Because I'm not necessarily great at doing math on my feet, so I wanted to create a matrix that had the levers up and down and back and swerve. So I kind of knew where we could go on a low, where we'd love to go on a high, but also what the variations would be. And even to the degree of doing the math to say, what would a royalty deal look like? How could that work? And how could we create the BIOS and what you don't see, and I didn't know until two, three days before we went on, in terms of talking with one of the producers about the valuation is you can't get creative. You can talk about warrants, you can't talk about options, you can talk about preferred stock and this and that. That'll never make it on the air, but it is, you know, those guys are all sophisticated investors, so you can have those inducements in play. So we try to package all that into our conversation with them to be prepared for whatever may come. Now, when you get there, of course, I think even in the show they're like, oh, what a crazy valuation, because that makes good tv. And then they just immediately start to try and demolish it. Now, I think there's a great reason for a shark to get a Great deal on a product depending upon where you are and what your goals are for your product. If you're a one off product, great, do a deal with Lori, give her half the deal, whatever it takes, because it's going to be a one and done. If it's flash in the pan for other companies like ours, we weren't interested in, didn't get in a deal like that. We wanted to get a fair deal. And what I would have loved was a fair deal that would probably been some sort of debt deal because there's no way those guys want to get out of bed in the morning for more than 5%. So in the middle of that, then is this whole kind of what I call the shark tank valuation strategy, which really comes from Mr. Wonderful, which is, now, wait a second, how much money are you making? Are you profitable? And a lot of companies are going to say, maybe, yes, fortunately, we were a little bit. But even you say, yeah, let's say we made 10% on our money last year and you did a million bucks. So, oh, great, you made $100,000. Mr. Wonderful, say, well, how am I going to make my money back?
So the conversation I had with them, which gets cut out because people don't want to hear it, it's like, well, Mr. Wonderful, then you should go invest in a bond. Because what you're talking about is basically making money off our money while we're trying to grow a company, not joining us as a partner and investor to put your money in and see the win over the long term, to ultimately turn that $100,000 into $500,000, $600,000. If you want to make money along the way, then we're not necessarily the right investment tool. They use that kind of Shark Tank methodology to diminish valuations. I think very unfairly and maybe less sophisticated people kind of go down that path. But I think it's a funny game. There is, I think, a legitimate shark discount in cases where for us, we had a benefit of bringing Justin Bieber into play. For people who don't have Dennis's office where celebrities are coming in and out all day, then, yeah, absolutely, give Mark Cuban a ton of your company, or enough of it, where you're going to be able to get that phone call, you're going to be able to get that leg up, if you're going to be able to get Lori Greiner to help you get that shelf space in Bed, Bath and Beyond, that's huge and in many cases invaluable. So you just have to base it on where you are in your company and what your goals are in terms of the shark Tank haircut. Because again, they do want a lot more. And it also depends on how much money you think you need to raise over the long term because there will be future dilution if you're giving them 40% of the company that all things you have to take into consideration.
Yeah. And I think there was something that you wrote about, I think some advice by one of the sharks. I think it was Lori about. You positioned it as more of a product.
Correct.
And not as a brand. Speaking of that a little bit, because I found that fascinating. Just the mindset.
Yeah. Well, it's interesting because I kind of think so. If you watch the segment, her out was, I think you're just a product, which on the face of it. And I wish I was smart enough in the moment to be like, wait, that's what you do.
You're at QVC and that's what you do. And.
Her point was like, I don't see this as anything more than kind of a one and done, I guess. Or like this is just something that's going to come and go and doesn't have legs to it and doesn't have what we would. I could sit here and talk for hours about the brand we're creating and the movement, the category we're creating around movement in sitting and building a tribe and all this other stuff and the future products we're going to have. It was easy for her to kind of dismiss as, oh, it's just a chair.
Which I think is a cop out. For her to be like, yeah, I can't afford the deal or I don't know how to affect this deal or there's not enough potential ownership in it for me to be worthwhile. If I were really on the ball, I would have said to her, hey, Lori, if Dyson came in here, going back to the Dyson example as a vacuum, it's just a vacuum. It's got some new cool technology. You would have passed on it because.
It'S just a product.
That's where we look at our companies. It's a brand. That's where we're going to be. A Dyson of chairs. And that's the way we look at it. I think it's an interesting thing to talk about. And, and when you. For me, it's an important reminder in all sales presentations, be it internal, like to your board, when you're talking about your financials, be it external to potential investors or to a buyer on the other side of the table at Staples or something. What they are seeing in your pitch and your presentation, they're seeing a photograph. They're seeing a. What you can describe right now. Well, and again, back to my kind of movie days. What I'm seeing and what I'm trying to say is the movie that I can see in my head. And they're two very different things.
