Following the Things You Feel Are Missing in Your Life with Travis Rosbach

Welcome to this episode of the Million Dollar Mastermind. I'm Larry Weddell. And before we get started, if you want to know exactly how to win again and Again, go to wydellonwinning.comwebinar now to watch something I've put together for you. Now let's get going into this episode.

Of Million Dollar Mastermind. I'm here with Travis Ross back, and we're just having a ball hearing about his story, and we've only got him up to age 29. So, Travis, welcome. You know, we got a new episode here, and we're just learning things. Mainly, we're learning what can be done and the kind of common sense approach, because what I see from you is that, you know, you hear people say, be in the moment, be present. And they don't know what that means. Well, what it means, one thing it means is look where you are. Look what your opportunities are. Look what you're excited about. Look who you can find, who can help you get going in that direction and get going and see where it'll take you. And once you reach as far as you want to go in that, follow your next inspiration. But you don't have to stay stuck in a career. You don't have to be average. You don't have to be miserable. You go up to Oregon and you have some success, but all of a sudden, now you have two winners is enough for you in Oregon. And it's like, I got to get warm again. So now you're in Hawaii, and so, and you make a change, you know, so it's like, what you got to learn how to coach yourself and read yourself, because all you got is you. And all you got is you, what you like, what you don't like, the kind of people you like, the kind of things you like to do, the kind of things you're interested in. And if you start accommodating yourself and you're going to find out that you're able to make big impact and really develop the skills that you have because you're doing what you want to do, where you want to do it with the people you want to do it. So many people waste their lives working with people they don't want to work with, living where they don't want to live, doing crap they don't want to be doing. And it's like, that's your fault. So don't do that to your. You know, it's like my ski instructor, Chino from Argentina used to say, you see that? Don't do that yeah, don't do that. That was his instruction. And so when you get in those situations, don't do that anymore. Start making some changes and head on to things that can excite you. And so you're in there. And how did you get.

From.

Where did this Tumelo come along?

Well, so after the sign company, we started Hydro Flask. Yeah. So we started Hydro Flask in Oahu, moved back to Bend, and then after I exited Hydro Flask, I, I took off and just went and traveled again. I just, I. The wanderlust is really strong. I really am inflicted with this travel bug. And so started traveling. And yet it, it. I kind of still felt like I had a little bit of something missing. And I realized it was because I miss doing business. I really enjoy doing big deals and growing companies and branding and negotiation and sales. And I had a. I was over in England and I had a guy ask, he says, you know, how do I start working with China to do manufacturing? And, you know, I kind of gave him a few bullet points and a few pointers and he, he just kind of like shook his head like, nah, you know, like, I can't do that. That just sounds too difficult. And I thought, well, you know, I'm not going to do it for you for free, but, you know, I'd like to help. And so, you know, I started helping him and I found that as he was paying me for it, he was getting more out of it because he had skin in the game. And kind of one thing led to another. I moved back to the States and I bought a bunch of property and started logging and kind of doing forestry stuff. But finally the Tumlo group just came full circle and I was like, okay, it's time to go. And so started a lot of sourcing products out of factories in China, predominantly. And then within the last year and a half, two years, we've been moving from China back home to the States. We're opening up a lot of manufacturers here in the, in our, in our own neck of the woods, which is awesome.

And.

And then slowly evolved kind of into more advising and coaching and consulting as well.

So you started to tell me, I think, earlier about where the Hydroflax Hydroflux idea came from. And a lot of water bottles out there. And so what did you feel like was missing in water bottles enough to where you'd go out there and make one? Because that's a big thing, making a new product. You gotta get the demos and, you know, the models done and all that and testing and so how did you. What. What triggered that? How did. You stuck out to. You said, wait a minute, this is. This. We need something better. Yeah.

Well, so I was downtown Honolulu running some errands for the sign company, and I was thirsty. And when I was a pilot and a rock climber, we used to drink out of these plastic Nalgene bottles, right? So I went into the sporting goods store to get an algine, and the whole wall was empty. There were no water bottles. And I said, you know, what's going on here? Where are the water bottles? And they said, well, there's this stuff, bpa. We're not really sure what it is, but as a preliminary precautionary measure, we're pulling all of the bottles. And I said, well, who's going to fill this up? What other brands are there? And the guy said, none. There are no other brands. And I said, okay, I will do that. And it just kind of came in and it came out my mouth. And he kind of laughed at me. And from the time I said, I will, I will do that. And he laughed. I saw about 10 years down the line, I saw myself up on stage talking about this highly successful water bottle company.

Wow.

