Born Primitive Went From $200k In PROFIT To $5M In One Year. Here's How. transcript

Bear Handland is the CEO and co-founder of Born Primitive, a brand that I worked on when they were at like 2 million bucks in revenue a whole bunch of years ago. And since then, we have remained friends. And so, I have gotten to see the meteoric rise of this brand into the mid- eight figures. Not without problems, though. And that's what we're going to talk about on this Profit Monsters episode of the show. All these Profit Monsters interviews I've done have been with brands in the eight figures building profitable businesses.

But this one is a little bit like the first one I did where that did not come without some challenges along the way. Let me take you back to the office of Bear Handlin in Virginia Beach where Bear and I sat and talked about how things were going badly a little later when we had started working together again at some point for a shorter project and then tell you about how Bear went from 5 million in profit to 200K in profit back to 5 million in profit over a few years and what the future of this business holds. incredible apparel brand whose clothes I'm wearing this very moment and whose clothes I've worn for a long time and have loved for a long time.

Let's get into it with Bear Hanland from Born Primitive Right now. Bear, we were sitting in your office in Virginia Beach and I remember you slid the P&L across the desk to me and we were working I was doing like a smaller creative project with you guys, like a few a fewer month thing to try to get some things done to to mix levels of success I would say. But like the at one point in the midst of me being out there and just kind of visiting the office, checking it out, you slid the P&L across the desk and you're like, "Dude, this is this is the last couple months." And in the midst of that, you were also trying to sell the business at the time.

Uh, and correct me if I can't say that publicly. We will wipe that that comment, but I'm pretty sure that's okay. Um, and um and you saw the P&L across and it was like loss, loss, loss, loss month after month. Um, it was dark. Like I remember that meeting and it was like we were looking at it and it wasn't super obvious necessarily how to get out of it if memory serves although I think it became obvious over more time.

Do you remember that moment? Oh yeah. Yeah, I do man. And yeah, we were in a process um we weren't going to sell the whole thing. We were probably going to sell um about 20% at that time. We had a we were under a letter of intent um for a pretty good uh equity plus debt deal that would have you know provide some good liquidity for me and my family. Um and uh yeah, we were right in the thick of it, man. I you know, March of 2023, I think Silicon Valley Bank collapsed.

Um that threw our deal kind of uh down the down the the tubes. Um even though we didn't know it right when it happened. Um and you know, as you probably know, when you're in a process, you want to obviously maintain numbers, right? So you're at all cost trying to maintain topline revenue because like when you're in a 90-day due diligence, like you don't want things to fall off a cliff and then they go, "Hey, what's going on here?

We were we were good 3 months ago, but now we're a little iffy. So, as you remember, we were being super hyperfocused on customer acquisition. And I don't know if you remember our fill the Big House campaign, which for the listeners, I had a giant print out of Michigan's Big House football stadium. And I said, "Hey, we want to acquire 110,000 people in 2023." Um, and that's our goal. So every month we would look at how many new customers we acquired and we would fill in a a section of the stadium with a with a Sharpie to show like our progress for the year.

Now it wasn't purely scientific. We were kind of guessing obviously but that was the big visual um every day when employees walked in they saw. So at the time we thought that was the right thing to do. As you recall our CAC um you know went up significantly. Our first order profitability dropped into the negatives for the first time ever. Um, at the time we were okay with it because we thought we were going to get that on the back end, but the consumer had changed a bit as we know.

We were, you know, I think in June of 2022 was like one of the lowest consumer sentiment reports. Maybe it was July of that. So, we were at a time where things had the goalpost had changed. We went from having the co COVID tailwind to now the headwind, which we weren't used to. Um, and yeah, we we got punched in the nose a little bit, but honestly, that was good. I think that those are some of the best things that can happen to a business because it really forces you to look at everything really carefully and because when you have the COVID tailwind, you think everything works and I think it overinflates all of our abilities like we we think we're better than we are.

Um, and it's it's a bit sobering once things normalize a bit more and you realize, oh, like those 200 CrossFit athletes that we're paying like $400 a month to, like we thought was some brilliant marketing plan. Okay, that's not actually doing anything for our business. but you could get away with it on your P&L when you know there's all this extra discretionary income and things like that. So, you know, once you get the headwind, it kind of exposes things that aren't working.

And that's the, you know, the the long story short of what we had to do. We had to kind of take our medicine. Uh, and I think June of 2023 was like the low point. Yeah, you called it out. It was like we were we were had only made money in January. Like the previous 5 months, we had lost money. I think we had lost $2 million to date. I had just had to pay the M&A attorney uh uh the $200,000 M&A bill on the deal that didn't happen.

You know, another 120 grand for a quality of earnings we had to do. So, it was like it all happened at once. The deal's done. You're 2 million in the hole for the year and you're like, what do we do now? Um and uh we made it work though. We're we're on a really good path now. I'm as I'm more bullish than I've ever been probably by a 10x multiple right now. Um and um there's a lot of good things in the works, man. I want to come back to that like what makes you so excited about it right now because I think you've always had big vision for the brand like just having worked with you for a while but I I wouldn't say I would strike you strike me as like um I mean you you've always taken huge swings.

It's one of the really fun things about working with you actually is like you you certainly push my imagination beyond what I think um is normally possible. I I tend to think within a more confined box, but uh working with you, you know, there's just like there's been a lot of times you be like, I don't know, let's try it. And you you put a bunch of money down and see what happens. And and I wouldn't say in a way that was stupid, but in a way that recognized that for a brand to be great, you have to you have to do things that are interesting.

And so you've always been willing to try things that are interesting, but I wouldn't say you struck me as like overly optimistic at the same time in the sense of like you don't go into those things going like this is definitely going to work and generate all the money. You know, it's more like there's there's some risk. So I want to come back to to in a second why that happens but can I want to dig a little more into the specifics and the tactics of like that the moment.

So So you did 5 million in profit in 22 I think you said. Yeah. A little over five. It was about five and a half. Don how much revenue do you remember? Uh 36. Okay. Yeah. Great. And then so I mean that's really healthy. And then you you know well growing a bunch. Okay. That's which is important. Okay. And then you go back down to 200k in profit. So essentially, for all intents and purposes, break even by the time the year um backed out and then you went back up the next year towards 5 million in profit or something like that.

Yeah. A little north of five um in in 24, which isn't where we want to be, of course, but like it's absolutely a bounce back from 200k, right, in just a one-year period. Really big bounce back. So you mentioned one of the things right there, which was CAC. So you let your CAC get high. There's a couple of reasons for that. Um, this is actually one of the things I always say to brands when I talk to them is is at the time, like if I'm looking at somebody's ad account, you know, I I I always want to be slow to be like, "Oh, they're doing all these stupid things wrong." Because there's all kinds of reasons people do stuff that are like beyond the most obvious thing.

