020: $100M Blueprint for Brand Growth: Content, Commerce, Community with Al Doan

I literally built my entire warehouse by watching YouTube videos about Amazon. And like that for lighting, that for podcasting, that for video, you know, like that same principle holds true. People think like they're pretty close. Most people are always pretty close. You just want to see it, want to interact with it, want to play with it, try it out.

Billion Dollar Creator is a show teaching creators how to capture attention and turn it into real wealth. We will deep dive into brands, celebrities, and entrepreneurs who have done it before and show you how you can apply it to your business as an Everyday Creator.

Welcome to the show. Thank you.

Oh, wow, what a show, man. I love this place.

So we're hanging out here in Scottsdale, beautiful, windy, rainy Arizona.

Yeah, which we all packed for.

Last night was a little rough. We're all huddled by the fire. We kicked Steve Nash away from the fire.

So Steve Nash was sitting next to us. I was like, this is a very swanky hotel.

It is. I'm not sure that we belong, but not the Hampton Inn I'm used to. That's right. So one thing that was fun, this is the first time that we've met and we were chatting and I was like, yeah, you're in the blog post that I wrote that I based a lot of my work around.

It was very creepy stalker-ish where you're like, I know everything about your family. I was like, what? I wrote it, I wrote an essay 3 years ago.

I've stalked you ever since. So I want to just dive in and start with the story of Missouri Star Quilt Company because that's one of the best examples that I've seen of someone building an audience and then taking it to the point that it has like powers a whole business that has real enterprise value. We also have buying towns in common. We'll get into that. Yeah, there's so much good stuff. But give me the origin story. Missouri Star.

2 minutes on Missouri Star. When we were kids, we— I was born and raised in California. Turns out California is pricey. There's 7 kids in my family. My dad worked at like Smucker's Jam as a machinist. We were not living the high life of California. We like— my memory of California was concrete and asphalt. Yeah, like 40 minutes inland from the beach. We weren't cool. So anyway, when I was like 13 years old, we moved out to Missouri and that became our home. And so we moved in this little town in the middle of nowhere. Actually, we didn't move to a town, we moved to a farmhouse that nobody had lived in 40 years and fixed it up in exchange for rent because we couldn't afford it. But it was— I mean, for us, it was a great way to live in. It was a great place. Missouri was great to us. I went from, you know, concrete and asphalt to lakes and rivers and streams. You're up in farmland, Idaho, man. You know this life. It was awesome. And I've always loved Missouri. But as we watched our little town that we'd go into for groceries and stuff, Hamilton, over the years, it just slowly died, right? I mean, the reasons to stay there, I feel like a lot of America kind of goes through this or the world goes through this, but you have these like gatherings to cities and then these like everybody disperses and wants to farm again and then you come back and out. And we went through a full contraction back into cities and like Hamilton just didn't have anything left for it to— like, if you're a kid there, there's no reason to ever stay there, right?

What's the population of—

1,500.

Okay, yeah, it's quite small.

And Cowgill, where my address was growing up, which is great for mail orders, 3 people. So a family of 9 moves in, we're like a double-digit increase in the population percentage. It was a big deal. So we had this great town that like just nobody cared about, and we'd see these businesses open up, they'd live for 3 or 4 months, then they'd die off. Because I mean, what you're doing in these small towns is you're the guy that works at the at the grocery store, makes $8, and goes and spends it at the gas station. And that guy makes his $8 and goes and spends it at the grocery store. And you're just recycling money. And so me and my sister had been looking for a thing to do in Hamilton for a while. And then my mom, you know, like, as all the kids grew up and left the house, she took up quilting by taking a class at the Vo-Tech down, you know, yeah, down a town or two away, and just loved it. Thought it was cool, thought it's very artistic and fun. She's not a lifetime quilter. She's not like the most skilled quilter in the world, but she's funny. She was in theater and like, you know, she's a ham. I take after my mom much more than my dad. My dad is very like kind and mild-mannered. My mom's like, now I got a story for you. And, and so, so when she took up quilting, that's sort of her flavor of quilting that she took is like everything was cool shortcuts and what could she do and how could it be fun. And so, you know, at one point she had taken a quilt in to get a quilt made for my niece who was a newborn at the time. And I was like, oh, that's cool. She's telling me about it. I was like, that's great. She's like, so I took it into the quilters because in quilting you sew all the pieces together. You have a flimsy top and then you have the batting and the backing, put it all together. That's called quilting when you stitch it all together. She took it into the quilters to get it quilted. She'd have it back in a year. And so I was like, yeah, I do. That's what I said. I was like, I can build a house faster than you can get a quilt done. Like, what is going on? It's like everybody's just so backed up. And so me and my sister were like, okay, well, we'll buy you a quilt machine. You quit your job that you kind of hate. And she was working at like a prison school for reformed teens. And yeah, I mean, when your mom's coming home with crazier stories than you, you got to get her out of there, right? So we got her home, she— and gave her, bought her this quilt machine. We, we mortgaged my sister's house. When I say we, she mortgaged her house, bought the machine. It's like a $40,000 machine. It was a big buy, but we were very confident. Like, all my market research was in that one call of like, it takes you a year, right? Okay, we'll do this. So we bought this quilt machine, she starts quilting. We needed to do a couple quilts a week. I was going to make an extra grand a month, so was my sister, and we're all going to be happy.

