Why This Founder Said “No” to Shark Tank Money and Still Built a 7-Figure Brand - The Shopify Growth Show (#15)
I can attribute about ten years of my professional career being held back because of public schools. This expectation that if you just do what you're told, you will find success in life. And then it wasn't until Beardbrand that I realized that is the worst kind of thinking that you can have for entrepreneurship.
Speaker 2:I'm Jim Hoffman and this is If I Was Starting Today, a collection conversations about half baked startup ideas, growth tactics, and stories from founders, including my own journey as a business owner. All of the content is centered around one question. What would you do if you were starting today?
Speaker 3:Today on the podcast, I have someone I've been reading for a while. His name is Eric Bandholz. He is the cofounder of Beardbrand. He has built a a very large 7 to 8 figure men's grooming product and he's done it while raising $0. In this podcast, it's a really fun one.
Speaker 3:He talks about being on Shark Tank, how he got there, how he's done this without raising any money. And he gets tactical on, you know, how he grew in the early days to now how he's growing and how he's hiring people to help take the company even farther. So if you're doing anything in around the consumer space, ecommerce, or just looking to start a company, I think you'll get something out of this episode. So I hope you enjoy. Okay.
Speaker 3:On the podcast today, we have someone I've been wanting to chat with for a while because I have been stalking his brand for numerous years using it in case studies whenever we're doing some marketing, teaching, and stuff. But we have Eric Van Holtz, is the cofounder of Beardbrands, and he also has a really great podcast you should check out called Ecommerce Conversations. But Eric, welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1:What is going on, Jim? How are you doing?
Speaker 3:I'm good, man. It's Friday. We get to chat, so I'm excited to get into it. But you said you're in Austin right now. It's it's a little hot.
Speaker 3:Right? And Yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, that doesn't really narrow down what time of the year it is. It's pretty much always hot, but Yeah.
Speaker 3:I just went on a jog in the rain, so I'm clearly in Seattle, but that's okay. You gotta do it. Whenever I moved out here, like, I had an umbrella and it's like, no, Seattleites don't have umbrellas. You just have rain jackets and and you deal with it. So that's that's the move.
Speaker 1:Yeah. You're actually it's so surprising. You're not wearing a black jacket or or or something. Because every time I went to Seattle, that's like the uniform there.
Speaker 3:Oh, absolutely. It's what'd you go with? The Patagonia, the North Face, you're you're black uniform. So Well, cool, man. Well, you've done a lot that I'm excited to get into because we we have a growth marketing agency.
Speaker 3:We love d two c and ecommerce, and you've got a really compelling story. You've created a category. You've created a following. You've built, like, a massive brand. You've been on Shark Tank, and you've done it without raising any money.
Speaker 3:So we're gonna get into that. But I'm always interested like, obviously, I I only know you as the guy behind Beardbrand, but can you tell me a little bit more about your path before starting this? Like, what kind of led up to this? Because I'm always interested to see the the seeds of a sprouting founder that were shown early on.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I mean, like, if if you wanna talk about my entrepreneurial story, it really could go all the way back to to grade school, elementary school when I remember raiding my mom's pantry for just like different powders and we repackaged those powders into to straws and taped off the ends of the straws and resold them as me and my business partner, my my business partner, his name was CP, and then my name was Eric. So we called them C and E Sticks, and we sold them to our classmates in elementary school. And then found out probably didn't like selling as much as, like, the idea of starting businesses, so we just liquidated them all to to 1% and
Speaker 3:Well, actually that's great great margins on that. Right? It's, you know, inventory with cost was nothing.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. I mean, like, the scalability might be a little challenging, but your audience is only a couple of classmates. But but I've always had this I mean, you could probably boil it down to one, I like being in control subsequently because I like being in control. I don't like working for people.
Speaker 1:I I can work well enough and I'm not disruptive in the office or anything but I just I like being on my own vision. And then I'm one of the few people who went to college and is actually doing what they went to college for. I was a double major in marketing and and management with a focus in management entrepreneurship and then my minor was retail.
Speaker 3:You nailed it.
Speaker 1:I nailed it. I nailed it. Now I I never like when I went to college, I didn't imagine like being a ecommerce owner. I mean, was 2003 that I graduated. Ecommerce didn't really exist at that time.
Speaker 1:Or if it it did, it cost $40,000 to build a website and there were no Shopify options. So I had I worked for the man. I I was like a salesperson in in a varying roles, graphic design company or a printing company, financial advisor. And then I had a couple of failed businesses along the way. I was a tried to do executive recruiting with my dad's business and never got a placement.
Speaker 1:So that was not very successful. But to be fair, that was 02/2008. So it was not not a time where a lot of people were hiring.