It's more of a vision in your head. It seems like there's a bigger story connecting the dots.
Yeah.
And this is actually, I learned this from a guy named John McCarvel. He was the CEO of Crocs at the time. The CEO of Crocs. And I was working with him on one of our last deals, and we were getting ready for a board meeting. He told me that lesson. I'm like, oh, my God, that makes total sense. Because you guys aren't seeing all the other stuff I have in my mind that I'm not necessarily communicating or I think I'm communicating. And that's what people get out of a pitch. They get the picture. They don't get the whole movie. And it's an important thing to remember and that I think it's a perfect analogy from that product conversation to the brand conversation.
Are there any suggestions? Because you do have the storytelling background, the movie industry background. Would you do anything different on Shark Tank or to kind of allow that movie to come out more into the pitch? Are there other ways you would do that or suggest others to do?
Honestly, based on the sales we had, no.
Yeah.
That was. That was. It was first past what we expected just because of our price point, I didn't. I didn't expect that. But I think there's always tweaks I could have done, because I did find that even with March, like, his reason for passing was, I don't want to be in the furniture business. And I think a similar kind of note could be taken there of like, wait, we're more than the furniture business, but more than that. What do you mean? The furniture business is, like, being blown up right now. Covid changed everything. The big guys who have these big giant corporate sales teams and selling structures, so they're not selling anybody anymore. There's the offices that are empty. That's all changed. The whole thing's being reworked right now. And by the way, we bring in technology to this that isn't even present in what we have right now. So that's the movie that I wish I could have expressed perhaps better. Challenge, of course, being pick Your battles. So you got 90 seconds, that initial pitch to get across. And what we had to get across was unique technology. And the result of that was that Mr. Wonderful sat in it, and he was like, oh, my God, this really works. And at that point, I was like, okay, I'm done. My job is done here. That's the. You know, I'd love to get a deal, but the commercial that we need just got made, and. And unfortunately, what you guys didn't see is Lori came up and sat on it as well. I think for Covid rules, they didn't allow it. But she, too, was amazed. And that's why when she finished, when the. When the segment ended, she's like, oh, I want to buy one.
Pay full price, right? I love that life.
Now, was there any sort of lessons or advice or anything that the sharks gave you that you took and have implemented in your business?
Not really. One, I guess two things. One was actually Laurie asked a question, and it's one of these things where I was telling you, here's the 150 questions you got to go through and remember all these different things. What's your valuation? What's your return rate? And knowing your number, numbers with finite detail about what's it cost to ship something? What's the tariff? What's the expected this? What's your conversion cost on a customer through either Facebook or this? All these different data swimming around your mind. She's like, what are the top three reasons why I should buy this chair? It's like the most simple question that's marketing sales beyond 100:1. But it stumps me for a second because I'm like, oh, my God. I didn't just think about the basics. And I think that was a big lesson for me. And I was able to answer it after, like, a second. But, you know, it's like, you know, we improve your posture, release back pain, gives you more flexibility, energy. But, you know, it's like, the basics are important, and you know that blocking and tackling is always important. You can get lost the details of figuring out how cool you are in your stats or this, that, but it ultimately doesn't matter what are the basics that get down to it. And I think the other thing was, unfortunately, you guys didn't really get to see the back and forth I had with Barbara, which was longer than when she sort of accosted me for just being a salesman.
Which was completely offensive. But that was just the other fun part. It wasn't really a lesson, but it was more like, come on give me.
A little respect here, man. Well, I'm kind of curious about the other because outside of Shark Tank, I think there is a really big need to actually think about what the heck you're doing with your body. And a lot of us are finding ourselves at computers and sitting way more than ever before. What other things are on the roadmap or. Because I think I heard there was even a video gaming chair coming out, which I'm like, wait, so what's different about it? Is there a headrest or something like that?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, Some cool stuff. And I think, you know, it is. You know, when you're doing something like this, you're kind of like, is it just a product and where else are you going to go with this? We went through a number of iterations of like all these different things we could make to, you know, build out.
A whole office of stuff.
And ultimately, you know, I kind of came around to say, you know what? No, we're going to focus. And you know, the old, I don't know if it's the old Steve Jobs thing, you know, what you say no to is more important and what you say yes to, I don't know where that comes from, but for us it became, listen, this is a chair. This is where the unique IP in technology is. This is something that is totally different. Let's own that. Let's own sitting. Let's just go after sitting. And so the focus with that in mind really became about chair. So one of the first things we'll do which is going to be coming out soon, is actually a sensor. So much like a Fitbit that you'd have in your wrist, there will be a sensor because of the way the chair works that goes in the sensor that will, you know, count your crunches. If you learned how to do your crunches yet in the chair.
I have not.