But, you know, one of them was you were possibly doing a deal. I remember you telling me at the time the people who you were doing that deal with, you're back on the phone with them all the time saying like, "This is not the way we would normally run the business. Are you sure you want us to run the business this way?" You know, like you're really trying to do that, but you also don't have their money yet. So, there's a competing thing there.

There's some stuff around trying to be aggressive about growth, like all of those kinds of things, but like can you hone in on what the central costs were that that sapped your profit besides lawyer fees, which you just mentioned a few hundred,000 worth of those? Um, but besides that, like what were the central costs? Was it was it pretty much all about CAC or or or was there more to it than that? I I think that was the main driver.

Yes. I mean, there were little things as as a company, you know, when you you look under the hood, you can cut costs, like silly stuff like we realized we're spending like a few grand a month on snacks for the break room, you know, we're like, "All right, we don't need people drinking Red Bull Sugar Freeze every day. Like, we can I know that sounds silly, but applying that mentality to the entire business. Uh, you get points back from that way." So, it was a kind of a an overhaul on little things, looking under every rock to find.

But then the biggest one was, yes, was was meta. Um, and and I think this is probably obvious. I'm sure Andrew, you've talked about it a million times, and I'm a regular listener, but uh, you know, when we're acquiring customers, it's important to determine how we're acquiring them. Are we doing a leggings flash sale? We're selling leggings for 30 bucks. Um, or and or is it a product that has a low LTV as it is? So, like, as we know, like a flash sale customer, it has a lower LTV already because they're buying at a crazy discount.

And if that's their first introduction to your brand, well, it's pretty obvious to know like likely they're not going to be a super high LTV. But since we're chasing topline, we were dropping flash sales and so the the rorowaz looked good. Um, but when you look at your margin, right, even though CAC was lower, but if if it's a $30 legging versus an $80 legging, and you know, your costs are what they are now, your gross margins way down now.

Uh, and you know, you see quickly how that's not a formula for success. Although, you know, if you post a $3 million month on revenue that in a year like that, you're like, "Okay, it's a decent decent month." But then you look at the bottom line and like, "Okay, we lost 200 grand that month." Um, as well as you remember some of our products, it rendered low LTV as it is, like our shorts, you know, it's kind of a it's a stretchy men's jean short.

We actually sell a billion of the women's ones like that that and that the LTV of the women's one is actually pretty good. Um, but we were selling like, you know, tens of thousands of units of men's George. it's a $55 item, but there was literally almost no LTV tied to that. So, the ad account quickly was morphing to like Chase, you know, rorowaz and things like that when we weren't looking at the bigger picture of like, you know, a a long-term play.

And and then so we had to, you know, take another look at, all right, we need to rebalance this. selling a pair of leggings at $80 full price on a on an evergreen campaign even though CAC's a little higher. that's actually a better financial outcome right up front but also you know within the first year right um and um then we got into new product categories which of course we can get into that opened up Pandora's box for all kinds of new you know prospecting opportunities and and hitting completely different customer cohorts which allowed us to be hit that early adopter part of the curve again which we had hit you know six years ago with fitness and now we're hitting the early adopter curve of tactical and in hunting in footwear, right?

Um that allowed us to get way more efficient in some of our acquisition on some of those new endeavors that were just starting to be um born during that really hard time. There's so much there in that answer and it fits so many things that I've been thinking about recently and I love it. Um let's start with the LTV side. So I do remember those flash sales and thinking about that and and it's it's interesting. You hear people say this thing all the time, which is like running big discounts is um bad for the brand and you get worse customers, but that's actually not always true, right?

Like for some brands, discount customers actually are pretty sticky. They just come back and buy a discount every time, but they're like you just acquire them at a higher OS or whatever. You guys, it sounds like you guys discovered that that just simply wasn't the case. Cuz I remember even you talking about like having too many leggings on hand, but just knowing that leggings customers were really valuable. And so it was like you were pretty willing to go and acquire leggings customers at a more aggressive CAC because they were they were coming back.

But did you guys actually do the analysis and find like oh no if they buy on a big discount they they do not come back at the same level. Exactly. You know we look at the 60-day LTV as the first data point and then we go out to 6 months in a year and it was pretty consistent. Um so I think in those moments you have to determine what is the actual goal. If you have 10,000 units you need to get rid of and convert to cash, like that's a totally different calculus as you know.

Um but if you actually P&L at that point barely matters, right? Like that at that point you just need the cash. Yeah. Yep. And and so as long as you're deliberate knowing that's the intent, I I have no issues with doing something like that. But we kind of made the decision, hey, we have been chasing topline at all costs and we it was influenced by being in a process, you know, um with a letter of intent and and that's, you know, when we go back and do it again, that's absolutely a lesson learned of knowing like, all right, you got to kind of stick to your guns and don't chase that.

Um, I'm sure others do it way worse than we did it, but we were still, you know, oh yeah, let's let's add that flash sale here and let's do this to make sure that the monthly calendar is just so robust that there's no way we're going to miss a topline target. Um, but uh, you know, having to learn the hard way that, um, that's not a sustainable approach. So, in I think it was summer of 23, we made a decision, hey, we're going to rip the band-aid off.

We have to stop discounting so much because we're we're it's like the cry we're crying wolf. people won't buy. And when we do have big kind of cool sales moments like a sitewide sale, which is typically a quarterly event and kind of renders a little bit more excitement when it's not happening all the time, we need to go back to making those real moments in our calendar and not person getting that text message when they're on the lunch break and they roll their eyes like, "Oh, there's another sale they're doing." We had become that.

Um, and uh, so we we ripped the band-aid off. We said, you know, no more flash sales, maybe one or two a year on specific products. We'll still do our quarterly sitewide sale. That's typically 4 days. We'll do our semiannual warehouses and then of course Black Friday, Cyber Monday, but that's it. And in between, we have to have really good prospecting campaigns and run good evergreen ads on high LTV um items that we know will build a customer base that will over time be more profitable for with returning revenue.

Um and kind of, you know, shake the foundation up a little bit. Was that painful to go because to like because I assume that means you lost some short-term revenue like you said like as you cut some sales off. It wasn't that bad because I was willing to have that little transition period cuz we weren't under the scrutiny of like a process anymore. I was like all right we're not going back to the table for at least a couple years.

So if we're you know a couple months uh you know missing um but I said we need to retrain our customers um on on kind of you know our premium image. Uh, and guess what? Every month, if we acquire 8 to 10,000 new customers, within four four or five months, we're going to have a whole new group of people that are the most current that won't know any different anyway. Um, so, you know, we just, and thank God we did that because now that puts us in an incredible position, you know, even with our shoes now, you know what I mean?