Speaker 3:I don't think anybody got a placement that year.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. So it was it was definitely hard times were had in the Banhultz family. And then I my my first e commerce business was called Wakomo, w a k o m o, and I was selling vinyl wall graphics because there's this company called like Blick and they were selling it. And I think that was dipping my toe into entrepreneurship.
Speaker 1:Was like finding something that was cool that someone else was doing it and then just quote unquote copying them for lack of better terms. And of course, when that's your strategy, you don't really have passion for it and yet you don't really do it. So I think I sold two two vinyl wall graphics and then that was it, let it scale down. I built that website on Magento and this was probably like 02/2008. And then Beardbrand.
Speaker 1:Beardbrand was the one that finally worked.
Speaker 3:Yeah. I for me, I'm always when people do their first startup or business and they're going for the moon, I'm almost a little nervous because I mean, to you, I I did some half baked things that I wouldn't even call them businesses because they failed out so much, but that allowed me to get to the next thing. And the next thing, they got a little bit better and a little bit better. But I think you just have to get those reps, right, to build up. I'm the people that the first thing they do out of the gate is life changing.
Speaker 3:I I don't know how they pull it off because I for me, I have to have experience to inform how I do what I'm gonna do with business.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I mean, I would first of all, I wanna correct myself that it was 2010 that I tried the Vaughan Wall graphic business. But really what was holding me back I I can I can attribute about ten years of my professional career being held back because of public schools and really the this expectation that if you just do what you're told, you will find success in life? And it's if you just build a master plan this way and you do these things, you will find success. So I was I was taught to seek the blueprint in my mind like that's how I was thinking.
Speaker 1:I was like, okay, I I because I can do a good job. I'm a smart person, I'm a hard worker. I'll do whatever it takes to to be successful. Just show me what to do, I'll do it. And then it wasn't until really I guess with Beardbrand that I realized that is the worst kind of thinking that you can have for entrepreneurship.
Speaker 1:The the the the way you are successful in entrepreneurship is you have to say, I need to find problems, I need to prioritize those problems really good and then I need to focus on the top of the list and go down from there. And if you don't like problems and you don't like finding problems or solving problems, you should not be an entrepreneur. You should just like work for the man and do whatever you do well. And then and when I look at hiring talent as well, like, very few candidates have that ability to just be like, I'm gonna find a problem and I'm gonna work on that problem and I'm gonna solve that problem.
Speaker 3:You're exactly right. It's like hire slow but fire fast. You hear that advice, but for me, it it can be the the hardest to take on. So I've heard you talk about your culture really well. And as we get into that, I wanna frame it because whenever you're starting something, you're probably not doing it with, oh, these are the three core values I have in mind.
Speaker 3:Can you go back to how did you even come up with this idea for beard brand? When what are the early days of it?
Speaker 1:Yeah. I I also wanted to share. I have a I have a rule for when to to fire someone and it's when I have a a dream with them in it, that's a a negative dream, the next day they're getting fired. Once you seep into like my because the dreams are are helping you prepare for that, the bad things that they're ultimately going to do. So that's kind of a rule for me if I ever have a negative dream about a team member then.
Speaker 3:I'll take that rule. I agree. Yeah. So you just wake up and just immediate fire through email. Got it.
Speaker 3:Perfect.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, like, maybe there's a little bit of planning or expectations depending on their role. But Yeah.
Speaker 1:I mean, so going back to the starting story of Beard Brain, I have this little Moleskine journal that I wrote down a list of the things. I was not happy in my career, I was aimless, I had all these projects going on. Didn't really know what I did, so I just wrote down the things that I love and like freedom came up and like liberty, a libertarian person. It was just like a list of things that I I liked. So like I've always I've known who I am and I just had to find that right plug and once I did, all the energy would be flowing.
Speaker 1:And with the Beardbrand, what had happened is I was a financial advisor and I love elements of that job but I hated working at that job. I hated one of the things about working in the job was this expectation that you looked and acted a certain way, which was not a way that I wanted to act. And and dress was like, I wanted to have facial hair and there's like, back in 02/1011, there's the expectation you don't wear facial hair in a professional environment. So I couldn't stand working there. I I ended up just like quitting and I grew my beard out.
Speaker 1:As I grew my beard out, I was trying to start up like a a marketing company. I look back on my ego and my hubris, so the ability that I could sell marketing services having never really been a successful marketer before. But I I digress. So anyways, like, I I would still go to networking events and grow out this big beard and people would call me ZZ Top and Duck Dynasty and Grizzly Adams and those are all like super rad dudes who are super cool beardsmen, but they weren't guys that I really resonated with. Like these hands were made for keyboards, they weren't made for axis.
Speaker 1:And so I I started to realize that you can grow a beard and you can be a salesperson, an entrepreneur, a doctor, a lawyer, humanity, like, evolutionarily speaking, we grow beards for for reasons and it's kind of odd that we just choose to to to shave them off. Now, there's certainly people who enjoy shaving and the look of a shave face and I'm not against that. But I what I'm I'm more in favor of is just like being yourself and showing the world who you want to be whether that's beard or no beard or long beard or short beard or mustache or short hair or long hair. I don't really care. What I care is that like you're making the decisions based on your behalf.