I just knew, like, okay, I got to do this. So I went back to the sign shop and I asked, you know, I always like to hire people who are younger than me that know what's cool and hip and training. And I asked him, I said, what do I do for water? And they said, well, there's this aluminum one. You can try it. It's awesome. We love it. I got it. It sucked. I couldn't put ice cubes in it. The mouth was too small. It had BPA in that also. And it was, it was way overpriced. And so my brother had just moved back home to Bend and started working at rei. I asked him and he said, well, there's this other one. It's metal and it's single wall and you're going to love it. So I got one and I didn't like it. It dribbled all over my face. It wasn't ergonomically correct. It couldn't keep hot, it couldn't keep cold. And we get in from surfing and the water was too hot to drink. It kind of made it futile. And I had a memory of my grandpa's old fashioned thermal bottle he used to drink coffee out of. And I thought, well, what if we just, instead of doing glass on the inside, what if we just do metal on the inside? We do a Double wall vacuum insulated stainless steel bottle instead. And so I took off to Shanghai to go do that.

Yeah, you took off to Shanghai to do that. Now you're, you're in Hawaii. So it's, it's. I mean, in Hawaii, do people get ideas and take off to Shanghai?

Well, I just, I knew that, you know, we. We've always sort of outsourced our American. Well, not always. We used to manufacture in the States and then we started outsourcing our manufacturing Korea, Japan, Germany, Taiwan, Mexico. And at that manufacturing, at this point, I wasn't doing any. I was doing the sign shop. But I knew that Shanghai or I.

Knew that China was before all of this other manufacturing. So, yeah, somehow you had the idea someone told you or you maybe asked somebody a question like, where do you get these things made?

And yeah, well, there was. At the sign shop, we had a customer who was making I can't wear shirts or hats or something. And he was a real nice guy. And I asked him, like, what, you know, what are you doing with. With your shirts here? And he says, well, I do these sort of field trips to the Canton Fair every year, and we're getting ready to go to the Canton Fair. And I said, well, you know, what's the Canton Fair? And he said, well, it's all of the who's who of manufacturing in China comes together twice a year and they, they show how cool they are and how proficient they are at doing manufacturing. I said, oh, that's awesome. Can I come with you? Because I want to do this double wall vacuum insulated stainless steel water bottle. He just starts laughing. He's like, no, there's no such thing. I say, well, I know there's no such thing, but I want to come with, you know, like, I want to go find a factory.

That's why I'm going.

Yeah. And he's like, no, you can't come with there. No, that's going to waste your time. And so I was like, oh, okay, fine. And so I, you know, I just kind of started looking and the cheapest ticket was to Shanghai. And I thought, well, I guess I just show up in Shanghai and start talking to people and figure it out and. And ended up finding a water bottle company in Shanghai. So I was, I was pretty excited. So I get to Shanghai and they're like, no, we only do plastic. I was like, well, I want to do double wall vacuum insulated stainless steel. They're like, no, that doesn't happen. And we just do plastic. It's like, dang so, you know, I kind of wasted a trip to China. And right as I was leaving, somebody came up and said, hey, you got to go meet my, my cousin. He does. He helps do sourcing and he might be able to help. You said, okay, cool, how do I go? And he wrote down how to get to the train station and, you know, know where to go on the train. And, you know, I'm like, okay, I guess I'll go try it. Sure enough, a couple days later, I show up in Hangzhou and I meet the guy and his wife and they said, well, if anything's going to happen, it's going to happen down in Xinhua and Yukong area. That's where all the metal is made. So let's just go start knocking on doors. So we showed up in Jinhua and we met with a single wall water bottle factory. And they said, no, like, there's no vacuums and we're not going to do that. Okay. And we went another and another and second or third day there, finally we met somebody who just kind of shook his head and he said, well, fine, I guess we can try it. Like, oh, cool. So I stick my ticket and we started work on creating how to do a double wall vacuum insulated, stainless steel water bottle that you could actually drink out of. And how many days were you in.

Shanghai at this point, where the guy said, you know, I guess we can do it.

I'd been in China for probably about two weeks before he said, okay, yeah. And. And I had spent a lot of time in Hawaii, going all around the island, finding different bottles, every beer bottle and pop bottle and water bottle and juice bottle that I could find, and measuring. I bought some calipers, which I thought were super cool. I still think they're super cool. Cool makes me feel smart. And I figured out, like, what's the most ideal, ergonomically correct awesome size, mouth and height and ounces, all of that. So I had a bunch of sketches and drawings that I. I kind of knew. And ironically enough, it looks just like a. The original bottles look just like a dive tank. So, yeah, he. He finally just said, well, fine, I guess. I guess we'll try it.