Like, we had an evergreen day yesterday that like would have been a sale day a year ago in and the number one skew was one shoe color. You know, we did like six grand of just that one shoe. And that's all evergreen, you know, full price, $130 item, no discount. Yep. I'm also wearing those right now, which you can't see. Oh, there we go. Yeah. Yeah. They're great. If you are trying to build a profitable e-commerce business or a profitable ad agency or anything in the space, you should be considering staffing your team with the same group that I staff my team with, and that is more staffing.

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So that's another thing the product side of things. Well, actually one more thing on LTV. Did you find I mean last we had worked together, you know, women's leggings customers were still the best LTV customers. Maybe maybe especially if we make that distinction between full price and you know especially extreme discounting you know flash sale just move the inventory kind of customers. Um but uh did you find other product categories as you guys did that LTV analysis that you had been neglecting?

Um or or was any of that analysis what led you into other categories? Like I I'm just curious if anything else sort of any as you as you start turning over those stones as you're losing profit in the LTV analysis if anything else kind of bubbled up for you that you had seen. You said jorts were really bad. I remember I mean that I remember from when we were working together. We had kind of discovered that already and already determined like we probably need to have take a a lower CAC on that customer.

You can still sell them, but you just don't expect the LTV on them versus leggings being a really good customer. Was there anything else that came out of that that you can think of? Nothing earthshattering. You know, a lot of the athleisure stuff like joggers did well, sports bras did well. Um and yeah, the the the typical uh offenders like the Jords and stuff. Yeah. Like you remember there was an ad I was chainsawing jeans on the beach into jorts, you know what I mean?

And I'm in jorts and then we had chainsaws and jet skis and like that was an ad we ran one summer and like it it killed it got like a four rorowaz, right? But like when you look at the actual financials we're like all right then all the budget shifted to that because we're like feed feed feed. Um, but that wasn't that's not the like our main pro like you know that was a silly product I made for fun on a deployment one year and it just so happened to do well.

But that's not like we're not going to build a $100 million a year business selling jean shorts, fray jean shorts to men. You know what I mean? I think you got to you got to be a little bit you can't kind of chase um the shiny object sometimes. And I think in the ad account you got to be disciplined. And now we kind of look at it as like a pie chart, you know what I mean? of like in any given month, we want to make sure we're we're fairly balanced in in a variety of categories so we don't end up chasing a category like we did.

Now, obviously that'll change monthto month. If there's a summer collection launch that's fitness, like you know, the pie will get a little bigger for that. Uh and then if like hunting season kicks off and it's in September, like maybe the hunting line gets a little bigger piece of the pie. Um but uh but we're much more I guess m mature and and sophisticated in in how that's all balanced out in the ad account. and it isn't always necessarily trying to chase the highest rorowaz number on a category basis.

So, you've added, you just mentioned three things, tactical, hunting, and for hunting, you know, I don't know if the collection has changed much cuz I'm not a hunter, but we're not talking about sit in a tree stand hunting. We're talking about something a little a little bit more niche than that, frankly, and a little bit uh more, I would say, in the born primitive ethos of aggressiveness than that. I remember just hearing about getting bear tags uh from people I was working with at the time and and going on long hunts and killing bears and I just thought that that fits that fits uh who you are bear and born primitive a little bit more and probably your customer in some ways and then shoes all three of those things like um how how did you make the decision to go into each of those three and like what's been the impact of those cuz I've been hammering hammering hammering like one of the things I think a mistake that a lot of people make is is they they sort of expect the ad account to sort of get past the product selection.

And what I mean is like they have a product collection and they they think that what they can do is just go like run ads forever against that product collection and they just, you know, they listen to everybody say run more creative and if you run more creative then you will um then you'll be able to just sort of scale your ad account for forever against the same set of products. But I think the actual thing more people need to do is the the way you reach new audiences a lot of times and the way you actually scale your creative is to have new products to scale against.

And so I'm curious sort of like yeah like I said like what was the genesis of those three uh things because they're all they're all significantly different categories and you've been in and then um and then sort of how how much was that sort of a strategic decision versus a brand decision and how has it worked out? Yeah, it it's it's been great man. I think that it puts us on a trajectory that we didn't have before. Um, you know, I think it's a blessing that I'm a little bit um naive maybe to our own abilities and I'm a little bit fearless in in in you know, perhaps being a bit overconfident in what we can actually, you know, create and put to market.

But um when I was in the military, you know, I I was a Navy Seal for almost 8 years. The idea of launching tactical and outdoor, which is essentially the hunting line, you know, was born, but I just didn't have the bandwidth. I was, you know, running the fitness side of the brand while also being active duty. It was just a lot. But I said there is a unique product opportunity here. And this is where it gets into like the what is your actual value proposition to the customer, right?

And I think you you have to be brutally honest with yourself and what that is. Um, in the fitness industry, yes, do we make really good stuff? Do we, you know, pay attention to detail and and do all these things? Yes, we do. But so is everyone else, right? So, do we really truly have a unique value proposition to a customer to be able to build a $500 million brand by just selling like really nice leggings and sports bras?

At a time, you know, had we done this um a long time ago, you know, became a Lululemon like first mover advantage, yeah, you probably can. But at this place, you know, at this uh point, there's so many people trying to get into what is a low, very low barrier to entry market and industry that I think you just got to be a little brutally honest of, okay, unless we have some super unique marketing angle that is so much more world-class than everyone else.

We're all doing the same things. We're all running the same types of ads. Um, what is our true unique value proposition? What what can we do differently than everyone else? Well, with my background being in the military, but also owning a fitness apparel brand on the side, I said, "Hey, there's a there's a unique product need in this market." And what I'm getting at is the the the the gear we were getting issued when I was in the SEAL teams was not that good.

Um, I'm talking about the apparel. And here I think we're tip of the spear, you know, whatever you want to say. And I get my first set of pants and I'm like, you got to be kidding me. Um, how am I supposed to climb up the a ladder of a ship with these pants on? I can't move. There's no mobility. Uh, so there were specific features without, you know, nerding out on what they were of, man, they should have done this, this, and this differently.

And when I got out, I said, I think I have a real opportunity now to reverse engineer a lot of these products into a product that actually fits the end users needs so much better. Um, because I think a lot of the big brands that were selling to guys like us were so far removed from being operational that they had forgotten what like the operator needs in let's say a pair of we call op pants, right? And since I was fresh out and I have all these buddies that were still running around the body armor on and things like that, I I was very close to it.