Speaker 1:And what I realized is during this beard growing journey that there's a lot of guys who didn't fit the traditional mold of a bearded guy who didn't know how to talk to their mom about growing a beard or didn't know how to talk to their boss about growing a beard and I gave them those tools and tips and really wanted to give them the confidence they needed to to grow their beard out. And that's where Beardbrand started. We started with a blog and a YouTube channel and a Tumblr page back when Tumblr was relevant and kinda grew from there. So we did that for about a year. And then I always had this like vision that Beardbrand was gonna be this lifestyle company.
Speaker 1:So it was gonna be like wallets and bags and apparel and whatever. But the reality is I didn't know anything about those industries or or how to start them. And I got some beard oil from a manufacturer at that time to talk about it, share it on our Tumblr blog. And then started selling that because I had that relationship And that's where Beardbrand started. I was able to to bring on my current business partners, Jeremy and Lindsay, and turn the content into an ecommerce store.
Speaker 3:That's amazing. And so one thing you're doing is really interesting. You're almost creating a category. Like, I I love the book, the 22 immutable laws of of marketing. And one of the first chapters is around category creation, and you're really leaning into something that maybe is there's a stereotype to it, you're like, no.
Speaker 3:Let's, reinvent the way that is viewed. And then you're essentially they call it now, like, community as marketing, but you're building this organic following even before you have a product. And so you start to see this idea. You're going towards, like, beard products, like beard oils. Can you talk about like, first, what was that first flagship product?
Speaker 3:Was it the beard oil? And when did you realize you had something special and you had traction?
Speaker 1:Yeah. So, I mean, first of all, I wanna set the expectation that the the size of our community in that first year was not notable. I think we had 300 subscribers on YouTube and then like a a couple a couple 100 or couple thousand visits to our blog. So it wasn't like we had built this massive community and then we're able to sell to them which I feel like a lot of people set that expectation. We we really did build the community side by side with the with the products.
Speaker 1:And our first products were beard oil and and mustache wax is where we started and we started by selling someone else's brand And then we we launched our own brand probably about five months in. And then I think it wasn't until in my mind, the the business grew really rapidly that first year I think. So we launched 01/28/2013. We did $900 in sales that that month. And then in February, we did, I don't know, like $1,500 or 2,000.
Speaker 1:And then in March, we did $600 and I thought we're going down to zero. And then April, it was like 2,000 again. May was 3,000 and then July I think was like 15 and then, you know, September was like 25 k. And that's when I've always told myself, well, if I can always get to if I can get to 25 k per month, then I know I can carve out enough to put food on the table and kind of like put away all my side projects and close those up. And then And
Speaker 3:sorry to interrupt. How are you because everybody's interesting when you're going from zero to one. Like, how are you getting those first customers? Is that from your blog? Are you doing ads?
Speaker 3:Are you just pounding on doors?
Speaker 1:Yeah. I mean, so this is 02/2013. So the strategies in 2013 are probably different than the strategies in 02/2022. But for me, I was really active on Reddit at the time and I'm I'm fortunate in the sense that one, I'm not only am I, you know, the founder, but I'm also like customer number one. So I was able to speak from it authentically as a product that that I enjoyed and I used and and I just talked about it.
Speaker 1:I just talked about it on Reddit. I would post about beards on Reddit beards. I would post about the business on Reddit entrepreneur. I'd tweet about it. I would make videos.
Speaker 1:It was just like I was just so passionate about this company. I don't think like, compared to all the other businesses I've had, beard brand checked all the boxes. I wanted to have a beard, I was doing all the design, I was designing the the packaging, it was finally a business that I could scale up that I could generate sales while I was sleeping which was a big thing for me. I didn't wanna trade time for money and I had great business partners who I just really enjoyed working with and it was just a ton of fun. So like that first year is I mean, really like the first five years of the business was just like, if I was awake, was thinking about beer brand probably much to my my family's chagrin.
Speaker 1:So when you're thinking about a nonstop, you're talking about a nonstop, you're posting everywhere, I think it was just anything and everything I would do. I would never say no. Like, if if someone wanted me on a podcast, it wasn't like how many listeners do you have or how long you've been around or whatever. It's like, no. Yeah.
Speaker 1:I'll I'll be on your podcast. Like, I don't care. Like, I just wanna talk about it. Like, I would talk to to to like a homeless person on the street and tell them about it. So it's just like, life is just so much more easier when you're you're super passionate about what you're working on.
Speaker 3:That's really good advice. And so you you're rolling up your sleeves, getting in these first few customers. And then I've I've read you've had some, like, inflection points. When is it going to that next level? Because you've been on Shark Tank.
