Episode 103: 85 Supply's Trevor Sarver: Rock-n-Roll Entrepreneur

Welcome to Skucast, the podcast for entrepreneurs in the promotional products industry. Skucast shines a light on our industry's best work, features maverick personalities, and discusses what's really involved in running a modern promotional products business. Skucast is the official podcast of Common Skew.

When you're writing a record, like for example, our band, we were very grassroots.

It doesn't matter, you know, how many shows we played, how much quote-unquote success or whatever, we still went to the garage in the heat of July and wrote the records, you know, exactly where we were when we were 18.

The voice you are hearing is that of Trevor Sarver, CEO of 85 Supply, a former rock and roller who found his way to the promotional products industry, and in a short 5 years has grown at a radical rate. He brings his punk rock attitude to the business. And in this episode, we talk about the similarities between the music business and the promo business, how process and technology play a critical role in his growth, and his eclectic and rather unconventional approach to the business. We also talk about the pitfalls and promise of the supply chain and a lot more. Hi friends, I'm Bobby LeHew, the Chief Content Officer at Commonsku. We've been averaging around 5,000 listens each month to SkuCast. We're so grateful for so many of you joining us each week as we explore the questions and ideas that shape the way we think and impact the future growth of our business. But we want to help even more. We're starting a new series inside the SkuCast called simply Ask Us Anything. It can be related to commissions, sales, HR, marketing, technology. It can be business or even personal. No topic is off the table. If you'd like to ask a question, email your question to me at bobby@commonsku.com. And don't forget about the promotional product industry's one-day conference for distributors who want to ignite their sales growth, Common Skew Sessions. Sessions is a multi-city event hosted in Dallas, Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York. You can learn more at commonskewsessions.com. And one more housekeeping note, we just released the schedule and session details for Skew Camp being held in Pittsburgh September 22nd through the 25th. Tickets are selling so fast. We have limited availability. We encourage you to check it out soon at skewcamp.com. And this episode is Brought to you by Commenscue, the platform that powers your connected workflow, enabling you to process more orders and dramatically grow your sales. Begin your free trial now at commenscue.com. And now to my conversation with still a punk rocker, Trevor Sarver.

Trevor, you guys have a very unorthodox approach to the business.

Absolutely.

And I noticed— now this obviously probably comes a little bit from your rock and roll background.

100%, man.

The word unorthodox probably doesn't even do it justice.

I played in a rock and roll band for 10 years.

You know, you figure it out.

You just, you wing it and you figure it out. That's literally how 85 Supplies happened. And, you know, it's like a mixture of unorthodox leadership techniques and methods all the way to unorthodox in how we treat our clientele.

And, you know, which we really consider them friends. I mean, it's, it's a totally different approach.

So yeah, we've— dude, it's— there's nothing normal about what we're doing over here. I think that, you know, like Are we reinventing the wheel?

No, I sound like a broken record, but I say it all the time.

We're not reinventing the wheel.

We're just putting some really dope rims on there and trying to make it, you know, make the wheel look as good as possible.

But yeah, as far as unorthodox, man, everything is from leadership to the way we've bootstrapped like the company.

It's funny, we talked about my background, so you know that I've had experience in the business and the way the business comes at you, it flies fast. There's a lot of moving parts.— there's a lot of projects. It's a really exciting business to be a part of. Do you think your performance background actually prepared you for sort of this spontaneous approach to business? And do you think the aspects of the business that are like that, the energetic part of it, the uniqueness of the business, complemented the skill set you kind of had as a musician?

Yeah, absolutely.

We have a team meeting every morning.

We have a quick little stand-up, 15 minutes long. And just a couple of days ago, I was talking to the team and referring back to how we did it in the band, you know?

So, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

And as far as just the success, I guess, or whatever you want to call it, the building of Eighty Five, you'd kind of assume that I would have got off the road and been like, "All right, cool.

I'm going to print some t-shirts for some friends and I'm going to reach out to all my touring contacts." And there was a degree of that, but man, I got hit with reality. And truth be told, I moved to Nashville chasing a girl and that didn't work out. Praise God.

Next thing you know, I'm printing t-shirts.

Shirts for just pennies, you know, and realize that nobody's going to take care of this.

Nobody's going to do this except for me. And I think because we've taken so many leaps of faith as a band, it was just easy. It was natural for me to be like, you know what, screw it, let's go. I'm going to start a company like right now. Let's do this.

You alluded to something there in that story you just told. You alluded to the fact that band merch was obviously something that you pointed to initially, but you quickly expanded into probably more corporate markets and things like— what types of clients do you serve? Who's your tribe? What do you guys— do you have a particular focus and niche?