Um, so we took a very specific approach that if you know any special operator or law enforcement guy, whatever you want to say, would put these pants on, they're going to know that every little detail would be thought out and they'll go, "Yep, whoever did this once did this for a living." Um and and so I I think the reason those you know the tactical in the outdoor has been successful is because we actually had a a unique value proposition that was a differentiator in the market.

Uh and that creates a viral coefficient of its own, right? Particularly in the military world. You know, a guy pair wears a pair of our pants, another guy, his teammate go, "Yo, where'd you get those? Those look pretty sweet. Oh, it's born primitive. Oh, I didn't know they had a tactical line." And then before you know it, it goes viral. I don't even have to, you know, pay to acquire any of these people. Um, so that that kind of covered uh tactical and and same thing with outdoor, you know.

Let's hold shoes off for a second because I want to stay there for just a second just to just to stay on that because it's a super interesting point. So you guys are seeing measurable word of mouth on tactical pants like off pants. Oh, dude, it's it's crazy. And I knew that because I knew that's in our in our world. That's how it was. any any guy walked into work one day and had a new piece of gear, everybody like, "Yo, where'd you It's dorky, but we love gear and we love talking about it and we love, you know, so I knew as soon just get this out, the viral coefficient itself will will take care of it, right?" Um, and sure enough, man, you know, um, it it did what we thought it would, but but the product had to be right.

Right. Uh, the ethos of our brand and supporting military and law enforcement wasn't going to be enough. These guys need things that actually fit the job. Um, and and perform at a high level. Uh, and and we're able to get that right. I have a client right now who I seriously think should consider lowering the prices on their product. It's not always the move people want to make, but I think it's there's a lot of reasons to think there's a viable solution for how to generate a whole bunch more scale and profit.

I brought it up on a call today and uh the owner, the founder of the business, the CEO totally open to the idea. And so what are we going to do? We're not just going to go change the price and see what happens. We are going to work it out to go test it with Intelligjam. Intelligjs is an incredible CRO tool because it goes so far beyond traditional CRO. Changing headlines, changing uh layouts of pages, changing copy, all those kinds of things.

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So when a situation like the one that I'm talking about comes up, we can look at it and say, "Oh, there's an easy way to decide this." We can run the test. We can run the price test directly on our page. We can actually test, AB test the price of the products, and we can see which one actually performs better. I've done the same tests with multiple clients in other parts of the business that are similarly close to checkout.

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I wonder if this this is going to be a hobby horse of mine that or really not a hobby horse yet. Something I've just been thinking about, but it maybe another way to frame what you just said is that the ethos of the brand supporting military and and not like you actually wouldn't be living up to that if you didn't get the product right. Like essentially it would be it would be like plagiarism of those of those values which I know for you personally is really important to not be.

But also there's even aside from whatever personal conviction you have about that, there's just like essentially no worse community to be uh fake with, you know, like people will sniff it out so fast you will never recover from it. And and it's like I think really frowned upon I think for good reason for a lot of people like these are people who are putting their lives at risk. Like you you can't just like try to use that to make money.

Uh and I know you you've always been careful about that for obvious reasons, you know, including your deployment. So, I I think it's a it's interesting and and one way I've actually been thinking about this recently is if if if you actually saw this is going to sound like a strong word, but if you actually sought to like love your customer, like to care for them as another human being to like look out for them and think about them in those terms, and I don't know that you'd put in those terms, bear, but like it's kind of a little phrase that's been rattling around my mind recently, then you would actually develop the pants the way that you just said, which is like that's a person who has a certain need in their life.

Maybe they're deployed, maybe they're not, whatever, you know, like uh but that they're they're living in a certain way where I'm going to try to think empathetically about what their life is like and what their situation is. And obviously for you that was probably easier to do because of your um you know, you are that person and you were that person and you were very close to it. Um but you sort of do you serve the customer that carefully.

Um, and I I really I really think in the in the whirlwind of tactical stuff, like it's it's actually that's this has been something I've been noodling on in general. I've been thinking about it in marketing, too, like how do you communicate to a person as as if you respect them and you're not just trying to like think of the hackiest way to sell a product to them and and you know, sort of all of those things go together to where you really respect the customer on the other end of it and you you develop the product and you communicate to them in those kinds of ways.

It seems to me that that's the pathway to making real impact. And I I think you guys did that in your original line. Like I think you guys you were really native to the CrossFit space and that was really important in your guys' stuff. And so you made products that people really loved and that actually fit a certain need for particularly women in CrossFit in the early days about you know what all these things. So anyway, I I just feel like that's sort of carried through your guys' stuff and has been an important part of your story um in a way that is easy to overlook.

Well, yeah. I think you're getting at authenticity, right? You have to be authentic, but particularly there's some markets they're going to sniff you out in two seconds. If it's a very tight-knit community, I think the tighter knit the more community, the more tight-knit it is, the more they're going to be like, "Whoa, who's this guy coming in, right?" Um, fortunately for us, as you know, we had always been, you know, very supportive of the military first responder communities.

At the time, we're active duty owned company, so like it was we were very easily accepted. We had donated a lot of money to those communities. Um, so we had kind of, you know, I guess greased the wheels for, you know, that type of, you know, positive outcome. Um, but you know, with it come when it comes to authenticity, we didn't have to fake it, right? Because I'll give you a quick funny story. When we did our first content shoot for to for the launch of our tactical line, we wanted to kind of create an anthem launch video and get a bunch of obviously still photography showing the product in action.

So, we booked um with a bunch of logistics. There's an airfield out in Arizona that has some helicopters and miniguns and things like that and and um one of my vice presidents knows the people over there. So, we rounded up a crew of I think six guys, uh me and some other SEALs and a couple other Army special operations guys and we had, you know, all these uh content scenes laid out and we brought a bunch of guns and suppressors on these things and we had a a film crew from LA meet us out there.

We're we're out in the hanger and we're, you know, it's 6:00 in the morning, sun's coming up. We're out in the desert and we're we're loading our magazines with bullets, right? We're getting ready to rock and and we're going to explain what the first scene is and one of the camera guys comes up to me and he looks at down at the bullets I'm loading. He's like, "Those are real." And and we all looked at him like, "The hell yeah, they are.

What what else would we do?" And he was like, "You guys are shooting real bullets?" And we're like, we all started laughing like it's got to look real, man. Like so you could tell this guy cuz he had worked on a bunch of sets with Netflix and you know big scale productions. Um and then he brought his guys in and like hey you know basically there were some that just weren't tracking. You know we had beltfed machine guns.

We had minigun. It was all live. We had rigged up cars with explosives that we were going to shoot so the cars would blow up um while we're maneuvering through the desert as an element. Um and and to us that was just so second nature. But there's little things that in that content, you know, you got the rounds ejecting out the side and and how you manipulate the weapon and the recoil and the sound effects, like all that matters if you're using real bullets versus blanks.