Speaker 3:You had some big pieces in New York Times. Like, I'd love to hear about that and even, how did you even get on Shark Tank?
Speaker 1:Yeah. So the first big milestone for us was hiring our first employee, which was, I think around October 2013 and we were doing I think we were doing like 50 or $60,000 a month at that time. By the end of the year, we were we were up to a million dollar run rate.
Speaker 3:Wait. That that's pretty good.
Speaker 1:Yeah. You know, like in the one thing that I've learned in in entrepreneurship is the the the minute you think you know what you're doing, life comes back and humbles you. So I so I could probably attribute a lot of that growth to just being the right product at the right time to the, you know, the right message to the right audience. So that isn't always the case. But yeah, we we had some really nice growth in that that first year which I recognize is is not not normal and and I don't think people should expect that.
Speaker 1:So we were creating, in my opinion, a new industry. Like, beard care had never existed before us. Shaving, of course, had had existed in men's grooming, but we were really a a new spin on on beard care or a new spin on men's grooming with beard care. And so there's this intense rush to to wanna grow super fast and capture the world before anyone else came in there. And I feel like if I was a more competent entrepreneur, maybe I would have been able to do that.
Speaker 1:But we knew that we always had something unique. Everyone would tell me like, should be on Shark Tank, you should be on Shark Tank. So we applied to be on Shark Tank and and even to the point where we were gonna do one of those casting calls where you you wait in line. And then I just heard from the grapevine that those that are looking for those wacky entrepreneurs that aren't like really feasible businesses.
Speaker 3:Yeah. More of entertainment value.
Speaker 1:Yep. So fortunately for us, like our our application got seen by someone who's producing it and they ended up contacting us and I had experience on YouTube which was really beneficial to being able to to create like a a good pitch for the producers and and that comfort of being on camera, I think is another advantage that I had. So we just went through the process and listened to the producers and took their advice and of course they give you full control and autonomy over the decisions that you're gonna make and I felt like I had the the full control and autonomy and then we we got to LA and we filmed the episode
Speaker 3:and That's awesome. And one thing that has been really interesting with with your business in general, we see a lot of these d to c startups that raise huge rounds of funding. You see like Allbirds, Casper, Warby Parker, but that's man, you raise that money. You it's okay. Now you have to 10 x that.
Speaker 3:And you see a lot of horror stories where employees are getting laid off. They have these things called options that aren't really working, even founders not working. But then you have this other path, the bootstrapped path, which is harder. But to your point earlier, it's like you can be in control and control that destiny, and you can create a business that, no, it's not a billion dollars, but you can pay people really well and have the lifestyle you want, and it's it's it's very nice. You you haven't raised these big rounds.
Speaker 3:Can you talk through that thought process of has it been hard to say no to that, or it was always intentional and that's the way you wanted it?
Speaker 1:Yeah. I mean, I think it it really goes back to our core values, which we've had from the beginning. That wasn't something that that came later in the business. Like, freedom has always been a big driver for for me and my business partners. And once you take money, you are giving up a fair amount of of freedom.
Speaker 1:And for us, we're not like our core values aren't Lamborghinis and big houses and flexing to your friends. Our our core values are freedom, hunger, and trust. And hunger can be shown in a lot of different ways, but it doesn't necessarily mean growing to a billion dollar company. So it's not hunger at all costs and and trust. A part of trust is I I think like a slower pace growth establishes trust with your customers because you're not dealing with all these stock out operational issues as you grow too rapidly and so for us, like our core values freedom, hunger, trust, they they do really work as a triangle that they hold each other in line.
Speaker 1:So if you have too much of any of them, you start to erode the other. So you have to to work in harmony harmony with them. And bootstrapping is is great because the reality is whether you've got millions of dollars in the bank or you've got a couple thousand dollars in the bank, all companies have scarce resources. So in my opinion, the the greatest entrepreneurs are those who are really good at allocating those scarce resources to the things that make the biggest impact on the business. And the challenge that these giant mega companies have with all this money is because they have so much money and such high expectations for growth that they start to reallocate those assets, those scarce assets to things that they should not allocate them towards because they don't have the same amount of scarcity.
Speaker 1:So you're a lot of bootstrap companies are actually at an advantage because they realize if I if I do something that's not profitable, I'm literally going out of business. Whereas the the venture funded companies don't have that gift. I'm gonna call it a gift because I really do think it it causes you to be a better entrepreneur and to build a stronger, healthier, more sustainable business. And then the trade off is that you no longer can you almost have to like let your ego go because you're not going to be on the cover of Inc Inc Magazine or Forged Magazine or the next LeBron James of entrepreneurship. And if you can come to terms with that and and realize that, hey, my my three bedroom house, two two and a half bath house in suburbs gives me a good life and I have the freedom, then then really like you are in control of your destiny.