And then how old were you at this time?

I was 26 and I was working as a, like, I was in with Symantec Corporation doing like tech stuff and having a great time. And so then I'd started this company for my mom. I lose my job and you know, when you lose your job, you're like, I am an entrepreneur now. I'm fully committed. We're going to do this. And so I had this little quilt company that was not doing anything that like I gave my full undivided attention to. And I always loved the stuff like, uh, woot.com and Steep and Cheap and all those daily deal sites back in the day. I mean, they hooked me so hard as a broke 20-year-old. And, but nobody had built any experiences for, you know, the 40 to 70-year-old female demo, which was my mom. And I was like, dude, she's up at midnight way more than I am. You know, like she's restless, can't sleep, insomnia, going pee and all that. She would love to open up a computer and look for deals at midnight because like my experience with it was Well, it's 11 o'clock. I'm just gonna wait around till midnight and see what Whoop puts up, right? Like, I loved it that much. It was just a fun way of interacting with the internet. And so we built this Quilter's Daily Deal site, started buying product to put on there, and nothing really happened. But then like that first year, we did about $100 grand in sales between a quilt shop that Mom was in every day and this website that I was working on online. And then the next year, we did about $1 million in sales, and then $4 million And then 8 million and like just really found some great appetite for it. But our secret sauce was my mom is this great character and personality. YouTube was only a year or two old at the time. I think YouTube started in 2006 and we came out—

it got acquired by Google in 2006.

That was super, super early.

That's when it really started to—

yeah. And we started in 2008. And so like through, I mean, I don't know why we all cared about, but like it came on the scene fast and it was big. And so we started, I started filming my mom and putting quilting tutorials up on YouTube. And then my genius idea was like, "Oh, we'll email these out in our newsletter." And because we are very protective of the messaging in it, it was an email that you got that made your life better. It was not about promos, it was about making you happier that day. We'd get like a 60%, 70% open rate on this with hundreds of thousands of users. And it was something that you were happy to forward to your friends. "Have you seen this? Oh, let's do this one." And so every week there's a new idea around quilting and this community just really embraced us and made it great. And so today we're over $100 million in annual rev, we're 400 employees, like it's a big deal, but, but we're still this very like family-owned authentic, you can come to town, give us a big hug and come shop at our 15 quilt shops. We bought the entire town and built this great destination moment, which honestly, it's very altruistic, but it's also the best marketing fodder you've ever seen, right? Like. Like, we talked to our customers about, like, here's what we're building today, here's what we're fixing up in the, you know, the man's land. We did this thing and this one got this new fabric display that we put together. And oh, we're in here building this. We literally— our customers came and helped us build the shelves for our, like, one of our second stores. Like, it's just—

they want to be a part of it.

Well, yeah. And it's like the town is almost another character that you follow along with. You have mom and my sisters and myself to a smaller degree or a lesser degree. And then you have this town that's doing a thing and you have the business doing a thing. Like it just, it's such a beautiful move for like building great content. And yeah, so that's the story in one minute or less. That is the story.

Nailed it. So one thing that I love about it is all these people talk about building audiences and they're pointing it usually to digital products, right? If someone wanted to build an audience in quilting, video first, I think most people would assume that would result in a $1 to $3 million a year business if done well.

Sure.

Because you'd be selling patterns, courses, tutorials, that sort of thing, and then have affiliate deals to a Joann Fabrics, right? Or someone else in the space. And you're over here and you're like, you know, the ceiling on this audience is $100 million in annual revenue. Like, what's different of how you're thinking about it?

What's funny, man, there's a, like, if I could be a one-man show making $1 to $3 million, I'm probably doing better than I'm doing with a 400-man show making $100 million, right?

Like, like the take-home is pretty different.

So like, would not knock that at all. But we've always looked at the stool that we're successful on is like content, commerce, and community, right? And you look at it like, there's some cool, I look at these great YouTube channels that I just can't get over. There's one guy that does like dioramas. He's got a million subs. He's just building dioramas. And I'm like, This is amazing. And you go to his store and he's got like a little bit of merch, right? But like, he's great at content, sucks at commerce, right? A lot of times they're good at one or two, right? Great at content, beautiful community, they don't understand the commerce piece. Or great, they can be great at content and the commerce piece, but then it's like, it's the guys that are like, have a big audience and shove a bunch of merch down their throat, and they're missing that community piece that like really builds it out into this full-fledged enterprise. And so, I mean, you see it really quick as you look at different creators and you're like, oh, they, man, they're so good at these things.