Um, and I just thought that was funny because by the end of Well, and you're not going to go do this and be inauthentic because your audience is going to know and and there's no actor, you know, because, you know, we had thought, oh, we'll have to hire guys, but then we're like there then there's going to be little things they do that a real operator will notice that no, it isn't authentic. So guys, we just need to do it because then there's no issues.

We know everything is real. And then, you know, that was just kind of funny. I just remember the look on his face when we're just jamming these magazines and he looks at the end of the bullet and realize it's not there's no blank. You know how and at the same time you want to say, "Don't worry guys, like we know what we're doing with these. These are not a bunch of idiots running around with guns." Like Yeah. Exactly.

Yeah. We said, "Hey, just stay behind us. Here's where we're going to maneuver." But then, you know, another thing that we were willing to do just in that space specifically is we were willing to put ourselves out there and do very like edgy, you know, content and creative. So, you know, you you got a bunch of tattooed dudes running around the desert shooting suppressed rifles and beltfed machine guns and blowing things up.

A lot of brands, tactical brands that we would be competing with, they didn't have the pallet for that, which is crazy to me because their audience is military first responder, yet at at their corporate level, oh, we got to tone it down. We get we came in lit guns blazing well almost literally and put out this video and it was super high intensity and and and everyone loved it and we were actually putting guns in our ads right um and and it was working right and I feel like we were the first ones to do that and it's funny now I see the brands literally making almost identical ads to us um and I'm like oh I wonder where they got that from because their ads wouldn't so I I think what I'm getting at is is you need to be authentic to the market but you also need to be brutally honest with yourself of what is your actual value proposition And I thought we had a we did have a a good actual real value proposition that could differentiate from a product standpoint and and that continues to show uh right now to a significant degree.

Do you um do you have that video somewhere? Yeah. Yeah, I can send it to you. Oh, you you'll crack up, man. It's intense. No, I'd love I'd love to put it in the uh I'd love to put it in the show notes um so that people can see what they're talking about so that they can get get a visual. So, check the show notes if you're watching or listening to this. Check the description on YouTube. Love it. Okay, I'll get that to you.

We'll we'll link out to it. Um the Yeah. Okay. So I mean that's that's really interesting. Okay. So then last thing about that um are you able to give any sense of how much those product categories have grown? So let's just get get back to the sort of the brass tax of the of the profit impact and some of that stuff like um have those continued continued to grow those categories. Yeah. Well I think um tactical and outdoor combined this year I think we'll hit around 10 million.

Okay. Amazing. So basically go from in an infant toddler or child to, you know, a $10 million just for one for Yeah, that's pretty good, right? Because that turns into 20 pretty quick and you know um so um and and the nice thing is the audiences overlap because that person that is also, you know, the special operator or whatever, the police officer, you know, there's a fitness component to his or her life, right? Um and then there's an athleisure side when they want to wear a flannel and some, you know, some nice blue jeans and whatever else.

Um, and uh, so if we acquire a tactical customer, they might now shoot over to the fitness side, vice versa, that, you know, kind of CrossFit fire breather who, you know, um, is in the military, you know, for his his day job, right? He's now, oh, they have a tactical line. I've been repping their fitness stuff for 5 years. Let me go. So, it feeds both audiences. A little bit of flywheel effect. Uh, and that has helped a lot, too.

Have you guys been on the on the sort of CrossFit? I know I mean you guys have moved beyond that to some degree, but I think you guys also have have had a really big presence of CrossFit for a while. Have you seen any noticeable negative impact with what seems to me to be a sort of decline of that community a little bit? Yeah. I mean, fortunately for us, we've, you know, I don't want to say we pivoted out of it, but you know, we acknowledge, hey, that's where we were born.

That's the roots of our brand, but but you know, anytime someone's, oh, they're a CrossFit brand, I'm like, you have no idea. 5 years ago, yes. Um, you know, we're we're not just for for CrossFit. Um, so the fact that they've Yes. It it seems like they're kind of going um in a bad direction right now. It it's less important to us than it would have been 5 years ago when like we were attached to that growing market. And that's part of the reason why we're successful.

We we were, you know, growing in an in a in a um kind of a craze of CrossFit when it was exploding. So by proxy, we were too, right? Yeah. Well, and that's smart. I mean, that's like getting into expanding TAM where you can make an impact. Like that's great, you know? So I don't think there's any issue with that. Um I Okay, what about shoes? So um shoes are not necessarily related to uh to the tactical component of it as far as I can tell.

Correct me if I'm wrong. Um they are more like a traditional um play in in a sort of for a fitness brand. Um or at least uh you know they make more sense as an add-on in a sort of more direct fitness kind of world. So, um, what what can you say about, uh, sort of how you thought about shoes and how that's done relative to how you thought about it? Yeah, I mean, honestly, I think I'm most bullish on that out of anything in our business right now.

Um, and yeah, I actually just sat down with our our president and COO Tony, and we looked at all right, as we invest as a company in the next 2 years, like where do we want to allocate most of our bandwidth, human bandwidth, you know, our our own effort, but also financial resources to like what has the highest ROI right now? And and after crunching the numbers, it came very very obvious, you know, the road map to getting to 100 million in topline in the next 3 years absolutely goes through a heavy investment in footwear.

Um, so where it started was I I always wanted to do footwear, but I also knew it was highly technical and you know that industry has a much higher barrier to entry. Obviously theQs are massive, opening up all the molds for all the sizes. Um, not everyone can just launch a footwear brand tomorrow like someone could launch a leggings brand, right? Um, and I just, you know, I didn't know where to start. I was active duty.

I got lucky though. One of my uh, SEAL teammates, his dad was in the shoe industry and I I ran him into the hallway one day at one of the buildings we were at and he said, "Hey man, you should hit my dad. like just get on a call with him. He's been in the shoe game. And I said, "Well, I've always wanted to do shoes. I just don't know where to start." Um, long story short, they um are highly reputable. They got a bunch of shoe engineers on staff and we got linked up with them and we started the development of our Savage One training shoe.

Um, and once again, that was from me living in that world my whole life and saying, "All right, if I were to build the perfect shoe, what how would I, you know, design it? What would be the the specific features?" Um, and we work through it. Um, and you know, LTV, AOV, all these things are it it just stacks the deck in your favor. You know, when you go from selling, you know, things that are, you know, on the high-end $80 to $90 to you have $130 item um with net 90 payment terms on it, that starts to become a pretty good uh pretty good uh way to be doing things.