You can do your crunches and it will count your crunches and your movement through the course of the day so that it'll be kind of like count your steps. And that will be fun because we'll gamify that and so you guys can compete against each other.
Well, and I know ab workouts, I know help back strengthen.
So yeah, yeah, it's all, it's all about core because you know this unlike other chairs, you're getting that totally engaged. So it helps us build out the fact that this is about movement and core health and a good for you product. So then beyond there, what we want to do is build out to kind of different price points number one. So we'll have, if it's like a BMW, we'll have the 3 series, the 5 series, the 7 series. And in each level of there we're still kind of focused on the main chassis again, really protecting the true IP of, of the movement that you get here, but with different bells and whistles that you can kind of go up and down on and then really exciting. Is definitely our entry into the gaming world. There's, I mean it's huge. Well, the stats are insane.
Yeah. We're going to fathom what the stats are right now.
Billions, billions and more and more and people are spending.
And they're sitting for hours at a time. And the pros, I mean the pros are in these games for hours and hours at a time. There are more people I think watching on an aggregate last year, these events than the Super Bowl.
It's crazy stuff. And definitely we feel excited to be a part of that because these guys right now, all the gaming chairs out there, I mean, sorry, they suck. They're really bad.
I believe it.
They're all based on like, hey, someone I don't know 10 years ago thought, oh, we'll make a gaming chair. We'll make it look like a Recaro racing seat.
Yeah.
Bucket seat kind of feel. And yeah.
And it's, it's the reverse of what our chair is doing. It locks you like a racing seat is built to hold you in a spot so you're not moving. And that's, that's where you know, the gaming design has come from for seats. So we're looking forward to blowing that out of the water. We did a deal with a team called the Immortals out of la. So they're playing, they have teams on League of Legends and Overwatch and some of the bigger teams and really, really high profile team that we wanted to work with, number one, to plant our flag from a marketing perspective, but number two, to work with their athletes. And Dennis has worked with the Clippers and all these different NBA NFL players for a long time. So we're like, hey, let's take his knowledge of working with those athletes to the gaming athlete and figure out what is it that will make that gamer perform better in a chair. What is it that we could do in a chair that helps their body work better so that frankly they don't destroy themselves. Because there's really not a lot of difference between a gamer playing Overwatch for 12 hours a day for three years than going out as a running back and getting hit by, you know, 300 pound dude.
Yeah.
So that we're really excited to get into and that mid year this year we have our first ones coming out.
Couple things. How are you going to approach the marketing in the gaming industry? Do you have a strategy or if you're comfortable with sharing anything here? I'm kind of curious how you're going to get in.
Yeah, it's wild because it's something we're spending a lot of time thinking about because right now our customers by and large they're a little bit older, 30 plus, let's say with a propensity towards the older end really partly due to price point, partly due to an appreciation of like a willingness to invest in what you're sitting in all day so that you can get up at the end of the day still feeling good. As you get older, you feel it more. That is getting younger and younger as we get better about getting our message out. So that because guys like yourself are hurting yourself on a Sunday and you're like figuring out that you need something. This is very different than the gaming world. And so the gaming world is kind of operating almost in its own silos.
So you can approach it from. And I think the demographics and the ages of gamers is actually quite surprising too. It's older in general than you think. It's not quite a Lion's share over 35, but the mainstay is in that kind of 20 to 40. It's not 18 year olds by and large. We thought, well, maybe we got to sell it to the parents. No, it's really we're selling to gamers who, who are actually.
Young professional people, men and women who are willing to spend on their rigs and their battle stations, frankly, and their battle stations. Right now it's predominantly hardware and gear that is based on.
What kind of video you're going to get and what kind of CPU got and what kind of monitor. But very quickly it's going into okay, I got to take care of my body too. And so that's what we're going to view to that is the better for you. So the places to be are we're starting with the tournaments with the teams making sure that we can line up and align with the right kind of influencers where naturally we start talking about Twitch and all these other performance channels where we can get seen. And one thing we're really trying to do right now, which I'm excited about, is we were just having this call with the Immortals the other day, which is it's like, okay, what kind of data can we get that shows at the eighth hour of gaming or at the end of a match, your reaction time and your kill time is going to be faster or better in our chair than another chair. So that's the kind of stuff we're working on right now, which I think will be pretty cool.
That's fascinating. I like that. I know. I mean, the thing that triggered me into getting into back health and spine health is literally just my brain. I want to be able to function and not have to focus on something that's painful behind me. But those can cause headaches and I can only imagine I don't sit at the desk for eight hours, 12 hours straight. But I'm thinking gamers, I'm like, oh my God.
Just think of the cognitive abilities in a game. Your reaction time, it is going to be slower. If you're hurting, you're getting headaches. And it's all related.
Well, if you think about this too.
