From Starting Up to Scaling Up with Laura Benson, Brandon Maddox, and Matt Paulson

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So our three panelists for this conversation are Brandon Maddox from Silencer Central, Laura Benson, originally from Philly Flair, who now has a new venture that she'll tell you about, and of course, Matt Paulson from MarketBeat. I'm not a big fan of reading long bios either, so I thought we would just have each of you maybe introduce yourselves from there, talk a little bit about yourself and the initial entrepreneurial journey. So, Brandon, thank you.

Perfect. So thanks for having me here. Brandon Maddox grew up in the south, went to school in the South. So I did undergrad and pharmacy school, believe it or not, at Chapel Hill, and then I did my MBA at Duke. I met a girl from Vermillion and guess what? I moved to South Dakota. So I am a transplant. Moved here from Florida, but oddly enough got into the firearms and silencer business, which I know sounds like a weird shift from. From pharmacists, but it is what it is and we've been here since 2005. And Silencer Central is located up by the airport, so if you fly in and see that we just finished our remodel of the old Cigna building recently. And if you want a tour, stop by.

Laura, I met you. I was trying to remember what it was. It's been a long time ago.

I had a. My first baby. Was a baby.

So yes.

Seven, Eight years. Seven years.

Eight years.

Your business has completely scaled from there. And a lot of people in this room do not know Laura Benson. Some of you might not, you might know her name, but she has an incredible business success story too. So I'm so glad you could be with us. Thank you.

Thank you guys for inviting me. My husband is an avid customer, so thank you. My name is Laura Benson. I'm born and raised South Dakota girl. I grew up on a dairy farm. No higher education outside of high school. I did try and go to a semester of college and I hated it. And I was paying for it myself and I was like, I'm not doing this. I always thought I would do something ag related. I love agriculture and somehow ended up and I mean, it's a very long story, so I'm going to cut that short. But somehow ended up in E commerce. I knew nothing about E commerce. Learned from Google and from trial and error. I started Philly Flair in 2010. It is an online clothing company for women and over the course of a decade scaled that to eight figure company. Had an exit a couple years ago.

That was eight figure if you guys missed that. Yeah, very, very successful business. So we're going to detail the trajectory of all of these for you, Matt, in addition to telling me the MarketBeat story, this was Matt's idea, this panel. So maybe speak a little bit about why you felt this was a good addition to this event too.

Absolutely. So, Matt Paulson. I am a South Dakota boy, born in Gettysburg, raised in Mitchell, Dakota State grad. My entrepreneurial story really started in college. Needed to make some money to pay tuition, so I started a business. It was a personal finance blog and then an investing blog. And now we are really a big financial media site. Have 3.3 million subscribers as of this morning. So it's gone really well. Did you know? But we're going to do about 25 million in revenue this year. Awesome business. And MarketBeat has really become a platform to do stuff like this in the community. It's allowed me to start other businesses like real estate investing with Kevin Tupy and a venture capital fund with Tim Wheelburg, but also a lot of community stuff. You know, like we are, you know, a big supporter of startups who falls, you know, obviously big supporter of this event. We've got a project with a pavilion that we're going to announce in a couple weeks. So MarketBeat has really become a platform to do this. And I really want to do a high growth kind of panel for this event because, you know, we have a lot of startup events in our community, but they tend to be focused on the very early stages of, you know, the people that really need help today. You don't often hear the other side of that story of, well, what is 10 years down the line? So, so I wanted to bring a few people up that are, you know, 10, 15 years into their journey to say, okay, when somebody has an idea and I work really hard and then they succeed, you know, what does that outcome look like? And you know, Brandon and Laura are really great examples of what that outcome looks like. So it'd be great to hear their stories today and yourself. Thank you.

Yeah. And I think it illustrates a lot about our community too, right? The opportunities and maybe the challenges. I remember meeting Brandon Maddox. Oh, my goodness. You had a really small, like 3,000 square foot office space or something that big. And yeah, you literally outgrew it because I think the product was piling up and then you moved on to a little bigger space. And every time I talked to you, it was like you had a new office. And yet there are always these tipping points. Right. In the growth of a business, particularly a startup that scales as yours have. What was the tipping point for Silencer. What do you credit for being now in the building where you used to work when you originally came to town? Which I think is a wonderful full circle story?

Tipping point, I guess that's a good question. So our model was we would work events and we would sell at the events. So normally gun shows, sportsman shows, farm shows. I would say the tipping point for us is when I could hire someone that could sell better than me and then I could focus on the business. Because for a long time I was the business. Every weekend I was working at events. And when I would hire someone, they would typically sell 20% of what I could sell. And it was like, I can't leave not going to the shows because I'm driving all the revenue. So once I was astute enough to find someone that could sell as well as I could and was willing to put the time and the effort into it and paid him really well, that's when I was able to sort of step back and say, okay, this is working really well in South Dakota, but how about North Dakota? How about Minnesota? How about Iowa? And now we have stores in 42 states.

