Driving Performance Season 2

Tom Shea [00:00:15]:

My name is Tom Shea. I'm the co founder of Agile Media Group. Welcome to season one of driving performance. I'm joined by Chris Mead and Ron Shaw from Cross and Avi, respectively. Cross net, the world's first four way volleyball game. Their signature four net is now available for volleyball pickleball, soccer and the pool. And Avi, the obvious choice for women's health reimagined to actually taste delicious. Gentlemen, welcome to driving performance.

Chris Meade [00:00:42]:

Thanks for having me. Appreciate it.

Tom Shea [00:00:44]:

All right, so I want to start this show off how I'm going to start every show off and ask you guys what the hell is going on here? So for the audio only listeners, what's.

Ron Shah [00:00:56]:

Happening in the middle of New York City? Like, literally having people pass by in one of the most busiest areas in America?

Tom Shea [00:01:02]:

Yeah, I mean, Chris has made at least seven friends so far. In the hour that we've been waiting.

Ron Shah [00:01:08]:

Chris has sold at least 20 Cross knife.

Chris Meade [00:01:10]:

Yeah, I think it's thanks for having me.

Tom Shea [00:01:13]:

You want some product?

Chris Meade [00:01:14]:

Come on. Come in.

Tom Shea [00:01:18]:

Well, all right. Ron, Chris, first question for you guys. Do you know each other? How do you know each other? Is there a story there? So take us back. If it's Twitter, I mean, it's Twitter.

Chris Meade [00:01:28]:

But Twitter is social media.

Ron Shah [00:01:30]:

Is it Twitter? It's Twitter, actually. I met Chris. I think I had attended one of his. So Chris throws, like, a dinner every week.

Tom Shea [00:01:37]:

Okay.

Ron Shah [00:01:37]:

And he just gets like, 50 founders together and literally bringing our community closer and closer together. So I think I literally got to be part of one of them. And then from there, he shares a lot of thoughts and is open to building in public, which is, I think, something that we embody a lot. So I love it. I think it really had a similar mindset.

Tom Shea [00:02:00]:

Yeah. And the building public thing, I think is part of why I put you guys together. That's something you guys both do so well. So we'll definitely get into that. But just to level set how the show is going to play out, obviously, we're in a truck, which is pretty on brand, and there's going to be a few stops on our route. Stop one, the origin stories. Top two, some brand specific questions I prepared. Stop three, brand intersection questions. So thinking about things you guys have in common, might have opposite takes on or the same take on. And then step four, or stop four, a segment we call the hot box. And stop five, which is a bit more literal, but the end and we'll wrap up there. As I was praying for this podcast, it's clear especially your father had a big influence on you, was an accountant, clearly molded in his image, at least in the beginning. And I grew up on Long Island, went to a school that was 50% Indian, Asian. I think it's dangerous to ascribe stereotypes, but there's something about that first generation immigrant mindset that takes comfort in those very safe, secure opportunities. And I know that's sort of how your journey started, but you look at where you are now, you picked the opposite side of the spectrum, the real obvious side. Yeah, the not so obvious side, and really just like, the riskiest side that you could pursue, and you're at the top of your game. So I'd love to just start at the beginning and talk through the story of Ron and how that's all come together.

Ron Shah [00:03:25]:

Yeah, I think probably as like, a typical South Asian. Again, not to be stereotypical, but I was supposed to be a doctor, or I was supposed to be super oriented into accounting, which is where my dad's been. My dad's been at Ernst and Young for 30 years. Right.

Tom Shea [00:03:41]:

And you won EY Entrepreneur of the Year. Yes. That's a pretty cool moment.

Ron Shah [00:03:47]:

And it was interesting because as I was going through high school, I took an Intro to Business class, got super interested, and I was like, okay, cool. I think I can go more the accounting route. Okay. So I went to Bentley University with a full scholarship there to become an accountant and worked at I did all my internships at Deloitte while I was there. So, like, fully on track, the big four CPA route. My dad was super involved in every part of that. And then I graduated college, and I moved to New York, and I was living in a building in Jersey City. And in that building at the penthouse level, there was a company that was formulating them, and it was a company called Shreds, and they also owned a company called Flavor God, which is Seasoning Company, and Skinny.com, which is a weight loss tea company. There's a guy named Arvin Law. He was starting these three companies and incubating them kind of in his house.

Tom Shea [00:04:44]:

Okay.

Ron Shah [00:04:44]:

And there's a few employees and whatnot. I met him in an elevator in that building. And my roommate at the time, which is my co founder today too, we both lived together. That's unket. That's unket. Yeah.

Tom Shea [00:04:57]:

Three co founder, one that's just, like, oddly behind the scenes.

Ron Shah [00:05:02]:

Yeah, that's Ankit for us. So I met him in the elevator, and I was like, oh, so whatever. Did a little bit of networking, and he was like, what do you do? I was like, I'm an accountant. I was working at Deloitte full time, and this and that. He's like, oh, I'm looking for finance stuff. Do you want to do some side work? At this point, I'm 20, about to turn 21. I'm like, you know what? Why not? Let's do it. So explored. It Ankit. Also was a designer there, and he was like, hey, I'm looking for some design work too. For some of these companies, we had nothing to know about, like, D to C, Ecom, anything. This is when you had to post on Instagram and your post would come up first. When you post it, that was the best marketing. You would post a lot. So this guy was building that engineering that model there. So we started working there. And then when I really liked enjoying working there, I told my dad, I was like, I think I want to work here full time. They're giving me a job as a controller. So my dad, who was super involved, he's like, I need to meet the founders. So he came to my office. He came to yeah, he got involved. He met every founder there. There were three people in the C suite sean Dua, Armin Lawl, and Uncle Garg.

Tom Shea [00:06:05]:

Did they ever tell you what their reaction was to dad just pulling up to the what's good here?