So, you have net 90 terms with your It's crazy. Zero up front, net 90. How is that possible? Well, I gotta give Mal credit on this one. She negotiated that. Yeah, we started net30, but I told them you, you know, Mal and I told them, hey, after the first order, we expect that to go up and then we got it to net 60. Uh, and then a couple more orders, we said, hey, we're going to the moon with this thing, but we need you to work with us.

The the the better your payment terms, the more aggressive we can be on our orders because we know we'll we'll convert that cash. Um, I remember there was one order we pre-ordered the D-Day edition shoes and um that launched um on May 30th of last year and they didn't deliver until uh cuz it was pre-order. Um I think late October and then we didn't owe payment until 90 days after that. So we, you know, sold I don't know it was a high number of of of dollars in shoes and we didn't owe that until like the next year.

So how's that for a conversion cycle? That is so that helps. That is unbelievable. I mean that that's fascinating. I mean did you did you negotiate net 90? Did you move towards that as opposed to taking a better price on the shoe or something? No, it really didn't affect price at all. We kept the same price. Um so you were just able to get your manufacturer to see the vision that you guys saw. That's what it sounds like.

And that and they cuz this is something I think people don't understand like manufacturers are volume businesses. They are volume businesses. And so if you can show them there's a viable pathway to you generating volume, how can you help us? Especially in places where they have access to better credit than you, which is a point that Matab Bogle points out that many places in the world do. Um then then you can actually help them to see like look it's good for your business if you can help me on this thing.

This is like the hardest part for the retail business ultimately and sometimes maybe not the hardest part for the manufacturer. And yeah, that's uh it sounds like you were just able to show them, hey, if you can do this, then we're going to order a whole lot of shoes from you. Yeah. And you know what? It was cool, man, because you know, when you talk about the the shoes and tactical and outdoor, there was a time where, you know, I would look at what are our top five products in and four of the top five in in 2024 were products that didn't exist a year prior.

And that that puts you in a in a really good position, especially when all of them are doing really well. It was our men's and women's Savage one. It was the men's opposite pant and it was the men's frontier pant which is a hunting pant. And then and then coming in at number five was the your go-to leggings 2.0 which you remember, right? Um so you look had you looked a year before none of those products even existed, right?

Um and you know since those all have so it just it's been crazy, man. You know I looked we had a really good evergreen day yesterday and the top 10 products all men's and women's savage ones. How crazy is that, right? Incredible. Incredible. Do you have So, what what what's the plan for shoots from there? Oh, man. We're excited. We have uh so we have the high top Savage one coming out, which isn't a huge, you know, like innovation, but we a lot of people wanted a high top version, so we developed that.

We have a barefoot trainer in development. We have a running shoe um that's pretty much done. Um we have a tactical boot called the Patriot one that will launch in Q1 of next year that we we've been I mean, we're on like the 12th prototype. It's going to be incredible. I think that'll be do massive volume. We're working on a barefoot hunting boot. Um and uh also like a lifestyle sneaker, kind of like a Vans uh Nike kind of skateboarding style shoe a little bit.

Um but so the the the lineup for 26 is is absolutely wild. I'm looking at our marketing calendar. I'm like this is going to be crazy. Um and uh yeah, and a lot more colorways of the Savage one. And then Savage 2 is in development, right? So that'll probably be like late 26 maybe. Um but uh we think we're ready for a sequel on it. We'll keep the Savage one for sure. We're not going to do what Reebok did and like you know do a new Nano every year and then and then every other year it sucks.

Uh sorry I can that's just my opinion but Oh no I it's 100% true. Yeah. Yeah. No, there was a couple years of those that they're awesome and a couple year of them they suck. Yeah. So, um, just on the footwear calendar alone, and that's why when when Tony and I were looking at kind of, all right, where can we invest heavily right now, you know, it was so obvious that footwear, you know, we want to get to the pathway where, you know, within a couple years, 65 to 70% of our revenue is all footwear.

Um, and that's unrecognizable to what we would be what we we've been in the past, right? Um, and uh, it's a it's a good development. You know, like I said, the payment terms are great that it just does really well, man. We have a really good way of prospecting with them. We have some cool creative that we just swap out the color way and like the background color and we just rerun the same ad and it just consistently does well.

Um Yeah. The product is the creative. Yeah. And and and that's why getting it right and and you know this is probably obvious but you know when when we were doing footwear you we had to go through a few more prototypes and I said guys this is not something we can mess up. We can't put out an average shoe. We have one shot at this one shot because we have to have credibility. if the Savage 2 won't happen if the Savage one is is is mediocre.

Um, so yeah, hey, let's do that next sample that's going to delay a launch by 8 weeks. We have to and I want, you know, we need to fine-tune every component. And I'm so glad we did cuz once you have the product right, all the downstream effects on that are are significant. Same thing with our hunting pan, our assault pant. It's, you know, um, so, you know, I was glad we had that kind of patience to say, "No, until it is 100% ready to put our logo on it and we're proud of it, we can't do it." Uh, and, uh, we we now make that the gold standard.

Just tell you a quick story on on the Patriot One boot. Yeah. The Patriot One boot, man, we went at this so hard from every little detail because we realize, all right, the the the special operations guy is going to be the one likely wearing this on the job. Every component of this shoe has to be perfect. Um, and so we we skydived with it. We put it over fins in the open ocean. We we ran with it. We worked out with it.

Um, and on the interior of the shoe is a fast rope stripping p a fast rope pad. So when you fast rope from a helicopter, it doesn't burn through the the shoe. Um, we got a these abrasion tests done. Um, it outperformed the the competitor shoes and all that, but we said, "All right, that's not good enough. We need to go rent a Blackhawk helicopter. we're going out to Tennessee and we're going to fast rope for real with full gear, you know, body armor, rifles, the whole thing.

So, we had a Blackhawk for four hours in Tennessee and all we did was fast roped um with me and the other guys that did it for a living um and we validated because what happens is you can burn through that strip. I I've done that in real life. By the time I hit the deck of a ship, my my both of my outsoles will burn all the way through to my feet. Um it was a pair of Nike boots, right? It's I've been that guy where it didn't and then you know for the next two hours I'm I'm you know stomping around with no midsole or outsole on my sho on the middle of my shoe.

Um in another little feature with the outsole um we were wearing it in around headquarters. We realized it was a little squeaky. So we got a few of us and we went down a hallway as if you know group of Navy Seals would down a hallway in a real life scenario you know going through a target and we realized this is too loud. So we went to Vibram. We said, "Hey, we need you to make us an outsole that doesn't make so much noise because, you know, this job requires a little bit of sneakiness, right?