In kind of overlooked or underlooked, whatever the right way to say it is just breathing.
So when your posture is improved and.
You can kind of feel it in how you're sitting, sorry, you're kind of slumped, but.
Your lungs are not going to be compressed, your blood flow is going to be better, your oxygenation is improved throughout your whole cardiovascular system, which means more energy, which means more alertness, which means better decisions and less fatigue achieved over time, which is also very much tied to what your joints are doing. But all that sort of ties together where keeping your organs in a place again, almost as if you were standing, but when you're sitting is just better for you. So you're going to play better, you're going to think better. And also remember that now most people who are playing these games probably, let's just say they work for something like Shopify.
They're never going back to an office. They're working at home all day. So not only working at home all day, but when they clock out, they're then logging into League of Legends for.
The next six hours. So it's a long day in a chair.
Yeah, I'm laughing a little bit because you're kind of describing me. I actually work from home all day. And then when my work day is over, I play Minecraft.
So yeah, that's exactly right.
So you're our target.
Seriously.
I'll have to figure out how to.
How to target you. That's honestly why what we're figuring out, it's like.
How do we teach you the value, the benefit of an investment in One of our chairs. And that's where making sure we hit the price points for the demographics are key. But again, making sure our underlying technology is there to help you.
Well, I think your price points are. I mean.
I think they're the best I've ever seen in a chair like this because it has been prohibitive. I mean like $800 chair plus up to 1000 dol, which is totally cool. But I think you guys have a much, much lower level, at least starter chair. Right. Just to get people kind of in.
Well, right now, yeah. The chair that you're sitting in right now is retailing for 800 for 799. Now the goal for that was to be really the low of the high. And so you go up from there in terms of the bigger brand name chairs that have all the R and D and everything behind them that I think we still beat, those are 1000, 1200, 1400 and up. So that's where we crush those guys on price. Now we are not a chair that you're going to go buy in a big box store.
Just pure and simple.
Because it costs us a heck of a lot to build the thing because of what's in it and we can't really compete on that. With that being said, we do want to make a model and we're just confirming the design of it. We'll start building it pretty shortly. As I said, if it were BMW it'd be like that three series. So I think we're gonna target that to be in that four to $500.
Tops range.
On that basis.
Which.
And frankly we don't want to go lower than that. Because you go lower than that, you have a chair that's gonna break down, it's gonna be crappy after a while and it's gonna be something that you just kind of discard. And that's not our jam.
Yeah. I feel like there's two things that especially entrepreneurs at our computer all day. There's two things that I always say you should not skimp on the investment in. That's your chair that you're sitting in all day and the bed you're sleeping in at night. Because just think about how many hours you're in those two things.
Totally true. We actually talk about that a lot.
It makes such a difference in your performance. And that's where we don't look at this as the furniture business. We do look at this as the better for you business. And in the same way, getting a good night of sleep, I think used to be the Badge of honor of like, oh, I'm working all night, I'm not sleeping. That's just now considered to be dumb. And you're going to get your ass kicked by somebody who's sleeping seven or eight hours a night. Right? So that's the way we look at our chair, in the same way.
Yeah, absolutely. Now I want to ask one sort of final Shark Tank question to kind of close the loop. And I want to hear about the aftermath. I want to hear. So from what I understand, when it comes to Shark Tank, you don't necessarily know what date your episode's gonna air. Maybe you did, maybe it's different now. But what was. Like, once it's filmed, you're back home, things are kind of settling back down into normal. What is it like when your episode airs? What's the aftermath look like?
Well, yeah, it's funny because you go do it.
You go through this whole thing. And.
Especially this year, I'm gone for like 10 days, by the way. I can't tell anybody where I was.
Because I've got, you know, I've signed.
An NDA that's like that thick, right? To say, you know, nothing. I'm like, oh, I have a business meeting in Vegas for a week and a half. People like, by yourself.
So, you know, with that being said.
Because you're not talking about it, you kind of just put it out of your mind. And honestly, you know, because you don't know if you're going to make it. You don't know if you're going to make it. And I thought based on the scheduling of when we taped and everything, maybe if we're going to make it on the air, it might be in like April this year.
I wake up on a Saturday morning.
To, to in December to a bunch of texts like, hey, you're in the promo last night.
What? They had apparently sent me an email.
The day before on that Friday, but it went to my spam. I had no idea. And I, you know, we like to watch the show on TiVo or recorded. And so I didn't even see any yet. But you're like, yeah, you're the promo. You're apparently going to be on January 8th. I'm like, what?
So it's only like three, two, three weeks out. And it's like, whoa. So you kind of jump into gear and kind of get excited for that. We had a particular problem because in.