Ron Shah [00:06:10]:

Yeah, it was like, for them, they were like, Anything can happen now. So my dad met him, and he was like, I'm going to hand you guys over my son, but you better take care of him. This can't be something that you just so, anyway, what's really cool there is, I think what I really tailored the rest of my career is you were required to work two shifts. So everyone lived in the building who worked there, or they moved people into the building. We work from 09:00 A.m. To 06:00 p.m.. You go home, shower, you come back at 09:00 p.m.. And you work till about two, three a. M. Six days a week. Your only day off Saturday. But we were building 100 million dollar incubator there. And so I'm thinking about it. You're 21. You don't have much going on in your life. Like, you're down to do it. We were in this ecosystem. We're building one of the fastest growing supplement brands.

Tom Shea [00:06:59]:

Does that exist? Are they still doing that?

Ron Shah [00:07:01]:

No, man.

Tom Shea [00:07:02]:

They hire anyone that's willing to do that.

Ron Shah [00:07:06]:

It doesn't exist anymore, but it ingrained our work ethic. What happened to the company? So Splavor God is a $50 million season company still shreds? They hired too fast, too much. They spent a lot of money. The good thing that they did is they paid us a lot of money, right. Even when we were young. Because you were working so much. Yeah, well, but the problem is the problem was they didn't understand that when you have a rocket ship growth, you're actually beating the fact that you have seasonality issues. Right. When you have rocket ship growth, nothing can really stop you. And then the first year where you start to plateau, you start feeling seasonality. Supplements have a very seasonality element to their business, right.

Tom Shea [00:07:55]:

Towards, like new year, new me.

Ron Shah [00:07:56]:

Well, so New Year, new me is rocket ship growth. But then from Memorial Day weekend to Labor Day, people don't care, right? They're trying to have fun. They're trying to enjoy. They've made their body or they haven't.

Chris Meade [00:08:06]:

Okay.

Tom Shea [00:08:07]:

And then they'll try it's a cut off, right.

Ron Shah [00:08:10]:

You mentally are going to let loose. And then so they didn't see that you played a lot of CrossNet. So anyway, was there for three and a half years, obviously. I met usher in there. He was working under me at that time, myself, Unkin and Usherin. We were like a big part of the engine that grew those three companies. We basically left three and a half years later, and we basically said, all right, we feel like we've been here for ten years. Let's go do something else.

Tom Shea [00:08:39]:

You were there for, like, seven if you did.

Ron Shah [00:08:41]:

Yeah, exactly. So we left start a marketing agency from there called Ghost Three Media, where we wanted to start our own brand, but we felt like we needed to keep learning. Best way to keep learning is start a marketing agency because you can spend other people's money. Keep learning. So we spent a lot of other people's money. Some of our best brands were like, Venus de Floor, which is a luxury flower company. Sparta Nutrition, Aloha. So we had some good names, we built them up, and then 2019, we were like, all right, we're done building other people nine figure brands. We have to start doing something our own because we never took equity. So we were just building people. And then as soon as our retainers got too expensive, oh, we can handle this.

Tom Shea [00:09:20]:

Yeah, right?

Ron Shah [00:09:21]:

So that was when the Birth of Avi came.

Tom Shea [00:09:24]:

Nice. And how did you land on the name Avi?

Ron Shah [00:09:27]:

Yeah, so we knew we wanted the same supplements because it's like, what we knew best. We knew we wanted to sell to women because they're the easiest to sell to in our market. So we have, like, demo figured out. Then we want to know we have to be disruptive. So we're like, collagen has space to be disruptive. Whey protein pre workout doesn't. Right? You can't do much whey protein.

Tom Shea [00:09:42]:

Pretty crowded.

Ron Shah [00:09:43]:

It's done. Yeah, there's only so much more you can do to it. And there's only so much more caffeine you can add to a pre workout.

Tom Shea [00:09:48]:

Right.

Ron Shah [00:09:48]:

So we're like, all right. Collagen is cool because it sits in nutra cosmetic, which is cosmetic benefits through nutrition. It kind of lives in health and beauty. So we're like, all right, cool. Collagen seems really boring because it's unflavored odorless powder by vital proteins. And we're like, Wait, we can be disruptive? Yeah. Smell it.

Tom Shea [00:10:09]:

Smells like chocolate covered strawberries.

Ron Shah [00:10:14]:

So, yeah, then Ankit was watching. So we knew the product, we knew the target market, everything. And then Unkit, he likes to get baked and watch movies and stuff. And he's like, super creative.

Tom Shea [00:10:30]:

Right.

Ron Shah [00:10:30]:

He was actually top 25 designers under 25 years old in the US. Damn. So he was like and he's super introvert, super creative. But anyway, he was watching Mean Girls and we were like, just thinking about what to name the brand. And we're just coming up with stupid ideas. Right? Because there's Ash, and I coming up with dumb ideas. And then he's like, Guys, I got the name, and I kid you not, it was three in the morning. He texted us, we're sleeping 08:00 a.m.. We had a label done, the logo done, all the brand colors done, and he's like, Guys, the brand's ready. Let me know when you're ready to launch. And it was called the Girls in movie segments and mean girls, they use the word obvi.

Tom Shea [00:11:13]:

Okay.

Ron Shah [00:11:13]:

Which is a short form of obvious. And he's like, Wait, we can play on obvious? Yeah. Why wouldn't you take our collagen when it's flavored and tastes good versus something unflavored that doesn't taste good?

Tom Shea [00:11:24]:

Yeah.

Ron Shah [00:11:24]:

He was like, So let's just play on this obvi. It's super girly. People will know it's for females. And then it's also we can go super horizontal with branding.

Tom Shea [00:11:33]:

Yeah.

Chris Meade [00:11:33]:

What was the first product?

Ron Shah [00:11:35]:

Fruity cereal collagen.