Speaker 1:And and and also if you can focus on enjoying the journey rather than working towards this destination. The journey never ends. But I think what happens for a lot of people who are chasing that that destination is when they get there, they realize it's it's not as good as they want it to be, and they still have a journey left to do but but no purpose anymore.
Speaker 3:I love that. Yeah. Because we can be obsessed with, like, growth, growth at all costs, but that can burn you out. And going to the moon, you know, it's yes. There's fun examples of companies that have done that, but there's so many more that tried that and failed out.
Speaker 3:Whereas slow and steady playing the long game, it's it can be much more satisfying. So as you're you're not raising money, you're like, okay. We're gonna fund this with profits. I don't know if you're thinking of, like, line of credit. How do you think about that?
Speaker 3:Because, like, in transparency, we're we're looking to launch our own d to c product. Right? It's a it's a men's hair product, and we'd sell it for $30. And I'm like, okay. How many times are they gonna replenish this?
Speaker 3:Is it quarterly? Is it monthly? Maybe we're making $1.20 or 200 a year from them. Something you've done really well is you've had expansion into other product lines. I don't know if that was intentional to either get your average order value up or to get people coming back.
Speaker 3:Because once you get people to fall in love with the brand and they trust you, they know that these other products will serve them well. Can you talk about your product mix and how that's helped you with growth and helping customers, but also maximizing their their LTV?
Speaker 1:Yeah. I mean, I I think a little bit of is the the vision for the company that that we've had for a long period of time is is growing beyond the beard is is, like, internally what we've said and and being able to to serve all of men's or or I would say the majority of men's kind of basic grooming needs. So like our utility bar, you can use it as a a shave soap. You can use our, of course, the bar soap as a a body wash, deodorant, keep you smelling good. You got a cologne, help you smell good.
Speaker 1:Shampoo, conditioner for your head, hair, beard wash, beard softener for your beard and beard styling products, hair styling products as well. So that was kinda like the goal was to to develop a line of products. And selfishly, it comes back to my core values, our company's core values, freedom. Like the the reality is if if you're dependent only on one product, you are at the whims of of the market to a certain degree. So if for whatever reason I was wrong and and beards went out of style and everyone started shaving again and I was selling beard oil, like that puts the the company at risk.
Speaker 1:And and to a certain degree, like, I'm a very conservative guy when it comes to financial things. So I don't like having all my eggs in one basket. I I I recognize, like, you have quicker and better growth opportunities. Like, if all we sold was beard oil, we probably could be doing significantly more in beard oil sales than we're doing now. But to me, I just sleep better at night knowing that if something ever happens to this category, we can reallocate our energy and efforts towards another category.
Speaker 1:So that was part of it is is leaning on that freedom and and not being under the whims of things we can't control.
Speaker 3:That's really smart. You had diversify. And your d to c site, which is brand new, looks awesome, does very well. Like, how did you balance also, like, hey. Should you test Amazon?
Speaker 3:Or are you guys actively going into wholesale? Is that part of it? Or is it strictly d to c?
Speaker 1:Yeah. So we've I mean, we've been around for ten years. This year, we're celebrating our ten year anniversary. So we've pretty much done everything. We've had international stores, we've sold on Amazon, we've sold into to major retailers and we've we've sold into to specialty retailers as well, independent retailers.
Speaker 1:So we've done it all. I I like I like D2C because it again, it goes back to the our core values and being able to control the the experience that our customers have and the freedom that we have by maintaining that direct relationship with our customers. We certainly love our our retail partners as well, but then you start to depend on your retail partners and things go outside your control a little bit. And when they're outside your control, I I get more anxious and I don't sleep as well. So and the same is true as selling on Amazon.
Speaker 1:So I didn't really wanna build a business on Amazon even though, certainly, probably would have driven higher revenue. So I think there's if if you got a theme from this podcast episode about me, it's like, I'm willing to make less money to feel better.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Well, it's also, you know, what you can control. Yes, you could probably throw it on Amazon and get a quick hit of sales because there's sure there's a lot of competitors that like people type in beer brand Amazon, you're not there and like, oh, there's a competitor and they might get it, but it's also, would you lose that D to C customer that that's going to Amazon and then you lose that relationship and that essence that that's a tough decision to make. Right? I don't know the answer.
Speaker 3:And I see the side for both. And same on the wholesale, it's yeah. I don't know if that locks up inventory to where it makes it more dependent on them. And as you're running this bootstrap, it's all about balancing all of that. And you've intentionally gone d to c and maybe it's is it strategic bets on those other two or are but you're currently not on Amazon anymore.
Speaker 1:Right? Yeah. So we we pulled off Amazon. And long story short, I I would say that Amazon was cannibalizing our sales. Our business grew when we pulled off Amazon.