A good way, we had an amazing holiday season where we just crushed it sales wise. So it was like this perfect storm. Oh, My God, do we have enough inventory?
If you're familiar with manufacturing in China, Chinese New Year hits every year. Where did the factory shut down for a month? Right in January. So it's like this double compounding effect of what are we going to do? There was stress with that, trying to prepare for that and then just getting ready for it. At a certain point you have to realize there's nothing you can do. For me, it's like I was in the tank for over an hour. I don't know exactly how long, but it was long. And you're going to get cut down to nine minutes. In that contract that you sign. It basically says you guys have the rights to edit me any way you want. You can make me sound like a serial killer if you want. That's okay. So you're definitely like, hey, everyone watch. Hope it's good. Just praying.
Wow, what a weird feeling. Surreal, huh?
It was totally surreal.
Yeah.
Yeah. Right up until the airing, certainly while watching it, where I watched it with my family. We did a big Zoom event with friends and everyone from the company, which was super fun. But that was real because I'm trying to like. No, that's not what I said.
Let me tell you the truth, man.
Yeah, but it was super fun. And my, my huge regret of the night was.
I had a bunch of screens open in front of me to kind of watch and I had Google Analytics open on one screen and it was particularly in the site visitors per second. And I remember watching that during the east coast feed that had started and.
It was kind of like those commercials that you've seen where the, hey, we just started this web company and oh my God, it's amazing. And look at the traffic. It was literally that we went from, I don't know, 50 people on the site, which is kind of, you know, was normal on that Friday at 8 o' clock at night, kind of super whatever, slow. Within minutes it was a thousand, then 30 seconds later it was 4,000, then it was 8,000, there was 10,000. Got up to like 25,000 people like Per se. It was like this crazy. And you look at all the graphs from that when you look back and even on LinkedIn profile, it's all the same graph and it looks just like a shark fin. It's kind of funny.
The shark Tank effect there it is. How cool. It's a fun experience.
I want to wrap this up just on something else you've created last year for Covid and Telehealth. And I think this is super interesting and For a low dollar amount. I mean, you could really help a ton of people in a big way.
Yeah.
Give us a little scoop on that and how people can help out there too.
So, yeah, intellihelp.org is a site that. So a guy named Ron lynch, who.
I've worked with for years.
So Ron and I did the original Kickstarter for the chair company. And so we've worked on a bunch of stuff together. And right around this time last year when Covid was just coming into play, Ron had had a conversation with some kid who just made him really incensed.
About.
Being kind of selfish and didn't really care what was going to happen to others. Like, it's all going to be fine for me. Anyway. Ron wrote a post that turned into what is now over 100,000 people on a Facebook group. And what he kind of quickly came up as in telehealth, with the idea being, how do we help people who need help? And the unfortunate truth of that was that there's so many people that we're not really paying attention to that have been out of work, that can't get jobs in the restaurant industry, whatever else. They've got kids at home and they're really screwed. So what we wanted to do, Ron's real inspiration here was that we organized around and. And moved off the Facebook platform onto now our.org and we built a 501C3 around. It was how do we hook people up together? There's a lot of people who can give and there's a lot of people who need. And how do we just make that a direct transaction without the charity taking 40% off it, without all the baloney marketing dollars going against it. So it's this really great thing where it's amazing. I think well over a million meals have been served. Tens and tens of thousands of families and tons of moms with their kids. Like, I can't get out to get diapers. I can't afford diapers. I can't get them. I can't get food. And so what happens is people go on the site to intellhealth.org and say, I can help. And they can scroll through and find either choose a city or a state or just grab one at random and say, I can help. And somebody will have a vetted ask list that we sort of vet out to make sure it's, you know, not some money scam or crazy. It's all legit people who need help. And we just line them up. And so people are like, yeah, I'LL get your diapers and your baby food and your rice done and either through Amazon or Instacart or this or that, it gets delivered. And then the result is, you know, these people, you know, feel so great because somebody helped them and the person who gives feels even better because they're like, look what I did. So it's really turning into this cool community. It's actually spread to now a handful of countries outside of the US and we're working on something now which, which is going to be hopefully pretty exciting in terms of sort of a last mile delivery capability with, with kind of drivers and stuff. So it's really cool. It's a lot going on. I appreciate your asking about it because it's been, you know, hugely rewarding. Really. You know, it's. It's Ron's brainchild and so many awesome, amazing volunteers of signed up and put in countless hours to make it all happen and help people. And that's the thing. There's a lot of people who we're not looking at right now that need help.
That's right.
No, that's amazing. I would consider Ron, a buddy of ours and we were in the Intellihelp group, I think. Weren't you in the group too? Yeah, I was in the group on Facebook. I didn't realize how much it's evolved since it originally started.
I had no clue. And this reminded when you said I was like, I'm in that group because we know Ron.