Chris Meade [00:11:36]:

Okay.

Ron Shah [00:11:37]:

Yeah.

Tom Shea [00:11:37]:

OOH, that's, I think, the one I like the grip. What's the best performing product?

Ron Shah [00:11:43]:

It's our fruity cereal collagen. Then cocoa cereal is number two.

Chris Meade [00:11:46]:

Okay. Got it.

Tom Shea [00:11:47]:

Yeah. All right, final question for you, Ron. Then I want to switch over to Chris. Can you just talk about the founding team? So I know you met Ash. You met ankit at that incubator. Incubating.

Ron Shah [00:11:57]:

No, we were in college together.

Tom Shea [00:11:59]:

Okay. All right, so take me through the founding team.

Ron Shah [00:12:01]:

Yeah. So the founding team is Ankit, which is the chief brand officer and co founder.

Tom Shea [00:12:07]:

We don't let people see him, though, right?

Chris Meade [00:12:09]:

Yeah.

Ron Shah [00:12:09]:

No, we try not to see him. His jawline's, like, too perfect. There's no point of letting him be seen. So he handles all things marketing, brand design, web development, incredible creator, and then Usherin, we met at the Incubator. He was also my wife's childhood friend.

Tom Shea [00:12:30]:

Wow.

Ron Shah [00:12:30]:

So that's how the introduction happened. And he's a CMO and handles all things paid media and then marketing, and then my background being Ops Finance. That's kind of the role I play.

Tom Shea [00:12:42]:

As CEO, and all right, Chris.

Chris Meade [00:12:45]:

Love it.

Tom Shea [00:12:46]:

You know, Ron has sort of know, I'll say industry insider experience. And you think about your mean. You have a literal, like, Moose County to Miami glow up alongside your brand. But I mean, on paper and I mean this honestly, you've had to overcome a lot more than the average person who's had success in this space. And through so much adversity and challenges, you found yourself here. I think you said yourself you never expected that you would be here. So I'd love to hear your side of the story, of just how the story for Crossing came together and then all the way from everything it's overcome to get there.

Chris Meade [00:13:29]:

Well, we grew up on a farm in Connecticut, so like a super small farm town. There's one stoplight there's one restaurant that only sells chicken tenders. And if you want yeah, they're great. If you want to get gas. You got to drive 25 minutes, and the nearest movie theater is about an hour away, so there's just nothing to do. Growing up, like, you're just a product of your environment. You're going out, you're having fun. I was actually having dinner with a friend last night. Kind of our growing up, making fun out of nothing, right? Is kind of what led to us inventing products and sports. Kind of like the game, like, don't touch the floor. Yeah, it was like an eight hour game for us, but yeah, growing up in that town, dude, I just always wanted to get out. I loved our hometown. I love going back, but at the same time, I knew it wasn't like, what I wanted to do forever. So I went to college to become a film director, actually. So spent my whole life thinking I wanted to make movies and become a director.

Tom Shea [00:14:26]:

What do you think? This?

Chris Meade [00:14:27]:

I love it. Yes, I went to college. I got myself into, like, $200,000 of student loan debt. Just absolutely terrible. And bro, I worked about one summer on a film set for HBO, and I hated it. I absolutely hated it.

Tom Shea [00:14:46]:

I said, he'd finance for so long. I was just like, what? Dude, so off brand.

Chris Meade [00:14:51]:

It was crazy. Because I'd be waking up and it sounds like I'm bitching, but you'd wake up at four in the morning, get to the film set at five. You'd be working until 09:00.

Tom Shea [00:15:00]:

The camera people are literally right here.

Chris Meade [00:15:02]:

I know, but it was just like how I felt it.

Tom Shea [00:15:05]:

They literally did that today.

Chris Meade [00:15:07]:

But for me, the thing that why it didn't work was because I had $200,000 of debt, right? So having to live in Manhattan and pay this $1,500 student loan bill, plus the rent in Manhattan, non starter, it didn't work. And I was only making right out of college, I was making $15 an hour.

Tom Shea [00:15:23]:

Right?

Chris Meade [00:15:24]:

It was just like the math just didn't add up. So I got into a sales job, starting selling software, okay? And that was kind of like my first sales job. I was making good money, 70 grand out of college. I was feeling pretty good about myself, but it wasn't enough. And then so flash forward, I became Uber's first ever salesperson.

Tom Shea [00:15:47]:

Uber? Uber.

Chris Meade [00:15:48]:

Like Uber.

Ron Shah [00:15:49]:

Yeah.

Chris Meade [00:15:49]:

So I launched Uber Eats.

Tom Shea [00:15:50]:

Wait, dude, are you rich?

Chris Meade [00:15:51]:

Then my equity never vested, so I was Uber's first ever sales executive, and I launched Uber Eats in Rhode Island. Boston. So I'd be like, cold calling restaurants, getting them on the app and all that.

Tom Shea [00:16:08]:

What about Connecticut and the one gas.

Chris Meade [00:16:10]:

Station they're still not on? Uber Eats. My mom's the number one Uber in Connecticut, I'll tell you. Yeah, dude, long story short, we come home for, like, fall break or whatever, winter break, and the three of us so my brother Greg and our childhood friend Mike were on the couch, like, brainstorming ideas all night, like, how do we get rich? How do we get out of our current situation?

Tom Shea [00:16:34]:

We did that, too. It was like, innovation month. Can we figure out in 30 days how to get a ton of cash flow businesses?

Chris Meade [00:16:41]:

Yeah. So we just wrote down a ton of ideas, and they were all pretty terrible. And then it comes to be like, two in the morning, and somebody writes down four way volleyball, and we all look at each other, we're like, Dude, this has already been taken.

Ron Shah [00:16:53]:

Right?

Chris Meade [00:16:54]:

And we Google, and there's nothing on the Internet. There's not a single search that's popping up. So we're like, all right, why not us, right?