Well, and I think this is important too, because he drew on his experience in pharmaceuticals in a really interesting way. And it has to do with licensing. And I mean, you know, sometimes people think, oh, it just happens. You hire a great sales guy and then it just happens.

Right?

You just. You just expand. Not necessarily the case, because you put a lot of intentionality into becoming licensed, which is not easy. Right. But you set yourself up for that opportunity.

Right. You know, interesting story. Obviously, my wife wanted to move to South Dakota. She was from Vermilion, and she said, look, there's a job opening at Cigna Tel Drug. They're looking for a head pharmacist to run their mail order pharmacy. And I was like, honey, I've never filled a prescription in my life. I'd be the last person they would hire. Well, fortunately for my wife, they hired me. And so what I learned at Signetel Drug here was that we were licensed in every state and we would send medication to every state. And it's very complicated because most states don't want pharmacies sending medication in. They want the retail pharmacist locally filling those prescriptions. So we create all types of obstacles to keep pharmacies from mailing prescriptions in there. What I found is typically you have to be licensed as a pharmacist in the state you're shipping to, your pharmacy has to be licensed in that state you're shipping to. And then of course, you have to be licensed as a pharmacy here. So when you have 50 states, that's a big mess to have to tangle with. But it sort of gave me the idea of selling suppressors. Suppressors are like handguns. You can only buy a suppressor if you buy it from a licensed store in a state where you reside. So sort of the same process I had to go through of how do I get a license to sell firearms in every state where they're legal? Suppressors are legal in 42 states. So then it was like, how do I expand this and put physical presence in 42 states, get a local license there with the feds, and also comply with the local laws and the federal laws. So that was the. The impetus was the, you know, my older pharmacy, I do keep my license up for pharmacy in North Carolina, Florida and South Dakota.

And he did this right before the.

Pandemic, which, yeah, we decided to scale up before the pandemic. So I mentioned earlier that we were pretty much all events. So I remember March, you know, 2020. Everyone's looking at me like, okay, we're 100% event company. All of our events are getting canceled. Mr. Maddox, what's the plan? You know, I called the bank and said, what's our burn rate? How long can I survive? He said, may. So I told the team, we're good for two years. Let me just see if I can figure out what we're going to do between now and then. But fortunately, we had, you know, a plan of expanding. Like I said, it worked in South Dakota. South Dakota is a low population, low density. So if I can make this work in South Dakota and we have a Democrat in the presidency with Obama, there should be no reason why I shouldn't be able to scale this. So we started going to other states. And then right before the pandemic really kicked in, we had licenses in 42 states. So you might ask, why does that matter? So we were working events. So if you work a big event, like last week, we worked Safari Club International. So you have people flying from all over the world, so you're going to have people that want to buy from you. And if you're not licensed in the state that they live in, you can't sell to them. So that customer is not available to us. So right before the pandemic, we got licensed all 42 states. And then we started a direct to consumer marketing campaign of no matter what state you live in, we could process the order for you and we can mail it to your front door. So it's kind of a big risk because most people thought, there's no way you can mail a silencer to my front door. But it took a little bit of convincing.

You know, a lot of people own boutiques. A lot of people have e commerce sites. What makes one take off when others maybe don't? As I've covered these, it's a few things, right? It's right product, right platform, right person, right time. And that is what always comes to mind with me, with Laura and Philly Flair. Because you began this business before Facebook even had business pages.

That is right.

And you have just ridden that wave and many others along the way. What was it, do you think, that made Philly flair take off in ways that other boutiques maybe didn't? This company has a million followers on Facebook.

So the thing about any business is you have to have something that makes you the. Differentiates you from the crowd. So you could go into selling any type of product. But you need to have a leg up that says, what can I offer with this product that makes me different. What is missing with my target market? Where is there a gap? I mean, that is our job as entrepreneurs is to find gaps in the marketplace and say, I want to fill this gap, right? So at the time, online shopping boutiques had not exploded. There was none in the Midwest. And so I actually started very western and it was very much a necessity. I was solely like, how can I make a buck? I'm farming with my parents. I love to rodeo, which is a very expensive hobby when you're not winning. And I'm like, I need money. So it was a very much a necessity. But I saw a need that could be filled and I knew it was low overhead for me to start up. At the time, online is. Online still is low overhead. You cannot. I mean it is. We are in a pivotal area era. I feel like where you can go online and start a business and not have to take out a five year lease, not have brick and mortar overhead, not have employee overhead and start something and try and get it going. And that's incredible. And so that is how I started. I did not have a lot of money and I saw a need. I saw I can, can sell these western belts and all these things to hundreds of my barrel racing friends. And no one else is doing this outside of the high end western stores. So I can offer them a better price. I can ship it right to their door. I have so many friends that live a long ways from A Western store or from a store in general, we eventually pivoted, and we can talk about that in a little bit. But there was a need in the market. And so, first of all, you have to identify a need. You have to say, there's something I see here that maybe this. And even now, if I were to start today, I would have to be very branded and say, what differentiates for me? I wouldn't just start a boutique. I would say, where's a small, like, micro niche that I could really niche down on and say, this is who I'm going to be and I'm going to do it better and I'm going to have a better offer than everybody else. And so combining those things and good timing of where the economy is at, I think is important. I will say I started. I technically started, like, the setup in 09. And so it was still kind of the 0900 10. Like, the economy wasn't great. And so I don't think there's ever a wrong time to start a business if it's the right business model.