Yep.

They're missing that one.

They've got one or two legs of the stool and all three together is where you get that like amplification.

Well, and honestly, like it worked in our world because it's my mom who's great at the content. It's me who's great at the commerce stuff. And my sister that's really good at the community. She built a town that essentially is Comic-Con every day for quilters. Right. And so like, I don't think it works without like a couple different personalities in the mix that you trust and lean into because any one of those is easily a full-time job for you to try and figure out and like stay on trends and figure, you know, like what's the algorithm doing today is something you need to be paying attention to. And so for, I mean, for us, as we had all three legs to that stool, the ceiling's unlimited. We haven't even seen where this thing can go yet. But if you don't have that, then like your ceiling for being a great, like you said, being a great creator that's, uh, that's building some affiliates and partnerships, a couple million a year. Not to knock that, like you don't need a 400-person business to do that, but like your ceiling is known. And if you're great at commerce, there's a lot of websites out there with no content face, with nothing, right? We know their ceiling too. But like you start, you put the stew together, you get some dinner, you get something different.

And then there's an impact in the community. Just hanging out with you the last couple days, you can tell that the like the impact that you've had in Hamilton is very important to you.

Dude, it— well, it's funny, man, because like I want to be a heartless capitalist so bad, and I just don't have it in me. Well, because like you and I, we both did, uh, Reboot, right?

Yep. Oh yeah.

And I found Reboot because I was the CEO of this company at the time, and me and my co-founders, which is my sister and my best buddy Dave, we all got to this spot where like the company's doing like $50, $60 million a year. I'm like, I don't know what I'm doing in here. Like, like I was a bad manager. I was very like micromanaging. You kind of learn how to be a leader by watching terrible movies on A&E. And like, I mean, you're just piecing it together the best you can. And so like I found Reboot, which is like business coaching and therapy for CEOs and stuff, came out of that and was like, all right, let's try and transition out of this and become healthy again. And the challenge I found in there was I got a town that I've told, trust me, I'm going to build it for you. I got a family that I've told, trust me, I'm going to build it for you. I've got an industry that we're disrupting that I'm saying, hey guys, I'm a good player here, right? Like, I'm not here to pirate anything. I'm not a vampire. I'm going to—

we're going to build up the entire industry because there's a bunch of guys.

I mean, that like knitting.com had— if you go, there's like a controversy around it because they're like, oh, these dumb ladies, we got it all figured out. We're going to We're going to strip mine this whole thing. We're going to sell it on Amazon. They don't even know what's coming. And everybody's like, "F these guys, screw them." And our personality is very much like, "Dude, everything we're doing, we're not gouging prices. Like, we're trying to build this great world around us." And so with all of that weight on my shoulders, man, stepping back from the company was this terrifying thing. And now I'm, you know, I'm chairman of the board. I like, honestly, I'm just— I'm a better CEO without the day-to-day duties that I thought a CEO had to do, but just like focusing on big ideas and stuff. But we've got a great CEO in there. Now, but like I've transitioned out of that, out of the day-to-day and I work on bigger stuff, but I still wear that weight of like, well, we can't just sell this to some crappy PE firm, right? Like, man, I'm building parks and like fixing schools in my county. Like I need to kind of stay here. I've made 400 jobs, dude. If somebody else came in and bought that, they'd be like, well, first thing, it's dumb to be in Hamilton. Let's cut that and move the warehouse out of here. And so, yeah, like, like all that stuff, it's funny. Community is meaningful from an audience standpoint. It's also very meaningful from from like the employees and the company standpoint as well as in our personal world, right? Like it all mixes together, man. You don't get to live in a silo.

Yeah. And I think the way that you've done it in the town, it's obviously had a huge impact. So do I understand correctly that you own all of the commercial real estate in Hamilton?

Well, most. 27 buildings in a 1,500-person town gets— you round that up pretty quick.

Yeah. Just about all the way there. But something that I've heard you talk about in the past is that like every business should have a town. Yeah. Effectively a set for everything that you're doing. And then, I mean, you've made literally the Disneyland of quilting.

Well, every dude, everybody I talk to— looks, I'm an angel investor. I see, you know, I hang out with a bunch of startup folks, and like, when you're a hammer, everything's a nail. And I, like, I see the value of a town that, like, a destination that you're building your amusement park in everywhere. If you're a baking company, right, like, I should be able to go somewhere in America. There should be a cheesemaking capital of the world in Wisconsin. There should be, you know, the rally car town that we all go to in southern Colorado for a guys trip for a week and we just race rally cars.

And then we follow it on YouTube the rest of the year.

And yeah, well, and that content is immediately a face because the thing that everybody, especially in the AI age and stuff, man, everybody's suspicious that they're being taken advantage of, right? I don't want to buy stuff from a faceless, nameless warehouse in the middle of El Paso. I want to buy, like, I want to buy from somebody. And so a lot of these creators come on and they give the veneer of authenticity.