Speaker 1:So yeah yeah because I I think what was happening is people would shop on beard brand and then they would go to Amazon to buy the product and then Amazon would suggest whatever Chinese made crappy ass hairbrush and people would buy that. Whereas when they're buying on beard brand, we recommend our like our premium boars hairbrush made in Europe and and people would go with that. So like we not only did we have higher AOV on beardbrand.com, whereas on Amazon you're just selling individual products. And now so like my advice for any listener is if you're really good at building a brand and telling a story, build on your own website because that's where you can have that competitive advantage over people on Amazon. But if you suck at that and you and your skill set is making like an amazing product and or analyzing data, then sell on Amazon, man.
Speaker 1:You can make a load of money doing that. You don't have to worry about all the freaking headaches building a brand and like things that don't matter to a majority of shoppers out there. So there's there's a lot of ways to skin a cat. You just gotta lean on the things that you love to do and that you can do for long periods of time because that's what business is about.
Speaker 3:That's awesome, man. And so if if you were starting a brand today or DDC company today, what would be the advice you would give that you would have want to give yourself when you were starting out?
Speaker 1:Well, I wanna sell men's men's grooming products. I hate to tell you that, Jim, but it's a really hard industry. Because not only are you trying to educate guys on why they need the product, but, like, the market's just not established, so there's a lot of resistance towards premium products. Like, just getting them to use a product is the first kinda step and then so you're almost like better off to to focus on the lower price point product, but then the market isn't even there. So you're taking a huge risk by going with a lower priced product for for something that may not exist in the marketplace.
Speaker 1:And whereas if you're selling women's beauty products or grooming products, they're familiar with it and they're just like, oh, yeah. Well, I'll try that. But the problem is you're competing with tons and tons of of people and everything's got its upsides and downsides. I I think operationally we we brought built in a lot of complexity to our business by having so many different fragrances. Pretty much like what our business has been doing is solving all the problems that we created over the first few years and, like we pulled out of Europe and we just focus on The US markets.
Speaker 1:We're we're cutting three fragrances this year and focusing on on just the the three other fragrances and we're simplifying our product offering as well to really make sure we're having products that have the biggest impact. Because I would rather have 10 products doing a million dollars a year than having 30 products doing a million dollars a year or or whatever. So, like, really finding those products that that can make that big impact and have a large enough audience rather than a load of specialty ones. Like everything is is your expertise operational excellence? Then maybe it makes sense to to really niche down and have a 100 different SKUs and and compete on that marketplace.
Speaker 1:So you just kinda have to understand where your your value is to, the world.
Speaker 3:Yeah. That sounds like a headache managing that many SKUs was having some quality ones where you could go go really deep. Literally before we got on this call, was listing my problems I have to tackle today, but I I totally agree because all businesses is problems. People are hiring you to get your product or service that solves a problem. And even as you grow, you have growing pains.
Speaker 3:It it it doesn't get easier. So you have to kind of embrace that. And I I like how whenever you're hiring for that, how do you weed that out? Because I can see some amazing job simulations and work, but it's like, do you simulate do simulations around grit? And, oh, here's something really hard where we only know 40% of the way to get there, but go figure it out.
Speaker 3:Have you had success in like candidates that can show that or not show that?
Speaker 1:Yeah. I mean, it took us a really long time to figure out how to hire talent and make sure we're getting the right people at Beardbrand. I I wanna be clear like the the type of people who are great at doing things that they're told, it is needed in society and and they can bring a lot of value. So if that is your personality and that's what you like to do, there's tons of opportunities and great ways to to build a life. So I don't want it to seem that I'm I'm bashing people who work like that or think like that.
Speaker 1:It's it's it's not a good or bad thing. Just like for what we need at Beardbrand. Before I get into like how we hire people, I also wanna double up and and say like problems like the valuation of your business is essentially the amount of problems and the the difficulty of solving those problems is how your business is valued. Like how difficult is it for someone to solve these problems rather than just buying it from you. It is really how a lot of people should look at it when they they probably don't think of it that way.
Speaker 1:But anyways, like hiring people. So we rolled out the method called top grading probably about four years ago, five years ago. And ever since then, we we feel pretty confident that we're bringing the right people. We have a nine step process. It's really the whole like saying hire slowly and fire quickly.
Speaker 1:It's true, but the the way the reason you're hiring slowly is because you're being as thorough as possible with the hiring process. So I'll I'll quickly walk through our multi step process to to show how we're doing it. So our our our process starts with first you need to have the most compelling job description that you could ever imagine. You wanna get as many people as possible applying for the job. Like, you are at an advantage the more candidates you have.
Speaker 1:So post it on all the job boards, find the very like niche specific job boards. Like if you're hiring a video editor, there's like video specific job boards. Indeed is not gonna get you the same talent as that that video videographer, video editor job board will. So post on the the relevant post, make the job seem as cool as heck, make it seem like the the most impressive thing. Now in my opinion, there's different kinds of cool.
