1
00:00:00,000 –> 00:00:04,830
Our decision was early
on to make our product

2
00:00:04,830 –> 00:00:08,100
as open source or open as you want.

3
00:00:08,340 –> 00:00:10,650
Now you could use my
competitor’s pouches on my belt.

4
00:00:10,710 –> 00:00:14,910
You could use my pouches on a competitor’s
belt because we just wanted to get

5
00:00:14,910 –> 00:00:16,860
people into the system.

6
00:00:29,220 –> 00:00:32,490
Hey, thanks again for tuning in. This
episode’s brought to you by OMG Commerce.

7
00:00:32,490 –> 00:00:34,500
That’s my agency. Hey,

8
00:00:34,500 –> 00:00:38,550
we’re specialists at creating
omni-channel growth for brands

9
00:00:38,940 –> 00:00:40,410
profitably. Now,

10
00:00:40,410 –> 00:00:45,060
the greatest brands we know are
no longer just D two C. Yes,

11
00:00:45,060 –> 00:00:46,140
they’re masters of D two C,

12
00:00:46,140 –> 00:00:50,220
but they’re also growing and scaling
on marketplaces and in retail stores.

13
00:00:50,280 –> 00:00:55,230
And we understand the complexities of
how to grow in all of those channels from

14
00:00:55,230 –> 00:00:59,700
a campaign strategy, a creative strategy,
and a measurement strategy. In fact,

15
00:00:59,700 –> 00:01:04,440
we recently won a Google Agency Excellence
Award for helping Arctic coolers

16
00:01:04,470 –> 00:01:09,000
grow their retail sales
in Walmart using YouTube.

17
00:01:09,510 –> 00:01:13,980
We’ve helped add almost eight
figures in growth on Amazon

18
00:01:14,400 –> 00:01:15,233
for brands,

19
00:01:15,240 –> 00:01:19,500
and we’ve even helped a brand
go from nine to 10 figures.

20
00:01:19,500 –> 00:01:22,230
And so we want to help you grow.

21
00:01:22,440 –> 00:01:25,320
So if you’re not satisfied with your
growth in any of those channels or you’re

22
00:01:25,320 –> 00:01:27,450
looking to unlock new growth,

23
00:01:27,510 –> 00:01:32,400
we should probably chat.
Visit us@omgcommerce.com,
click that let’s Talk button.

24
00:01:32,850 –> 00:01:37,710
We love to schedule a strategy session
with you. With that back to the show.

25
00:01:37,920 –> 00:01:41,670
Well, hello and welcome to another edition
of the E-Commerce Evolution podcast.

26
00:01:41,670 –> 00:01:44,550
I’m your host, Brett
Curry, CEO of OMG Commerce.

27
00:01:45,060 –> 00:01:49,950
And today I’m so excited
about this topic and

28
00:01:49,950 –> 00:01:51,030
about our guest.

29
00:01:51,030 –> 00:01:55,740
You’re going to get to hear directly
from a successful eight figure

30
00:01:56,580 –> 00:02:01,560
D two C store owner and
CEO and so many valuable

31
00:02:01,560 –> 00:02:05,250
lessons here as we look at a
couple of really cool topics,

32
00:02:05,250 –> 00:02:07,050
open source product development,

33
00:02:07,620 –> 00:02:11,250
building product platforms
for continued growth.

34
00:02:11,730 –> 00:02:16,530
We’re going to look at some accounting
and finance lessons and much,

35
00:02:16,530 –> 00:02:19,680
much more. And so my
guest is Connor Crook.

36
00:02:19,680 –> 00:02:22,950
He’s the CEO of Diamondback Tools.

37
00:02:23,460 –> 00:02:26,940
If you are handy or you
like to build on the side,

38
00:02:27,240 –> 00:02:29,640
you’ve probably heard of Diamondback
Tools, you’ve probably seen them online.

39
00:02:30,600 –> 00:02:33,450
They’re fantastic. It’s
a fantastic product.

40
00:02:33,960 –> 00:02:36,990
Members of my family use this
product and rave about it,

41
00:02:37,080 –> 00:02:41,790
and so can’t wait to dive in
and unpack lots of lessons from

42
00:02:41,790 –> 00:02:45,210
Diamondback tools and their growth. So
with that, Connor, welcome to the show,

43
00:02:45,210 –> 00:02:48,000
man, and appreciate you
coming on. And how’s it going?

44
00:02:48,570 –> 00:02:51,870
Thanks. Things are going well.
It’s a little cloudy today, which

45
00:02:53,460 –> 00:02:57,780
I always prefer the sunshine,
but things are going well.

46
00:02:58,200 –> 00:02:59,530
Things are going really
well with the company.

47
00:02:59,530 –> 00:03:02,620
We’re ramping up for the fourth quarter
and getting excited for the holiday

48
00:03:02,620 –> 00:03:03,453
season.

49
00:03:03,910 –> 00:03:08,140
Yeah, man, it’s just been so fun. And
full disclosure, Connor and Dieback tools,

50
00:03:08,140 –> 00:03:11,080
they are in OMG clients will get
an inside look at their business,

51
00:03:11,080 –> 00:03:16,060
helping them grow on Google and
YouTube and Amazon and other areas.

52
00:03:17,320 –> 00:03:20,110
But man, just watching you guys
grow and watching what you’re doing,

53
00:03:20,170 –> 00:03:23,470
it’s been very, very impressive. A
lot of lessons I want to unpack here.

54
00:03:23,470 –> 00:03:28,060
You guys lowered your CACs by
70% not too long ago and improved

55
00:03:28,060 –> 00:03:29,650
quality. We’ll dig into that a little bit.

56
00:03:30,130 –> 00:03:32,980
You’ve taken this mindset of
almost like Apple, where like, Hey,

57
00:03:32,980 –> 00:03:36,190
if we can get someone into our ecosystem
and we can sell them all kinds of

58
00:03:36,190 –> 00:03:38,410
products, and once
they’re in our ecosystem,

59
00:03:38,500 –> 00:03:40,960
it’s kind of hard for them to leave
and start buying competitive products.

60
00:03:40,960 –> 00:03:44,620
We’re going to dive into that and talk
about accounting and finance lessons and

61
00:03:44,620 –> 00:03:49,570
lots of fun stuff. But I want to start
with first this little nugget, Connor,

62
00:03:49,570 –> 00:03:52,600
you were a trial attorney,
and so you were litigating,

63
00:03:52,600 –> 00:03:54,640
I think you said you were in the
courtroom multiple days a week.

64
00:03:55,330 –> 00:03:59,800
How did you go from that to
starting and leading and growing

65
00:04:00,520 –> 00:04:04,540
one of the top tool belt companies
online? How did that happen?

66
00:04:06,070 –> 00:04:09,430
Well, it’s a twisty turning
story. It starts with,

67
00:04:09,490 –> 00:04:11,740
I’ve always been a little bit
connected to construction.

68
00:04:12,250 –> 00:04:15,430
My dad had a construction company.
I worked there growing up.

69
00:04:16,330 –> 00:04:18,310
The room that I’m sitting in right now,

70
00:04:18,310 –> 00:04:22,750
I actually built this room as an addition
on the house by myself. Impressive,

71
00:04:22,760 –> 00:04:24,790
impressive. Well, not completely.

72
00:04:24,790 –> 00:04:28,840
I had a big polish guy who helped me lift
some windows and my dad actually came

73
00:04:28,840 –> 00:04:31,090
along to help me put on some roof rafters.

74
00:04:31,090 –> 00:04:34,870
So tied into the construction
business all my life.

75
00:04:35,200 –> 00:04:37,690
And when I was building this
room that I’m sitting in,

76
00:04:38,110 –> 00:04:42,760
I was contacted by an old friend
about buying a tool belt company,

77
00:04:42,760 –> 00:04:45,250
which is actually our largest
competitor now that I’m at Diamondback.

78
00:04:45,910 –> 00:04:48,820
And that kind of got me down
the rabbit hole of like, Hey,

79
00:04:48,820 –> 00:04:50,650
this is kind of interesting. I’d always,

80
00:04:50,680 –> 00:04:54,100
I’d never been comfortable as an attorney.
It wasn’t something I really enjoyed

81
00:04:54,100 –> 00:04:56,770
at all. So I was looking for a way out.

82
00:04:58,300 –> 00:05:02,890
And so the opportunity to be involved
with buying an interesting business in a

83
00:05:02,890 –> 00:05:05,650
field that I knew a little
bit about was appealing.

84
00:05:06,400 –> 00:05:10,090
That original deal never came
to fruition, but along the way,

85
00:05:10,090 –> 00:05:13,300
learned a lot about premium tool belts
and found out about this little company

86
00:05:13,300 –> 00:05:17,890
called Diamondback, which oddly enough
went up for sale about six months later

87
00:05:18,580 –> 00:05:21,640
and we jumped on it. And

88
00:05:23,230 –> 00:05:26,950
all of a sudden, exactly nine
years ago, I mean nine years ago,

89
00:05:26,950 –> 00:05:28,360
in four weeks,

90
00:05:28,360 –> 00:05:32,980
I think we closed on buying this
little tool belt company based in

91
00:05:32,980 –> 00:05:36,730
Alaska. I’d never run a company before.
I didn’t know anything about marketing,

92
00:05:36,730 –> 00:05:37,960
product development, nothing.

93
00:05:39,220 –> 00:05:43,360
My original partner had been with a big
tool company for 20 years or a couple of

94
00:05:43,360 –> 00:05:48,070
them. So that gave me a little
bit of comfort. Got into it.

95
00:05:49,150 –> 00:05:53,590
We got some other projects going on so
that my original partner was working on

96
00:05:53,590 –> 00:05:56,470
those. He also had another
business he was working in,

97
00:05:56,530 –> 00:06:00,650
and eventually I found
Instagram became sort of

98
00:06:00,650 –> 00:06:04,970
Insta-famous and ended up with the reins
of a toolbox company and bought out my

99
00:06:04,970 –> 00:06:06,920
partner a year or so later.

100
00:06:07,520 –> 00:06:12,470
And here I am, as I said, the apple
doesn’t fall too far for the tree.

101
00:06:12,470 –> 00:06:16,550
I grew up working construction
and now on a toolbox company with

102
00:06:17,540 –> 00:06:19,730
a detour of being a lawyer along the way.

103
00:06:21,080 –> 00:06:22,670
And hey, man, valuable lessons.

104
00:06:23,210 –> 00:06:28,160
We all come from some background
that gives us unique insights into a

105
00:06:28,160 –> 00:06:30,560
business. My background is
marketing, which really helped me.

106
00:06:30,950 –> 00:06:34,730
I wish I had had more legal
experience. That’d be super valuable,

107
00:06:34,730 –> 00:06:36,560
especially as we’re looking at
m and a and things like that.

108
00:06:36,560 –> 00:06:41,120
So I’m sure that helped in your journey
of buying the business. But yeah,

109
00:06:41,120 –> 00:06:44,240
super cool to see where you guys are now.

110
00:06:44,240 –> 00:06:48,710
And so let’s talk a little bit
about, you mentioned Insta Famous,

111
00:06:48,710 –> 00:06:53,570
so I want to talk about building
a platform with your products and

112
00:06:53,570 –> 00:06:56,210
open source product developments. We’ll
talk about that in a minute. But first,

113
00:06:56,780 –> 00:06:58,580
how’d you become Insta famous,

114
00:06:58,580 –> 00:07:03,320
and what was that all about and how
did that help kind of the launch or the

115
00:07:03,320 –> 00:07:04,610
growth of Diamondback?

116
00:07:05,060 –> 00:07:08,030
Sure. I was doing some
writing the other day,

117
00:07:08,030 –> 00:07:12,820
and I think one thing I will say
time and time again is again,

118
00:07:12,820 –> 00:07:16,580
the key to success is not hard
work. It’s not brilliance,

119
00:07:16,640 –> 00:07:19,280
it’s absolute luck. There are
a lot of people who are smart.

120
00:07:19,280 –> 00:07:21,200
There are a lot of people who work
hard, but unless you’re lucky,

121
00:07:21,200 –> 00:07:22,490
you’re never going to be successful.