Ron Shah [00:17:01]:

Did you guys play volleyball?

Chris Meade [00:17:02]:

No, we hate.

Ron Shah [00:17:05]:

Love.

Tom Shea [00:17:05]:

We loved Foursquare was yeah, Foursquare was so good, man.

Chris Meade [00:17:09]:

But then you don't play it like, when you get to be like, we can be a shame, by the way, it's sad.

Tom Shea [00:17:12]:

Bring back four square.

Chris Meade [00:17:13]:

We sell it now, baby. Yeah. We were like, Yo, why not? So we stayed up all night thinking about it. We woke up the next day, like, ran to our local Walmart, bought two bandmint nets, cut out the center, rigged it up on the side of my mom's shed in the garden, and just texted all the homies and were like, Yo, come over. And we played for, like, 5 hours straight. And we just made up the rules on the spot. It was four square in the air. Don't let the ball hit in your square. And the coolest thing was, like, after 5 hours, nobody was about their girlfriends or their job or what they had to do. We just felt like we were kids again. But we were all kind of in our early 20s where life was starting to get a little bit hectic. So with that mindset, we were like, dude, if we just played this for 5 hours, why wouldn't every kid in the family in America do that? So that was our proof of concept. And then the business part came.

Tom Shea [00:18:11]:

We had a bunch of cross hunts at my sister's wedding. And to your point, you're absolutely right. I think, like, any sort of gameplay and I love video games, to be honest. And the reason I like them so much, especially we're all founders, right? It's the one thing where you can't think of anything else, otherwise you'll be bad at the game, so you literally can't focus on know very true. I think that's true of cross video games. And I'm sure there's plenty of other things, but also want to talk about the founding team. Much like Ron, it's a three person founding team, so you have your was it Mike?

Chris Meade [00:18:44]:

Mike. Yeah.

Tom Shea [00:18:45]:

Mike. So what's the origin story there? How'd you get them all? Like, where were they that you got them to pull them in?

Chris Meade [00:18:51]:

So, Greg so me and Greg actually used to run a it's kind of funny we used to sell hookah tobacco, non tobacco hookah.

Tom Shea [00:19:00]:

Okay.

Chris Meade [00:19:01]:

So my college roommate got me.

Tom Shea [00:19:03]:

We did a lot of that in high school.

Ron Shah [00:19:08]:

Most of my friends are still doing it.

Chris Meade [00:19:10]:

So my college roommate actually is the one responsible for getting me into all the e commerce. Came to me one night. He's like, yo, my dad owns a sugarcane, like, plantation in Jamaica. I'm going to go to Jamaica. I'm going to ship over all this. I'm going to go shop. I'm going to chop down all this sugar cane. We're going to import it to your mom's house in Connecticut. We're going to take the bins, and we're going to flavor it. We're going to package it, and we're going to sell it to Hookah tobacco hookah lounges all across the country.

Tom Shea [00:19:37]:

Okay. All right.

Chris Meade [00:19:38]:

So we called it the King. That was our first e commerce company.

Tom Shea [00:19:40]:

Wow.

Chris Meade [00:19:41]:

I did this, like, cold calling, like, Shaquille O'Neill's, like, hookah lounge in Atlanta, like, setting up meetings. And so we shipped this hookah all across the country. Like the shisha all across the country.

Tom Shea [00:19:55]:

Swag left?

Chris Meade [00:19:57]:

No, I had one bottle left on my desk. It was kind of sweet, probably a little dried, right? So that was our first route in ecom. But anyway, so my brother, I went and got a real job because I just needed to pay my debt. Greg was two years younger than me, so he's still in college, right? He evolved. He created this thing called the Glunt, which was a glass blunt, and it was, like, very, like, the world's most popular glass origin story of ribs. My brother, anyway, he's selling a bunch of this glass blunt on worldstar.com, like, WorldStar's. Posting it every day. He's buying meme pages. He's making, like, ton of money, right? I'm like, fuck, what am I doing? I'm working at Uber cold calling restaurant, and he's sitting on my mom's couch flipping glass blunts and making a million dollars. Anyways, our other founder, Mike, we grew up playing soccer together. He was in Greg's grade. Super, like, smart, nerd.

Tom Shea [00:20:49]:

You're the senior, man.

Chris Meade [00:20:50]:

I'm the senior. So Mike's an engineer by trade, went to Northeastern, graduated with an engineering degree. So that was the cool thing. That night was when we started making the volleyball net. The dude's already on AutoCAD, like, designing the shit, which was, like, super helpful, so we didn't have to go source.

Tom Shea [00:21:12]:

Like he's your anika bro.

Ron Shah [00:21:13]:

Yeah.

Chris Meade [00:21:17]:

Exactly. Yeah, exactly. So whenever we do come up with games, he's the one drafting it. It cuts out all the cost of having to have a product specialist. That cost us $20,000. So then that night, dude, we made the game. The next day, we pooled all the money in our bank account. I withdrew my 401K. We had about, like, 17 grand across the three of us for our life savings at this time.

Tom Shea [00:21:40]:

Thought the king was doing well. Glass blunt, it was printing money. Spending money, too.

Chris Meade [00:21:49]:

Yeah, Greg was doing well at the time, but we pulled, like, 17 or maybe it was like, 22K into his bank account, and we made our first, like, 50 units. We moved to Miami, so I quit my job. We all moved to this two bedroom in Miami, just, like, have everybody crashing on the floor.

Tom Shea [00:22:07]:

It's essentially the incubator. You do double shifts also, like this guy. No.

Chris Meade [00:22:13]:

Yeah, we were working a lot.

Ron Shah [00:22:14]:

You were working a lot, right?

Chris Meade [00:22:15]:

I'd meet Ron. Ron would come down for a bachelor party or something, and I'd sell it to Ron on the beach for, like, $70. I'd have some beer money.