Yeah, it's—

I, man, we have ran all sorts of analytics. Like, I know I have, you know, just straight up getting—

looking at—

all right, look at all the orders in the past X amount of months or whatever, and it is just unbelievable. I mean, to be honest with you, like, right now I'm not going to mention clients and all that kind of stuff, but yesterday we're working for a well-known rapper, you know, who's just off the wall, like you'd know him. And then in the same day, I'm just doing youth camp t-shirts for my friends, you know, guys I've known forever.

And then on the flop side, we're working for, you know, some larger, like a drink brand or something like that, which is exactly what I want and wanted 85 to be. It's just a well-diverse distributor to say, I don't care who you are, where you come from, Come exactly as you are. We will meet you in the middle and we'll figure this out and we will get you good merch. It's that simple. You just never know who's going to call. You literally never know.

I mean, I remember the day that, man, I mean, it's an app on your phone. You use it to get a ride somewhere, right? And I remember the day that my phone rang and I was like, 85 Supply, this is Trevor. And the guy's like, I'm from blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, I literally, I couldn't even BS this dude. I just responded and I was like, dude, I know exactly who you are.

You need merch. Let's do this. And you know, I'm like, don't even, don't even try and church it up, dude. Cause he like said something tech, he said he added the word technologies after the name, after their business name.

And I was like, dude, don't even try and church it up.

I know exactly who you are. I used your app yesterday.

So like, let's figure this out.

But it's just the coolest thing, man. And then I'm still able to, to focus on our You know, I mean, you can order as low as 36 shirts from 85.

We started kind of in a way like, don't get me wrong, I was, you know, just pulling shirts off a press. But then a friend of mine taught me the promotional products world, and that's—

that is a huge, huge, huge focus of ours now.

So why 85 Supply?

It's easy, dude.

I was just born in '85.

It's just—

that was it, man. I have 1985 tattooed on my knuckles. And, you know, 85, it just kind of rolled off the tongue.

I was like, oh, 85. We supply things like, oh, it works. Let's, let's just start selling merch.

Go. You made a comment when we chatted briefly that there's a lot of people in the merch business who should not be in it.

Yeah, I'm actually pretty passionate about that statement, actually.

I, you know, I've just witnessed in recent times, man, and I know that the listeners right now are like, whoa, you know, that's a powerful thing to say.

Who is this guy?

But truth be told, I've seen a major trend as EightyFive has grown and our clients have grown. Obviously, the correspondence and the communication with these new people, it has grown.

And I'm a firm believer in there's always two sides to every story.

But what I'm finding out also is that we're really cleaning up a lot of people's dirty work, man. You know, when it comes to terms and conditions, when it comes to all these nitpicky things, and then all the way down to just somebody not making their wrong right.

Don't get me wrong, I'm going to jump up and try and shine for these people. And give them a service that they just, you know, they really, really dreamed of. But at the same time, I mean, a few weeks ago, a guy came to us and explained the story.

And I said, "Well, man, do you mind forwarding me some emails? I'd like to see this correspondence." And sure enough, man, he was not joking, and he just straight got screwed. And I was 2 seconds away from emailing those folks and being like, "You have no business in this industry. You need to leave." or change what you're doing because you're giving it a bad name. And then there's also the folks that—

don't get me wrong, we're all new at some point. I was new, you know what I mean? But, you know, whether it's a Facebook group and all that kind of stuff, it's like, does anybody know where to get this white coffee mug?

Like, are you serious right now? Are you freaking serious?

Like, anyway, yeah, I could go on that rant forever, but it's just interesting.

I really believe that the industry—

I don't know how you would do it. This is just my own opinion, for what it's worth.

I really believe that there's like— we need to band together more and have common understandings because it's It's an ocean. It's not just a pond. You know, it's an ocean of merchandise out there. We're not going to step on each other's toes, but we need to represent the industry really well. And I'm passionate about this, man. I'm extremely, extremely passionate about merchandising. And it's my— I think more than anything, I'm passionate about giving something to somebody that they didn't have before and for them to see it and go, oh my gosh, like, dude, this is something I say a lot, but every single day We are signing a contract, right? Like, you download an app, you agree to the terms of service. We've gotten in this mentality as a culture where I already, before I even click accept, I've already accepted the fact that I am screwed. They're going to have the upper hand on me. And imagine living in a society of business where when you clicked accept, yes, those are terms, yes, but the company also worked with you on a realistic playing field. Understand that a terms of service can't cover everything, you know, that there are wild, weird things that happen. There's personal vested interest. I've eaten thousands, dude, hundreds of thousands of dollars of just, you know, wrongs that were not my wrongs. And those clients are our clients for life.

So, anyway, that's something I'm really, really passionate about is just delivering on every level, man.

With you, it's an integrity and intentionality issue.