122
00:07:23,630 –> 00:07:27,260
I had the lucky serendipity,

123
00:07:27,980 –> 00:07:28,670
coincidence,

124
00:07:28,670 –> 00:07:32,900
whatever that about the time I got
into Diamondback and started running.

125
00:07:32,900 –> 00:07:34,130
It was really a time,

126
00:07:34,760 –> 00:07:39,260
Instagram was still about building
community rather than its modern

127
00:07:39,590 –> 00:07:41,630
iteration. Again, this was nine years ago,

128
00:07:42,320 –> 00:07:47,120
and the community around
the trades was really

129
00:07:47,120 –> 00:07:47,953
nascent.

130
00:07:48,950 –> 00:07:53,720
You had guys spread around the country
and the world who were starting to share

131
00:07:53,720 –> 00:07:58,250
pictures of their work, share
techniques, talk about different tools,

132
00:07:58,310 –> 00:08:01,520
and these are guys who
generally, it’s funny,

133
00:08:01,520 –> 00:08:05,300
a lot of people think that construction
workers or carpenters are this silent

134
00:08:05,300 –> 00:08:06,800
type.
They’re not.

135
00:08:06,890 –> 00:08:09,050
They’re just on job sites all the
time where there’s a lot of noise.

136
00:08:09,200 –> 00:08:11,150
If you get ’em off the job
sites, you can’t shut ’em off.

137
00:08:13,040 –> 00:08:17,900
And so I started commenting
on people’s work.

138
00:08:18,470 –> 00:08:21,590
I knew enough to be dangerous from my
background in construction and say, Hey,

139
00:08:21,590 –> 00:08:24,380
that’s really cool how you’re
doing that set of stairs.

140
00:08:24,380 –> 00:08:26,510
I never thought about doing
that. I’d never seen that,

141
00:08:27,920 –> 00:08:31,520
and started making friends. Just
started commenting on people’s stuff,

142
00:08:31,550 –> 00:08:32,990
started to send dms,

143
00:08:34,970 –> 00:08:37,790
found out who some of the more
important influencers were,

144
00:08:38,180 –> 00:08:41,450
and at this time they
were still really small,

145
00:08:41,450 –> 00:08:44,300
so they were happy to work
with a little small brand.

146
00:08:45,920 –> 00:08:50,180
Having a couple beers with these guys at
trade shows never hurts and really just

147
00:08:50,180 –> 00:08:55,010
became a part of the community and
friends with a lot of these guys.

148
00:08:55,650 –> 00:08:57,600
And that allowed us to,

149
00:09:00,120 –> 00:09:04,230
people watch my stories. After about a
year, I started letting on that. Yeah,

150
00:09:04,230 –> 00:09:07,020
I’m actually a lawyer and I know some
things about running a business that I’ve

151
00:09:07,380 –> 00:09:08,460
learned the hard way.

152
00:09:08,460 –> 00:09:11,940
And so we actually had our own podcast
for a while that people were listening

153
00:09:11,940 –> 00:09:14,310
to. They were following us on Instagram.

154
00:09:14,940 –> 00:09:18,090
We were trying to make as much
engaging content as we could.

155
00:09:18,630 –> 00:09:23,100
And it became strange when I would go to
a trade show and people wanted to take

156
00:09:23,100 –> 00:09:26,370
selfies with me. That was weird.

157
00:09:26,610 –> 00:09:30,630
Wait a minute. Yeah, it’s awesome,
man. But that happens, right?

158
00:09:30,630 –> 00:09:33,660
You become internet famous
or famous in your category.

159
00:09:33,660 –> 00:09:34,470
I remember hearing this guy,

160
00:09:34,470 –> 00:09:37,230
he used to say they’re the famous
people that nobody knows, right?

161
00:09:37,230 –> 00:09:41,250
You’re famous at a convention, not
airport famous. Right, exactly.

162
00:09:41,260 –> 00:09:43,710
And that’s kind of probably
where most of us want to be.

163
00:09:44,190 –> 00:09:46,740
We’d love to be well known in our
industry, but let me walk through.

164
00:09:47,010 –> 00:09:49,980
I did Avega come up to me at the
airport after a trade show once.

165
00:09:50,070 –> 00:09:51,180
So that was kind a blending.

166
00:09:51,180 –> 00:09:52,013
Of the two.

167
00:09:52,680 –> 00:09:55,320
Yeah, that’s awesome. But I love
that strategy where you’re like, Hey,

168
00:09:55,320 –> 00:09:56,550
let me just be a part of this community.

169
00:09:56,550 –> 00:10:00,060
Let me comment and form
relationships with top builders. One,

170
00:10:00,060 –> 00:10:02,370
because I kind of want to and
because this is cool, but two,

171
00:10:02,370 –> 00:10:05,400
it’s going to allow me to have
relationships in the industry,

172
00:10:05,400 –> 00:10:07,890
get feedback on my
product, find influencers,

173
00:10:07,890 –> 00:10:10,410
maybe kind of opens all kinds
of doors and things like that.

174
00:10:10,410 –> 00:10:14,970
And so I think it’s a good
reminder that one, every business,

175
00:10:14,970 –> 00:10:16,920
whether it’s online, offline, or a mix,

176
00:10:16,920 –> 00:10:19,650
it’s still relationships
are at a core of that,

177
00:10:19,650 –> 00:10:24,540
especially as you’re launching content
and storytelling is at a core of that

178
00:10:24,540 –> 00:10:25,050
as well.

179
00:10:25,050 –> 00:10:30,000
And so how then did you
translate those connections

180
00:10:30,000 –> 00:10:32,490
into promotional aspects?

181
00:10:32,490 –> 00:10:37,440
So how did that help you in the early
days of selling that back tool products?

182
00:10:38,400 –> 00:10:40,920
And then I want to talk about the product
development piece in a second as well.

183
00:10:40,950 –> 00:10:42,960
Yeah, so on the promotional side,

184
00:10:45,360 –> 00:10:49,170
we developed an ambassador, a formal
ambassador program about a year ago.

185
00:10:50,340 –> 00:10:54,300
For the first six or seven years, we
didn’t pay for anybody to do anything.

186
00:10:54,960 –> 00:10:56,790
I’d send free product to guys.

187
00:10:57,030 –> 00:11:01,980
Once I saw that they were creating good
content around my product, I’d send ’em,

188
00:11:02,430 –> 00:11:04,470
Hey, we got new stuff. You want
to check out the new stuff?

189
00:11:04,470 –> 00:11:07,440
And we just built this very
friendly relationships,

190
00:11:07,860 –> 00:11:11,250
and I always knew that the big boys,

191
00:11:12,030 –> 00:11:14,340
the big tool companies
could pay for spots.

192
00:11:14,340 –> 00:11:19,050
And so as the influencers got larger,
I wouldn’t be as prominent for them.

193
00:11:19,410 –> 00:11:24,120
But the dirty little secret is don’t
look at what the influencers is talking

194
00:11:24,120 –> 00:11:25,890
about. Look at what they’re using.

195
00:11:25,980 –> 00:11:29,550
And I think that’s across a
lot of different industries.
They might talk about,

196
00:11:29,550 –> 00:11:31,230
Hey, I got this great new baseball mi,

197
00:11:31,620 –> 00:11:35,130
but if they only use it for a week
and then they don’t use it anymore,

198
00:11:35,130 –> 00:11:40,050
that should tell you something.
It also started

199
00:11:40,050 –> 00:11:42,450
to help with, as you were saying,
with the product development,

200
00:11:42,450 –> 00:11:45,810
starting to understand better
the needs of the customer.

201
00:11:47,730 –> 00:11:51,480
My experience in construction was
a very small construction company,

202
00:11:51,480 –> 00:11:55,870
a small town, and we kind of used what
we had and got by and were creative.

203
00:11:57,130 –> 00:12:01,930
The community that I found
on Instagram was really

204
00:12:01,930 –> 00:12:06,910
dedicated to the trades. It was a
whole different mindset from, yeah,

205
00:12:06,910 –> 00:12:11,020
I’m working construction right now until
I can move somewhere else or move on to

206
00:12:11,020 –> 00:12:11,680
something else.

207
00:12:11,680 –> 00:12:15,220
These were guys were passionate about
what they did and were really proud of it.

208
00:12:17,290 –> 00:12:21,430
I came to it with the
attitude of somewhat,

209
00:12:22,360 –> 00:12:24,400
the lawyer thing kind
of worked in this way.

210
00:12:26,050 –> 00:12:30,520
I’m used to in practicing law in a
fairly small town where I live now,

211
00:12:30,760 –> 00:12:35,260
when I walk into a men’s shop,
oh, Ms. Crook, what you want?

212
00:12:35,530 –> 00:12:37,930
I got some new ties for you. I got some
new ties you might like to check out.

213
00:12:38,800 –> 00:12:41,410
I remember that last suit you bought.
Would you like to see this one?

214
00:12:41,740 –> 00:12:43,510
You’re used to that level of service.

215
00:12:46,270 –> 00:12:49,000
A carpenter is a guy.

216
00:12:49,420 –> 00:12:53,320
The ones that I really
keyed in with were guys who,

217
00:12:54,040 –> 00:12:55,900
you’re in high school, you’re a smart kid,

218
00:12:55,900 –> 00:12:59,650
but maybe you don’t do well in the
classroom and your teacher says,

219
00:12:59,890 –> 00:13:03,790
you’re never going to go anywhere. You
should be a carpenter. And the guy says,

220
00:13:03,820 –> 00:13:06,400
okay. And then he becomes a carpenter.

221
00:13:06,400 –> 00:13:09,640
He starts building these amazing
things and somebody says, wow,

222
00:13:09,640 –> 00:13:12,640
you’re so brilliant. You should
have gone to college. And it’s like,

223
00:13:14,500 –> 00:13:15,850
you can’t win for losing.

224
00:13:16,300 –> 00:13:21,040
And I just thought if we show
the kind of respect that white

225
00:13:21,040 –> 00:13:25,870
collar workers get to
guys who were literally

226
00:13:25,870 –> 00:13:28,960
build the world around us, build our
houses, our schools, our libraries,

227
00:13:31,210 –> 00:13:32,140
what’ll happen,

228
00:13:33,700 –> 00:13:36,550
and we found it created
amazing brand loyalty.

229
00:13:37,360 –> 00:13:40,900
Just meet people where they are,
find out what their needs are,

230
00:13:40,900 –> 00:13:42,250
find out what their pain points are,

231
00:13:42,250 –> 00:13:45,130
and then figure out ways to
solve those problems. Because

232
00:13:49,960 –> 00:13:51,790
most of the big companies you know of,

233
00:13:51,790 –> 00:13:55,240
they’re making toys,
Whether it’s a cooler,

234
00:13:55,510 –> 00:13:59,830
whether it’s something for camping,
whether it’s something for athletics,

235
00:13:59,830 –> 00:14:03,010
whatever. These are for the most
of us, these are toys. Yep, yep.

236
00:14:03,520 –> 00:14:08,380
I’m making the product that literally
can add years to your career

237
00:14:09,160 –> 00:14:13,600
by helping you work faster and better.
And if you really love your career,

238
00:14:13,600 –> 00:14:14,740
that’s going to be meaningful to you.

239
00:14:15,430 –> 00:14:17,620
Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah,
it’s really great, man.

240
00:14:17,620 –> 00:14:21,610
And I think actually in some ways the
tides are turning a little bit on that you

241
00:14:21,610 –> 00:14:25,030
should become, you’re not smart enough
to do white collar, do blue collar.

242
00:14:25,480 –> 00:14:27,970
I’ve got teens, and so I hang
out with teens a decent amount,

243
00:14:27,970 –> 00:14:31,150
and I encourage kids like,
man, consider the trades.

244
00:14:31,150 –> 00:14:36,130
Consider becoming a blue collar
millionaire because that’s possible.

245
00:14:36,130 –> 00:14:38,710
And AI is coming for
basically everything else,

246
00:14:38,710 –> 00:14:41,830
but it’s going to be a
while I think on the trades.