Tom Shea [00:22:21]:

I'd have some money for the rent.

Chris Meade [00:22:24]:

You're literally every day because when you look at it, it's like a UFO. You've never seen something like that before. So you stop, you stare, you want to play. But what ended up happening was Ron would take it back to New Jersey, and I'd start getting sales in New Jersey. And I'm like, Yo, I haven't been in New Jersey in 25 years. How am I getting sales? Oh, that dude ron. And it just kept snowballing.

Tom Shea [00:22:47]:

Wow, that's brilliant.

Chris Meade [00:22:48]:

So you mean to tell me that I can integrate my shop with you in less than a minute? You store all my inventory across your 50 plus fulfillment centers in the US, canada, UK, europe, and Australia, and then fulfill all of my orders globally with over a 99% order accuracy rate?

Tom Shea [00:23:07]:

That's right. We do that for over 7000 brands today.

Chris Meade [00:23:10]:

And you can do that for all my D to C, B to B, and Amazon orders?

Tom Shea [00:23:14]:

Yep.

Chris Meade [00:23:14]:

And when my next TikTok video goes viral or during the holiday rush, you can grow with me forever.

Tom Shea [00:23:21]:

Yes.

Chris Meade [00:23:21]:

Again, Dang, that's the Ship bob, check.

Tom Shea [00:23:26]:

Out Shipob@shipob.com to unlock your fulfillment provider that acts as your personal chief supply chain officer. So stop. I want to get into some brand specific questions. And, Chris, I'm gonna keep it with you for, you know, you lead sales and marketing for the organization, and I want to talk about and it's a good transition from what you just said, the complexities of selling like a new to world concept. And I think we sort of had that with Agile, right? It was like, we'd get into these meetings, we'd have to sell people on the benefits of out of home. Then we had to sell the benefits of our format, and then we had to sell that. It's tech enabled and has you know, it's not to say you don't have that same issue, Ron, but people can figure out what your product is quickly, and if they can't, they'll pick it up, and they can then shame on our branding. But that's not true for CrossNet. And so I'm curious how you sort of, like, bridge that divide and do sales and marketing when there's such a heavy educational lift associated with the product.

Chris Meade [00:24:22]:

Especially since it's so expensive too.

Tom Shea [00:24:24]:

Right?

Chris Meade [00:24:25]:

It's really, really tough, man. We've literally invented a sport and also a product, so we're not making things easy for ourselves. The most important thing that we could do is just kind of the first year was just spent getting the product in the hands of people and going to the beach. We set it up. We try to be as resourceful as possible. This is a sick idea for you guys. There was one summer where we drove around and we set up cross nets in front of billboards. So instead of buying the $50,000 billboard, we would just set up the Cross.

Tom Shea [00:24:55]:

Net and we would leave it there.

Chris Meade [00:24:57]:

And it would literally stay for like a month.

Tom Shea [00:24:59]:

And it was just like stands for.

Chris Meade [00:25:00]:

Traffic and people just staring at it, looking and taking pictures.

Tom Shea [00:25:03]:

Oh my God.

Chris Meade [00:25:03]:

So yeah, just becoming resourceful like that and trying to get exposure. Because once you play it, once you're hooked and you're going to talk to somebody about it.

Tom Shea [00:25:10]:

Totally.

Chris Meade [00:25:10]:

And imagine if we had one set up right here. Imagine how many impressions we'd get over the next 4 hours.

Tom Shea [00:25:15]:

Totally.

Chris Meade [00:25:15]:

So it's doing that working with local beach communities and schools is really good. One thing that's been great I know we're talking about it later on is getting into physical education.

Tom Shea [00:25:25]:

Right.

Chris Meade [00:25:26]:

We're in over like 10,000 schools now.

Tom Shea [00:25:28]:

Yeah.

Chris Meade [00:25:28]:

So CrossNet is literally bro.

Tom Shea [00:25:31]:

How do you even approach is only you want to aggregate those or that's just all blocking and tackling.

Chris Meade [00:25:35]:

So it's a little bit of blocking and tackling. But also every school gym teacher buys from a catalog. And so there's like five different catalogs.

Tom Shea [00:25:44]:

What else is in it besides like dodgeball?

Ron Shah [00:25:47]:

How big is this catalog?

Chris Meade [00:25:49]:

400 pages. It's like volleyball nets. It's basketball hoops. It's like frisbees all that.

Tom Shea [00:25:54]:

Yeah.

Chris Meade [00:25:58]:

So we're front and center in all those catalogs. And the nice thing is the gym teachers already have the stuff that they've had for 100 years. So they're looking when they do have budget, they're looking to buy something new and exciting.

Tom Shea [00:26:11]:

And as a student, you'd love when they had like, all right, what Frankenstein thing have they dreamt?

Chris Meade [00:26:18]:

So the kids will come in, they'll have a week long curriculum at school. They'll be hyped because it's like, oh, that's that game I saw on TikTok. The teacher looks cool because he's got the cool game. The kids play, have a dope time, and then they go home and run to their parents and like, yo, I need to get this game that I played in school. So it's just kind of like a full circle. But no, I mean, ultimately, at the end of the day, when is the last time either? If you guys walked into a store and spent $100 on something that you didn't know that you needed, you're not going to look at a Cross net.

Tom Shea [00:26:47]:

It's consideration windows. The higher. The AOV, the longer the consideration. So you do need that upfront education.

Chris Meade [00:26:54]:

So digital awareness in person at the school systems and just trying to create as many events as possible, like where we're at.

Tom Shea [00:27:01]:

What about college?

Chris Meade [00:27:02]:

Amazon crushes. We're the number one volleyball net on Amazon. We're not even like.