Was there something, again with this tipping point idea that made Philly Flair go from a niche audience to a much broader audience?

I don't know if there was one tipping point. I studied my customer inside and out. And so as there was no fan pages, they were like, I had to make a friend page. It was literally first name Philly, last name Flair. And as people accepted me, I started realizing, like, wait a minute, these people aren't all Western. Like, what if I take. So I started very niche. And then as we grew, I realized that, like, I could have a bigger audience and they were already buying for me, so I should offer them more product than just the west, the specific Western. And so when I switched to that, we actually started growing extremely fast. And I don't know if there was like, one tipping point other than I lived and breathed. Every time I hired someone, Our sales marketing always came first in our business. I don't know if that's right or wrong. We learned customer service on the backside a little bit. And there's some things I probably should have been a little more proactive about. But I came from a scarcity mindset. It took me a long time to shift that mentality. But at the time, I knew I needed sales to hire people to have better customer service. I knew I needed sales to buy more products so I could grow the company. So that was always number one for me. And I guess taking care of the customer in the sense of, like, what do they want? How can I show up for them? What can I provide them that I know they want? I didn't buy for myself ever, as crazy as that sounds. So, I mean, there was an era of these zigzag dresses. If you're not fashion related, it was called Chevron. It was horrible. I never. I owned one dress and we sold tens of thousands of them. It wasn't about me, it was about the audience. It was about the need that I was fulfilling for the customer.

Yeah. You know, if you are going to hit your business wagon to technology, you better be ready to adapt.

Right.

Because The Facebook of 10, 15 years ago is not the Facebook of today. Philly flair has had to adjust. You're on multiple platforms now. The whole live sale thing happened.

I think the key to success, in my honest opinion, is your ability, your innate ability to adapt and pivot and say, what worked for me three months ago isn't working today and what can I do now? The reason that small startups can scale so fast and big corporate companies cannot is because they do not have the ability to go fast and pivot.

That's a good lead into Matt and his digital growth. You know, I wish I could remember exactly when I met Matt Paulson. And I have this really bad feeling. It was when he sent me an email that maybe I didn't reply to because it was a while ago. And he was this guy who had these multiple ventures and I could never figure him out. Like, is he the owner of this? Is he doing that? But you did try a lot of things before you settled on MarketBeat. What was it about MarketBeat that ultimately became your growth engine?

Yeah. So right now there's this trend on the Internet of being company or people that run these holding companies that have all these different businesses in them. And that's what I was trying to do 10 years ago is I wanted to have different Internet businesses that made money. So that way if one of them didn't do so well, the other ones would kind of make up for it. But what happened was that I had two or three, but one of them made 80% of the money. So I figured, well, I should probably just do more of that. So I had like a press release distribution business that I ended up selling. I had these different content websites, had like an audiobook website. I did like web design for a while, but one just really took off and that was MarketBeat. So we really doubled down on that and we've gone from nothing to 3 million subscribers in the last several years.

But how is the thing. Because it's not like there aren't some companies out there doing what MarketBeat does. They're big. Right? But what's allowed you to scale like that?

I honestly think I'm probably the best at acquiring financially interested email subscribers in the world. And the reason that I say that is because I know where all the places that these people hang out online. They tend to be 40 to 80, primarily male, interested in investing in single stock. So I know they're all on Yahoo Finance, they're all on MarketWatch, they're all on MSN Money, believe it or not, Google Finance. And I've been able to get marketbeats content into all these places. So in a way, all roads lead back to MarketBeat. Even if you're on a small financial website, you sign up for their email list, on the next page, there might be an ad that says, hey, you just signed up for randomstockwebsite.com but would you also like to sign up for MarketBeat? And we buy all of those ads that we can. So we try to be everywhere we can possibly be in the kind of investing space. And, you know, obviously that's evolved over time. Like, we just launched a new YouTube channel in January that we're experimenting with, you know, tons of Google Ads, tons of Facebook ads, you know, stuff like that as well. But whatever that next thing is, wherever that audience is, we want to be there. And that's kind of by doing all of the things we've been able to get all the people.