And so what I'm seeing, the trends I'm seeing here, that people can learn the lessons here is that, number one, you're very proactive in. You ask what you don't know, but then you follow through yourself. You do a lot of the research yourself. You're hands on, which you got to be hands on when you start, but. And you're always starting new things, so you get hands on. But the advantage of hands on is you find out what you like, what you don't like, what comes right to you. So you're doing your own customer research, your own market research with yourself. And that's the first way, like if you're, you want to be a hit as a musician, you know, you, first of all, you got to be a hit locally. And that was like the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, you know, they wanted to be a hit in their town and then their region and then, you know, ripple, ripple out like that. And so what you got to do is find what's available. And you went around looking, checking out this particular thing, the water bottle things in Honolulu. And you got a pretty good education from that too, you know, as far as size, shape and this, that the other, and you're getting yourself trained, but then you jumped onto the next step. But we used to say in sales, you know, we have found that the best people to recruit and every business lives or dies off the caliber of people that work with them, you know, and so we found that the best people are referrals from people inside our own company. You can't always get them, but when you can get them, that's the best ones. But it's not necessarily first when they refer to you, because if you. We always have the attitude. We have learned it's four deep to a star. You know, you ask this guy or lady, you know, they, they come in there, they might even try it. They're just no good. But before they go, you get a few names from them and they might not be any good or even interested, but then you get some referrals from them. And it's like trying to figure out who's, who's going to build this bottle for me, you know, sooner or later, you know, if they're not interested or they don't want to do it, that just means they're not the ones, you know, and, and maybe they'll be the ones next year or for the next idea. But now keep moving. That doesn't stop. Doesn't mean I'm not good enough. The fact that you kept running into these people and the companies like, no, we don't do glass, metal, we only do plastic. What's so tragic about people that are starting off at business? A lot of times they'll stop when they get an idea and the first people they run into say, that's a dumb idea. And one of the tests of whether or not your idea is any good is how quick and how many times you hear it's a dumb idea in the beginning and it can't be done. And that type of stuff, I mean, pat yourself on the back because you've got something other people haven't thought of yet, and you may need to refine it and develop it, but keep on going. The main thing is keep on going. So you went. You got on the train, you went here, you went there, and you're bouncing around, and sooner or later you found the factory. I don't know if that was four deep, but, you know, we said it's four deep to a star. You know, every dud knows a stud basically is the thing, you know, and everybody who can't do things know people who do things. And so especially inside industries. Most industries are pretty small or most niches, and they might be average, but most of them know who the stars are and know what the strengths of different companies and all. If you get in that groove and you keep moving through it, that's where you're going to find the pot of gold, you know, and so that's what you did. And that's how Phil Knight got going with, you know, the athletic shoes. He's a young kid in college. He gets his suit and his knapsack and takes his last. His lunch money and flies to Japan and goes bouncing around and finally found a Japanese store that would give him representation for their shoes in the United States. And then from that, make shoes at his own design and stuff like that. But at some point, you got to get going and start. It's really like digging for gold, isn't it? If you think about it. You keep shoveling down, and I've got a story in my book serial winner, where we needed water for our farm. And you got to dig, you know, bring out the well people. Because we had horses out there, you know, we needed water. And so they come out, they say, well, we went 100ft, no water. What should we do? I said, keep going.

Yeah.

Another hundred feet. We dug another 200ft, no water. He said, keep going. Another hundred feet, no water. Another hundred feet, no water. At 4. What should we do? Keep going. At 420ft, they found a river. Oh, wow. They didn't find a little drip pot. They found a frigging river where you could water the whole north side of town. You know what I'm saying? And so the thing is, you. You gotta keep on going on these things, folks. I don't know how many examples you need to hear. But that's what you know, Travis is sharing that that's how this works. Even in these principles. Winning principles don't care who use them. They work. And so you can as you're successful because you wind up using these successful approaches that have worked for so many other people. And so Travis, that is an amazing thing. We've gone on really long. We've covered a lot of ground. Travis, thanks for sharing this part. I can't wait to hear the end of this story and how you went in five years and sold this thing. It became $100,200,000,000 enterprise and we're hearing the beginnings of it right now. Can't wait to hear the rest of it. Thanks for sharing man.

Thank you Larry.

If you enjoyed what you've heard and are dead serious about finding out for yourself exactly how this works in the real world, I've taken the most valuable business lessons I've learned over 40 years and put them into something for you to watch. Go to whiteellawinning.com webinar now in order to move up as fast as as possible. I'm Larry Widell and I run the Million Dollar Mastermind. Go Go.