Tom Shea [00:27:10]:

What about college towns? I think those would similarly have that organic flavor. I remember Spike Ball was huge when we were in college, right? And one guy group had it. People pop in, watch it, that was fun as hell. And then you blink and every guy group has it in their quad or whatever.

Chris Meade [00:27:26]:

So college isn't cool. We're in intramural programs at like 250 schools now. You could sign up, like, the University of North Carolina. Like Chapel Hill has a CrossNet program.

Tom Shea [00:27:37]:

Wow.

Chris Meade [00:27:37]:

Electric 07:00 p.m on the quad. They're playing CrossNet, which is like, great exposure for us. Right. So we're trying to build as many of those activations, and that's completely free. They're paying money for the CrossNet.

Tom Shea [00:27:49]:

Totally.

Chris Meade [00:27:50]:

And I'm hyping up on social from time to time. So trying to create as many of those events as possible. The ones that don't work is like when I ship it to a college kid and hopefully that he says hopefully. And now I just spend $30 to ship, and I spent $80 on the product. That's where we've lost a lot of money over the years. But working with established programs that could get people together, that's been money for us.

Tom Shea [00:28:09]:

What about the Nil name, image, and likeness stuff with college athletes?

Chris Meade [00:28:14]:

Yeah, so that popped off like a year ago or so. Essentially, those at home college athletes you don't even need to be an athlete can now make money off their name, image, and likeness.

Tom Shea [00:28:23]:

Right.

Chris Meade [00:28:24]:

So when that was announced, we had like 400 people come inbound in the first 24 hours.

Tom Shea [00:28:29]:

Wild.

Chris Meade [00:28:30]:

It's like, Yo, I want to be across an athlete.

Tom Shea [00:28:32]:

I do the same thing.

Chris Meade [00:28:34]:

So we had a graphic designer, like, working around the clock, creating like, little graphic cards so they could post on.

Tom Shea [00:28:39]:

Stories, trading cards, baseball cards.

Chris Meade [00:28:41]:

It looked sick. It was really cool. But what it led to was a massive loss for the company, actually, because we ended up shipping Cross nets to 350 people.

Tom Shea [00:28:52]:

Right.

Chris Meade [00:28:53]:

So, I mean, the cogs on that alone and just throwing out a number, it might have been a $70,000 project. And then out of the 300 people, we got like, 15 good videos. So it's like, what a waste. It was just us trying to have too much clout and trying to make it could have been very good.

Tom Shea [00:29:12]:

UGC is incredible.

Chris Meade [00:29:15]:

Our high quality stuff like this never performs well for backyard. Better perform, always. A mom that's shooting it on her iPhone with her finger over the lens a little bit, that actually performs for us well.

Tom Shea [00:29:31]:

Does the consumer get like I feel like they pick up on when it's over produced. This is a normal person just like me.

Chris Meade [00:29:39]:

We should have started small, man. We should have picked ten people, like, really vetted them, and we were paying them on top of it. So some of these people, if the girl had 120K TikTok followers, maybe she was making $200 a month, or this guy had a million. Maybe I'm paying him 500. Yeah. Live and learn. So we scaled that operation down. So we got, like, ten people on our roster now, and they're very good because they'll create those community events at their college or we'll drop a new product, and I know I could go to them for some good DGC.

Tom Shea [00:30:08]:

Right.

Chris Meade [00:30:09]:

So it's good. I mean, overall, we've made good relationships, but I definitely wish we didn't go.

Tom Shea [00:30:14]:

Too hard, approach it differently. Also, you're probably a first mover, right. I'm sure after the dust settles a little bit, you can probably vet them in a way that you couldn't at the beginning of who actually has that innate talent and knows how to sell and knows what you're trying to accomplish. For sure. All right, Ron. So, you know, AVVI operates in a pretty crowded space, and you've really honed on a specific type of consumer or addressable market, almost like a space within a space in your category. And so I think it's really easy for brand founders to sort of want to be everything to everyone all the time. But you and I have had some really interesting conversations about just sort of unwavering focus. So I'm curious sort of how you figured out that you would go in the direction you did and how you positioned Avi in the market.

Ron Shah [00:31:03]:

Yeah. So it's interesting because I think for us, once we picked female as our demographic, I think we had two avenues.

Tom Shea [00:31:12]:

Of this that we could have gone.

Ron Shah [00:31:14]:

One was this brand appeals to super young women because it's like, playful and fun, or it's going to appeal to women that want to feel like they're young.

Tom Shea [00:31:26]:

Right.

Ron Shah [00:31:28]:

We studied the demos and the stickiness you can get from going on a market that's older is way better than a younger demo, like a Gen Z or Millennial. Right. Our next focus was like, okay, cool. From day one. Even, like, the influencers we get, we're going to get, like, older women.

Tom Shea [00:31:47]:

Right.

Ron Shah [00:31:48]:

Even if you go to our website, it's like 40 year old models. Right. Because what we wanted to do was if you can get a 40 year old woman to try something and like it and see results, she's going to tell all her friends.

Tom Shea [00:31:59]:

Totally.

Ron Shah [00:32:00]:

She's going to stay on the program, and then the person is also going to help the community grow. So that helped us. I think that being laser focused there helped us because now who we cater to, it's a 40 year old woman named Sally in the Midwest.

Tom Shea [00:32:17]:

Okay.

Ron Shah [00:32:17]:

She typically has fast food three to four times a week. Really bad habits. This our target demo is not the girl going to equinox three times a week and doing hot yoga the other three times.

Tom Shea [00:32:28]:

All right? And what even is that? Pan. People forget 97% of America, right? When you're in consumer, you do have to design. We're in this little bubble.

Ron Shah [00:32:40]:

I think when we took that approach of like, you know what, we'd love to sell to younger people and or our friends, even. But that's not going to create unbeat. That's not going to and you see.

Tom Shea [00:32:52]:

CPG, Twitter, dude, it's all just like this sometimes. It's an echo chamber of, like, no one actually giving you the feedback.