247
00:14:41,830 –> 00:14:46,720
And so interesting how that’s shifting.
But would love to then talk about,

248
00:14:46,750 –> 00:14:51,590
okay, this idea of open source
product development is and

249
00:14:52,580 –> 00:14:55,430
how has that shaped your product
development and what specific,

250
00:14:55,580 –> 00:14:58,580
give us some examples of what products
have you developed because of the open

251
00:14:58,580 –> 00:15:01,130
source nature of your development cycle?

252
00:15:01,220 –> 00:15:06,050
Yeah, so my favorite story around
that is always our Nico pouch.

253
00:15:06,140 –> 00:15:10,550
So when I bought Diamondback, most of
the products were geared around cs.

254
00:15:12,050 –> 00:15:15,680
They had one product that was for
electricians that wasn’t very good.

255
00:15:17,750 –> 00:15:22,010
And so being on social
media, being on Instagram,

256
00:15:22,760 –> 00:15:25,700
I started getting messages from guys
who are electricians. It was like, Hey,

257
00:15:26,060 –> 00:15:28,460
I’ve heard about these new tool
belts. People are talking about ’em.

258
00:15:28,700 –> 00:15:33,470
What do you have for electricians? We’d
show ’em. They’d say, eh, no. So I just,

259
00:15:33,530 –> 00:15:37,970
what do you want? And I started
getting ideas. People would say, well,

260
00:15:37,970 –> 00:15:42,290
I want a tool belt that I want to pouch
that’ll hold these tools and not sag and

261
00:15:42,290 –> 00:15:44,000
this and that and the
other, and various things

262
00:15:45,650 –> 00:15:50,510
around about this time I got this massive
industrial sewing machine that ran

263
00:15:50,510 –> 00:15:52,370
on three phase power,

264
00:15:52,370 –> 00:15:55,640
which thankfully I didn’t kill
myself trying to wire my shop,

265
00:15:55,910 –> 00:16:00,110
run this sewing machine, and I
learned how to sew, not well,

266
00:16:00,170 –> 00:16:04,550
but enough.
And so for a couple of weeks

267
00:16:05,120 –> 00:16:08,450
I would have my daily store. I
did Instagram stores every day,

268
00:16:09,110 –> 00:16:13,070
multiple posts and stories
every day. And I said, Hey,

269
00:16:13,790 –> 00:16:18,080
I just sewed this thing up. What do
you guys think? And they said, well,

270
00:16:18,080 –> 00:16:19,160
where does this tool fit?

271
00:16:19,160 –> 00:16:23,060
And the next day I do a set of stories
with the screwdrivers and the pliers.

272
00:16:23,060 –> 00:16:25,640
I bought all these
tools. They said, oh no,

273
00:16:25,640 –> 00:16:27,200
I don’t think that’s going
to work because whatever.

274
00:16:27,200 –> 00:16:28,520
And we just kept going back and forth.

275
00:16:29,690 –> 00:16:33,680
And finally I noticed these two guys,

276
00:16:34,460 –> 00:16:39,050
Adam and Andrew, I’ll use their real
names rather than their handles.

277
00:16:39,050 –> 00:16:40,430
And I said,

278
00:16:40,430 –> 00:16:44,240
these guys are commenting every day
I should reach out to these guys.

279
00:16:46,700 –> 00:16:48,470
I had not talked to Adam in a while.

280
00:16:48,560 –> 00:16:53,270
I was texting Andrew about
cooking within the last week,

281
00:16:53,570 –> 00:16:55,610
and this whole development
was six years ago.

282
00:16:57,650 –> 00:17:00,680
And I was just like, okay, these
guys know what they’re doing.

283
00:17:01,460 –> 00:17:06,110
And so we would keep doing sort of the
lab stuff, but then there was also,

284
00:17:06,920 –> 00:17:10,670
Hey, I’m just going to say let’s set up
a video call on Instagram and let’s go

285
00:17:10,670 –> 00:17:13,820
through some stuff. Let’s talk through
it in depth. And we started doing that.

286
00:17:14,480 –> 00:17:17,810
And so when we finally
got down to a design,

287
00:17:18,140 –> 00:17:20,150
I had my manufacturer makeup,

288
00:17:20,720 –> 00:17:24,410
three or four of them send ’em to these
two guys and I don’t know if we send ’em

289
00:17:24,410 –> 00:17:25,243
to anybody else.

290
00:17:25,670 –> 00:17:30,260
And they then started using their
influence of talking about the product on

291
00:17:31,220 –> 00:17:34,070
their page. And what they were
able to say was not just, Hey,

292
00:17:34,070 –> 00:17:37,250
I got this new tool bag,
I got this new pouch.

293
00:17:37,310 –> 00:17:41,120
And the guy over at Diamond that actually
called me and talked to me and it’s

294
00:17:41,210 –> 00:17:44,570
really, we went deep to make this thing.
It’s awesome.

295
00:17:46,100 –> 00:17:50,490
That gave the product a real cache,
but it also gave us a Diamondback,

296
00:17:50,610 –> 00:17:54,480
a real cache and some real props for
being the kind of company that would do

297
00:17:54,480 –> 00:17:58,890
that. And so even both of them used it
for a while. They made a couple tweaks.

298
00:17:59,670 –> 00:18:01,950
When we first released
it, we were still small,

299
00:18:01,950 –> 00:18:05,310
we bought a couple hundred of the things.
They were gone in a week and BA gone

300
00:18:07,740 –> 00:18:12,570
because people are like, I want the
ones that Adam and Andrew Design.

301
00:18:13,740 –> 00:18:17,550
And then it sort of snowballed
from there. A month or two later,

302
00:18:17,550 –> 00:18:19,830
Adam calls me up and he is like,
Hey dude, this thing’s great,

303
00:18:19,860 –> 00:18:21,990
but I tell you what, sometimes
I don’t need all that stuff.

304
00:18:22,170 –> 00:18:26,310
I actually drew this out for
you. Can you just make this?

305
00:18:27,060 –> 00:18:27,893
Wow.

306
00:18:28,020 –> 00:18:32,070
And so that became another version
and it went through the same cycle.

307
00:18:32,070 –> 00:18:36,930
And so we were able to do that with
a number of things. Just a quick one.

308
00:18:36,990 –> 00:18:40,500
Our vest was a real sort of a game
changing product in the market.

309
00:18:41,130 –> 00:18:44,160
I sewed up one and I just started going
to trade shows and every trade show,

310
00:18:44,160 –> 00:18:46,590
I’d walk around with this vest and
just like, Hey man, try this on.

311
00:18:46,740 –> 00:18:49,530
You’re a short guy. You’re a tall guy,
you’re a big guy. You’re a small guy.

312
00:18:49,650 –> 00:18:51,570
Try this thing on. Try this
thing on. What do you think?

313
00:18:56,370 –> 00:18:58,020
Hey, is that guy with the vest again?

314
00:18:59,190 –> 00:19:02,790
But people believed in the product
because of that and it was better.

315
00:19:04,500 –> 00:19:05,100
It’s so good, man.

316
00:19:05,100 –> 00:19:08,910
I think sometimes we get the idea whether
we’re a service-based company like

317
00:19:08,910 –> 00:19:09,120
mine,

318
00:19:09,120 –> 00:19:13,500
like OMG or we’re a product company that
we want to design and build and tinker

319
00:19:13,500 –> 00:19:14,333
in isolation.

320
00:19:14,760 –> 00:19:19,290
We get in our office and we’re banging
out ideas all independent of the

321
00:19:19,290 –> 00:19:22,650
customer and certainly some
ideas can come that way, but man,

322
00:19:22,680 –> 00:19:27,510
you really strike gold and really
create magic when you are building

323
00:19:27,690 –> 00:19:31,020
and iterating and getting feedback and
working that feedback into the product

324
00:19:31,320 –> 00:19:35,760
and really making it tailor
made for your audience.

325
00:19:35,760 –> 00:19:38,850
And what a cool thing where you were
able to design for some influencers too,

326
00:19:39,510 –> 00:19:44,490
then led to not only better product
designs, but immediate sales as well.

327
00:19:44,490 –> 00:19:48,360
And so that totally makes
sense. As you were building,

328
00:19:49,530 –> 00:19:52,110
how do you make that a part of what
you’re doing because now you’re an eight

329
00:19:52,110 –> 00:19:53,070
figure brand.

330
00:19:54,240 –> 00:19:58,530
How do you make this an ongoing part
of product development at your size and

331
00:19:58,530 –> 00:19:59,340
scale now?

332
00:19:59,340 –> 00:19:59,820
Yeah,

333
00:19:59,820 –> 00:20:04,470
that was always scaling leads
to a lot of difficulties of how

334
00:20:04,650 –> 00:20:06,480
there’s a lot of cool things
you can do when you’re small.

335
00:20:06,480 –> 00:20:08,490
Then as you get bigger, become harder.

336
00:20:09,390 –> 00:20:13,380
We had a competitor beat us to the punch
on a product that we were working on

337
00:20:13,540 –> 00:20:17,130
Instagram, and it was just like, okay,
they were bigger, they were faster,

338
00:20:17,130 –> 00:20:21,330
they had more money, and they did
what we were already working on.

339
00:20:22,710 –> 00:20:25,620
So since then it’s been
a little bit more closed.

340
00:20:26,310 –> 00:20:31,080
It’s still working with customers
because we are on social

341
00:20:31,080 –> 00:20:31,913
all the time.

342
00:20:32,700 –> 00:20:37,230
Our stable of friends and family
has gotten bigger and bigger and

343
00:20:37,230 –> 00:20:39,360
bigger. And you really start to

344
00:20:41,340 –> 00:20:43,320
categorize the guys who
are out in the world.

345
00:20:43,920 –> 00:20:46,740
There are guys who can give you the
best product feedback in the world,

346
00:20:46,740 –> 00:20:49,900
but world, they’re kind of dorky, they’re
not good on camera, they’re whatever.

347
00:20:50,200 –> 00:20:53,320
And it’s like, okay, that guy’s not
going to be my influencer, but man,

348
00:20:53,320 –> 00:20:56,650
he knows his stuff. Then there’s an.

349
00:20:56,650 –> 00:20:59,440
Advisory board member of sorts,
but not going to be an influencer.

350
00:20:59,980 –> 00:21:04,720
Then you have this massive influencer
who you never going to be able to

351
00:21:04,720 –> 00:21:08,740
pay for a spotlight product,

352
00:21:08,740 –> 00:21:10,720
but he’s going to use
it because he loves it.

353
00:21:12,160 –> 00:21:14,530
And then there are all
these iterations in between.

354
00:21:14,530 –> 00:21:18,730
They’re this nano influencers who make
great content and they get really excited

355
00:21:18,730 –> 00:21:23,170
when you promote them by reposting
their content on your site,

356
00:21:23,170 –> 00:21:25,300
so they’re going to keep
making great content for you.

357
00:21:25,810 –> 00:21:28,870
And then there are the guys who are
hustlers who want to make money off this

358
00:21:28,870 –> 00:21:30,610
whole thing and they’re like, Hey man,

359
00:21:30,610 –> 00:21:32,650
you give me a coupon code and
I’m going to drive this thing.

360
00:21:32,650 –> 00:21:37,630
So as you have to constantly
be out there in that

361
00:21:37,780 –> 00:21:41,950
space, finding the right people who
are going to meet these different,

362
00:21:42,100 –> 00:21:44,890
and obviously there’s overlap
and different people can
do different things for

363
00:21:44,890 –> 00:21:49,690
you, but right now we know, Hey man,

364
00:21:50,050 –> 00:21:54,100
we got to make a new product
for electricians. I think
we need something kind of

365
00:21:54,100 –> 00:21:56,320
in this space. Alright, call this dude,

366
00:21:56,320 –> 00:22:01,000
this dude and this dude get their
ideas and we’ll start working from

367
00:22:01,000 –> 00:22:04,960
there. It was a continuum from early days.

368
00:22:04,960 –> 00:22:07,840
I had some ideas and I’d set up some
really, it was actually really fun.

369
00:22:07,840 –> 00:22:12,100
We’d set up an live Instagram
chat, a closed chat,

370
00:22:12,400 –> 00:22:15,340
and get five or six guys in there who
might be all over the United States and

371
00:22:15,340 –> 00:22:19,600
Canada. They maybe met a couple times
and it sort of becomes in like, Hey man,

372
00:22:19,600 –> 00:22:22,780
what have you been up to? Kind
of thing. But it was also, Hey,

373
00:22:22,780 –> 00:22:25,600
Connor’s got some cool ideas. Let’s
talk about it. Let’s hash it out.