Dude, huge. Absolutely. Integrity is, you know, you saw the YouTube video and, you know, two of my main traits are protection and provision.

I was about to ask you about that, right?

Yeah. I take those. That's just really, really important to me, man.

Can you elaborate on that protection and provision?

Absolutely, man. I didn't find that out about myself until maybe really about 4 or 5 years ago.

Once I kind of went through this phase of when I was done with the band and we stopped touring, I went through slightly an identity issue, and I didn't know who I was.

And, you know, it was like I thought that my identity was completely the guy in the band. You know, I'm on the road 250 days a year, blah, blah, blah.

I can spout it all off.

I went through this identity issue and finally decided that I was going to be transparent. I was going to live transparent. And I read a book by Donald Miller called Scary Close. And Cody, my very best friend who also is COO at EightyFive, he read the book too and gave it to me. And I was just like, dude, honestly, it just really changed a lot for me and how much freedom there is in transparency. So that boiled over into 85.

When you say transparency, what do you mean by that in terms of who you are as a person and where you're heading?

Yeah, actually, I know this has nothing to do with merch, but absolutely with who I am.

I'm always telling the truth no matter what, always speaking boldly, always loving people, always doing the right thing, always, no matter what, even when it hurts, man. Trust me. Been going through some stuff recently, man, and it is the hardest thing to keep your head up. But the truth be told is one thing that you can't get back quick is your integrity.

And the moment you lose that, it takes forever to get back.

And that applies in business too. And through all of this massive identity crisis I had coming off the road, Eighty Five was growing and I realized, oh my gosh, like production, protection, and provision. So as the team grew, that is whenever I was like, whoa, I really like love this. I love creating jobs for people. Like, this is so rad and I love it.

So, you know, to be honest with you, I've had times where— not times, maybe like two literally—

where a customer has gone out of line and said some, you know, just, you can't speak to somebody like that. And this isn't We're not freaking Comcast.

I'm not going to allow you to speak to one of my employees like that. And I've ripped them up, just straight up.

It's a human issue at that point. It has nothing to do with business.

So that's my protection. Provision, meaning looking at the team, being really, really transparent.

I'm very transparent about our finances. I'm very transparent about where we're at because that shows them like a level of provision, like, and it shows me too, like they've always got my back. So yeah, those are two things. Even like my relationships with my friends, man, I'm always the first guy who's, you know, I mean, you know, what do you need? You know, like I'm going to do everything I can to make sure you're okay.

On your window in your office, there are values printed on your window: passion, dependability, creativity, integrity, transparency, understanding. You mentioned something about the rewarding parts of the work being providing jobs for folks. What are the parts of this? I'm really curious coming into this from, from this rock and roll high-profile life that you had, then you're moving into the merch business, which obviously you've put that same performer's touch on your brand, which is a kick-ass brand, really cool story. You can feel the energy in the brand. You can, you can connect emotionally to it. So there's a lot of cool things going on with that. What did you think the business would be like before you got into it? What's the reality like now? And maybe it's not a fair question because many people evolve into the business. Maybe they don't just jump in, they just sort of incrementally grow into the business. But what do you think of the business now versus when you first started?

Well, actually, it's crazy because I've not been doing this very long.

I just learned really fast because I, I loved it.

So yeah, I mean, dude, my little Facebook time hop thing popped up the other day and it was like 6 years ago and I'm like, oh my God, there's my laptop and like sticky notes, you know, like that's all That's all I had in a checking account.

I mean, dude, but as far as the way it's changed, man, whenever I jumped in, I don't know that it's changed a ton. I think a lot of people have been, you know, like we were speaking earlier, I think there's a lot of people who have like the millennial, whatever you want to call it, whatever that buzzword is, just younger folks getting in the industry like myself who are tending to like attempt to change the game.. And I think that's, that's more of the change that is occurring.

I haven't seen a ton of change just because I haven't been in it, you know, that long, but I'm starting to notice more and more rebellion and it's like in a, in a really positive way.

And dude, but I will say, oh my gosh, if I, if I get a factory that's like, you please fax your PO to blah, blah, blah.

Like, dude, I'm going to lose my ever-loving mind. I'm a tech nerd, man, and we have been working on some really heavy software at 85, and we'll dive into that.

But, you know, yeah, so as far as changing the game, man, I mean, dude, I've sat down with suppliers and been like, if you just did this, this, this—

I'm a process nerd, you know, and I see it in my head.

And, and then, uh, you know, a couple of factories have, have, have some close friends of mine, you know, have adopted that mindset, and it's really cool, man.

Do you find your fulfillment more in the architecture side of the business where the process side? You seem to get excited about that.

Yeah, it's just like seeing something come to life. I think when you're writing a record, like for example, our band, we were very grassroots. It doesn't matter, you know, how many shows we played, how much quote-unquote success or whatever, we still went to the garage in the heat of July and wrote the records, you know, exactly where we were when we were 18.