Chris Meade [00:32:57]:

That when we started crossing it. I thought it was going to be for our age. And it's actually parents, parents, 99% of our moms buying it for their backyard to get their kid off TikTok. As much as I'd like to lean into our younger content, it's really the four year old who can barely stand up, tapping the ball.

Tom Shea [00:33:18]:

Yeah. And my mom's always trying to get us to go visit her on Long Island and stuff. That's exactly what she's with every single ridiculous backyard dream up of, I think.

Ron Shah [00:33:31]:

I think once you align with who you want to sell to with actual purpose and not desire desire and purpose is, like, so twisted in ecom because it's like, sometimes people come out with brands or products for the wrong reason, and it's for clout, or it's like, oh, I want to look good in this name.

Chris Meade [00:33:48]:

Drop them.

Ron Shah [00:33:50]:

We'll add it in the broll. But I think for us, it was like, the purpose is all right, we want to make money, right? That's what we want to do. So how are we going to do that? And I think that's where we honed in on the demo, and that gave us a chance to kind of crowd some of the crowded people out, because they're all going for probably the 1% of America, which is all we are usually exposed to.

Tom Shea [00:34:18]:

Yeah. And what's also really interesting about that demographic is they're very on Facebook. So that's something that I always found you talk about stickiness and LTV and all those concepts. That's something that I've always found really fascinating about how you guys have growth hacked your go to market. And so can you just talk about those communities that you've built online specifically catering to that demographic and what you've learned from them? Because I think they're core to how you think about your products and drops and stuff like that.

Ron Shah [00:34:48]:

Yeah. 40 year olds, 40 to 60 year olds are still on Facebook. Right. And they love it, and then they're preserving it. I truly believe that. And so for us, once we picked the demo, started going after them, the other thing is we were bootstrapped, and we yeah, and around the same amount with, like, $10,000. Right. We couldn't release a third product. We started with two fruity cereal and cocoa cereal collagen. We couldn't release a third product without knowing it's going to be a short bet. I couldn't mess it up because that would be the end of Obbe. So what we did was after our first, like 200 customers, we were going to do like a survey. Instead, we were like, wait, what if we just kind of brought them in a focus group? We're like, we can't afford a focus group. So what is the grittiest way? Yeah, what's the grittiest way to do a focus group was, oh, why don't we just start a Facebook group? So the Facebook community we started was actually just a focus group to figure out what our third launch should be. Because we wanted to figure out if we should do peanut butter, marshmallow cereal or cookies and cream. They all voted. There was like 106 people in it. They voted marshmallow cereal. We launched it, sold out. So it was like that was the purpose of it. Then we saw they were all starting to talk to each other, right? Like, oh, this is working for you, or this is not so weird. So we just started. It's so weird.

Tom Shea [00:36:10]:

Just strangers, like young kids. And there's like parenting ones that are like, does anyone got I'm in some so.

Ron Shah [00:36:19]:

Because people want to know from people, right?

Tom Shea [00:36:22]:

They almost don't reddit almost, yeah, they.

Ron Shah [00:36:24]:

Almost don't trust companies know as much. So it's why UGC works.

Tom Shea [00:36:29]:

Right?

Ron Shah [00:36:31]:

So the community what we started doing is when we realized people are talking to each other, and it's driving either upsell or just good education on a person to person, a consumer to consumer end. We just started funneling all our traffic there. So we were like, once you bought, you were invited there. If you were even thinking about buying in the Facebook comments, we would tell people, like, here's the answer to the question you're asking us, but there's thousands of other questions that can be answered in our community invited there. Our pop up on website was join our community. If you go to our, we have a landing page that we run ads to to join the community that sells nothing. So now it's like 65,000 active women in it. And it's just they're talking all day, every day, just sharing stuff about obvi. Sometimes they share about random stuff. Like, I'm severely going through PMSing right now. Any recommendations outside of obvi? People just share stuff.

Tom Shea [00:37:24]:

Actually. You need some app.

Ron Shah [00:37:27]:

Yeah, but I think the community piece is big and it's what you're doing with your customers too, right? It's so important.

Tom Shea [00:37:34]:

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So, Chris, I want to talk about good sport a little bit and how that partnership with Danny Duncan came to fruition. And I'll share one of my favorite, most hilarious emails I've ever received. And it's from Chris. It was one sentence. I don't think there was a subject line. I think it was all lowercase, and it went, hey, Tom, do you have any experience wrapping monster trucks? And that was it. No other context. And you just posted it like a few days ago?

Chris Meade [00:38:01]:

Yeah, we got it wrapped finally. But yeah, dude, this guy named Danny Duncan. Massive YouTuber. One of the most popular YouTubers in the states. Kind of. For those that don't know him, he's like a modern day jackass. Like Steve. Steve, like Bamarger.

Tom Shea [00:38:16]:

Steve O rip. Those are the dates. Those are the dates. Like MTV music video.

Chris Meade [00:38:22]:

Yes, that's him now for like 16 to 24 is kind of like his demo.

Tom Shea [00:38:27]:

Okay.

Chris Meade [00:38:28]:

All like male. Like 98% male, which is, like, sick for me. It's fun. I've been selling the fucking mom five years, which I wanted to do. Danny, like seven and a half million YouTube subscribers. Like 20 across. All the other crazy, crazy powered influence.

Tom Shea [00:38:45]:

What was his come up? How did that even happen?

Chris Meade [00:38:47]:

He's just been grinding on YouTube for, like, ten years, and he has this massive organic audience. And the thing that he prides himself on is like, he's never sold out. I love the Nut Boys, but they do 100 million different projects.

Tom Shea [00:38:59]:

Totally.

Chris Meade [00:38:59]:

He's never had his own thing besides just selling his merch.