Matt has a little history in journalism. You can see the reporter at work there as you're trying to find out where these people are. Matt, I'm going to stay with you just so that we don't get too formulaic here, because I want to talk about venture capital. You know, that's one of the challenges that we businesses, particularly in South Dakota, is that access to venture capital. So according to some Data from Statista, South Dakota ranked 38th among 50 states in terms of venture capital dollars invested in 2021. And I don't have the historical in front of me. I actually think that might be better than before, but certainly it's still not great. So, Matt, how did you finance your growth? What challenges did you find if you looked for capital? And maybe if you want to speak more broadly because you are so connected in the entrepreneur community, what kind of issue is this for our state?

Yeah, so the capital I got for MarketBeat was $5,000 from DSU. So thank you, DSU. And I believe it was also a lake area improvement corporation. So thanks to those guys as well. Yeah, I mean, I didn't even know venture capital existed when I started my business, or even if money was out there, certainly wasn't out there in Madison, South Dakota. So I had to bootstrap and was able to do that quite successfully. But now I'm in an environment where a direct competitor of ours raised $70 million, you know, 12 months ago. And how do you compete with that when they have, you know, just loads of money they can spend on anything that, you know, they. They really don't even have to spend it profitably. It's just they can grow to grab market share.

So that's.

That's the environment we find ourselves in today. Like, there are certain industries that you just can't compete in unless you have tens or hundreds of millions of dollars. Like try to start an AI company in South Dakota. You know, you need millions of dollars a day just to train some of those models. And like, how are you going to do that if Tim and I write somebody a $2 million check? There are just certain types of businesses where the capital doesn't exist in South Dakota at the levels needed to fund them. So I think what we kind of have found is there are definitely people that want to invest in South Dakota and in a region, but also the companies have to be there too, but they also kind of be a specific type of company. There are great opportunities for software as a service companies because they don't require, you know, you can build one with five or ten million dollars worth of capital and really scale it up. You can invest in those. You can invest in E commerce companies, because also you don't need a crazy, crazy amount of money to do that. And then products businesses like Brandon's, you know, it's. It's more of an expertise thing than money is. So we have to be really smart about what types of businesses that we start in South Dakota and just recognizing the realities of the capital that we do have available. If somebody came to me and said, matt, I need to raise 5 to $10 million, I could probably pull that off. But if somebody came and said, hey, we have this awesome idea, 100% sure it's going to work, here's the data. Need $20 million. I don't know how to help you. That's just the reality of the state we live in right now.

And Laura, I don't know if you sought out venture capital. It found you. But what was that experience like?

Yeah, I did not seek venture capital. I had no intention of selling. I sold majority of my business end of 2020. And I was approached and at the time it was like, I don't think I'm really interested. It wasn't for the sake of money. I felt like we were scaling very quickly and everything was self funded that I had done. And I don't like, I don't know, I felt like it was better off if I was running the company. I wanted to make all the decisions, but I thought this is a great opportunity for me to learn about my company. They're going to bring in all of these top dogs to do due diligence, all these things and I can learn about my business. And I did. I mean it was an incredible experience to be able to go through and see the business side of things from a totally different angle that I've never, never lived through that lens. And so it was really amazing to, I don't know, go through that, I guess. Did I answer your question?

Yeah. They found you and ended up being a good process.

Yeah. So they did seek me out and then we kind of had negotiated and then there was, well Covid hit so we all kind of pulled back. They have a hundred plus other companies so like we need to focus on this. And I was like, that's fine, I need to focus on my company. And then we came back, met again and I had, in that time I had sought out and talked to a few brokers just to understand what selling a business would be like from that side of things. I did spend a few months really researching, like what are the implications if I sell my business like out on the market, like what does that look like? I really did study that for a few months pretty extensively and ultimately decided I was just at the point where I was right. The timing was good, the offer was really great and I was just, I was happy.

Yep. And she is still involved at a high level in the company, right? Yep. I don't know that I've ever talked to you about this, Brandon, but have you sought out venture capital or have you always self funded? And what's your take on that environment?