Speaker 1:There's like work cool and then there's like benefit cool. I would not recommend selling the benefits of the company because you're gonna attract people who want benefits. They want the bean bags and the naps in the office and whatever. So I would focus on getting them in there and then within the job description, we always point out that we are gonna do reference checks and we will do reference checks at the end. And and what you're doing by letting people know that you're calling their past employers or past bosses is that you're really weeding out like the the c and the d candidates, those who don't have a good reference.
Speaker 1:There's a lot of people who leave jobs for a lot of different reasons but they're still able to maintain that that cordial environment. So it comes in. So the first process is screening the candidates and then moving relevant candidates to the next step which we call our our core values email. We we do two things. We ask them to to do a short paragraph on what our three core values freedom, hunger and trust mean to them and we also asked them to take a typing test.
Speaker 1:So this is gonna show really quickly their communication skills. You want to have an over preference for people who can communicate in your office at a higher level than than maybe their skills because they can learn skills but most people if they can't communicate, I don't know if you can help someone who can't communicate. And then typing test just shows their their level of competency working on a computer. We we don't really have like baselines or expectations but it does set the expectation. If you're gonna be customer service replying to tickets all day and you can only type 20 words per minute, it's just logically speaking you're not gonna be able to handle as many tickets as someone who can type at 65 words per minute.
Speaker 1:So more some jobs are are more important to have a higher typing speed. So depending on how they do that, we'll move them forward to our skills test and we have an online skills test that's more like personality driven and then also kind of like just general intelligence. And then, we bring them in for specific skills test where we watch them perform. So it could be replying to customer service tickets, not live ones but we'll have like preset ones that that all the candidates will do the same one, how they prioritize it, how they solve it. Or if we bring in a graphic designer, we'll actually watch them design and sit behind them.
Speaker 1:It's the most awkward thing ever, but you can really quickly see who's comfortable on the the programs and and and who's not. So you're able to do that. And then if that goes well, what we do is our our top grading interview. And the top grading interview is when we talk about their previous three jobs. We ask the same 10 questions over and over again.
Speaker 1:One of my favorite questions is when we call up your boss, how are they gonna describe you? So we ask that question for their three previous jobs and what we're looking for is any kind of trends. So if if each of the bosses, oh, they're late but you know funny or whatever, then you're like, well this person's gonna be late. And then the other thing is the other question I really is what is the one thing that your boss can do to improve upon? So when they describe their boss, you're you're also looking for themes.
Speaker 1:If every boss is a terrible communicator, then probably the candidate's a terrible communicator or if every boss somehow has drama around them, then probably the the drama is around it. So like usually a good candidate is gonna have, oh, this person was really bad about reflying to emails and this person was really bad about handling stress. You'll see like things that are are authentic. And then from there if if that looks good, we do of course I've missed this step. But from there we would do a reference check with the people and then make an offer.
Speaker 1:But I wanted to say like before all this starts, after the core values email we do a phone screen where we tell them the expectations for the job. This job was gonna be in office five days a week from these times and the salary for this is gonna be this rate. Is that okay? We don't go through this whole nine step process and at the end of it you're like, oh, well I wanted to get paid more or oh, I wanna work remote. If they do that, they're automatically disqualified because we talked about it very upfront.
Speaker 1:And I'm like an upfront transparent guy like we make our payments based on seventy fifth percent to them. So we're gonna pay, you know, more than if there's four companies, we'll be the the second highest paying company. So I feel pretty fair in the marketplace that we're competitive. And if somebody doesn't agree with it, that's fine. I I don't wanna waste their time and I don't wanna waste our time.
Speaker 1:So those are those are our ways to really know and understand what the candidate is really gonna be like when they start working. And then we only hire people if we're excited and we we we can't wait for them to start working. If we have this mentality of, oh, well, we could always fire them down the road or, oh, we could do this or that. No. Because what's gonna happen is you're gonna end up firing them down the road and you you just gotta figure out a different way to solve that pain point that you have rather than bringing in someone who's not the right fit.
Speaker 3:And a question I always like to ask people, what what is the nicest thing anyone's done for you in your professional career?
Speaker 1:One of the coolest thing of of going from being a a wantrepreneur to a successful entrepreneur is you almost get invited into this exclusive club of other entrepreneurs. Like, my friends, some of my friends have done a $100,000,000 in sales or they've sold their business for 9 figures. Like, to to think about me fifteen years ago, I would never be able to to be in that same room with that person or have any kind of conversation with them. Of course, I've I've been able to bring them on my podcast as well which is a lot of fun. And I I I feel like like it wasn't an individual thing but but becoming part of that club and going into conferences and and meeting other people and and being treated as a peer to those people was, for me, like one of probably the the the most impactful things on my life that I feel like really resonated with me.