374
00:22:25,600 –> 00:22:28,150
So as a continuum,

375
00:22:28,150 –> 00:22:31,600
as you sort of have to get more closed
and not really talk about things,

376
00:22:31,600 –> 00:22:36,340
and then there’s this whole,
when do you show a snake peek?

377
00:22:36,400 –> 00:22:39,640
When do you start showing the product,

378
00:22:39,640 –> 00:22:44,620
how you’ve got to build hype around
a product before you release it,

379
00:22:44,620 –> 00:22:47,320
but you don’t want to be too
early so that you get jumped.

380
00:22:48,880 –> 00:22:53,140
Any insights on that because that’s a
great point, and as you were talking,

381
00:22:53,200 –> 00:22:55,960
I see some similarities to Google.

382
00:22:56,230 –> 00:22:59,920
Google’s always been open source and
let’s test and iterate and get feedback

383
00:22:59,920 –> 00:23:02,920
from customers and improve,
improve, improve, start with an MVP,

384
00:23:02,920 –> 00:23:05,920
improve from there. But they also
know that as they get bigger,

385
00:23:06,220 –> 00:23:08,710
there’s lawsuits and there’s
competitors, and so some things are very,

386
00:23:08,710 –> 00:23:11,980
very secretive on other things they’re
open source on. So totally get that.

387
00:23:12,460 –> 00:23:14,950
Any insights then on how you do,

388
00:23:14,980 –> 00:23:18,700
how and when you do a sneak peek on a
product where it’s not too early where you

389
00:23:18,700 –> 00:23:22,600
get ripped off or a competitor comes
out first? Yeah, any guidance there?

390
00:23:22,640 –> 00:23:25,930
Yeah, it really has
developed as we have learned.

391
00:23:26,500 –> 00:23:29,290
We’re going to talk a little bit about
how we saved a bunch of money on CACs

392
00:23:29,290 –> 00:23:29,890
down the road,

393
00:23:29,890 –> 00:23:34,720
but basically now we have a much better
idea of about calendar and our product

394
00:23:34,720 –> 00:23:35,740
development lead time.

395
00:23:37,090 –> 00:23:39,430
I used to get really excited about
products and start talking about ’em,

396
00:23:39,430 –> 00:23:40,360
and then it was like, wait a minute,

397
00:23:40,510 –> 00:23:42,070
what do you mean we can’t
have this for six months?

398
00:23:43,660 –> 00:23:46,910
You have to know your calendar so that
you can start dropping things in there

399
00:23:46,910 –> 00:23:49,070
and not jump the gun and say, Hey,

400
00:23:49,070 –> 00:23:51,200
we’re going to have this in two months
when it really is going to be a lot

401
00:23:51,200 –> 00:23:54,050
longer than that. But

402
00:23:55,650 –> 00:24:00,350
we will talk a little bit about
it at one point conceptually, Hey,

403
00:24:00,350 –> 00:24:03,410
we’ve got this cool new designs
coming out, we’re improving this,

404
00:24:03,410 –> 00:24:08,090
we’re improving that.
It really comes down to,

405
00:24:08,480 –> 00:24:09,890
with our manufacturing right now,

406
00:24:09,890 –> 00:24:13,250
it’s about a three to four month
lead time on manufacturing a product.

407
00:24:13,250 –> 00:24:17,960
We know that that’s after it’s fully
designed. So after we get the design,

408
00:24:17,960 –> 00:24:20,870
we can start talking about, Hey, we’re
working on this, that, or the other,

409
00:24:22,040 –> 00:24:26,540
and then we can maybe start
dropping in a few quick

410
00:24:26,540 –> 00:24:27,770
glances at it.

411
00:24:27,890 –> 00:24:31,760
It’s almost like that old story
about the blind men and the elephant.

412
00:24:32,000 –> 00:24:34,760
It’s like I can show you a little
piece of what I’m working on,

413
00:24:34,760 –> 00:24:39,440
but maybe not the whole thing. Oh, here’s
a cool new material that we’re using.

414
00:24:39,440 –> 00:24:42,140
Here’s a cool new
whatever that we’re using.

415
00:24:42,140 –> 00:24:44,210
We’re adding this cool new technology,

416
00:24:45,740 –> 00:24:50,390
and then eventually we have to get ’em
out to influencers so that we can get

417
00:24:50,390 –> 00:24:53,570
some B roll and some copy to
prepare for our marketing.

418
00:24:54,200 –> 00:24:59,090
So we get that out and
we’re depending on the

419
00:24:59,090 –> 00:25:01,520
product, Hey, you can show this.
You can’t show this.

420
00:25:03,020 –> 00:25:07,730
Maybe you can wear this, but
don’t talk about it. And then

421
00:25:09,230 –> 00:25:13,250
we have two big product releases during
the year. One is before Black Friday,

422
00:25:13,250 –> 00:25:16,940
and then one is before a big trade show
that we do in March. The end of March,

423
00:25:17,480 –> 00:25:21,920
we have another trade show that’s in
February though, so if that February show,

424
00:25:21,920 –> 00:25:26,360
we’ll usually have the product, even if
it’s not being released for a month yet,

425
00:25:26,780 –> 00:25:28,540
then we’re going to start
building more hype around it,

426
00:25:28,540 –> 00:25:30,380
and then people are going
to get their hands on it.

427
00:25:30,680 –> 00:25:34,250
That’s another opportunity
for our influencer friends
to come around and start

428
00:25:34,430 –> 00:25:38,780
taking videos of it and building the hike
so that by the time we’re in a show in

429
00:25:38,780 –> 00:25:43,220
March with thousands of our end user
customers, people are coming up, dude,

430
00:25:43,220 –> 00:25:47,270
I’ve already seen that new belt. You’ve
got that new pouch you’ve got. So

431
00:25:49,280 –> 00:25:53,150
you have to understand the timing for
how long it takes to build a product and

432
00:25:53,150 –> 00:25:56,180
know I can release this much
and nobody can beat me to it.

433
00:25:56,680 –> 00:25:58,970
Yep, yep. Totally makes
sense. Know your calendar,

434
00:25:58,970 –> 00:26:02,840
know your product lifecycle or lead time,
all of that. It totally makes sense.

435
00:26:03,110 –> 00:26:04,820
This episode is brought
to you by ChatAble,

436
00:26:04,820 –> 00:26:09,110
the number one feed management and
advertising platform for savvy e-commerce

437
00:26:09,380 –> 00:26:13,460
marketers. Over 11,000 brands and
agencies, including OMG commerce,

438
00:26:13,850 –> 00:26:16,910
use channel’s, powerful
automation engine to sanitize,

439
00:26:17,390 –> 00:26:22,190
optimize and advertise product
data across the world’s biggest

440
00:26:22,640 –> 00:26:26,780
channels like Google, Amazon,
and many more. So save money,

441
00:26:26,780 –> 00:26:28,580
save time by switching to channel’s,

442
00:26:28,580 –> 00:26:31,610
full service platform and
get world-class support.

443
00:26:31,820 –> 00:26:34,700
Plus month-to-month pricing
as an e-commerce evolution,

444
00:26:34,700 –> 00:26:39,320
listener channel is giving you a free
feed audit for a channel of your choice,

445
00:26:39,800 –> 00:26:43,070
learn how you can improve your feed
score and increase the visibility of

446
00:26:43,230 –> 00:26:46,230
products. Sign up for free@chatable.com.

447
00:26:46,590 –> 00:26:50,580
Mention e-commerce evolution to get
started, no strings attached well’s.

448
00:26:50,820 –> 00:26:51,960
A quick comment on,

449
00:26:52,020 –> 00:26:56,970
I love your approach here on the open
source product development side. You’re

450
00:26:56,970 –> 00:26:59,820
just creating products that people
love and the feedback is amazing.

451
00:26:59,820 –> 00:27:03,750
The reviews are amazing, and as the agency
helping you grow on Google, YouTube,

452
00:27:03,750 –> 00:27:06,150
Amazon, and organic,
unpaid and stuff like that,

453
00:27:06,660 –> 00:27:10,110
it makes our life so much easier
when this is an amazing product.

454
00:27:10,410 –> 00:27:14,520
And then when you have this influencer
content that you can work into the

455
00:27:14,520 –> 00:27:15,353
marketing,

456
00:27:16,050 –> 00:27:20,970
it feeds the machine and it’s
really what’s at the core

457
00:27:21,450 –> 00:27:24,060
of your growth. And so love
that you guys are doing that.

458
00:27:24,510 –> 00:27:28,380
Let’s talk before we get into the CAC
savings. I think that’s super fun as well.

459
00:27:29,220 –> 00:27:33,960
I think this open product source or
open product development leads itself

460
00:27:33,960 –> 00:27:37,590
into how are you building platforms,
what are you thinking about platforms?

461
00:27:37,590 –> 00:27:40,920
And we kind of compare it as we’re
prepping compared this to Apple, right?

462
00:27:41,580 –> 00:27:43,860
Apple maybe hasn’t had,
just as a quick side note,

463
00:27:43,860 –> 00:27:47,760
they may have maybe the
biggest innovations lately,
but iPhone’s still solid.

464
00:27:47,760 –> 00:27:49,950
I love my MacBook. Once I’m in the system,

465
00:27:50,280 –> 00:27:52,590
it’s pretty hard to do something else.

466
00:27:53,220 –> 00:27:57,090
You’re kind of trying to do that with
tool belts and your systems as well.

467
00:27:57,090 –> 00:27:58,440
So can you explain that a little bit?

468
00:27:58,830 –> 00:27:59,460
Sure. Well,

469
00:27:59,460 –> 00:28:03,810
the first thing you remember is that Apple
did that for its first 20 or so years

470
00:28:03,810 –> 00:28:05,400
of existence and almost went bankrupt.

471
00:28:07,260 –> 00:28:11,310
Then it recalibrated started over
again with the iPhone and exploded.

472
00:28:13,020 –> 00:28:15,270
And of a person of my age.

473
00:28:15,870 –> 00:28:20,400
I remember the early days of
Apple’s closed source versus what

474
00:28:20,400 –> 00:28:24,270
Microsoft was doing. I
remember Sony Beta versus VHS,

475
00:28:24,660 –> 00:28:29,070
and those were some real conversations
and ideas that we struggled with early

476
00:28:29,070 –> 00:28:33,810
on. Do we want to be compatible with
other brands or do we want to be like,

477
00:28:33,810 –> 00:28:35,700
if you’re Diamondback,
you’ve got to be Diamondback.

478
00:28:36,930 –> 00:28:41,610
And so our decision was
early on to make our

479
00:28:41,610 –> 00:28:45,300
product as open source
or open as you want,

480
00:28:45,630 –> 00:28:46,710
however you want to describe it,

481
00:28:46,710 –> 00:28:49,920
so that you could use my
competitor’s pouches on my belt.

482
00:28:49,950 –> 00:28:53,220
You could use my pouches
on a competitor’s belt.

483
00:28:53,910 –> 00:28:57,570
The suspenders would work cross platforms
and everything because we just wanted

484
00:28:57,570 –> 00:28:59,760
to get people into the system.

485
00:29:00,210 –> 00:29:00,510
Totally.

486
00:29:00,510 –> 00:29:01,290
Makes sense.

487
00:29:01,290 –> 00:29:03,570
We had a major competitor who was,

488
00:29:04,650 –> 00:29:07,080
they’re still I think probably
at least twice our size,

489
00:29:08,370 –> 00:29:10,950
but we had this major
entrenched competitor.

490
00:29:10,950 –> 00:29:12,630
We just had to get people to get a taste,

491
00:29:13,830 –> 00:29:16,800
and you’re talking about a
blue collar guy, a carpenter,

492
00:29:16,800 –> 00:29:19,530
and I’m asking him to buy at that
time, probably a three 50 tool belt,

493
00:29:19,530 –> 00:29:23,400
which now more like four
50, right? Let’s get,

494
00:29:23,400 –> 00:29:26,340
and people would say, well, if
I want to get into down that,

495
00:29:26,790 –> 00:29:29,580
what should I buy first? And so
it was like, okay, try the belt.