Yeah, good question. So 100% bootstrap last year. So I would say for two years now is the first time I've ever paid myself. So I figured my wife's got a good job at the hospital, so if we can't live on her income, we got a problem. And that was the strategy moving forward. I would say that we had some hiccups just because of the industry we're in. I had always banked with Wells Fargo, and when I went to them and said, I want to do a loan for a new building, they said it was. They wouldn't say this, but it was a reputational risk for them because it's firearms, because it's fire. Guns scare them. So I got turned down by Wells Fargo. And so fortunately for me, and I think he's fine with me saying this, I found out that one of my good customers from Yankton owned First Dakota Bank. So just got to know Rocky, our banker. And, you know, you were talking about how to get funding to me. I think if you can get it locally, that's best. And just creating a good relationship with your banker and explaining to them what you're doing. You know, when I was small, they didn't really want to meet with me, but, you know, it's kind of like forcing them to meet with me to talk to them about my plans, telling them what I'm going to do. And then when you start needing funds, you already have that relationship in place. Because right now, you know, we had to grow from a lot of inventory perspective. You know, we're pushing $100 million worth of inventory a year through our funnel. So to get that kind of capital, we had to work with a big bank. And locally is what we've done. I have talked to venture capitalists, but it's more about acquiring other people that are in a similar business, but maybe a different model and how we could synergize the two of those. And of course, based on the discussion this morning, capital is getting more expensive, so some of that's cooled down, but it's still, I find, opening those discussions because I do get the feeling that, you know, maybe it doesn't happen today, but it is an opportunity to buy someone later.

I want to talk about workforce. We all deal with this. Startups sometimes are in a unique position when it comes to workforce in a variety of ways, particularly when your industry is a bit different. And Silencer, every time I talk to Brandon, has more people. So you are acutely familiar with this, but what has your workforce experience been like, and have you been able to find the talent that you need?

Yeah, that's a good question. You know, my brain always says there's a lot of gentlemen in our area that like the outdoors, they like to hunt. And so an opportunity to work in an environment that they see as their hobby is not always a hard sell. You know, we're the fastest growing company on the E5000 this year in Sioux Falls. So that helps sort of get some publicity out there. I will credit Jody. I know when I asked her, could we create a partnership, I think she was like, well, most of your sales are not in South Dakota. Why would you do that? And I'm like, well, if people haven't heard of me, they're not going to want to work for me. I always tell our team, if they haven't heard from us, they're not going to buy from us. If they haven't heard from us, heard of us, they're not going to work for us. So partnering with Jody has really helped us get our name out there, because I am convinced that's the best way to recruit people if they know about you. A lot of people say they're interested in growth, you can show them growth. But sometimes when they get there, they're like, this is too much change. So there is sometimes when you have to find other people, but, you know, sometimes it's a struggle. I feel like now we're getting people picked off with, hey, you can go work from home and make, you know, two bucks more an hour, and people are leaving. It's frustrating, but I feel like we're in a good position because we do have the growth. We do have a lot of good name recognition based on, you know, local efforts and then just continuing to give the employees what they want to see. That growth and new opportunities has been a benefit.

Didn't pay him for the endorsement, but I'll take it. Hopefully we have lots of partners in the room, so hopefully you all have had similar experiences. Okay. Working in South Dakota and working in the fashion industry, two things that maybe don't necessarily go together. But you brought fashion jobs to this community.

Yeah, we have experienced both sides. Number one, I think if you have a good culture, which I have not always had, it has taken me, like, some experience to understand that and to really foster that. But if you have good culture, people see that, they feel it when they come in for an interview. And you will be amazed at people's want to connect with your company and. And especially in the Midwest, people want to work for people that have. They want to feel like they're part of something bigger. And so the reason that people would willing to come work for me versus Amazon down the road, and it's still the case, but it was even more so when it was like me. It was like they were rooting for, like, the small guy. I mean, even though we were scaling and growing, people want to connect with people. And so if you are willing, especially as a leader and a boss, to be able to put yourself out there. And I'm very, very open about my values and my faith. I'm a huge, like, believer. God has done all the things he has for me in my life. And I think you attract the people that you want to. And so I think we were able to. I got a lot of women that loved that, and so they wanted to work in our warehouse. So that's one side of it. The other side of it is, yeah, there's not a lot of fashion jobs. So good and bad, we've definitely struggled with. It's. It's retail and it's a warehouse. And so a lot of times people do not understand the fast pace and like, the constant change. And that is really hard for people. So we started going in depth on interviews of, like, how well do you handle change? Like, what if we're changing, like, daily? Can you handle that? Like, really trying to get a grasp on, especially these young gals coming out of marketing that we wanted to give the opportunity, but they needed to understand that, like, this is really fast paced. This is really intense. So that was something we really had to work. On the other side of it is the modeling. So this is really interesting. We, most of our models are still local. We have outsourced, we have flown in people from LA and they have never sold as well. And I think it's because our customer base is so mid, so local, that people resonate with what they see. And so that's something that is definitely a challenge because we have found that a lot of our really good models, we've had to just kind of search out on other platforms. So don't be afraid to go looking on LinkedIn, on Instagram, on places where you are. We found good employees on Instagram that aren't models that like, you know, that might be doing something great and approach them and say, hey, would you ever be interested in coming in and just seeing our building and seeing what we have to offer? Because that has helped us tremendously find local, local help.