Especially middle of the night, maybe going through a place that they don't know we're there yet, right?" Um, and okay, so we got four more outsoles sent to us. We tested them all out. We went down the hallway, found the So, it's little tiny things like that that if you get it wrong, you're dead in the water. Um, but if you get it right, the guys that are the end customer are then going to be the they will be your viral coefficient for you, right?

Because they're going to wear them. These are incredible, you know, blah blah blah blah. And and there you go. Now you're set up for success. Um, now the, you know, the hard part is done. Now you get to do the fun part. Now you can start to market it and do prospecting and just getting it out there and seeing your handiwork play out. Um, so I just provide that as one example of how we have to approach product development now because like it has to be good.

Did you get video of you guys uh testing those out of a black op. Oh, you know me, man. Yeah. And and that that'll be part of the story once we launch it next Q1%. You know, to preheat the audience, you know, there's video of me outside the helicopter saying, "Hey, I had the shoe in my hand saying, "Hey, we got this Blackhawk behind me for 4 hours. Hey, if we're going to put our logo on this thing, you you're going to know that we ourselves have tested it.

We've skydived it. We've swam in the open ocean. We've ran with it. We've worked out. We've done, you know, close quarter combat with it. Blah blah blah blah blah." Um, but hey, this is the final test, which it was. The fast roping was the last thing we needed to do before we could tell the production guys, hey, green light, go on this. Um, and yes, then we got, of course, the videos. We had camera crew in the hilos and on the ground getting multiple angles and all that.

So, we we're all over the, you know, capturing that this the story line. Um, but, uh, but I think, uh, you know, that again, what is the real differentiator and and is this any different than anything else on the market? If if the answer is no, I think you need to have an honest conversation of okay, do we do should we actually um execute on on you know um whatever that idea is that you have of oh maybe we could branch out into this category or this maybe this is a new product category we could explore.

Um I think you definitely should but just be honest with yourself on um what you bring to the table against the competitors in that market. Were you rusty on your fast roping at all? Did you feel a little bit I think on the first one? Yeah. Yeah. in and in and yeah, it was uh it's it's you can definitely screw it up. Um but it's also like uh you know, kind of like riding a bike a little bit. So, it went okay. No one got hurt, thank god.

Okay, good. Didn't uh doesn't come up probably quite as often in running an e-commerce business as it used to in your old job. So, Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Um do um uh I I think I think one of the things I think of is like sort of business phase like and category and brand when I think about this like I'm trying to think about what you're saying and applying it to the brand that I'm starting to build and launch on the side and I'm trying to think about like how many we're getting impatient about sort of samples and some of those things and one of the questions for me is like is it should we keep being should we keep going with another round of sort of samples and and that sort of thing or should we just get it launched and find out kind of what the response is?

And I I don't think there's a one right answer all the time for that. Like I think I think sometimes you actually need the feedback. Uh your brand is too small and unimportant to have like the kind of negative feedback that's going to like destroy you for forever. And you sometimes it's just like helpful to get into the market and see what people do. Um, other times I think especially for brands like in your case where it's like it's much harder to move a a mid- eight figure ship than it is to move a you know a a mid-seig ship for example and and at that point like in the early days like taking a bunch of shots might might be the way forward whereas in the later days especially again in your category and some of those things like it is all about the authenticity component.

Obviously, you don't want to launch like a crap product at any stage of business, but it's interesting to think like about sort of how that mentality plays out at different different stages of business. I don't know if you have any thoughts about that. Yeah, that that's a tricky one, man. I I always kind of smirk and and kind of laugh when I think about this is like if I if I had to restart if I had to launch a totally new business, let's say I sold Born Primitive or whatever and, you know, I had a year to kind of chill out and I just wanted to launch something new because I know I won't be able to sit still, you know, if I would how I would do it differently.

And I kind of use the analogy like imagine you tried to build a house from scratch the first time without having any trade skills and you had to just watch a bunch of YouTube videos on like how to set the foundation and frame a wall and like electrical and you know all these things and you literally just made every mistake. Um you eventually figured out how to build it but it took you 10 years and it's you know kind of built on stilts. um if you were to go build a second house and you now have all the trades, you know, mostly mastered.

Imagine how much more efficient it would be, how differently you would approach it. Uh and and I look at that with a business. I think for me, knowing what I now know as far as when you get the product right, how the the positive downstream effects of that make everything else so much easier. I I think I would be very deliberate and slow in in in launching anything that I didn't think was bulletproof. Um that's just me.

Um, and just because man, you know, we we we've we've done it before. We're like, "Yeah, this is a this is a good product. Like, let's go." But it's not great. Um, and um, I think you just end up spinning your wheels, particularly when things are so competitive, you know? Uh, unless I, you know, I'd say it's a unless it's a category that doesn't have that much competition, then I think you could get away with it. And if it solved a specific need, you know what I mean?

Um, not more like a fashion item or just like, okay, it's a workout short or whatever. You know what I mean? those are just so interchangeable. Um, so I think but I don't know. I I just No, I hear you. Yeah. I mean, it's my number one concern about the thing I'm working on is just is just like I I feel like I have all the trade skills for running an e-commerce business at this point. I'm not I'm not too worried about that.

I know exactly what I want the piano to look like and all those things. The but I'm not really a product guy and and so the founder the co-founder and I have just like we have product. We think it's good. We we definitely think it's good. like just just to be clear, but like um it's it's interesting to think about how good do we think it is, you know, and how much does that matter? Um okay, last last question. So you you don't have to coach my business right now.

I got to pay you for that. The um the uh the um uh just last little wrap up. Um I'm curious about anything on the sort of tactical side. There's anything else you'd say about um stuff you guys have done that's been important for you. Um, you know, I I'm always fascinated to talk to you because you probably as well as any operator I've been around go back and forth between things like product and brand and getting all those things right and then like the LTV of a leggings customer on discount.

You know, that's that's really in the weeds and I think that's the responsibility of of what your job is is to is to be able to think about both of those things at the same time. I'm just curious anything else in sort of the tactical end of things that you'd look at and say like this is something we did that really is effective. You're sitting in your podcast studio for example right now. That's why you have this beautiful background.

Curious if that's done well for you. You've been on Fox and Friends a few times. you know, I don't know how you made that happen. Like I I'm just curious if if there's anything else besides the kind of normal day-to-day of running meta ads, you know, with CTC as your agency. Shout out to them. You know, those kinds of things. Um, you know, anything else sort of tactically that has mattered for you? Well, I think a couple dorky tactical ones.

We'll do a meta one real quick. Um, I I I'll tell anyone who's running a business to do this. In March of last year after and Taylor and I joke about it now, but it was like my I realized at the end of 2023, we looked at our percentage of ads like sent to like existing customers and it was like almost it was like 2%. And I was like, you got I I like it almost like I almost had a heart attack. I'm like, wait a second.