496
00:29:29,580 –> 00:29:32,550
That’s the real heart and
soul of this ergonomic design.

497
00:29:33,660 –> 00:29:38,340
And so we started getting
more and more people into the

498
00:29:38,340 –> 00:29:43,300
system. And so then two years
ago, we revamped everything.

499
00:29:43,330 –> 00:29:47,770
We revamped the belt, we revamped
our vest. Talk about platforms too.

500
00:29:47,770 –> 00:29:52,360
We really think in that apple mindset of
you can buy a belt and put our pouches

501
00:29:52,360 –> 00:29:53,950
on it, maybe as suspenders,

502
00:29:54,010 –> 00:29:58,060
or you can buy a vest and you can put
all the pouches and different things on

503
00:29:58,060 –> 00:30:01,960
it. And we also offer some bags and they
also have compatibility so that you can

504
00:30:01,960 –> 00:30:04,270
sort of modularize them.

505
00:30:04,270 –> 00:30:08,470
And so that was all this idea of
here’s the software that I use on my

506
00:30:08,710 –> 00:30:12,070
MacBook, and I put the same
thing on my phone or whatever.

507
00:30:12,070 –> 00:30:16,090
So trying to create that brand
language across all the things.

508
00:30:16,090 –> 00:30:20,740
And so about two years ago we
started this process of redoing the

509
00:30:20,740 –> 00:30:22,930
belt, redoing the suspenders,
redoing the pouches,

510
00:30:23,080 –> 00:30:25,000
and we’re doing a vest for next year.

511
00:30:25,510 –> 00:30:29,590
And we’ve been able to
now at a certain distance,

512
00:30:29,950 –> 00:30:34,840
what is the brand language that
we want rather than me doing a

513
00:30:34,840 –> 00:30:38,230
lot of it working with different outside
manufacturers and outside different

514
00:30:38,380 –> 00:30:42,340
designers. Now that we have our own
design team that’s focused on this,

515
00:30:42,820 –> 00:30:46,870
we can create a unified brand that’s
everything from the appearance of our

516
00:30:46,870 –> 00:30:50,620
website to the functionality of our
product, which sounds a little weird,

517
00:30:50,620 –> 00:30:55,450
but trust me, for instance,
there’s the diagonal on our,

518
00:30:55,960 –> 00:30:59,530
we have a diagonal on our logo.

519
00:31:00,010 –> 00:31:03,370
If you look at my belt, the way that
there’s certain components of it,

520
00:31:03,370 –> 00:31:07,180
the same angle is where the
different materials come together

521
00:31:08,200 –> 00:31:09,940
and it’s actually functional.

522
00:31:11,590 –> 00:31:16,120
So now we’re to a point where we
think we’re large enough, Hey,

523
00:31:16,120 –> 00:31:18,460
you know what? Let’s kind
of start closing the system.

524
00:31:19,270 –> 00:31:23,950
So if you use my newest belt, most of
my competitors pouches don’t fit on it,

525
00:31:24,670 –> 00:31:29,440
and we’re moving more in that direction
so that we are really creating a full

526
00:31:29,440 –> 00:31:31,870
ecosystem around down
and back and the brand.

527
00:31:32,710 –> 00:31:35,230
Love that. Have you gotten any
feedback positive or negative on that,

528
00:31:35,230 –> 00:31:39,880
or is that not really an issue? I
don’t think it’s really been much of.

529
00:31:39,880 –> 00:31:43,360
An issue now because people,

530
00:31:43,960 –> 00:31:47,860
the brand has become strong enough that
if you’re going to go buy Diamondback

531
00:31:48,460 –> 00:31:51,190
tool Belt, which means four
or five different components,

532
00:31:51,190 –> 00:31:52,023
belt touches everything,

533
00:31:52,960 –> 00:31:56,260
you kind of want it all to
be the same really focus.

534
00:31:57,280 –> 00:32:01,810
There is a look to it that is
beside the functionality that

535
00:32:02,260 –> 00:32:04,690
it all really looks good together.

536
00:32:06,160 –> 00:32:08,920
Totally. Totally. And it
makes sense, man. We’re

537
00:32:11,230 –> 00:32:14,560
as creatures, we like to collect.
We like some things to be uniform.

538
00:32:15,130 –> 00:32:19,330
And I’m sure in the contractor world
that’s especially true. And so yeah,

539
00:32:19,450 –> 00:32:20,950
it’s super, super smart.

540
00:32:22,150 –> 00:32:26,320
And any insights on how this has impacted

541
00:32:26,920 –> 00:32:31,450
repeat purchases, LTV, things like that?
And feel free to speak in generalities,

542
00:32:31,450 –> 00:32:33,370
but as you’ve done this,

543
00:32:33,790 –> 00:32:37,030
what has that done to your repeat
business and to the business overall?

544
00:32:37,090 –> 00:32:37,923
Yeah.

545
00:32:39,230 –> 00:32:40,610
We’ve talked about Apple a bit,

546
00:32:40,610 –> 00:32:44,330
and I think I told you this
story earlier off camera that

547
00:32:45,800 –> 00:32:48,830
we were at that trade show I
mentioned in the February one,

548
00:32:48,830 –> 00:32:51,800
about two years ago when we were
first rolling out this new belt,

549
00:32:52,610 –> 00:32:57,380
and it was a real mindblower
when some people came

550
00:32:57,380 –> 00:33:00,410
up and some dude I’d never got
before. He’s like, Hey man,

551
00:33:00,740 –> 00:33:03,350
I got two Diamondback tool
belts. They’re all tricked out.

552
00:33:03,350 –> 00:33:07,280
What you got this’s new? He’s like, yeah,

553
00:33:08,090 –> 00:33:12,560
basically I want more. And I was
like, well, we got this new belt.

554
00:33:13,220 –> 00:33:16,670
And I showed it to him and he is like,
holy crap, I got to get that now.

555
00:33:17,840 –> 00:33:22,670
And this was a huge paradigm
shift for us because for

556
00:33:22,670 –> 00:33:27,500
years it was trying to get people
to go from a cheap product to a

557
00:33:27,500 –> 00:33:30,470
real premium product and say,
Hey dude, just spend the money.

558
00:33:30,890 –> 00:33:32,180
This thing will last you forever.

559
00:33:33,080 –> 00:33:36,710
Thank me for it later
to somebody saying, wow,

560
00:33:36,710 –> 00:33:39,110
I’ve already spent a ton
of money on this product,

561
00:33:39,110 –> 00:33:42,470
but now I actually like it so much that
if you have something new and better,

562
00:33:42,470 –> 00:33:42,800
I want to.

563
00:33:42,800 –> 00:33:43,633
Upgrade.

564
00:33:45,110 –> 00:33:48,980
And once we had hit that upgrade
point, that was when we said, wow,

565
00:33:49,010 –> 00:33:53,510
this is huge. We’ve now
unlocked this thing such that

566
00:33:55,220 –> 00:33:59,720
we make a great product. And then
we hear the, I won’t say complaints,

567
00:33:59,720 –> 00:34:02,780
but I’ll say people saying, wow, I
wish it did this, I wish it did that.

568
00:34:03,110 –> 00:34:04,310
And what people also don’t realize,

569
00:34:04,640 –> 00:34:09,320
a tool belt does need to change over time
Because

570
00:34:09,680 –> 00:34:14,450
the tool companies are constantly making
new tools. Tools. And so we have to,

571
00:34:15,680 –> 00:34:19,100
it’s like you can throw everything
in a bucket and carry it around,

572
00:34:19,100 –> 00:34:22,730
or you can throw it into an organized
system and the organized system has to be

573
00:34:22,730 –> 00:34:23,563
made.

574
00:34:23,870 –> 00:34:27,230
Everybody’s bought one of those drawer
organizers that doesn’t do you any good

575
00:34:27,230 –> 00:34:28,700
because your stuff doesn’t fit in it.

576
00:34:31,250 –> 00:34:35,960
So to make those upgrades that people
had asked for and see the changes in the

577
00:34:35,960 –> 00:34:40,850
tools that the best people are using,
we were able to hit this upgrade level.

578
00:34:40,880 –> 00:34:43,670
And that then takes the guy who said, oh,

579
00:34:43,670 –> 00:34:44,810
I’ve already bought two year tool belts.

580
00:34:44,810 –> 00:34:47,660
I’ve spent a thousand dollars
with you to now like, oh wow,

581
00:34:47,750 –> 00:34:49,340
I’m going to replace
both of those tool belts,

582
00:34:49,580 –> 00:34:52,040
so I’m going to spend another
thousand dollars with you.

583
00:34:53,900 –> 00:34:57,590
And so you can grow your
revenue in a number of ways.

584
00:34:57,590 –> 00:35:01,430
You can grow your geographic base,
you can grow your product base,

585
00:35:01,670 –> 00:35:05,480
your sort of product lines, but man,

586
00:35:05,480 –> 00:35:08,060
if you can just continue to
improve the same product you got,

587
00:35:09,170 –> 00:35:13,850
that’s probably the easiest way to build
your lifetime value with your customer.

588
00:35:14,540 –> 00:35:16,370
Totally makes sense. And I experienced,

589
00:35:16,370 –> 00:35:18,860
I think you mentioned
cameras a minute ago.

590
00:35:18,860 –> 00:35:22,190
I’m kind into photography and I’ve
got several friends that are too.

591
00:35:22,190 –> 00:35:25,520
And then of course we work
with videographers and
stuff for YouTube ads and

592
00:35:25,520 –> 00:35:25,910
whatnot.

593
00:35:25,910 –> 00:35:28,370
And there’s a guy locally who I’ve
worked with forever and his name’s Nick.

594
00:35:28,370 –> 00:35:31,010
And every time I see him, he’s
like, oh, I got a new camera.

595
00:35:31,010 –> 00:35:32,540
I got this new thing, I got
this new piece. I’m like,

596
00:35:33,110 –> 00:35:37,440
there’s no way you actually needed
that, but you like it, right?

597
00:35:37,440 –> 00:35:38,850
And I’m sure it is
creating some improvement.

598
00:35:38,850 –> 00:35:42,060
And actually what’s funny is Nick is
editing this video, so I love you Nick,

599
00:35:42,060 –> 00:35:46,620
but that’s just the way it works. This
is our craft, and if we care about this,

600
00:35:46,620 –> 00:35:48,870
we want to upgrade and we
want to get the new stuff,

601
00:35:48,870 –> 00:35:51,060
I want to see if we can push the envelope.
I want to see if we can improve and

602
00:35:51,060 –> 00:35:53,400
whatnot. And I think I
see this a lot too, again,

603
00:35:53,400 –> 00:35:54,900
with kind of videographers
or photographers,

604
00:35:54,930 –> 00:35:57,120
they also kind of gravitate
towards a platform.

605
00:35:57,120 –> 00:36:01,260
Are you a cannon type of photographer?
Are you into the Sony platform?

606
00:36:01,260 –> 00:36:04,230
Are you a Nikon person? I think
that’s more rare, but yeah,

607
00:36:04,230 –> 00:36:05,880
it just all plays together. And man,

608
00:36:05,880 –> 00:36:08,670
if you can continually
innovate and extend the line,

609
00:36:09,240 –> 00:36:13,530
you can grow with your existing base.
And that is a beautiful thing. Well,

610
00:36:13,530 –> 00:36:16,050
we’ve kept the people
waiting long enough. Connor,

611
00:36:16,050 –> 00:36:20,670
let’s talk about how did you
drop your CACs by 70% and improve

612
00:36:20,670 –> 00:36:24,090
quality? Walk us through
that. Alright, Brett,

613
00:36:24,090 –> 00:36:26,940
we’re going tread very carefully into.

614
00:36:26,940 –> 00:36:28,890
Some very hot political waters here.

615
00:36:30,210 –> 00:36:31,043
Yeah,

616
00:36:32,070 –> 00:36:36,420
anything we say related to this is maybe
going to change 15 times in the next

617
00:36:36,420 –> 00:36:37,253
couple of months. Who knows?