That's really interesting. And Matt, we've talked about this many times. You know, MarketBeat, we don't measure MarketBeat success based on how many people they have in the office. It is. It's a pretty small and lean team and yet still not always the easiest to find the skill sets that you need.

Yeah. So we're at 14 employees today, and then we have another 15 writers and they're all freelance. What we have found you Know, if they're up to me, like, every marketing employee would live in Sioux Falls and be in the office probably three days a week. But that's just not possible because we are the only player in our industry in South Dakota. So if I need a financial content editor who has written, you know, edited, you know, articles about stock market before, there's probably not a lot of those people in Sioux Falls. And that's just the unfortunate reality. So what we have kind of done is we train the people that we can or when there is expertise that exists in town, like when we needed a VP of finance, we could find one of those. Or we needed a graphic designer like Christy Wire, who did our awesome logo here for this event. We can find one of those. But there are some skills that just don't exist here, and that's just the unfortunate reality. So we try to hire as many people locally as we can. We train them, or we find people with skills, and then we teach them about the stock market. And unfortunately, some of the other skills we just have to find elsewhere.

I have more questions for them, and I'm going to ask some of them, but I want to make sure you get to ask yours as well, because you all had such great questions for Neil that I'm sure you were sitting on some for this panel. So does anyone have a question that they are anxious to ask? Chris, we'll find you, I think, If you don't have any takers right away. All right, I'm going to ask one more, then I'm going to call for yours again. I don't want to talk about time management. Laura and I recently had a conversation about this. So maybe I'll start with you, Laura. When you are a founder, and particularly a founder who is scaling quickly, that is a real challenge. It's also something that you are addressing with your newest venture, which I want you to share a little bit about, too. But what are some of the strategies that you found were most effective as far as where your time needed to go?

Yeah. So I am a mom of three children and my husband farms. And so I have found it very challenging in the past. I still do daily to balance that all. And I believe that I look at more of my week. I used to be very like, I need to get this done every single day. And I have push it out to weeks. And so something that has really helped me is, I mean, everyone's familiar with the concept of time blocking, but I'm a very creative soul and I don't do well like Sticking to an exact schedule. And so for me, I look at my Monday and say, okay, I know, like, we homeschool. I know I need to work with my kids from this time, then they go somewhere and I have from 1 to 3 to get these things done. So I'm very, very conscious and aware of what I'm doing in those hours. I have gotten to the point where, like, my phone is on, do not disturb. I want zero distractions. I have realized that for me to be highly ultra productive, I can get more done in honestly, an hour than I used to be able to get done in five hours. But I think that's being really keeping yourself accountable. And I never used to be good at that. And I do want to say with that, when you're scaling, when you're starting a company and you are doing everything, you have to do everything if you don't have funds, like, you either have money or you have time, like, that's how you grow. And so at the beginning, obviously there are times when you have to work a bajillion hours in your business and at some point you start to realize, okay, I do feel like I was. Had a pretty good grasp on this right away, where I was like, immediately, if I have sales coming in and I have money in the bank, I should be paying someone to answer the phone and ship the packages. Because I should be picking out product, your offer, your service and selling it. Because the more I can do of that, the faster I can grow this and I can hire a lot of people to ship product and answer the phone, hire, you know, I mean, get the supplies, those type of things. So being very diligent about the tasks that really move the needle forward and saying, I know I could work on all these things. And sometimes it's not always the fun things that you want to work on, but you're very aware that, like, okay, this week, these are the things that are really going to move the needle in my business. Whether it's like, infrastructure, we have to, you know, I don't know, get our warehouse plan set up, or we're really struggling with sales. So, like, what are the activities that you should be doing that directly respond to bringing in sales to the company and offloading the other things to people that can help you. That is the point of hiring out people to do that.

Brandon, your company starts the day in a very interesting way. And you have, I think, throughout most of your history, so maybe share that with the group, if you don't mind. And then how you as a Founder have changed the way you manage your own time?