Yeah, there are folks in the business that love different aspects of it, and I use the words architecture might be a little heavy, but the creative side of it where we're not only talking about creativity in terms of artistic design, talking creativity in terms of designing your own business, designing your own life, designing, designing the fulfilling path that you want. You seem to find a lot of pleasure in that.

Yeah, I think it's because it's exciting, man. It's exciting to see a personality grow. Like, think about it this, this way. Like, I don't have kids, I'm single, like the whole bit.

But I, I would imagine that if you have a kid, it's really exciting when they're born and then all of a sudden their personality starts to come out and then like little nuances and then they, you know, they're a kid, they're a toddler, sorry, then they're a kid, then a teenager.

And but the whole time you're growing and adapting, but you're still really proud if you're, you know, hopefully a good parent, but you're like really proud of your kid. And, and that's the same way with a business.

When you start a business, dude, I had a logo, our singer made our logo. I didn't know what our core values were.

I didn't know what I was going to do. Like, but now it's like all these little, like, things are popping up, you know, little nuances of personality that is 85, and it is just the freaking coolest, man. So that's what drives me. It's like, I have no idea what this company is going to look like in 10 years.

Hopefully it's, you know, $50 million and, and we're, we're loving life and, you know, and providing jobs for a lot of people.

That would be amazing.

That's cool.

5 or 6 years now in the business, what are you struggling with now? What do you think? What are the— what are some of the raw aspects of of difficulty of building business. As you know, we love the raw honesty here at Commsky and this QCast and helping other entrepreneurs as they're growing. So people are going to be listening to this that are brand new to the business. What's the struggle now in this season of your business?

Uh, delegation for sure.

What's his name from Auric Audio? Uh, Jason. Yeah, I listened to that one and he talked about some of their early growing pains.

I just resonated with that, man. He's like, in the beginning I was marketing and I was finance and I was this, you know, and, and 85 is now, just as of this year, now to a point where I am not all sales and I am not all finance and I'm not all production and I'm not— you know, we have a person for, for every one of those departments now. And I don't know, but delegation, it's still hard to let go.

It's, it's been, it's been hard for you to let go of some of those aspects because you did everything.

Dude, it is like when you're working with somebody, you know, just maybe a client that you've worked with forever, and then you realize that you have a, you know, 100-something emails and you cannot do— they're a physically cannot do their order. I do not have time, and I have to pawn them off, quote unquote, you know, to a sales rep or whatever. I know they don't care. They're here— like, the client doesn't care. They're here to, to order from 85. And we're preaching it a lot now that it's not the Trevor Show anymore, and I love that, man.

Yeah, yeah. You like that? Is your role changing though? It sounds like though there's been a little tension as you've tried to adjust to this role changing. Not tension in a bad way, but just tension of like, where am I going next and what am I going to do and how are we going to grow this?

More than anything.

Absolutely. Yeah, it's been—

it's very, very challenging.

I'm like I said, transparency is one of our core values. And if I'm being completely transparent here, every single day I am looking in the mirror and I'm going, I'm just an old punk rock kid. I have no idea what I'm doing. And one thing I know is that I work hard. And I work very, very hard, and I'm a good dude. Like, I strive to be just a good dude. And if we can— if, if I can combine those things, we're gonna be A-okay. And so when a problem does arise, when it's like, and what about HR? Like, dude, I don't even know what HR freaking stands for. Like, you know, like, I'll figure it out though, I promise you.

You don't want to hear— you don't want to hear in your voice and your tone— I'm sorry to interrupt, but you know what I hear in your voice and your tone is I've had the privilege now of sitting at this desk talking to so many entrepreneurs like you that are doing some really kick-ass work. And I've come up with a defining characteristic for folks, and I don't like to be typical, so I really respect everybody's individuality. But there is one defining characteristic, I think, in the renegade entrepreneur that finds a passion in this business, and that is their ability to pivot. Yeah. And it seems like that's what you're in the process of doing even now, again and again, is this pivoting away from something to something else. And it's even at a micro level and just the projects we work on, the ability to pivot from one product you know nothing about, or that you've finally mastered, to a product you know nothing about. And so this whole ability to be agile, open, which requires humility, and the ability to pivot is huge. And it sounds like you— that's really a trait that resonates as you're talking.

Yeah, it's massive.

I mean, because you wake up and you're like, I mean, what if one of your team members, right, they come in there and they bring up a subject and they're telling you you did something wrong, or maybe they're bringing up a pain point in the company. If you're not an open, truly open individual and open to constructive criticism, i.e., a musician who's going to—

their producer is going to rip them a new one, you know what I mean?