618
00:36:37,260 –> 00:36:41,520
Yeah, so the company we were scaling,

619
00:36:42,090 –> 00:36:47,010
and I knew all along that the problem
I had with Diamondback was that I

620
00:36:47,010 –> 00:36:51,840
had a luxury product that had a luxury
cost. And what I mean by that is, look,

621
00:36:51,840 –> 00:36:56,010
a Louis Vuitton bag doesn’t cost any more
than the bag to make than the bag you

622
00:36:56,010 –> 00:36:58,110
buy at Walmart. It’s the same thing.

623
00:36:58,140 –> 00:37:00,720
It’s just that one of them
has a different logo on it.

624
00:37:01,950 –> 00:37:05,550
Unfortunately with my product versus
the product you can buy at the big box

625
00:37:05,550 –> 00:37:07,770
store is it really does cost.

626
00:37:08,910 –> 00:37:12,420
The price is four times as much and the
cost is four times as much because we

627
00:37:12,420 –> 00:37:16,470
were making it in the United States,
which was a huge brand color for us,

628
00:37:16,470 –> 00:37:17,400
made in the usa,

629
00:37:19,560 –> 00:37:23,370
the term made in USA is actually a legal
term and there’s certain requirements

630
00:37:23,370 –> 00:37:28,350
around it. And the FTC
came after us and said,

631
00:37:28,350 –> 00:37:31,920
Hey, you’re not made in USA because
you’re using too much foreign content.

632
00:37:31,980 –> 00:37:36,810
And they asked us to prove where every
material that we used in the product

633
00:37:36,810 –> 00:37:39,720
came from and whether or not we had the
right percentage and blah, blah, blah,

634
00:37:39,720 –> 00:37:44,280
blah, blah. And I mean we’re
talking 10, 15% was of the cost,

635
00:37:44,610 –> 00:37:47,580
labor materials, everything was
coming from outside the United States.

636
00:37:47,580 –> 00:37:50,910
And they said that wasn’t good enough.
Then when we asked what would be good

637
00:37:50,910 –> 00:37:54,150
enough, they wouldn’t give us an
accurate, got to be this percent.

638
00:37:55,050 –> 00:37:56,580
And we said this is ridiculous.

639
00:37:57,390 –> 00:38:00,870
And so we made a flying leap, which was

640
00:38:02,760 –> 00:38:07,710
we can go to Asia and we can make this
product a lot less expensively and

641
00:38:08,010 –> 00:38:09,390
I’m sure we can make it just as good.

642
00:38:10,050 –> 00:38:13,350
And the reason we’re getting in trouble
here is because we’re bringing materials

643
00:38:13,350 –> 00:38:18,150
in from Asia that aren’t sourced from
the United States because we don’t make

644
00:38:18,150 –> 00:38:18,983
them here.

645
00:38:19,650 –> 00:38:24,120
The cut and sew industry in the United
States is basically the military and some

646
00:38:24,120 –> 00:38:28,860
small brands and just the
whole base is just not

647
00:38:28,860 –> 00:38:32,880
there. And besides the people who
are willing to do that kind of work,

648
00:38:33,570 –> 00:38:34,170
oddly enough,

649
00:38:34,170 –> 00:38:37,210
the people who are doing all work from
us were either Vietnamese or Mexican,

650
00:38:37,540 –> 00:38:42,310
depending upon which American
factory we had in the United States.

651
00:38:43,930 –> 00:38:48,640
So we started this long process
of moving to Vietnam and it

652
00:38:48,880 –> 00:38:52,960
quickly became apparent
that we could drop CACs

653
00:38:53,980 –> 00:38:57,130
60, 70% by moving to Vietnam.

654
00:38:58,570 –> 00:38:59,403
And then

655
00:39:00,880 –> 00:39:05,560
the book of materials that
we could use of just like

656
00:39:05,650 –> 00:39:08,380
fabrics went from like, oh, you
can pick one of these three,

657
00:39:08,380 –> 00:39:13,030
so you can pick one of this 3000 when
it comes to zippers, buttons, buckles,

658
00:39:13,030 –> 00:39:13,863
all this stuff.

659
00:39:13,930 –> 00:39:17,290
Here’s a little book that’s the size
of your kid’s high school notebook,

660
00:39:17,650 –> 00:39:21,790
or here’s a binder set like the
encyclopedia you had as a kid.

661
00:39:21,790 –> 00:39:25,030
I mean it was radically different. Oh,

662
00:39:25,120 –> 00:39:27,400
you don’t like any of the
fabrics that we have now? Well,

663
00:39:27,400 –> 00:39:30,490
tell us what you want and we’ll make
it for you. You got a custom color,

664
00:39:30,490 –> 00:39:32,110
no problem. How much do you want?

665
00:39:33,700 –> 00:39:37,000
So we were actually able to go out and
find all this great stuff and we found

666
00:39:37,210 –> 00:39:40,540
there’s some stuff that it’s proprietary
about some of these large companies.

667
00:39:40,540 –> 00:39:43,240
We can say, Hey, we want something
like this, but we want it better.

668
00:39:43,240 –> 00:39:46,060
We want it thicker, stronger,
whatever. And they say, okay, fine.

669
00:39:46,390 –> 00:39:47,440
We can figure out how to do that.

670
00:39:50,860 –> 00:39:55,240
So it took us about two years to
make the shift just from a cashflow

671
00:39:55,240 –> 00:39:57,760
perspective, because when you’re
making stuff in the United States,

672
00:39:57,760 –> 00:39:59,890
it’s like every week
you’ve got stuff coming in,

673
00:39:59,890 –> 00:40:04,690
you’re paying for it every week versus
in Asia, and we were in Vietnam,

674
00:40:04,690 –> 00:40:07,930
we did make a very strong, I was
like, I’m not working with China,

675
00:40:07,930 –> 00:40:10,360
which I guess was a
good thing politically.

676
00:40:10,990 –> 00:40:12,130
That worked in your favor for sure.

677
00:40:12,640 –> 00:40:15,280
And we also found that China,

678
00:40:16,030 –> 00:40:19,180
it’s like a red flag for
people. They’re like,

679
00:40:19,690 –> 00:40:21,670
I don’t care where he goes as long.
This is not China. Like, dude,

680
00:40:21,670 –> 00:40:22,360
we’re going to Vietnam.

681
00:40:22,360 –> 00:40:26,230
They’re like great people and they are
the nicest people in the world ever have

682
00:40:26,470 –> 00:40:27,640
opportunity to go over there to visit.

683
00:40:30,130 –> 00:40:34,780
And so it took a long time and
it took a change of our story.

684
00:40:35,740 –> 00:40:38,920
But the thing that kept
rattling around in my brain,

685
00:40:38,920 –> 00:40:41,170
there’s a book called Blue Ocean Strategy,

686
00:40:42,370 –> 00:40:46,780
I think I had it home and I took it back
to the office and it’s all about when

687
00:40:46,780 –> 00:40:48,820
you make a product that’s got
too many bells and whistles,

688
00:40:49,540 –> 00:40:51,400
when you make a product that
has too many bells and whistles,

689
00:40:52,000 –> 00:40:54,670
the value proposition doesn’t
align with your customer.

690
00:40:57,730 –> 00:41:01,990
We kept adding features to the product
like, oh, you can put this product in,

691
00:41:01,990 –> 00:41:03,880
you can put this drill
bit here, you do this.

692
00:41:04,270 –> 00:41:07,960
But we never could get all the features
that people wanted because it was too

693
00:41:07,960 –> 00:41:08,620
expensive.

694
00:41:08,620 –> 00:41:13,300
But what we realized was the blocking
feature was that made in the USA

695
00:41:13,300 –> 00:41:16,240
label. So when we took that away,

696
00:41:17,110 –> 00:41:21,460
we were able to add all these other
features that people wanted and

697
00:41:21,940 –> 00:41:23,320
able to keep the price the same,

698
00:41:25,540 –> 00:41:30,430
turn the company from basically
just cash pouring out the door.

699
00:41:30,430 –> 00:41:35,270
And literally we were selling
all the inventory down to

700
00:41:35,270 –> 00:41:38,720
try to keep the company going while we
made this transition because we just

701
00:41:38,720 –> 00:41:43,670
could not scale with a product that costs
that much while also paying OMG to run

702
00:41:43,670 –> 00:41:47,660
our ads. And that does
not mean we’re more.

703
00:41:47,660 –> 00:41:48,980
Expensive than other
agencies. You want to.

704
00:41:48,980 –> 00:41:51,110
Call that? No, it doesn’t.
No. What it does mean, Brett,

705
00:41:51,110 –> 00:41:55,100
is that you can grow a certain level
by just organic Instagram power,

706
00:41:55,100 –> 00:41:58,010
just dedication of being on
Instagram all day every day.

707
00:41:58,010 –> 00:41:59,270
And you can get to a certain level,

708
00:41:59,510 –> 00:42:03,740
but once you have to start running ad
campaigns and reaching people who aren’t

709
00:42:04,250 –> 00:42:05,083
on Instagram.

710
00:42:05,210 –> 00:42:05,610
Man, it.

711
00:42:05,610 –> 00:42:06,650
Takes money.

712
00:42:07,670 –> 00:42:11,720
It takes money, it does. And that
requires cashflow. Not just profits,

713
00:42:11,720 –> 00:42:13,400
not just sales, but cashflow.

714
00:42:14,300 –> 00:42:19,280
And so we got to a point where we
were able to make a product that

715
00:42:19,280 –> 00:42:22,520
is definitively better. It
has a much better feature set,

716
00:42:22,910 –> 00:42:24,380
the quality of construction.

717
00:42:25,730 –> 00:42:29,540
This is no slight to the folks who are
making products in the United States and

718
00:42:29,540 –> 00:42:30,410
the manufacturers we had,

719
00:42:30,410 –> 00:42:32,870
we had some wonderful manufacturing
partners in the United States,

720
00:42:33,680 –> 00:42:36,110
but the first time we
got stuff from Vietnam,

721
00:42:37,550 –> 00:42:42,140
we got a letter from this third
party inspector saying it all failed.

722
00:42:42,890 –> 00:42:44,480
And we were like, oh my
God, what have we done?

723
00:42:44,960 –> 00:42:48,560
And they started sending us pictures of
the failures and we just started rolling

724
00:42:48,560 –> 00:42:50,240
on the floor laughing. We
were like, are you kidding?

725
00:42:50,630 –> 00:42:52,460
This looks better than
anything we’ve ever had.

726
00:42:53,420 –> 00:42:58,400
It’s just the level of perfectionism
from those manufacturers and

727
00:42:58,400 –> 00:43:02,630
they had better machines, bigger, stronger
machines, more experienced workers.

728
00:43:03,050 –> 00:43:07,160
That’s what they do day
in and day out. And man,

729
00:43:07,160 –> 00:43:10,790
I went over there and visited those
factories and man, they are amazing,

730
00:43:10,790 –> 00:43:14,300
the efficiency, just attention to detail.

731
00:43:14,840 –> 00:43:18,860
And so we were just like, failure,
that thing looks better than anything.

732
00:43:18,860 –> 00:43:20,990
Just put that thing on a boat
and get it over here, man.

733
00:43:23,000 –> 00:43:25,070
So it’s a better product
as far as the feature set,

734
00:43:25,070 –> 00:43:27,050
better product in terms
of the construction,

735
00:43:27,320 –> 00:43:30,200
better product because of the
materials that we’re able to source.

736
00:43:31,010 –> 00:43:34,670
And our goal was to do that for our
customer and keep the price the same.

737
00:43:36,290 –> 00:43:38,630
And that’s what we did. At the same time,

738
00:43:38,630 –> 00:43:41,480
we were able to take the products we
had been making and start to create this

739
00:43:41,840 –> 00:43:44,300
bifurcation system that we
have a better and best line.

740
00:43:44,300 –> 00:43:48,950
And our best line is light years ahead
of anything else out there in the

741
00:43:48,950 –> 00:43:53,360
market. And our better is very
comparable to our closest competitor

742
00:43:54,710 –> 00:43:56,810
in terms of the look, feel, everything.