How did I not know this? Why are we not marketing more to our existing customers that we just paid 60 bucks to acquire? Um, and where we landed, even though there was some disagreement at first, and again, now Taylor will will kind of we joke about this of like, you know, I was right, but he's been he's he is way smarter than me and he's been right way more times. So, I have to get the one win and and and tell everyone about it.

It's always good to tell Taylor that he's wrong. So, we modified the exclusions. We said, "All right." Because I said, "Listen, someone might not be uh following us on Instagram. If they do, they probably still won't see it. They might not be subscribed to our email or text list. even if they do, they might not see it. So like if we launch a summer collection, all of our existing customers need to see that, right? Like what what do we what do we even how is that not SOP?

Um or even evergreen campaign. So what we did was anyone that is outside of 110 days that has not purchased essentially becomes a new customer, right? Um that change alone changed our account overnight. Um, and I think it actually helped the algorithm with meta to figure out like who they should go after that's an actual new customer, not you know what I mean? Because that it puts those people back in the in the kind of, you know, the the place you could um mark, you know, kind of prospect to.

So that was an overnight uh win. So that's a really nerdy one. So I would No, but it's a really good one. And and and I think part of the deal there that some people miss is the category that you're in, which is exactly what you said, which is apparel, releasing new products all the time. And you're right. Right. and like and so those customers in particular are um are people who who you need to be showing things to.

So again and again and anybody like that like I think this is less obvious in supplements though you could do exclusions um where you like exclude you know if you've got product A you exclude anybody who has seen product A before but you but you do run your product A ad to people who have not bought product A or you know so if they've bought product B and C then then run product A to them you know like uh go for it you know so but apparel where the business is all about your ability to drop new product drop new product drop new product and then run sales and stuff like that.

Yeah. People are not going to check all your emails or SMS. Get real. Yeah. And and now, you know, if it's a collection launch, they get it day one, even if you know it's they're inside the exclusion cuz of course it's new summer collection. Like, yeah, we want that person that bought two weeks ago to see it, right? So, that was one. Um, another one is just a quick one, fulfillment swaps. We send like little mailers to other brands and they send theirs to us and we just put them in our orders cuz we do our own fulfillment.

Like we did that with Black Rifle Coffee. We acquired like a thousand customers. did like, you know, quarter million dollars in sales. That cost me three grand to make a bunch of, you know, 5x7 piece of print collateral. So, collaborations, leveraging each other's audiences can be highly efficient, as you know. That's that's also a great one where that that brand people love Black Rifle and it's probably the same customer as you.

Like, it's like it's a perfect fit. Both both brands are really happy to to put each other's brands in there and say like this is who we associate with. Yeah. So easy. Um, and then yeah, I guess the last biggest thing that we've really noticed, man, is is leveraging our platform to make a real impact, you know, for that Normandy shoe we did. It was 80th anniversary. You know, we um, you know, end up donating a lot of money from the proceeds for that.

But then in the on Veterans Day, you know, we paid off $1 million of veteran medical bills and did a big campaign on pledging all of our profits. And that's what got me on Fox and Friends and all these things. um that really kind of hammers the point home that we actually care about those communities and and we're we're genuine in the approach. Um and and it's just been awesome to be able to kind of because you know, I'll be honest, while those are incredible give back moments, they're actually just tactically great for our business.

And and I don't I'm not afraid to say that. Like I'm not ashamed to say that. It it it's a win-win for everyone. You know, we were able to there were 6,000 veterans before Christmas last year that didn't have any medical bills anymore, right? and I was able to call a bunch of them and you know we recorded all those calls with their permission of course and put it out. So you know I think um that has been the biggest thing for me is realizing that hey we can we can make a real impact um but also achieve incredible financial outcome and and and you know um that's what you want man's there's no need to shame to that.

That's great. That's like and and then of course what happens is your brand grows and then you can do it at a bigger scale next time. Like it's just like it's it's it's a win for everybody. Yep. So, that's been the biggest thing and we have huge plans for this Veterans Day. It's going to be incredible. Um, and, uh, you we're raising the bar on our own impact and and every year it's going to be like, okay, how do we beat that, right?

Uh, and that just feeds itself and, you know, that comes up in when you're talking with buyers that are, you know, for retailers. Oh, I saw the thing you did on Veterans Day and it like breaks the ice of, okay, now we're in these big box retailers cuz they saw what we did on they saw me on Fox News or, you know, whatever it is. Um, it it has significant positive impacts beyond just in the moment. So, uh, yeah, that's that's kind of my biggest, uh, thing now is how do we continue to raise the bar on what that is?

Um, but fortunately, we're ahead of it. There's some big things in the works. Bornperitive.com to go shop, get your own Savage Ones, go head to toe. I don't I don't I don't know if you guys have any hats, but I don't That's probably the only thing I'm wearing right now. I know you're always wearing your your Dodgers hat, but it's okay. Yeah. Yeah. I'm a baseball I'm just a baseball. I'm very particular about the crown of my hat, too.

So, other than that, I'm head to toeorn primitive right now. Um, so, uh, and I have been for a long time. Bear is you're you remain one of my favorite thinkers in the space and people I've had a real pleasure to work with. Thanks for your time. I appreciate it so much, man. Thanks for having me, man. Keep up the good work, man. Bear handling is one of my favorite people in e-commerce to talk to. I find it inspiring and um, and makes my mind think bigger about what is possible for e-commerce brands that really care about brand and customer and authenticity in their space.

Just an awesome dude. Go buy yourself some Born Primitive. It's great stuff. I'm wearing it right now. I love it. You should also sub subscribe wherever you are watching or listening to this. That was a profit monsters episode. I've got a bunch more of them and um and you should go check my profit monsters playlist and subscribe to my show so you don't miss any profit other profit monsters episodes where I'm doing interviews with 8 figureure profitable e-commerce operators who uh some of them like Bear turned it around after things went badly.

Some of them just on a profit rocket ship the whole time. Uh we should all be so lucky. Uh but but a bunch of great conversations there. I think it's the fifth one of them. So, there's a bunch of really good conversations there now with 8 figureure profitable e-commerce operators that you will love. Go check that out. Of course, you can respond to me. I'd love to hear back from you. Podcast at ajfgrowth.com is the place to email me with your questions, with your thoughts, any of those things.

And hit me up on xanderjer. I'd love to hear any public conversation about those things as well. See everything I'm doing at ajfgrowth.com, including signing up for my newsletter there. Most of all though, subscribe. Subscribe wherever you're watching, listening. Don't miss what's coming next. I will talk to you next time. [Music]