Like, you're going to get eaten up as a leader. Like, you're not a leader and you have no business leading. Whenever my team speaks, I listen.

And I know I can honestly say that every single morning.

I have— we have a leadership meeting every morning for 15 minutes, and I, I just— all right, start with you, you know?

And I'm listening and I'm engaging, and, and I, I really care about these people.

So I think that's— in order to pivot, like, dude, you cannot be Mr. Know-it-all. Forget that garbage. You got to be humble and listen to the folks around you. You're gonna make mistakes or whatever, pick your junk up, move on, get the job done, you know?

Yeah.

You've mentioned that you guys obviously have an unorthodox approach to the business, an unorthodox philosophy. But to me, it just sounds— what it sounds to me like is just a very raw and real. You move fast, break things, and that openness and transparency sort of create this rawness, probably this energy that you can pick up even as we're chatting.

It's, it's, it's very raw. We are very fast-paced here and it's growing like crazy. One of my passions is technology and that is where EightyFive is going.

100%. Uh, when you say that, what do you mean where you're going? Uh, what do you see as a vision for Eighty Five and technology?

Fully automated, scalable. The leadership team, the people that, that I answer to basically, is going to be Michelle. She oversees all the sales stuff. And then you got Cody, he oversees all production, anything. And then you've got Austin who does anything creative, anything with our brand, graphic design, all that kind of stuff. And then Ian handles all of the technology, anything tech related, and then Margaret and product development, and, and then we have a slew of contractors and, and other stuff.

So specifically bringing Ian on board in the last year, I knew I wanted, you know, some sort of, uh, outlet via technology to manage all these orders, to automate it from front to back, and I'm talking like every single curveball possible.

That's why I'm such a huge Commonsku fan.

I just think think that what you guys are doing should have been done, you know.

I'm just so glad you did it, man.

Uh, it's like you guys are doing something right, and, and you're marrying—

you're bridging that gap.

But as far as technology, we rebranded internally.

I think that most important side note is that the most important brand to me is 85. It's not going to be our top, top, you know, customer, because how are they going to trust me with their brand if I can't even take care of my own? And so anyway, we just did a full rebrand.

We'll putting all that kind of stuff out.

We— our new website is coming out and directly integrated with a lot of these suppliers. But what we don't want is to go full e-commerce. We don't want to be Custom Ink, you know, and, and we don't want to be 4imprint, but we do want to be some of them, if that makes sense. We want to be able to still serve the rock band that has 150 shows this year and, you know, they're playing to 20,000 people a night. And have that boutique custom tailored experience with them. And then we also want for the local, you know, body shop guy to go on there and snag his t-shirts and he'd be like, dude, I did that all from my phone.

That was so easy, you know, and, and speed.

I'm a big Amazon nerd. I believe in speed. Our average turnaround time right now for printed apparel, if you hit me with 1,000 shirts, you know, and if it was just like, you know, normal, whatever, like average turnaround time, put your order in on a Monday, it's going to be shipping by Thursday.

Thursday, Friday, somewhere in there. But basically, you know, 4, 5, 6 days.

It's just, you know, the industry, 10 to 12 business days. Like, just like, like, dude, if you want to freaking survive and hang with guys like Jeff Bezos, you better get it down to 3 to 4 days, like, and figure it out. And I think that some of these amazing entrepreneurs have figured that out.

You know, like I said, Auric Audio, man, I mean, think about them.

He's done a great— he has a very focused product line and he's got a very focused pipeline. And I think it's really, really cool. Our hopes and dreams is to come out with a— we'll see, I have no idea, don't mark my word— late this year, next year, launching a 24-hour ship program for all apparel.

If we were to do that, I mean, of course there's absolutely limitations, but as of right now, if you call me, "Hey man, I'm in a bind.

Can you get my 100 shirts out by tomorrow?" "Let me see what we got." You know, I look at the schedule and do all this other garbage. Why not just go, hey, when this happens, what are the steps that need to happen? How do we automate those via technology and how do we remedy any hiccups that may be there? And now we have a plan. Now we can do 24-hour shirts. You know, that's, that's really important to me. Process is massive.

Yeah, I can hear that. It's been a fast ride for you. This is 5 or 6 years. You made a comment that it was weird to be excited about something other than rock and roll. And you can hear that in your voice and your enthusiasm here. Let's say you're sitting across having coffee with a 6-year-younger Trevor, and he comes to you and says, you know, I'm thinking of getting into this business. You've only got a few minutes to share advice. How do you encapsulate that for them? And what would be like your 1 or 2 main things you want to share with them in terms of how they define success and then how they're going to succeed in this business?