Yeah. So during COVID I mentioned that we used to work all events. So of course when we had no events, we all really had to pivot and say, what are we going to do every day? So we started meeting every morning at 8:30. And I know some people say, well, that's a waste of 10 or 15 minutes. Well, what I found is everybody actually gets there on time. It's nice. But basically we get in a big group and it first started out with like 15 of us, and now it's like 115 of us. And we have people on video that work off site. And we just talk about sort of metrics, where we're at, what we're doing, and we talk about what the plan is for the day and what are some of the updates for the entire team. I think it makes people feel a part of a team. I think it helps people see that needle move, which I think is impactful for a lot of employees. I will say that we do bring in guests. I know I invited Matt Paulson to come speak to our group. What impresses me about Matt is not only has he made the Inc 5000, but like seven or eight years in a row. So to me, that's what I look at is how do we get more consistent in our success? So it's not just a, you know, one year type situation. But if anyone wants to come and see what our scrum looks like, it is impactful. Like when people leave, they're like, wow, I got to do this. This is, this is great to get everyone in the same room. It just, it seems weird, but it's worked for us. And it was started for a weird reason, but time management. You know, I hired an executive coach when I was in pharmaceuticals. Basically said, I want to get out of pharmaceuticals. There's too many rules. I can't handle this. So I hired an executive coach. Brian Tracy. Highly recommend him. Read his books, listen to his audios. He's a great guy. He told me, you should not do any task that you can hire someone else to do. So that has always been in the back of my head. And it's hard, right? If you have no money, then you can't hire anyone to do that for you. But at least you're starting to think that way. Like, okay, what's my rate? And just throw a number out. Say I'm worth 300 bucks an hour, 400, whatever it is, can I hire someone for less to do that task that I'm Currently doing, even though I know I could do it better and it'll be done right. Is there someone else I can hire to do that? So having that mindset and I think another big sort of tipping point for me was to hire a good executive assistant and basically let her manage my world for me. So I was probably spending 20% of my time of, when can we meet? When can we get together? Where should we meet? How do I get there? What should I wear? You know, all those type of things that you're running around trying to figure out to have someone else and put that on their plate and say, you own this. Just tell me where to go and where to be when I need to be there, when I need to leave and what I need to say and what I need to look like. That is so helpful just to sort of plan out your day. But I would say it is critically important. The other thing I probably should mention is I'm over 50. I realize I don't have as much energy as I used to, so I've started working out. Actually helps. Not something I've done in the past, to be honest with you. I was always, work, work, work, work, work. That's the reason why I don't know many of you all in the room. I'm pretty much heads down, work, work, work, work. But as I got older, I'm like, I don't have that same sort of drive and energy where I wanted to steamroll the competition. So to get that back, I'm like, I gotta go work out and work out with some people who help me get back that, you know, additional testosterone. I guess that's been helpful.

I agree.

That is. It's huge. The mental, like, I. When I was really in the thick of scaling Philly flair, and we were like, it was intense. At some point, something in my brain said, like, I want to start looking at myself almost like an athlete. Like, clearly I am not a football player or anything like that. But what I do is so intense. And so what I put in my body and how I treat my body will allow me to get the things done and allow my brain to operate at a higher capacity, and it really changes things.

Matt Paulson's calendar would be an interesting one to look at. You have a lot of irons in the fire. So how have you changed the way you manage your own time?

So one thing that I kind of picked up over the years is there's a pastor named Andy Stanley, and one thing that he says to business leaders is, you're either Going to cheat on your business or you're going to cheat on your family? And nobody is on their deathbed thinking, man, I wish I'd worked more. So I've kind of decided when my kids are born, like, I'm going to cheat on my business for the sake of my kids. So every morning, except like today, I walk my kids to school, I give my daughter a bath probably six nights a week, put them to bed, and like, I want to be home for my kids when they're little. So that's kind of the priority for me. So when people invite me to do a lot of evening stuff, the answer is almost always no. Because I want to be home with my kids and my family. And that has, you know, kind of created that. You know, the 8 to 5 window is really the workday these days. So I've got to be really focused on how I spend my time, where I spend my time, and when I do want to go do something new, I've got to find a good operating partner like Tim Wheelburg, like Kevin Tupy, or even for this event like, like you, Jody and Maureen, to really run the ball with it where I can provide ideas, but somebody else is carrying that ball. So it's really important to have good partners in whatever you do and especially if you want to do multiple things.

I can take a question.

Yeah.

Great stuff, guys. One of my questions is when you go from starting up to scaling up, your role changes a lot as a.

CEO and a founder.

And sometimes you end up doing the.

Things that maybe you, you don't love to do. You guys talked about some of the tactics, but as your business gets bigger, you need to change for your business.

And how have you found, how do.

You stick in the work that you.

Love and what made you an entrepreneur.

In the first place?

That was right. So when I was. I'm trying to figure out the year, probably 2008 was probably the first year we crossed 10 million and I had hired some help, some, some advisors, I don't know what you want to call them, who had never run their own business. And they highly counseled on me like, you need to hire out everything. Like you shouldn't be in the sales, you shouldn't be doing all these little tasks that I love to do. And you should be doing like very, very high level vision driving, which is very important. But I realized that, number one, I didn't have SOPs in place that like highly detailed, laid out what needed to be done. And a lot of what I do is very creative. And so you have to have a mind that understands that. And so there were certain things that when I did that, the business definitely downturned. And I realized that, like, not only was I not doing the things I liked, and I hate sitting in meetings all day, but now our business was doing less. And so once I realized that, like, listen, there is no perfect playbook. You can. It's really good to hire people to help you, but you know the sweet spot of what you're really good at, and you should always be in that zone of genius, and you should be hiring around. Yes, you are the founder. You need to be driving the vision. Some people are way better at, like, leading the team. Some people are way better at the sales area. So you need to hire around what you are not good at. And as soon as I figured that out, that's when it became very easy to like what I did because I was still having fun, but also grow great.