Speaker 1:So I I don't know if it was one particular thing. And then, of course, my business partners choosing to work with me. I think that was a pretty nice thing of them to do as well.
Speaker 3:Yeah. It's it's so important. I know I've I've learned this too late, like, connecting with other business owners or founders just to experience sharing like, hey. This is hard. Here's what you're what I'm going through.
Speaker 3:Are you seeing that? Because sometimes I'll just, like, stare at my computer and think I have to come up with all the answers, and and that can be a little dangerous because I'm definitely not smart enough nor have the experience to to pull that off. So that that network is is very key. How how did you go about building that that network? Was it just serendipitous over time?
Speaker 1:Yeah. Think it was a little the same of building the business. I I was really active on Reddit, entrepreneur in the early days. And one of the guys, Peter Keller, he's got a business called French Sport. He's also a Redditor.
Speaker 1:He's like, hey, man, you should check out Dynamite Circle. And then I checked out Dynamite Circle and and then there's some people that are like, oh, you should check out Andrew Guderian with Ecommerce Fuel and kinda checked out those. And those are like in the early days, the first two communities that I was really active that aligned with with my same mindset. And it's funny because you mentioned EO and Peter Keller has been big into EO as well. And I've always kinda like stayed away from EO because my business partners in my opinion serve as that function for me.
Speaker 1:But, yeah, just like going to those events and not being afraid to this is other advice that I wish I knew early on is like whenever you go to the conference, stay in the hotel of wherever the conference is. Stay in the conference hotel. Because just like the meetings you have and the that by the elevator or, like checking in and whatever, those are the ones that you could find that one piece of advice that pays for the whole trip. And don't go necessarily for the talks or I mean, you can get value out of that, but most of that stuff's available on YouTube anyways or or some kind of remote conference. Where the magic happens is when you go to a conference and you'd be vulnerable, you talk about the problems you're having and then you just shut up and listen to how other people would solve it.
Speaker 3:That is really good advice. Yeah. I was just at a conference that hadn't been to one two years, and I was bumping into somebody that gave said something that, yeah, has changed my business, and it was a ten minute conversation. That that's that's really good advice and the vulnerability part. Because it's not fun if you go there and everyone's just flexing like, oh, look how great I am and it's like, I can go on Twitter and get that.
Speaker 3:You know, you wanna have meaningful conversations.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And and also just your expectation is just one thing. This conference is only one thing because you're gonna be over low overloaded with so many things that you could be doing or should be doing. You're just thinking about what is that? I I paid a thousand dollars for this conference or with the hotel and travel, $2,000.
Speaker 1:What is that thing where I can drive $20,000 of sales and and make the conference worthwhile? And that's the one thing I wanna take away and then I'll go to a conference down the road and try to figure out something else.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Oh, that's awesome. Well, Eric, you've been so generous with your time, man. Where can people find out more about you with Beardbrand or your podcast? Where where can we send them?
Speaker 1:Yeah. So my podcast is called Ecommerce Conversations. It's a very similar structure to this. So if you like this podcast, you you may find interest in it if you can get past my Kermit the Frog voice. And then I am the only Eric Bannholt, so if you Google me, you'll you'll find me, but I'm active on Twitter.
Speaker 1:And then of course, head over to beardbrand.com, buy some stuff and let me know what the experience is like, because we just rolled out that new website, so we're looking for any kind of feedback.
Speaker 3:The website is slick on desktop and mobile. We we we love CROs, so we were nerding out on it. And, yeah, if if you really are going deep on ecommerce or d to c, Eric's podcast is a must listen. So Eric, dude, thank you so much for coming on, Really appreciate it.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Pleasure's all mine. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2:Today's episode is brought to you by No One. Yep. We have zero sponsors. I haven't reached out to any companies nor would I expect a reputable brand to give me money. But I'll give a few plugs.
Speaker 2:First, I send a weekly newsletter each Thursday featuring five articles or tools that have helped me. You can sign up for these weekly updates at jimwhuffman.com. Second, for anyone running a startup, if you need help growing your business, check out GrowthHit. GrowthHit serves as your external growth team. After working with over a 100 startups and generating a quarter billion in sales for clients, GrowthHit has perfected a growth process that's hell bent on driving ROI through rapid experiments.
Speaker 2:Plus, you'll get to work with yours truly. So if you wanna work with a team that's worked with startups have been funded by Andreessen Horowitz or featured on Shark Tank, then check out growthit.com. And finally, I wrote a book called the Growth Marketer's Playbook that takes everything I've learned as a growth mentor for venture backed startups and I've distilled it down to a 140 pages. So instead of hiring a growth team, save yourself some money, get the book and you can just do it yourself. I hope you enjoyed this episode, and I'd love to hear feedback.
Speaker 2:I'm on Twitter at jim w huffman.