I would say success is not when you win, is when everyone wins. And then I would tell them, if you're going to do this, do it with every ounce of your being. Do not dabble in promotional products. Don't dabble in it, but you also do this, but you also do that. Be good at what you do. And then the reason being is because you will become a professional in that. Then that will allow you to do these other things that you want to do. I believe that's the definition of an entrepreneur. You know, I am a partner in a couple other companies and all this other stuff, or one as of right now. And, you know, I've got my hands in a few different things, but none of that happened overnight. And so I would tell the younger me, stay focused. Do everything you possibly can to refine your pipeline and the process. Draw it out on a freaking piece of paper. Think about being the customer. Think about how the way they're going to feel, what they're expecting, and all the curveballs they're going to throw. But I would definitely tell the younger me, "Buckle up, dude, because you are going to learn. This business is going to take you places you never thought possible in the same way that your band has taken you from playing at the talent show or the local venue to playing an arena. This business is about to do the same.

So have no expectations and just throw your arms up like you're on a roller coaster and just wee it all the way there, dude." Because you're going to lose a lot of money and you're going to unwisely spend a lot of money.

You're gonna—

there's gonna be times where you're gonna have to look at your bro and be like, I freaking—

I have no idea if I can make payroll. I have no idea.

Like, like, let's just figure this out. Uh, I've not always been really good with money.

I'm just being honest with you.

Um, this, this business has challenged me in that, and we now have somebody in accounting, so I don't really have to worry about too much of it.

But, you know, it's, it's really, really not, not too much of a worry now.

Yeah, yeah. I loved your advice on process. I mean, that's funny because that's not what a lot of people think about when they get in this business, but it is absolutely essential. And of course, it's really hard for me to talk about that when I'm in the role that I'm in with the company I'm in without it sounding self-serving. But I'm coming at it from my background, which we did e-commerce stores and fulfillment distribution. And there's so many moving parts, parts beyond just the merchandise, just getting merchandise in, that I have a higher or deeper respect for process. What I love is that you're constantly evolving this process. You're constantly looking at your process because Mark and I did a whole series around engagement commerce. And very few of us consider our businesses from every touchpoint that the customer has with you and your brand, which has to do with process more so than branding. And process, process, process is so much of it that it should be invisible. They shouldn't notice the things. And I love how you're constantly refining that. I think it's a passion of yours.

Yeah, dude. Oh my gosh. I mean, you should hear me whenever I sell.

I love to sell. You know, I sell out of passion. I do not sell out of greed. So whenever I am selling, I'm telling people, like, one of the funny things I say all the time is, look, it's really this simple. I'm going to send you a quote. There's a big green button at the top. Click that and your shirts will magically appear on your front doorstep. It's like literally that easy.

And then people are just blown away. They're like, oh my God, you know?

But little do they know that it's the Amazon mentality. Think of a one-click checkout. Do you know how many functions are written behind the scenes when you hit that button? Simplicity. Is the most complex thing you will ever take on, ever.

And I love that personally. This is where I want to— this is where I want to be in my life. This is what I want to do.

I want to make amazing relationships in this industry and, and take care of people.

But, you know, one thing I—

that we kind of touched on earlier, uh, before this, this talk was, you know, leadership and our unorthodox way of doing things, you know.

So this, I guess— and you asked me about my pet peeves too. And so, uh, dude, one of One of my biggest pet peeves is whenever I'm talking to, say, a customer service rep for, you know, I don't know, whatever website, you know, that I'm using QuickBooks or something, but I'm on the phone with them and they're like, oh, we'll have to transfer you to this guy and transfer you to that guy.

And as a business owner, I get it. I understand the process. There's certain questions that it's like, well, why don't you know those answers? And we— my dad taught me this about 3 or 4 years ago. I was at home sitting there on the couch, extremely overwhelmed. And I'm like, I am just, you know, I'm doing, you know, 7 figures in sales by myself, you know, and I'm also trying to over here do, you know, run the— do this and that and the HR, and I'm everything. And I was just freaking out. And my dad was like, Trevor, let me teach you about the 80/20 rule. And I was like, all right, cool. And so my dad used to run a bunch of Sonic, uh, or some Sonic drive-ins. And now, he's a pastor now, but he still has such a great knack for business. And he said, "80/20 rule. When you look at your team or when they look at you and you give them 100% of the task, right? You'd be very clear. You give them 100% of the task and you expect 100% of it to be completed. You tell them, 'Don't come back to me. I want you to figure it out.'" I give you 100% of the task. If they complete 80% of that task and then you just need to clarify the 20%, we're okay. Consider it as a completed task.

And then whenever I adopted that mentality, I sat down with, with Austin and Cody specifically, and we did that.

And we were like, let's, let's adopt this mentality, 80/20, in everything, dude. And now, dude, it's the crazy—

our CTO, the guy that just writes code, and, you know, he comes, he's fired up, man. He went to meeting last night, and he's selling.