Brandon?

Yeah, that's actually a good question. I think one thing I try to ask my team, I'm probably not. I have a colleague here. I'm probably not great at this, but you know, what, What. What should I be doing? Like, what do you think is my best spot? Like what? You know, because if not, you're going to revert back to when you did everything right. So it's, how do you empower people? But you got to be careful, too. I mean, that's kind of cliche, right? Empower people. I mean, I empowered people in my organization and sort of like, kind of mentally checked out because it wasn't my wheelhouse. And then I found out a fire going on, and then fires are hard to put out. So it's how do you stay engaged and know what's going on and ask good questions, trust good people. But I think it's also ask your team what you're good at because they're going to see what's moving the needle on base, what you do. And, you know, my role sort of changed more to sort of like a corporate cheerleader, if you will, at a national level, try to network with people that have bigger microphones than me so that they can use their megaphone to tell people about us. That's the biggest challenge for us, is no one really knows who we are and don't know what we do once we kind of get a little message in their ear that we have more success. So, again, I think it's empowering your team, but also ask a lot of questions and make sure there's a good.

Balance there, Matt, any thoughts on that?

Yeah, you know, for us, it's. For me, it's always been focusing on doing the things in my zone of genius and the things that are not in my zone of genius, like somebody else should be doing them. So, you know, as a business owner, you wear all the hats. You wear your marketing hat, you wear your sales hat, your support hat. And, you know, you've got to figure out, like, what hat should I be wearing? And find other people to wear the hats that. That you shouldn't be wearing.

All right, now's your chance to help me maybe break some news.

I don't know.

You never know. For each of you. Matt, maybe I'll start with you. What's next for you? What's next for your business? What can we be looking for?

I have no idea.

Well, stretch that.

Okay. I don't know. We're always doing the next thing, so there's never a big, long list of stuff to do. Obviously, we're gonna have a new office in the fallout. It's gonna be awesome. Business is growing this year, unlike last year, so that's good. But there's. I have nothing to tell you.

You know, you ask a lot of questions. Sometimes something results. So, Laura, you do have something new.

I do. I took the last year kind of off. I was overseeing some stuff at Philly Flair, had another kid, and just been really spending a lot of time with my babies. But I like it is I'm an entrepreneur before I knew what that word meant. Before it was cool. And I love, love, love business owners. And I would say one very interesting thing is I had never worked a corporate job in my life. And I'm so grateful. I'm so proud of where the company that bought us is going to take Philly Flair. But I also realized that I don't fit in in corporate world. And I think it just made me also realize, like, the incredible power small businesses have. And small business owners are super humans. And there's just something so different and magical about small businesses versus corporate world. And I don't think you can. I don't think you can know that until you experience both. And so for me, it kind of lit this fire in me to, like, I need to get back out there rooting for small business owners, helping small business owners. I've had multiple mentors, coaches throughout the last decade of my life. Some I paid a lot of money. Some were free. Some taught me nothing. Some taught me a lot. And I realized that the people that really helped me excel had been where I wanted to go. And so I want to somehow create that. I spent a decade with my head down, or 12 years almost with my head down. And, like, I didn't. I was not good at networking, and I was not good at showing up at events. I had little kids, and I was just busy. I was just doing the grind. And so now I really want to help the next entrepreneur, the next. Specifically women, specifically moms. It's my, like, niche. I feel like I know them. I understand the level of, like, I have been there when you're, like, the only one that forgets to have your kid wear pajamas to pajama day and stuff like that because you have so many things on your plate. And so I'm starting the Business Grower. It is a mentorship for women moms who just genuinely want to grow their relationships, their networks. And I will be doing some group coaching with them. So I'm really excited about that.

And it just launched and they're signing.

Yeah, yeah. It is a meant. It is a monthly membership. If you're interested, you can come talk to me in the back. But it just launched. It's going to be a small kind of starter group. This is new for me. I'm really good at product, and so services and offers is just very different. I'm really excited. I feel like it is our job as humans to push ourselves and get uncomfortable. So if you've been comfortable too long, do something that pushes you outside of that box.

Brandon, how about you?

I would say our goal is more partnerships. We announced the partnership in January with Federal Ammunition, which is owned by Vista Outdoors, largest outdoor conglomerate in America. Fortunately for us, most firearms manufacturers aren't in the silencer suppressor business. There's a nice synergistic opportunity there to work with them. So goal is to sort of expand those partnerships with some of the larger brand names that are, you know, household names. So we continue to grow our awareness and, you know, kind of grow and partner together.

Perfect. Please help me thank our panelists and congratulate them on their success. Thank you.