743
00:43:56,990 –> 00:44:01,040
It was started by a guy who left the
employment of Diamondback before I owned

744
00:44:01,040 –> 00:44:04,460
Diamondback. There’s a long
weird story about that,

745
00:44:05,270 –> 00:44:07,910
but I’m able to make a product just
the same as theirs. But you know what?

746
00:44:08,000 –> 00:44:09,770
It’s less expensive. So

747
00:44:11,840 –> 00:44:13,130
we’ve been talking a lot about Apple.

748
00:44:14,720 –> 00:44:19,460
They’re not in main in Wisconsin
totally at some point in

749
00:44:19,460 –> 00:44:23,600
time. And also for Diamondback,
half of our business is global.

750
00:44:26,270 –> 00:44:30,110
In the US is important. Manufacturing
jobs in America, American jobs,

751
00:44:30,530 –> 00:44:31,650
I’m from South Carolina, man,

752
00:44:32,460 –> 00:44:35,130
nobody wants those jobs
working in those cotton mills.

753
00:44:35,400 –> 00:44:38,170
Jobs. Not the same kind.
Those are not the jobs.

754
00:44:38,260 –> 00:44:40,230
Those jobs left South
Carolina when I was a kid.

755
00:44:40,230 –> 00:44:42,690
And those same families
are now making BMWs.

756
00:44:42,990 –> 00:44:44,400
Lemme tell you which one pays better.

757
00:44:44,590 –> 00:44:48,000
Yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure.
No, it totally makes sense, man.

758
00:44:48,000 –> 00:44:52,890
I love this because this is one of
those things where as we look at how

759
00:44:52,890 –> 00:44:56,310
as a D two C brand or
an omnichannel brand,

760
00:44:56,580 –> 00:45:00,840
how do you improve profits?
How do you improve cashflow?

761
00:45:00,840 –> 00:45:04,020
How do you convert and cash to sales,
sales to cash, cash, inver cycle,

762
00:45:04,020 –> 00:45:06,780
all that. It really does start with CACs.

763
00:45:06,900 –> 00:45:09,030
You’ve got to get CACs at a certain point.

764
00:45:09,330 –> 00:45:11,610
You got to continually be
optimizing and maximizing that.

765
00:45:12,450 –> 00:45:16,290
And when your CACs are at, I’m
just going to make up a number,

766
00:45:16,290 –> 00:45:17,670
this is not reflective of yours,

767
00:45:17,670 –> 00:45:21,960
but if your CACs are at 20% of your
retail price versus 50% of your retail

768
00:45:21,960 –> 00:45:24,870
price, that’s a completely
different business.

769
00:45:24,870 –> 00:45:28,560
And so being able to reduce that is huge,

770
00:45:28,560 –> 00:45:32,730
especially while improving quality and
consistency and innovation and all those

771
00:45:32,730 –> 00:45:35,340
things. And so goes to you guys on that.

772
00:45:35,910 –> 00:45:37,920
It opens up so many more opportunities.

773
00:45:39,900 –> 00:45:41,610
And a lot of people think, well, Connie,

774
00:45:41,610 –> 00:45:46,110
you’re just making money off of this
hands and fist because half of a bunch of

775
00:45:46,110 –> 00:45:50,460
your sales are online. Well, I tell
people all the time, there’s Amazon,

776
00:45:50,460 –> 00:45:52,710
there’s online, there’s dealers,

777
00:45:52,710 –> 00:45:54,990
there’s wholesalers that
trickle down to dealers.

778
00:45:55,500 –> 00:45:57,730
You’re giving up certain
things with each one of those.

779
00:45:58,020 –> 00:46:00,750
There are a lot of costs to go into
each one of those hundred percent.

780
00:46:00,750 –> 00:46:03,930
You’re doing FBA, Amazon, you’re
paying Amazon a ton of money,

781
00:46:05,580 –> 00:46:10,080
managing a lot of your stuff.
If I sell to a wholesaler,

782
00:46:10,080 –> 00:46:12,540
I’m going to give them a lot of margin,

783
00:46:12,780 –> 00:46:16,380
but they’re also going to have to go out
and find dealers for me and do all it’s

784
00:46:16,380 –> 00:46:18,840
partnership. If I’m selling online,

785
00:46:19,590 –> 00:46:23,430
I’ve got to get customers there because
people don’t just walk down the street

786
00:46:23,430 –> 00:46:27,150
and stumble across a website. I
have to get eyes to that website,

787
00:46:27,150 –> 00:46:28,260
which costs a lot of money.

788
00:46:28,740 –> 00:46:30,540
You’re paying Google, you’re paying
YouTube, you’re paying me, you’re paying.

789
00:46:31,590 –> 00:46:33,840
It’s all expensive. So
you got to factor that in.

790
00:46:33,840 –> 00:46:37,620
And if you don’t have the right
margins, you are immediately behind.

791
00:46:37,620 –> 00:46:42,360
And so love that kind of, and we’re
getting a little bit tight on time.

792
00:46:42,360 –> 00:46:44,490
It’s probably just a
couple more topics here.

793
00:46:44,790 –> 00:46:49,470
I know you’re passionate about
financial success and even I think

794
00:46:49,470 –> 00:46:54,360
spoke at was University of Virginia
maybe recently talking about this?

795
00:46:54,360 –> 00:46:58,800
And it’s been one of the trends in DC
eCom that I’ve loved where there was a

796
00:46:58,800 –> 00:47:03,180
period of time early pandemic and mid
pandemic where people were just like,

797
00:47:03,210 –> 00:47:05,580
grow, grow, grow. Who cares?
We’ll figure out money later.

798
00:47:05,970 –> 00:47:08,220
So now everybody’s obsessing over,

799
00:47:08,760 –> 00:47:12,900
let’s create profitable growth and
let’s treat this a real business and

800
00:47:12,900 –> 00:47:13,500
understand that.

801
00:47:13,500 –> 00:47:17,100
And so that’s where we want to see get
insights and all of our clients is this

802
00:47:17,100 –> 00:47:19,350
profitable growth is, it’s not
profitable growth, things like that.

803
00:47:19,710 –> 00:47:21,750
But what financial
lessons have you learned?

804
00:47:21,750 –> 00:47:24,030
What insights can you share with us?

805
00:47:24,240 –> 00:47:26,250
Yeah, I mean I was
definitely in that same era.

806
00:47:26,760 –> 00:47:29,650
We were hitting our biggest
growth during COVID.

807
00:47:30,220 –> 00:47:32,320
COVID was a fantastic
time for us financially.

808
00:47:32,320 –> 00:47:34,540
We just grew and grew and
grew and grew. And yeah,

809
00:47:34,960 –> 00:47:38,860
our idea was we’ll figure
out the cost play. Well,

810
00:47:39,640 –> 00:47:43,390
we figured it out a little bit
too late, but not too late.

811
00:47:43,420 –> 00:47:47,140
We were able to correct
things. But yeah, for me,

812
00:47:48,550 –> 00:47:50,350
I don’t have a finance background.

813
00:47:50,470 –> 00:47:54,910
I took one accounting class in
community college 30, 25 years ago,

814
00:47:54,910 –> 00:47:57,520
something like that. I know
enough to be dangerous.

815
00:47:58,360 –> 00:48:02,380
But the main lesson that I learned was

816
00:48:03,190 –> 00:48:06,700
don’t give too much authority to
any one person in your organization.

817
00:48:06,700 –> 00:48:09,970
I had a COO for a while, and
that was a total disaster.

818
00:48:10,810 –> 00:48:14,560
I tried to kind of say, okay,
well he’s got this under control.

819
00:48:14,560 –> 00:48:18,700
I’m going to go do some other stuff.
You’ve really got to get down and

820
00:48:18,700 –> 00:48:21,670
understand the financial
aspects of your business.

821
00:48:21,670 –> 00:48:26,170
And what I told those folks in this class
was that comes down to understanding

822
00:48:26,440 –> 00:48:29,620
cash. Cash is king. You’ve
heard it before. Guess what?

823
00:48:29,740 –> 00:48:31,630
No matter what you try
to do to get around that,

824
00:48:31,630 –> 00:48:35,830
no matter how smart you think you’re
cash is still king. So for me,

825
00:48:36,130 –> 00:48:37,360
I have a daily process.

826
00:48:38,500 –> 00:48:43,330
My daily process is I’ve got this
wonderful tool, my cell phone,

827
00:48:43,900 –> 00:48:47,950
and I can see how much
I sold online yesterday.

828
00:48:48,610 –> 00:48:50,260
I know how much I sold
on Amazon yesterday.

829
00:48:50,710 –> 00:48:52,600
I know how many deal
orders I got yesterday.

830
00:48:52,690 –> 00:48:55,000
I know the cash cycle
for each one of those.

831
00:48:55,000 –> 00:48:58,450
I that if I sell stuff
on Friday on Shopify,

832
00:48:58,450 –> 00:48:59,890
I don’t see that money till Tuesday.

833
00:49:01,250 –> 00:49:04,030
I know when I pull money from PayPal,

834
00:49:04,030 –> 00:49:07,030
how long it takes to get there.
So I know all that.

835
00:49:08,020 –> 00:49:10,180
I know how much money I
have in my bank account.

836
00:49:10,990 –> 00:49:13,180
I know where all my
credit cards limits are.

837
00:49:13,180 –> 00:49:14,470
I know where all my lots of credit are.

838
00:49:14,470 –> 00:49:17,890
I know all of those things on a
daily basis. I know those things.

839
00:49:17,890 –> 00:49:20,170
One of the first things I do in the
mornings check, all of those things.

840
00:49:22,090 –> 00:49:23,530
When I get to my office in the morning,

841
00:49:23,530 –> 00:49:26,410
I sit down with my staff accountant
who tells me all of those things and I

842
00:49:26,710 –> 00:49:28,630
happily say, you know what, Sheila?

843
00:49:28,630 –> 00:49:32,860
I was off by about 5% of the number
that you just told me was what was our

844
00:49:32,860 –> 00:49:36,580
available cash. There’s always some
things that she knows that I don’t know.

845
00:49:37,810 –> 00:49:42,220
Sometimes I know some things she
doesn’t know. But then knowing that,

846
00:49:42,310 –> 00:49:44,200
and then we can go through
the AR report together,

847
00:49:44,200 –> 00:49:46,000
we can go through the AP report together,

848
00:49:47,140 –> 00:49:50,650
and then she has old school paper
calendar and we look at, okay,

849
00:49:50,650 –> 00:49:53,080
we got to pay this bill this week,
this week, this week, this week.

850
00:49:53,080 –> 00:49:55,360
We know monthly run rates and all of that.

851
00:49:56,320 –> 00:50:00,730
Now I know all of those things because
I had to learn those things when the

852
00:50:00,730 –> 00:50:02,740
company was about to go under.

853
00:50:03,010 –> 00:50:03,843
Yeah, yeah.

854
00:50:04,270 –> 00:50:06,340
We are now in a very
healthy financial position,

855
00:50:06,340 –> 00:50:08,170
but I still look at
those things every day.

856
00:50:08,530 –> 00:50:09,363
Got.

857
00:50:09,580 –> 00:50:12,310
You. And from there,

858
00:50:13,570 –> 00:50:17,680
when the month closes, it’s the 10th of
the month right now. 10th of September.

859
00:50:17,680 –> 00:50:18,580
We’re recording this.

860
00:50:19,060 –> 00:50:22,060
I don’t have my financials for
my outside accounting firm yet,

861
00:50:22,330 –> 00:50:24,400
but I can tell you what they’re
going to look like. Yeah.

862
00:50:25,720 –> 00:50:27,710
Because I can look at the trends.

863
00:50:27,710 –> 00:50:31,100
I know how much percentage of
revenue I spend on marketing.

864
00:50:31,760 –> 00:50:34,400
I know what my product margins are, CACs,

865
00:50:34,700 –> 00:50:39,050
I can just go through and I can look
on my different revenue cycles, say,

866
00:50:39,050 –> 00:50:40,250
this is how much money I made,

867
00:50:40,250 –> 00:50:42,830
and then I can just trickle down
from there and I can figure it out.