Right?

And they say, hey, I'm here now, buy from this thing that like I'm not connected to or affiliated in. And like, as you build a town, that, that trust just goes so much deeper because you like, I want to go and shop your products, I'm going to go to your town, I'm going to see what you're making. You know what, like, I'll, I'll travel a bunch, and, and I was in Morocco a year or two ago, and I remember walking through and like your first couple stands, you're like, this stuff is amazing. And then like by your fifth or sixth little, you know, shop, you're like, oh, it's all the exact same stuff distributed.

Yeah.

And if I could see a guy cutting a leather belt like by hand in the back, I immediately trust him and want to buy from him because all I'm looking for is something authentic to that experience. And if you're in quilting, you just don't want to be tricked into buying a Walmart thing, right? You want the real good stuff. And any hobby, any craft, that's exactly what you're looking for. You just want to trust and you want to get like the real thing. And that's why creators are so unique because they give that— a town just goes one level deeper and surprisingly affordable to do.

Yeah. What does it actually cost to—

well, like, you think about it. So we have one little town next to ours that we— that me and my sister are trying to restore, right? It's called Kingston. There's like 8 buildings on the main drag and it's completely run down. It's been vacant for years. I drive past it back to my house every day, and one day I called her. I was like, I want a dang chicken restaurant to stop, a place to get some ice cream with the kids, and eat a little general store. Like, we gotta do something about this. And so we bought the whole lot of buildings, and they're— I mean, they're abandoned, nobody's in them.

It's gonna cost a lot to fix them up.

$50 grand is what we bought them for. We'll put in about $2 million at the point that you go and fix that up, which— $2 million is about $10 grand a month as a mortgage, right? Like, if you do— if you get some financing on it. So you got to cover $10 grand a month in rents, and in a town that has nothing, that's kind of tough. But like, we'll do some mixed real estate, do a little residential up top and some commercial down below. But like, that town now gets to have an identity. And, and because I own a quilting company, it'll probably extend into like Crochet and Knitting, right? Or Embroidery Town or Watercolorville, or, you know, like we'll give it something in that same space. So as people drive to come and see us there, we get 100 and some thousand people a year come to our tiny town, 100,000 or over 100,000 people a year coming to visit Well, and for a barometer, right, like, I don't have the source for this, but in my head, the number for Magnolia, which is the Joanna Gaines, is like 30,000 people a week.

Like, we're talking about 100,000 being a huge number.

Yeah.

And you're like, try doing that every 3 weeks.

That's right. Well, and so I'm looking at saying, man, I think I can double or triple that, right, if we have creativity land and people are coming for that. But they'll come to town, and then I give them a few other things. 7 miles this way is another one. 7 miles that way is another one. You'll go check it out.

Yeah, it's like buy your ticket California Adventure right across the plaza.

When the— dude, the Barnum and Bailey Circus, like, the 3 rings mean something because you can't get it all in one trip, right? Like, that's why they did this, so that you'd have to come back and buy a ticket for the second day. And like, we're in the same boat. We're like, we've got to stay interesting. You can't just come to town and then never be like, oh yeah, I did that, checked it off. It's like, no, it's changing. New stuff, shutting that store down, moving this one over here, and doing a whole thing. And for us, like, you look at it in sort of those numbers— a finance, $2 million, $10,000 a month. There's a lot of brands that spend way more than that on meta ads.

Oh yeah.

And like, you're going to get so much more fodder out of like the build and the experience that you're putting together in there. And the fact that people can come and visit that— $10,000 a month is very reasonable for a lot of people.

Want to follow that journey. And you're talking about someone saying like, oh, what, what changed? What's different from last time? But then it also gives you all of this content ongoing. So I think of, you know, what you're doing. Chip and Joanna are a great example of building a town. Brett Underwood is doing this with Cerro Gordo, which is the ghost town in California that I'm an investor in. But watching that, Like, I go visit there and there's probably 100 to 150 people on each, like, Saturday and Sunday that come up. I mean, it's like in the absolute middle of nowhere.

Well, you know what's funny, man? As soon as you get poking around, like, it's not an original idea. Apparently Freeport, Maine, okay, is Elbeanville, right? And so, like, our parents dreamt of going to Freeport, Maine, and I didn't know this until, like, yeah, my mom's like, oh, we've got to stop there. And we go check it out, and like, they've got the whole downtown and it's 20 stores and it's all LL Bean and you walk around them and they have the return shop where you can go and get the discount stuff and you go to the jacket place and the boots place. Like you're saying, I'm like, oh yeah, you guys are killing it. But like a lot of these, a lot of these mail order brands would start in these small towns. They sort of do that, right? And like, it's cool, it's experiential, it's things that people would aspire to. It's Disneyland because you just, you want to go and see it. But you take that and put that over a brand or a creator and like What does it look like? And would your people go see it? Dude, I wish there was like a Nintendoville and we'd go hang out and like play all the— like a game dedicated or a whole shop dedicated to Super Mario or something, right? Like, I would go see it. I would just want to see it.