That's awesome.
And I think there's a way to give money too, right? I think 50 bucks.
Yeah, we have the. If you go to the intellehelp.org, you can definitely 5, 10, 2,500 or more if you can. But the key thing is those donations are there to support the network, to support the volunteers and everybody that we have kind of manning the systems to do this by and large. And that's like the extra donation, the general donation, if you want to go and help somebody, you can just go.
In and do that.
And it's honestly 100% correct. Which is kind of this unique model that people really appreciate because your dollar is going to somebody, go figure. At the same time, we have a lot of people who are giving to support the build of the network and make it bigger and stronger. So yeah, please, if you're up for it, consider it. And that's@intellihelp.org we'll be giving back there for sure, man.
Awesome.
Yeah, of course. Bing. This has been really awesome. Thank you so Much. Yeah. Sharing freely. It's open up our eyes, that's for dang. Sure. Appreciate you, man.
So all3.com, right? That's the website to find more about the chairs.
Yeah, all33.com a l l33.com. And yeah, it's a great site. A lot of info there. And there's a little bit of backlog right now still from the Shark Tank stuff. But if you catch us on the right day sometimes we got some refurb action which is like in and out stuff for a special deal. But yeah.
I can't even tell you how many containers on the way in. And one of the last things I'll say about Shark Tank and for us, with a kind of.
Momentum in our business, the question is, what do you need the money for? Our answer, which was the honest truth is we are actually starting production here in the US and been one of our goals to do is to. Is to move production here. We're working on a facility in Tennessee to actually start building chairs here as soon as this year. So that's, that's. And when we have that done, then there will be no, you know, eight week lead time tomorrow.
Imagine with. Yeah, it's probably a totally complicated thing right now.
But yeah, it's worth it. It's worth the wait. All3.com.
Cool. I appreciate it.
Thank you, Bing.
Thanks, guys.
All right, so what did you think of Mr. Bing?
Mr. Bing, man. Bing is. I love the fact that he is. He's coming from a whole different perspective than the folks that we typically bring on this show. Yeah. And that's. I think that's what I really wanted, you know, and he's thinking big, but at the same time he's doing some stuff that like obviously being on Shark Tank.
Yeah. I think that's what initially attracted us to the conversation. Right. We were connected through Lisa Byer and Lisa was like, he loves talking about his Shark Tank experience, so bring him on and ask about the behind the scenes. And that was this sort of initial thing that brought him on the show that we were excited about. But as we all know, everybody's got a lot more depth than that. And there was so much amazing stuff to talk about in there and the timing too. You got a jacked up back literally today. And we're talking about chairs that help your back.
Can't make this stuff up, man. I even told him that's why I referenced it. But yeah, I mean, like, literally right now I swapped with Matt's chair. I'm sitting in his all 33 chair right now. And it's legit helping me.
I'm sitting in my Office Depot special.
And it was hurting me. And this is not a paid testimonial. This is truth. But yeah.
I mean, although we did get our chairs for free.
Well, we.
Did.
It's not a paid testimonial, but we were.
Good point.
The chairs. So I think technically we're supposed to be disclosing that. Very good point.
But it wasn't paid. You're right. But the fact that it freaking works. And I'm stoked. And I have nerded out on this stuff for a long time. Yeah. It's like we ain't thanking my neck all the time back.
Yeah, I do. I sit there and I'm like, dude, you're just like trying to contort yourself constantly. What are you doing?
But yeah, man. I mean, I love the perspective, the behind the scenes of Shark Tank. We had what, Stephen Sachin on from Zero Shoes.
Yes.
A few years ago maybe. And he had great perspective from his own experience, but obviously every experience is different product and stuff.
Another dude who sold a product that was designed to help your body.
Good point. We have a trend here. Yeah, we got some of those too. Hooked us up.
Is becoming about affiliate marketing, podcasting, and unfucking your back.
Pretty much. I mean, I'm in on all of those. That's cool. I'm okay with that. It's the power of podcasting.
Yeah.
Check out podhacker. Yo, podhacker.com.
We gotta make a module in there about what chair you need because there is a section in there about the equipment we use. We should probably list, like, all right, these are the chairs you should be using.
I mean, it's legit. You even said it. You're like, you know, you sleep on your bed, ideally eight hours or so a night, and then you sit, I don't know, maybe around the same time.
Probably 8ish hours.
Right? Yeah. I mean, it's true. You might invest in your battle rig. Like a gamer. Which entrepreneurs. It is a freaking battle rig.
We have a battle rig.
Look at.
Look at my desk right now. My office is colorful as hell with our battle rig.
Two screens, a little mini stream deck from Elgato over there. You have a Rodecaster Pro on the right with all fancy lights. Looks like Christmas.