868
00:50:43,880 –> 00:50:45,530
It comes in, there’s some variances,

869
00:50:45,530 –> 00:50:47,540
there’s some things that
pop up month to month,

870
00:50:47,540 –> 00:50:50,780
but I know that and because
I know it that well,

871
00:50:50,990 –> 00:50:52,340
that means I can build a forecast.

872
00:50:53,510 –> 00:50:54,343
Yeah.

873
00:50:55,880 –> 00:50:58,940
Monthly accounting. It’s
nice, but it’s looking back,

874
00:50:59,210 –> 00:51:01,250
if you’re the owner of
the company ceo, his.

875
00:51:01,910 –> 00:51:03,080
It’s what happened.

876
00:51:03,200 –> 00:51:06,290
Yeah. You got to be looking forward.
And your accountant cannot do that.

877
00:51:06,620 –> 00:51:08,660
Your accountant doesn’t have
the skillset to do that,

878
00:51:08,660 –> 00:51:11,720
and they don’t know what new
products you got coming out.

879
00:51:11,720 –> 00:51:14,240
They don’t know your product
release schedule. So you
need to know those things,

880
00:51:15,380 –> 00:51:17,330
but you got to build your own forecast.

881
00:51:18,440 –> 00:51:22,010
It takes a few months of revenue so
that you can start to see those trends,

882
00:51:22,010 –> 00:51:23,540
what’s related to what.

883
00:51:23,990 –> 00:51:28,100
But if you can do that and then build
your forecast every month when the books

884
00:51:28,100 –> 00:51:31,160
do close, you look back and say, where
does that match up in my forecast?

885
00:51:31,400 –> 00:51:32,330
Where was I off?

886
00:51:33,410 –> 00:51:36,380
Hopefully you were off because you made
more money than you thought you were

887
00:51:36,380 –> 00:51:36,890
going to.

888
00:51:36,890 –> 00:51:41,030
But that doesn’t affect the percentages
and the relationships between all those

889
00:51:41,030 –> 00:51:44,270
categories. And once you’re to the
point where you can start doing that,

890
00:51:44,270 –> 00:51:45,620
then you understand your business.

891
00:51:46,700 –> 00:51:50,030
Yeah. It’s so good, man. So good.

892
00:51:50,030 –> 00:51:54,440
Understanding the history, understanding
all of those things you talked about.

893
00:51:54,650 –> 00:51:58,430
And there are profitable businesses
that go out of business all the time.

894
00:51:58,940 –> 00:52:02,780
They’re turning a profit on paper, but
the cash conversion cycle is not healthy.

895
00:52:03,110 –> 00:52:06,530
They do not have the
appropriate amounts of cash,

896
00:52:06,530 –> 00:52:07,610
and so they go out of business.

897
00:52:07,610 –> 00:52:11,630
And it’s one of those things where
in order to forecast properly,

898
00:52:11,960 –> 00:52:15,230
you’ve got to obsess over what’s
happening and what happened.

899
00:52:15,650 –> 00:52:18,770
And the best operators, I know their
numbers like you were just talking about,

900
00:52:19,040 –> 00:52:23,480
we’re teaching and training our team as
best as it fits for particular clients.

901
00:52:24,170 –> 00:52:25,910
Let’s know their numbers like they do.

902
00:52:26,180 –> 00:52:28,820
So that can help us
influence those as well.

903
00:52:28,820 –> 00:52:30,590
And I compare it to people
that I know that are really,

904
00:52:30,590 –> 00:52:33,860
really healthy and I try to be consistent
with hitting the gym and running and

905
00:52:33,860 –> 00:52:35,240
watch what I eat and things
like that I cheat to,

906
00:52:35,240 –> 00:52:37,250
but those things are pretty healthy.

907
00:52:37,970 –> 00:52:41,390
And the healthiest people I know they’re
using an Apple Watch or whoop or an AA

908
00:52:41,390 –> 00:52:44,150
ring and they’re tracking their
data, they’re tracking their inputs,

909
00:52:44,150 –> 00:52:47,390
they’ve got a schedule, they hit
their workouts on an ongoing basis.

910
00:52:47,810 –> 00:52:49,460
People that are unhealthy
that dunno any of that, right?

911
00:52:49,460 –> 00:52:50,570
They’re not looking at it.

912
00:52:51,050 –> 00:52:54,620
And so I think the same is
true with your business.

913
00:52:54,920 –> 00:52:57,080
You’ve got to know the
numbers and then opt Well.

914
00:52:57,800 –> 00:53:01,940
A great place where you can come in to
help on these things with a business is

915
00:53:03,560 –> 00:53:04,970
sometimes you overbuy inventory.

916
00:53:05,690 –> 00:53:09,530
Sometimes you’ve got a big inventory
purchase coming up and it’s like, okay,

917
00:53:09,980 –> 00:53:11,030
we need cash.

918
00:53:12,950 –> 00:53:15,920
And one of the things we’ve learned
over the last few years is where those

919
00:53:15,920 –> 00:53:19,880
levers are. It’s like, is there
a holiday coming up? Sure.

920
00:53:20,510 –> 00:53:23,600
What is it? President’s Day. Okay,
we’re having a President day sale baby.

921
00:53:23,840 –> 00:53:25,110
I don’t care what the holiday is,

922
00:53:25,110 –> 00:53:28,650
but it’s a reason to put on a sale and
so we can generate some quick cash.

923
00:53:29,310 –> 00:53:31,410
And that’s where you
come in and you say, Hey,

924
00:53:31,620 –> 00:53:34,080
I got this great idea
for a campaign. We can

925
00:53:35,670 –> 00:53:37,050
throw some cash at some ads,

926
00:53:37,050 –> 00:53:41,790
we can create some cash for you and a
multiple of that cash spin. And it’s like,

927
00:53:41,790 –> 00:53:44,040
okay, we smooth that
out. Everything’s good.

928
00:53:46,500 –> 00:53:51,420
And unfortunately people now so much
expect Black Friday sales that October for

929
00:53:51,420 –> 00:53:54,450
an online company is a terrible month
because nobody wants to buy in October.

930
00:53:54,450 –> 00:53:55,860
It’s like, Hey, it’s going
on sale next month. Wait.

931
00:53:55,980 –> 00:53:57,270
Let’s just wait. Totally. Yeah.

932
00:53:57,300 –> 00:54:00,510
So you have to start to learn that cycle
of through the year of when people are

933
00:54:00,510 –> 00:54:03,120
buying, when they don’t, and
then you got to figure out, hey,

934
00:54:03,120 –> 00:54:06,000
let’s make a new product to throw
out there that time of year. Let’s

935
00:54:07,680 –> 00:54:11,040
a sale going to be. How do we get eyes
on our website in those slow times?

936
00:54:11,490 –> 00:54:12,240
Right? Right.

937
00:54:12,240 –> 00:54:16,290
It’s the Amazon developing prime day and
what’s historically the slowest month

938
00:54:16,290 –> 00:54:17,160
of the year, July.

939
00:54:17,160 –> 00:54:20,430
And then now they have a fall prime day
in October like you’re talking about.

940
00:54:20,430 –> 00:54:20,550
Yeah.

941
00:54:20,550 –> 00:54:25,380
What can you do for product release or
some kind of special thing in those slow

942
00:54:25,380 –> 00:54:29,340
months to try to level that
out? This has been brilliant.

943
00:54:29,340 –> 00:54:31,920
We are out of time I do want
to leave just a minute though.

944
00:54:32,250 –> 00:54:36,330
For those that are watching or listing
and they are handy and they’re like,

945
00:54:36,600 –> 00:54:39,990
dang, these products sound amazing.
Where can they check them? But then also,

946
00:54:39,990 –> 00:54:43,080
how can people follow you? I know
you’re starting to put out some content,

947
00:54:43,470 –> 00:54:46,320
you’re doing this, you’re a seasoned
operator, you’re crushing it.

948
00:54:46,320 –> 00:54:48,960
So how can they find your tool
belts? How can they connect with you?

949
00:54:49,650 –> 00:54:52,260
Best way to find a tool
belt is@toolbelts.com.

950
00:54:53,040 –> 00:54:54,780
One of the founders of Diamond url.

951
00:54:55,650 –> 00:54:59,130
Moments of Brilliant early in the
nineties to buy that URL. For me,

952
00:54:59,130 –> 00:55:02,550
probably the best way to reach out
to me is on LinkedIn, Connor Crook.

953
00:55:03,300 –> 00:55:06,210
I think I’m one of the only
Connor Crooks on LinkedIn.

954
00:55:06,210 –> 00:55:08,940
If you see Connor Crook and Diamondback,
that’s the best way to get ahold of me.

955
00:55:09,840 –> 00:55:12,870
And I check it all the
time. I love LinkedIn,

956
00:55:12,870 –> 00:55:16,200
so I’m always happy to meet
new people there and connect.

957
00:55:16,980 –> 00:55:17,670
That’s amazing, man.

958
00:55:17,670 –> 00:55:22,620
And then any sneak peeks of things
that are coming in the future

959
00:55:23,010 –> 00:55:27,480
for Diamondback or for you
as an e-comm influencer?

960
00:55:27,480 –> 00:55:29,790
Any teasers there? And
totally okay if not.

961
00:55:30,930 –> 00:55:33,150
No. The big things we have
coming up, I mentioned the vast,

962
00:55:33,600 –> 00:55:35,430
we’ve got a big re-release
on that next year,

963
00:55:35,430 –> 00:55:37,320
which we’ve been working on for years.

964
00:55:37,320 –> 00:55:39,990
Some really great new technology
that we’re putting into that.

965
00:55:41,280 –> 00:55:45,150
And then we’ve got some ideas
to move into the B2B space,

966
00:55:45,450 –> 00:55:50,010
moving towards sales to large contracting
firms instead of just the smaller

967
00:55:50,010 –> 00:55:51,270
firms and the individual,

968
00:55:51,270 –> 00:55:53,970
which will be open in another
big sales channel for us. So.

969
00:55:55,470 –> 00:56:00,390
That’s where we’re headed. Check it all
out. Diamondback tools tool bells.com,

970
00:56:00,900 –> 00:56:03,780
and Connor Crook on LinkedIn.
Connor has been amazing, man.

971
00:56:03,780 –> 00:56:06,630
Thank you so much for the time
and really, really enjoyed it.

972
00:56:07,170 –> 00:56:08,100
Thanks, Brett, appreciate it.

973
00:56:08,790 –> 00:56:11,670
Absolutely. And as always,
thank you for tuning in.

974
00:56:11,670 –> 00:56:15,300
Let us know what you’d like to hear more
of on the pod. You found this helpful,

975
00:56:15,570 –> 00:56:19,170
share it with somebody who would
benefit from it as well. And with that,

976
00:56:19,170 –> 00:56:20,790
until next time, thank you for listening.

977
00:56:21,180 –> 00:56:24,850
I want to take a minute and tell
you about Loop Subscriptions. Now.

978
00:56:24,850 –> 00:56:29,620
What if one platform transition
could transform your subscription

979
00:56:29,620 –> 00:56:31,900
business overnight? Well,

980
00:56:31,900 –> 00:56:35,590
that’s exactly what happened to
longtime OMG Commerce client Nutri.

981
00:56:36,400 –> 00:56:41,290
They switched to Loop and
grew subscription revenue
from 4% of total revenue

982
00:56:41,650 –> 00:56:43,930
to 20% of total revenue.

983
00:56:44,320 –> 00:56:48,940
OC reduced subscription churn by 50%.

984
00:56:49,330 –> 00:56:54,130
Lumen achieved 12.6% additional
revenue from the payment

985
00:56:54,130 –> 00:56:57,400
recovery feature alone.
Unlike other platforms,

986
00:56:57,640 –> 00:57:02,170
loop includes dedicated success managers
on Slack and costs about 40% less

987
00:57:02,620 –> 00:57:03,670
than the competition.

988
00:57:04,060 –> 00:57:08,560
Plus E-Commerce Evolution listeners
get an additional 50% off the Pro plan

989
00:57:09,070 –> 00:57:13,750
that’s nearly 70% in total savings
compared to other subscription apps.

990
00:57:14,170 –> 00:57:18,910
So if you’re ready to join almost 1100
brands who’ve made the switch to Loop,

991
00:57:19,510 –> 00:57:24,280
visit Loop work co to book your demo.