And then you have the museum aspect where you're learning about behind the scenes.

You can jump on a Goomba, you know, and battle King Koopa. Like, I would just go do it. And I'd take my kids and we'd do the whole thing and like put it in Yuccaipa, California. In the middle of nowhere. And I'm like, "All right, I'll go there." Yeah.

What do you think about, like, let's say ConvertKit is a company, right? We could obviously spend $10,000 a month on that real estate or something. How important do you think it is of building something out like that out in a larger city, right? Chip and Joanna are in Waco, and so they've got a big population there and within a 2-3 hour drive.

Well, honestly, man, before Chip and Joanna, Waco was David Koresh's town, right? Like, nobody cared about Waco at all.

From a brand, it was not.

And like, I couldn't have built Missouri Star in Chicago or New York. It just wouldn't have worked. But you go 30 or 40 minutes out of there and it gets an excuse to exist. And so like, if you were gonna do it, right, like, don't do it in Boise, right? Drive 30 minutes somewhere and go— like, you got a lot of desert out there.

There's plenty of desert, no shortage.

But when you like, you go marry it up to like Rexburg or something where you got plenty of work working populace, like a lot of college kids looking for jobs, and all of a sudden you've got an identity that lives in this town that you're growing it out. And it's like, oh dude, ConvertKit, you got to go see what they're doing. The whole creator experience, 4 city blocks of like, you go, you can go make your content there, you go like, they'll let you use a podcast space for free. Like, it's fun. Like, yours, here's an interesting one because it's not an obvious jump in there, but if you guys sat in a room and put on a whiteboard, like, what if we had a town, we're about creators, we're about amplifying their message, helping succeed, what would you put in 4 City Blocks? And it's like, dude, that's interesting. Like, maybe we're getting— you know, the goal is that you have some serendipity, and 20 of these creators are there all the time, and like you're collabing without even trying. You know, like you're just building these ways to facilitate that, whether it's doing activities or sitting and doing podcasts or writing content together. Like, there's a constant TV show, docu-series that's being shot through there. People can go and like slip into it and see themselves. Like, There's a ton of stuff that you can start to pull out and say, if you're a creator, what would the coolest experience look like?

And you'd have this whole range. Like creators is such a giant umbrella that there'd be like the perfect woodshop where all of the, you know, the DIY woodworking creators are at. There'd be—

Well, when you have— I mean, you have a bunch of like authors and so it's like, all right, what cool experience? Like nobody's built the author experience. Right.

There would be a bookstore that has every, you know, book from all the ConvertKit creators. Well, it's funny, man, Like, I love—

have you ever been through like the Color Factory?

I haven't, no.

Yeah, well, like the— what is the Museum of Ice Cream and stuff? Like, they're just these big sort of Instagrammable moments. Like, I would want— if I— there was an author I followed that like I could go and sort of go through the mini experience of like 5 rooms dedicated to, you know, James Clear or something. You're like, he changed my life, it was transformative, it was magical, and I just had to come here and see And look, I'm here with the giant thing. Like, it's all this stuff that now has meaning to you. And from a community standpoint, like, you have both the creator community and the fans of those creators, and like, there's plenty there to be excited about. And it's funny because like, I didn't know ConvertKit from Adam, right? Because ConvertKit mainly is message to people that are not me, right? You're, you're looking for, for more like you know, people with a newsletter that are growing that. And but I guarantee you, if there's a town that was building experiences around authors or building experiences around— like, that makes it onto NPR, that makes it onto NBC Nightly News. And like, I see that, and all of a sudden I have a relationship with your brand where before I didn't, right?

Yeah, the amount of earned media that you can get from that. I mean, that's what we see with the ghost town. Yeah, where it's just non-stop people Like every story, if you put it in the ghost town, becomes infinitely more interesting. It's— and people fall like they're hanging on every word that Brent puts out because they're like, oh, did you finish that? Like, did you get windows in the hotel yet? No?

Okay, dude, did you see the guy on TikTok that was building the eel pit?

No, what is this?