Three microphones in here, two sets of expensive headphones, like a camera, like. Like we have a freaking battle station for podcasting.
It is. And why not include the chair?
Yeah.
You know, so, yeah, all that to say, check out all 33. And I do remember, you know, Bing did say it, but I mean, remember Lisa saying it too. After the Shark Tank, they sold out. Yeah. You know, and rightly so. So I don't know if they have a wait list or anything, but check it out. It's worth it. But Shark Tank, what did. What was your big takeaway like? What was for me? You watch it way more than I do.
I think I've seen every single one. I don't know if there's a shark tank I haven't seen, to be honest.
So what surprised you from being's experience, like a takeaway here?
I don't know. I don't know if there was any specific surprises, but I just had fun being curious about what the behind the scenes looked like. Um, you know, there's a. A few things that he might have mentioned that I was like, oh, I didn't know that. That's kind of how it went. But like, like, for instance, I did not know that during COVID A, they didn't want you talking about COVID on the set, but B, he had to sit around in quarantine for 10 days, and during that 10 day window, he wasn't allowed to tell people where he was.
That's crazy.
Think about your life right now. How would that even work? Like, if you were just to disappear and be like, I'm gone for 10 days and I'm like, where are you going? Can't tell you, dude. I'd be like, what's he. Is he starting up another business without me? What the.
Is he cheating on me?
Yeah.
Is he cheating on me with another podcast?
No, but, you know, it's true.
It's going to be.
Can you imagine? Like, I've got to go quarantine for 10 days before I'm allowed to go on this show and I'm not allowed to talk about where I am or what I'm about to do?
That's crazy.
That is insane to me.
And then obviously a family of kids, you have a wife, you have extended family around your parents.
Yeah, well, I'm sure the NDA doesn't necessarily extend to your spouse, but, you.
Know, bad NDA, so who knows? But yeah, I. I thought it was cool because, you know. Yeah, well, I like the way he was pitching, you know, so actually on his Facebook, I think it's on Bings or maybe All33. Actually, I think it was on All33's company Facebook page. It actually shows a picture of Bings, you know, the different pictures of the sharks on a window and it's in him in Vegas. I don't think he's in the picture, but you see the Wynn Hotel in the background. I was like, interesting. So that's where he was held up. And I thought, just the approach to pitching multiple sharks. And really anyone at that. I mean, just think about the dynamics you have to think about. Everyone has different motivations.
Well, I mean, so I watch Shark Tank a lot, like we just mentioned, but I'm sitting there mostly making comments at the tv, right? Like, I'm not speaking about Bing specifically, but I might watch an episode and be like, this guy's an idiot. Like, why is he valuing it at that price? Did he really just say what I think he said?
Now.
Now he's never going to get a deal. And I'm sitting there like, armchair. Yeah, armchair quarterbacking or whatever on Shark Tank going, why is he saying that? But, like, it really makes sense.
A.
It's edited down to nine minutes, right. He was in the room for an hour, and that got edited down to nine minutes. So we didn't hear the whole conversation.
I didn't know it was that long an hour. That is a long time.
Yeah. And then I, you know, I didn't. I never really thought of the fact that you got five sharks all yelling at you at once and you're trying to pay attention and not offend any of them. Because when they edit it on tv, they make it kind of look like one shark is throwing a question at you. At it. Every once in a while, that kind of gets riled up. But it's kind of rare that everybody gets riled up and talks over each other. They make it seem like one shark is throwing a question at him at a time.
Right.
So, like, some of these little things that you don't really realize I think will give you an extra appreciation for the people pitching on there.
That's my takeaway, is a huge appreciation for going through the process, even if the pitch was horrible.
Yeah.
You know, someone else. Not Bing's, but someone else's approach. I mean, think of all the work that they had to do to get into that role. And I think Bing even said he was running a company, he was leading a company at the same time by doing all of this other stuff. Yeah, that's kind of a bonus. Obviously, it really helped them, I would imagine, get the demand and the traffic, all that stuff he said. But, man, so fascinating because I even. I mentioned and the little experience I have in the Showbiz side is I did do a bunch of wipeout. You know, I think I went to the third stage and never made it because I wasn't crazy or dumb enough. Seriously. I think that's what it came down to. I was, like, too normal for them, but I saw the process, and it's freaking grueling, man. And then let's Make a deal. I actually did make it on the show a couple times. Heather won some stuff, but. But even that was less grueling. But I could just see, like, okay, take that game. Game show feel and apply it to here, which is kind of a game show in itself. But then you have all these layers of, like, due diligence, pitching. I'm like, holy crap. You're not just running some course, throwing around yourself on some obstacles, and making yourself look funny.
Yeah.
Which is. Most shows, like, you have to do it all, really.