You know, that's what I tell everybody.

If you're at this company, you better know how to sell.

If, if I'm gone and someone calls and they got a problem with their proof, and you're a sales rep and you're not in the proofing department, the sales rep should be able to type a few numbers in on the computer, find the order, and diagnose the issue right there.

I don't want to create employees.

I want to create entrepreneurs to where we can have a really successful company and then they can do all the things they always wanted to dream of and maybe some side businesses or whatever. But I don't want employees, I want entrepreneurs working at 85.

You have a very democratic view of your clients. You seem to have a very healthy, respectful approach to the business. What I mean by that, I mean you respect what you do, and it shows. You, when you respect what you do and you love what you do, it really does show and come through. The supply chain in this industry is so significant.

We—

I can't You're being nice. It's a nightmare, but go ahead.

What do you mean by that?

Expound on that. Dude, it's a friggin' cesspool, man. Oh gosh.

Have you ever logged into ESP?

Right. That's why I'm like—

you asked me earlier, what would you tell younger Trevor?

And I would say, look, dude, like, find your factories that you love, that you trust. And love them and trust them and then build that rapport. But don't, like, don't take your clients' orders. This is— oh, this pisses me off. Don't take your freaking clients' orders and then throw them up on a freaking wall and see if it sticks with this new vendor. Do your research, man. Just because you found it in ESP doesn't mean jack to me, you know. I, I could give two craps less about that.

We have an account. Rarely will we log in, you know.

To be honest with you, you do it so so long that there's really— you have your guy for everything at this point. And we are very loyal to our factories.

That's what I wanted to speak to a little bit too, is the supply chain that you have created as your core part of your business. What have you learned about that?

Oh, brother. I'm going to talk in regards to apparel, and then I will talk in regards to promo, because we do a massive chunk of both. In apparel, what we do not do is just, you know, does anybody know a contract printer out in the New England area or, you know, West Coast area? I'm a screen print nerd. It comes out of Texas, you know, like, so whatever this company—

we started generating speed.

I was doing that, you know, just working with a couple of different printers. And then next thing you know, man, built up this amazing relationship with a friend of mine who is one of the greatest screen printers out there. And now they're just doing 85 at this point. I mean, we're even in talks of what does it look like to really, really team up and grow this thing. So when you order for apparel, you order— just know that like they're in my Slack channel, you know, they're in my— they're on my cell phone. This is not just some random factory, you know what I mean? I have full control over— I want my hands on that order. And I think it's really important instead of just sending it, you know, and just shooting it over to whoever. And that's the same approach that we take in the promotional products industry. We have our core vendors, and I'm always really transparent with other vendors when they come to 85 because I'll just be straight up with them and saying, look, it's going to be hard to come in here. Our client doesn't know who our vendors are. They don't care. You know, all they know is 85.

So if my vendor doesn't align like theologically or whatever, you know what I mean?

If our, if our views do not align, I'm not going to work with you, at least on a consistent level, you know, from turnaround to quality to intentionality to what happens when something goes wrong, because it's a partnership. And I think that a lot of distributors forget that, man, is that this is a partnership. And this is to all you distributors out there. I've let people go at 85 before because they didn't respect our suppliers. I take our suppliers very seriously, and those relationships, I have worked so hard to build those up, and they will take care of you if you take care of them. And you get a lot of these distributors just talking garbage, man, on these suppliers.

Oh, they're selling direct, or, you know, they're, they're, you know, they cut— they took my customer, or, you know, I there's an overrun charge and all.

So you know what, you send them 3 orders a year, I'd hit you with 5 of those overrun charges, honestly.

Like, did you ever get a plane—

get on a plane and go meet them? Did you ever try and get their cell phone number? Did you ever ask them how their day was going? Did you ever make an impact on them? And, you know, we have our very choice suppliers, and we've had a lot of suppliers try and come in and, you know, ah man, you need to work with us, and No, man, if it ain't broke, don't fix it, man. You know, like, I, uh, you, you offer the same thing that they do, and we have a really great process.

But the moment that our viewpoints and philosophies don't align, yeah, it's time to break ties.

And we have had to do that before. I'm not just going to be a distributor. There's hundreds of thousands of distributors. I want to be a damn good distributor, and I want to make sure that You know, if you think about it, Amazon is— the United States of America itself is the biggest middleman ever. Okay? The United States. Walmart is a middleman. What is Walmart? Walmart? Yeah, they probably get into manufacturing their stuff now. In the beginning, what would it— it was a— it is a shell. It is a warehouse, literally, just so I can go get my peanut butter, bread, and underwear, you know what I mean? All from the same place. But the thing is, is they're a damn good distributor. That is what I want 85 to be. I want to be an amazing distributor that really—

I say this in that YouTube video, but like, I'm going to internally work on myself so that externally you can reap the benefits.