Dude, there's this guy on TikTok that had it like in his basement. He had this like, this like just a basement, and he like sealed it off and filled it with water, and he's like, I'm building an eel pit. And so like, dude, he was in my feed. He owned my feed for a while. And like, you just watch him and he's like normalizing the water. He drops some fish in there. He goes and catches some, and he— and like, he gives them all names, and then he finally drops some eels in there. And like, but you're watching this whole thing happen. I'm like, dude, if this guy would let me come see this, right, I would drive to Alabama or wherever this dude is set up because like, I've watched 100 videos on this thing and I just like— it's so cool to me. I want to go and meet like Flashy the Eel. Like, I, I just want to go see it. And it's sort of ho-dunky and like not flashy or anything, but like, I was into it. Yeah, I was super curious about it because there's part of me that's like, maybe I'll build an eel pit in my yard now, but I got to see yours. I got to see how you do it. And like, he did all the work of creating all that content. The audience, everybody followed him, but he was never selling anything, to what you were saying. Yeah. And like When you think of like an eel pit, what are you going to sell? You can do some merch, but you really— unless you want to get into like selling fish over the internet, there's not a lot you can do. But the experience is definitely worth coming out and going through, right? I paid $20 to go through the eel pit and like feed the eels and stuff and like be a blast.

Yeah. So now if you think about scaling the, the community further as you go, like what's it going to take, say, to go from 100,000 visitors a year to $200,000 or $300,000?

Well, it's funny, man, because in my world in quilting, there's like 10 million quilters out there, right? And, and a lot of them, a lot of them aren't online because that's, you know, you buy fabric, you want to touch it, you feel it. And so when I think about where I go from here, you know, the town is an element of it, but, but the big question mark in my mind is like, how do I find another, you know, 8 million customers? It's probably figuring out some other experience that goes and like builds around them or Probably more meaningful than that is like supporting the experiences that already happen. Like quilters get together and do stuff. And so it's like, like if I'm thinking outside of my box, it's like, man, how do I become a big supporter of that? We've got an example next to us of like Joann's or Michaels, right? Which are these big craft stores, crappy stores that have not earned the right to exist in 2024. And you can see that in their market share and their stock price and stuff. But like For Joann's, dude, that's $2.5 billion in revenue. Like, they're a big company that, like, a lot of people get their fabric from them. And they're very transactional, but it's like, dude, what could Joann's be if Joann's had the community and the content brain that we've got? Like, what does that look like? And I mean, I don't have it solved yet, but that's one of the big curiosities that I live in. When even, like, you know, Amazon, when they did the bookstores and stuff, it was— and the Go stores. Honestly, like, I was way more excited than most, even though they've kind of flopped a little bit, like they pulled back and done stuff. But I'm like, this is the first time that Amazon wasn't just the nameless, faceless warehouse, right? And I was like, this is interesting. I wonder where this goes.

Yeah, are you watching a bunch of direct-to-consumer brands like the Warby Parkers and others that have started to open up? Well, not started, they've been doing it for 10 years now, but the, like, the retail spaces all around.

Yeah, which again, I mean, those guys are great at commerce, right? And they're doing great with commerce. What if you married amazing content in there? What if you married amazing community in there, right? And those shops that are opening up meant something to the community rather than just being an eyeglass shop that's screwing over the local optometrist, right? Because like, if they open up in my town, like, they don't love them. They open up in New York and Philadelphia, they're beloved because it's a fun brand and it's the D2C stuff. And I'll mail order through there, like, totally makes sense. But they haven't solved the other two pieces of the stool. And so they will— well, you can make a lot of money being a commerce brand. Yeah, again, not knocking just going all in on that, but like, I love the idea of these brands that sort of have this holistic round. I read an article a couple of years ago about how Hilton was trying to call itself a media brand, or Marriott or something, right? Like one of these big hotel hospitality things. And their thinking was like, no, we're trying to inspire people to travel. And like we're going to rethink ourselves into this like this content space that supports it with our infrastructure. And I was like, it's awesome, that's cool. Like, I hope, I hope you can figure something out because if not you guys, there's some upstart brand that's going to do amazing at it. And like Airbnb is probably the closest to something like that where they say, we've got an infrastructure here, now dream of where you could go and look at all these experiences and the trips and all the stuff that you could take. And it's like, That's a good model. I like that. That resonates with me as a creator and as a consumer a lot more than any other hospitality, you know, shtick that I've seen. Yeah.

And I'm just thinking about like the local expansion. Like instead of most people say, okay, you're bringing commerce to each one of these cities, right? Say like, okay, we're going to open up 10 Missouri Star Quilt Company locations over the next 3 years. Most people look at that and say like, great, commerce.

Yeah.

And what you're saying is, no, I'm only going to do that when if I plant a flag in a new location, I can have equal parts commerce, community, that's right, content.

That's right. Yeah, I, I sort of see it as like, I don't think I could be a Walmart or a Joann's, right? But I could be a Six Flags, right?

Okay.

And there's like, there's a great destination within 3 hours of everybody in America, and you're picking, right, 16, not 200.

Yeah.

And it's like, you know, there's, it's like, oh yeah, and you got to go to the MSQC, the Missouri Star, down in Santa Fe, because they did this, they You know, something like that starts to be interesting to me where like just opening up a bunch of stores, like being the pure retail play, gets real boring real fast.

So who's an example that does that?

Like Cabela's or Bass Pro Shop or something?

Yeah, Shields.