Yeah.
It's intense. Yeah. It's probably the hardest seeming game show out there, or if you want to call it a game show. Yeah.
I mean, I guess kind of you're going on there hoping to win, but. Yeah, Another thing, this isn't Shark Tank related, but when he mentioned Ron Lynch's name, I was like, holy crap. Like, Ron's a buddy.
That was cool. Intellihelp.org yeah, definitely. I mean, I checked that out, and it doesn't take much money, and you're supporting so many people, and you can obviously connect directly. Check it out. Because the Facebook group. Yeah, it did start, like, right when Covid happened started, I guess, and it was. I think it was, like, in a local area, been, like, spread around. But it's all from a Facebook group.
Yeah.
And it's just super cool to now see that it's a nonprofit, and it's going directly to people who need it the most, and they have a cool system. So people aren't, like, gaming the system and all that stuff. So check it out. Intellihelp.com that's intella. I n t e l l I help.com or.org my bad.org.org yeah, very cool. Yeah. All right, this is. This is a cool one. And.
There'S. There's just a lot here. So grab the action guides, of course. So we covered a lot. And, you know, if you're looking to pitch and do all this other stuff, know your numbers, due diligence, all that. It's in here. So Hustle and Flowchart, Doc. Nope, that's the wrong URL. Flowchart group.com go over there within two weeks of this episode, you'll get access to our Facebook group community and also plug in your email to get the action guides. Flowchart group.com do it. And we got easy webinar. We do.com hustle sponsoring the episodes. Episizzle. Yeah, not the episizzle. Sorry, wrong podcast.
Wrong podcast. That's some guy named Brad Casitanzo or something. I think.
I think that's actually something like that. Anyway, Behon rapt business.
Oh, is the C like silent Behon Behon.
Yeah. So no, Easy Webinar is our sponsor, but it's also our go to webinar tool that we love and adore. Because why would you need anything else? Because it's all under one roof.
Does automated, does hybrid, does live, does streams, does you name it. You can do it with Easy webinar.
Yeah, you can do a lot there. You can just have meetings. Kind of like a zoom. You could and just use it like Zoom. Because sometimes zoom sucks.
Yeah, a lot of times zoom sucks.
Yeah, most of the time. So let's brand Easy webinar, not Zoom all the time. Let's hop on an Easy webinar.
Yeah, let's hop on an Easy webinar. It's just. It's more syllables. That's the problem.
Couple more syllables. I'm a little lazy. I'm not lazy. All right, but go check it out. Seriously. The page will tell it, you know, tell the stories and show you way more of what it does. @easywebinar.com hustle they are hooking you up with a fat discount, depending on what you choose. Easywebinar.com hustle. Go get it.
Go get it. And I know you enjoyed this episode. Share it with some friends. If you have anybody who's thinking about going on Shark Tank, they need to hear this episode because A, this will help them get on Shark Tank, but B, it will help them make a good pitch on Shark Tank. So anybody that's throwing around the idea of one day possibly being on Shark Tank needs to hear this episode. So share it. Share it around. Let it. Let people know that you enjoyed it.
Got someone in pain, want a little upgrade? Their. Their brain or their battle station and their backs and all that. Share the episode too.
Yes.
Got everything here.
If you hated the episode, share the episode and be like, I didn't like this episode. But share the link to the episode that you didn't like.
Be totally honest. I hated this episode. Everyone on here was horrible.
Go listen and tell me what you think.
Yeah.
That's what you should say.
I would love to hear it.
The social media post writes itself. I hated this episode. What do you think?
And then the link, it writes itself. I love it. Go do that.
Unfortunately, I have a feeling we'll actually see somebody do that now.
But you know what? That's fine.
That'll be awesome.
All right, well, we got Pod Hacker, too. I mean, this is a new brand of ours that we probably forget to mention a lot. And I want to just make this a call to action fest here.
Yeah, but too many calls to action.
Yeah.
If you're in our Facebook group, you're probably hearing about Pod Hacker right now, so.
Email list. Yeah, you'll hear what we're talking about. But check out, take a little peek at Pod Hacker if you're interested in podcasting and kind of a lot of the stuff that we're doing here, it's the behind the scenes. So that's all. See you next time. Thank you.
Thanks, everybody, for listening to this episode of the Hustle and Flowchart podcast. Cast for taking the time to listen. We want to give you something a little bit special. Every single episode that we do, we actually have somebody on our team take notes. We basically have a Cliff's Notes version of every episode where you can go and find all of the tips and tactics that they laid out, all of the resources that they laid out, all the good stuff from this episode. We actually have a nice, simple notes version that you can find on our website. So go to evergreenprofits.com, find this episode that you just listened to, and give us your email address, and we'll send you the notes. Thanks for listening.
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