And that is an 80— that is 85 Supply.

We're going to constantly be refining our process and our systems and our relationships with our vendors so that our customers can reap the benefits in quality and turnaround and, uh, and really every other buzzword you got out there, you know what I mean?

But like, uh, truth be told, that's I'm very, very passionate about that.

I see it all the time.

You get these distributors, they're like, I'm gonna go and, you know, throw it up on the wall and see if it sticks or whatever.

But yeah, you asked me about the, uh, you know, like ESP and all that kind of stuff. I mean, it can help, and, and don't get me wrong, but dude, I'm the first guy to get on the horn and be like, dude, tell me about who you are.

Like, I want to know you.

I'm talking volume over here, and I want a relationship with you.

And it's just incredible. But yeah, that's, uh We, we very rarely are we using new suppliers. It's, it's, we just, we have our core folks and we love them.

I mean, dude, I've had suppliers call my cell phone and be like, Trevor, you will never guess the artwork we just received from another distributor.

And I'm like, oh, is that right? You know, it's like somebody, one of our customers, like, when ordered from somebody else or something, I don't really care. We don't do contracts. We don't do anything.

If you don't want to work with us, you don't have to.

Our whole thing is we don't preach perfection, we strive for it. So as long as we're, we're doing that, we're going to be okay.

Trevor, mad props to you for picking up on something that takes some of us, myself included, years to learn, and that is process and respect for the supply chain are actually something that we don't spend enough energy and time on because we're so busy selling. But it's so crucial, and I can't say how much I respect the fact that you've come to those lessons pretty quick in your career.

Thank you, man.

I mean, you got to think about it, dude. These guys You know, all you distributors out there that dog on your suppliers, you got to quit that. You know, you got to quit it now. And if you want things to change, you better be the change. Like, get out there, fly out there, talk to them, ask them, ask them what they don't like about what you send, how your POs look.

You know, like, ask me how mine look.

They're beautiful. I spent 6 months, 8 months. We're always refining them. Literally, I kid you not, our purchase orders are well designed in Photoshop.

Like, and they, like, they're not just a PO.

I mean, What are you doing on your side to make sure that the supplier is okay and taken care of? Because to be quite honest with you, if I got crap POs and crap artwork from somebody who's saying they're a professional, I'd probably cut you out and go get the client directly too, so I can just get money, the same artwork, you know what I mean?

Like, sorry, you know, I kind of, you know, like, that's just truth.

And, you know, I know that some of these people out there are not going to agree with everything I'm saying, and I'm okay with that.

I really am. Yeah, you'll find a lot of people resonate with your message on this, with this audience, man.

I hope so, you know. But the supplier thing, man, that, that is something I'm really, really passionate about.

These guys aren't getting any glory. Nobody's going, oh my gosh, like, Hit Promo just completely saved a starving child, you know. Like, it's, it's like No, they're not getting any glory at all. Like, so make sure they know that you got their back and, and no matter what, you're working together and this is a family. Yeah, man, I mean, I think it's, uh, but all these other distributors, you know, if you got any questions, email me. I got a, I got a blacklist and a whitelist.

So anyway, no, man, I really am passionate about this industry.

I firmly believe that, that it's going places. I firmly believe that we as distributors and, and as merch companies or whatever, we've got to like really, really constantly be refining our process. I've met with people who are running multi-multi-million dollar companies on Gmail, and it makes me want to vomit. And some people would be like, well, they're getting the sales. Yeah, what— I guarantee if you look at their analytics, they're piss poor as far as delivery and all this other stuff, you know. So I believe in this thing, man. It's going places, and I plan to retire from 85. This is really, really special to me. And I mean that. Any distributors who have questions, call me. If you're curious about us, you know, look us up. If you're a supplier out there and you got some products you think might be kind of cool, like, reach out to us. I mean, you can always, always— I know that this is more of an industry thing, so I've never actually given out this email. But if you are a supplier and you want to reach out to us and think that our vision and everything aligns with yours, you can email us at wholesale@85supply.com. And I've never publicly said that email. So that's how you get in with 85, is wholesale@85supply.com.

That's cool.

Trevor, it's been an honor, man, to have you on the podcast. It's really been a pleasure.

You kidding me?

Pleasure's mine. I love Common Ski. Yeah, I'm telling you, the little punk rock, it's like technology company of the promo biz, and you guys are doing a great job. And however I can help, I mean, say the word.

Thanks, man.

Thanks so much for tuning in to this episode of SKUcast. Be sure to keep up with our latest content by subscribing to SKUcast on iTunes or to our blog at community.commsku.com. Until next time, friends, thanks so much for listening.