Yeah, Bass Pro Shops you'll drive to, you want to go see, and like they— and they build a huge experience around it, right? And you're in—

like when we go to Cabela's, I'll take my two older boys, we're going to, you know, go pick something up, and my 9-year-old will be like, okay, this is the knife that I want to get, and we're like looking for that. My 12-year-old's like, I'm gonna go look at the aquarium. And like, you know, go over and see if the turtles are still in there.

Well, what's funny, man, is like, is like you'll hit that and then eventually you'll be like, wait, we're gonna go by Sydney, Nebraska. All right, we're stopping because I want to see the original. Yeah, Cabela's, because there it is. And we're just gonna go, you know, like there's a relationship to that brand that's built by these outposts that they put, right? But, and eventually we'll get you to the mothership. But then also you're, when you order online, like, you know, you, you know who it is, right?

Right. So I feel like Cabela's, that's the one that I know best in, in Boise. I, I feel like they're 90% commerce, maybe 10% experience. What would you change about it in order to get it to like, like that 50/50 maybe?

Well, so I'll just simplify it and say, what if Cabela's was one big store, right? And I wanted to build the experience around it more. I would try and make it a thing where you'd come and hang out for a week or two and feel engaged the whole time. And so, you know, like, I'm a gun owner, but like, I don't know what I'm doing, you know? I'm like, yeah, I, I got one in case a raccoon comes and gets my chickens, but is this, you know, what am I doing. And I would love to go and take like, hey, you're gonna come for 3 days and we're gonna go through— we got the woods course and we got this course. I want to get into hunting. I went hunting with some buddies for the first time this last year and I was like, oh, I get it. I've never cared about it my whole life. Let me go out at like 4 AM and sit while the forest wakes up around. I was like, this is cool, this is cool. But I'm— I don't know what I'm doing.

But you could show up and learn all those things with my kid.

And because like, I can't teach my kids how fun. I wish I could, right? But like, I don't have that skill. And if we could go and learn it together and then try it on our farm and do that stuff, like 100%, I'd go do some of that stuff. Or like, go there and, you know, I want to get into fishing, and they're like, awesome, we're going to try— we have this great simulator you can go take 100 pulls into and try all the casting rods and see what you think. And like, well, we have some fun games where you're riding in a boat and rocking back and forth and don't fall in, you know, like But there's stuff you could easily do around that that would be super interesting and really fun. And like us guys that right now we're sitting in Scottsdale and it's like, whatever, but let's go to Sydney, Nebraska. We're gonna freaking spend a week. It's gonna be awesome. We're gonna, you know, 8 to 4 is Cabela's and then we go hang out for dinner, right? And like 100% we'd do it.

Yeah. Okay, so that's interesting. Going back to the— I convert it to town. Yeah, there are all these events that happen, right? A mastermind you know, mini conferences where creators are getting together and we're doing things like sitting in a hotel room, you know, with all of our gear set up to film a podcast. But if a mastermind is like, hey, we're going to host, we're going to go do our mastermind in ConvertKit's town.

Yeah.

You know, in Creatorville, then like it makes sense. You can have all the experiences, but then all the studios are already there. You can tour it. You can— yeah, a lot of people would And it's in a place that maybe has great nature so you can get out and do it.

But it's funny, man, because a lot of— I think a lot of the aspiration is I just want to— like, if I've got a little podcast that does 1,000 listens a week or a month or something, right? Like, I kind of want to— like, and I can go and record in a big studio, right? That feels cool. And you're going to make it a reasonable thing for me to go and do. And like, I'm just going to go, yeah, when we're there, let's go record in the studio. Do like— we're going to pretend to be professionals at this. Where we could never justify that expense on our own, but now we have something to sort of aspire to and you've helped, you know, create that.

Well, and the thing with pretending to be a professional at something is, especially as a creator, is it often leads to another step towards becoming a professional at it. 'Cause you're like, oh, so that's the lights that you use. Okay, how, you know, like you learn those things. You're like, wait, I could buy this gear.

I could— That's a great point, man. Because like, yeah, a lot of times you just wanna go see how it's done. And somebody that's like willing to engage with questions doesn't ever think you're a competitor, right? Like, awesome, awesome. You'd come into a space like that and you just see it. You can take that home and go, dude, I literally built my entire warehouse by watching YouTube videos about Amazon. I went to a friends and family day. I had a buddy that worked in, you know, like the San Antonio Amazon warehouse. I was like, can you sneak me in? I just got to look around. I'm like, oh, they pick their orders like this, which is, it's just normal warehouse. Warehouse logistics stuff, but like, I didn't know. And then I went and like copied it down and drew my little warehouse blueprint and went and got this whole thing built, put millions of dollars in. But I wasn't willing to pay a, you know, a con— like a contractor, yeah, consultant to come and like tell me the right thing. I was like, I'll figure this out, I can figure this out. And that's exactly what I did. And like, that for lighting, that for podcasting, that for video, you know, like that's— that same principle holds true. People think like they're pretty close. Most people are always pretty close. You just want to see it, want to interact with it, want to play with it, try it out.

I'm realizing maybe it's taking too far, but I'm realizing you could bring in other brands adjacent in the creator space. So like there could be like Wistia could be the sponsors of the one like all about video. Dude, Wistia and Blackmagic should sponsor, you know, like, and they're teaching you like, oh, here's the switcher, here's the gear that you use, you know.

Yeah, what equipment you want to be in there that's aspirational for new creators, you want to see and touch the good stuff so they know what they can reach for, right? Like, otherwise, I'm almost never getting off my iPhone because it's pretty good, right? But like, you let me see that, see how it goes, see what the Switch looks like. Then I—

also, you could, you know, if you had a good like live studio that could have an audience of say 50 or 80 people, then if you're bringing people through, someone's like, well, who's recording tonight?

Well, you know, I'm telling you, every company, if you sit down and say, what would that experience— like, you go as deep, right? It pisses me off pissed off that I can't go to like a Kansas City Chiefs experience, right? Or like all these pro sports teams like that. Like, you drive all the way there, you go there, and you have the game, and that's it. That's all they'll give you. And I'm like, dude, I would do— I would give you 10 times more money. I would do all this.

Let me stay for 3, 4 days.

Cared about your people a little bit and let, like, let that brand grow. And no, I mean, anything we put on the whiteboard, we'd come up with that experience around.

Yeah.

And that's— it's a great hack because once you've done the work work to imagine your brand or your experience in a physical world, right, that translates to digital way easier, right? Like way, way easier. Where a lot of times it gets muddy trying to imagine the digital experience without the crutch of like, oh well, our physical brand is this, and so the digital version of that looks like— that's way easier than going the other way around, I think. Yeah, because our whole brand changed once we started having to like print up signage and like create, you know, like, well, all right, are we 15 stores? Like, what are we? We kind of have to think through how do we connect as a brand, how do we support each other, how do we message that? And then that came into our online world really easily.

Are there any missteps that you made?

Uh, not one.

Yeah, just perfectly. But as you go and build this out, you're like, okay, this ended up being a waste of 6 months, or—

Yeah, I mean, I mean, if I could do it again, I would like— well, because I, I started restaurants that I tried to run myself.

Okay.

Like 3 restaurants that we tried to run and And I also thought we tried to partner with like, we had a gal that always dreamt of starting a bakery. And in my mind, entrepreneurship is very simple because I can do it. And so I think everybody would be great at being an entrepreneur. And then she got in there and did not love.

Right. Being up at 3:30 in the morning.

Wasn't her cup of tea. And like 3 months later, after I'd paid to build it out, I was like, I will give you your dream. And she's like, I'm going back to the job. This sucks. I was like, huh, okay. Like I would have just done that differently. Hired somebody to set that up, hired somebody that knew about restaurants to do some of that. Probably a lot of it is just like finding good partners and, and consultants to help me. Like the warehouse, dude, I 1000% should have hired a guy to be like, that's a 10-foot room with a toilet, my man. You don't need that for a bathroom. And I'm like, oh, okay.

Right. Like, I think you should have still gone, like, gone in deep, fell in love with the process, studied it, and then hired the expert as well.

Well, because it's not as much as it is in my head. Like, a guy to look at my warehouse plans and call some of that crap out would have been like $3,000. Or 5 grand or something, right? And most of the time you have buddies that know somebody that can help you out with that stuff. And so I would have done a lot more of that, been much more inclusive, because the instinct as a creator, I think, is to be an isolationist. It's you against the world. Everybody else is the bad guy because they think you're a dummy, they think you can't do it, or they're out to get you, you know, whatever narrative you build up in your head. And so you go into this closed world and say, I'm going to do it, I'm going to show them. And the truth is, man, like, most people are rooting for you. And they're fine and like, happy to help you, happy to give you a few words. And I think that narrative is changing a little bit as people like promote cold emailing and stuff. It would have never occurred to me to cold email somebody and ask them if I was, you know, for advice or if I was doing something right. I literally, I was sure everybody thought I was a joke and I had to prove them all wrong. That ego is a mean voice on your head. And so yeah, I mean, that's what I would do different. I would be much more like Hey, how do you do it? Like, now, dude, it is so easy for me to go like, this is cool, what are you doing here? How do you do this podcast?

What software do you use?

Yeah, and like, you're stoked to talk about it, you're happy to share. Like, you're no worse off if I'm successful in my thing, right? But like, I didn't understand that until I was 40 years old.

It's very much a positive-sum game.

Yeah, I love it.

It's a good place to wrap up where we dive back into our mastermind and hanging out in, uh, cold Scottsdale.

See you on part 2. Sounds good.

Thanks for coming on.

Yeah, man.

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