Tom Shea [00:39:02]:

Wow. Yeah, they dilute themselves. A lot of them do it at.

Chris Meade [00:39:05]:

That scale and it kind of speaks volumes. Right. So how I met him, we reached out to his manager. We wanted to do it was the year before last year. Yeah. So 2021, right? It's been a long time.

Ron Shah [00:39:20]:

23 now.

Chris Meade [00:39:21]:

Life goes quick. We reached out because we want to do a big Black Friday video. So I was like, Yo, I want a YouTuber. I want to test this whole concept of paying YouTubers. So we offered him $45,000 for a video, which is a lot of money. And he's like, Nah, 250. I was like, no shot. That's not going to happen. Because he doesn't do brand deals. He'll do, like, one brand dealing out.

Tom Shea [00:39:44]:

If they're crazy enough to do it, I'll do it.

Chris Meade [00:39:46]:

Exactly. So he doesn't water his shit down with brand deals at all.

Tom Shea [00:39:50]:

Right.

Chris Meade [00:39:50]:

And so I'm sorry, that's just not going to happen. But he's like, yo, if you're ever in La, why don't you come over? I was like, all right, I'll call your bluff. So I went over to La. I was in La. Like, a few days later, went to his beautiful La house and had a product with me. That one of our new products that we're trying to come out with. So I was like, all right, let's show Danny it.

Tom Shea [00:40:11]:

Which one is it?

Chris Meade [00:40:12]:

We haven't actually released. So we go to Danny's house. It's me, Greg, and Mike. We're all together in La. And we show up to his house and we start playing and showing the game. He has fun with it. And I'm like, yo, I think this would be cool for your website. Maybe we could brand it Danny Duncan or whatever. Just do a Co brand. He's like, let's build a company together.

Tom Shea [00:40:30]:

I'm like, oh, the Jackass music starts playing.

Ron Shah [00:40:35]:

That says a lot about you. You probably left a really good impression.

Chris Meade [00:40:38]:

Because at that time, we have been coming up with tons of games that we have.

Tom Shea [00:40:42]:

Right?

Chris Meade [00:40:42]:

I mean, just like a Soup example would be like, oversized beer pong does not fit into CrossNet. Crossnet's become such an established sport, and we're known for our four way games, like putting out other games under CrossNet. We kind of dilute the CrossNet brand.

Tom Shea [00:40:55]:

Yeah, I get it.

Chris Meade [00:40:56]:

So we're building this new one. It's called good sport. Danny's our founding partner on it, and the goal is to build, like, a modern day Franklin or Wilson. When I talk to you, you're going to be buying your son's baseball glove a few years, and it's going to come from Franklin or it's going to come from Spalding or Wilson. And you bought that and your parents bought that. Why are we still buying from the same companies when there's a million other companies that come off in every other space, never in sporting goods? So my thesis is creator led, plus our innovation and build, like, a future backyard in sports.

Tom Shea [00:41:28]:

I love it.

Chris Meade [00:41:28]:

I'm hyped for that. So we dropped it in October. We came out with three products. Smash net's, our lead product.

Tom Shea [00:41:34]:

Okay. Smashnet describes Smash net for people who are listening.

Chris Meade [00:41:37]:

An oversized ping pong volleyball net. Two people on each side. There's a net in the middle, and you're spiking the ball down.

Tom Shea [00:41:43]:

Yeah, it looks pretty fun.

Ron Shah [00:41:45]:

So much fun.

Chris Meade [00:41:46]:

And so we just rolled out to Dillard's Wegmans and Shields, and then we roll out to Walmart in May.

Tom Shea [00:41:52]:

Hell yeah. Awesome. I'm excited to see how that partnership progresses. I miss Jackass.

Chris Meade [00:41:59]:

Yeah, it's sweet, dude.

Tom Shea [00:42:00]:

I was watching the video with you.

Ron Shah [00:42:02]:

Guys with the big balloon ball. Yeah, that thing was wild.

Tom Shea [00:42:08]:

All my guy groups, I was like, going looking at my story, I'm like, Wait a second. He's literally 3ft away from the guy being launched into the tree.

Chris Meade [00:42:19]:

That's been fun, dude. And I think the coolest thing about it is all the mistakes we've made with CrossNet over the years, all the learnings, we just apply to Good Sport. And Good Sport is going to be 100 times better of a company because of all the totally, dude.

Tom Shea [00:42:33]:

I mean, when VCs say, like, we bet on first or second time founders now, I totally get. But okay, cool. Ron, back to you. In preparing for this podcast, I thought something really insightfully said was around controlling what you can control when so much is out of your control. And I think especially in the context of what you guys are so good at, you work. Everyone in this industry is working all day every day to try to get TikTok, Meta, Google search to work harder for them. But you talk about some of those things are sort of just in your backyard, and they get overlooked. So I sort of just love if you could speak to that concept a little bit.

Ron Shah [00:43:17]:

I think, when it comes to paid media, right. I think there's a few things that I think that we've approached it a little bit differently right. Where even after this post iOS thing, right. I think the tricky part is so much of our time goes into, like, I got to get my CPA down. I got to get my CPA down. Right. And I see everyone just banging their head right now. It's why everyone's looking for money, too.

Chris Meade [00:43:45]:

Right.

Ron Shah [00:43:46]:

Because CPA is not coming down. And I feel like for us, what we've done is like, all right, we're going to do our best that we can with an X amount of effort in time to make Meta or TikTok or Google work better. But from there, a platform is a platform. You can't change what you can't control. Right. So for us, I think we've done a good balance of saying, all right, if $60 is our CPA and the lowest we can get it to is 58, we're okay with 60, we're going to try and make 60 work. Now let's go to the other side of this and say, all right, what do we need to do in terms of conversion, right? If my CPA went up from $40.02 years ago to now 60, I need to get a half more person to buy every single time. Okay, so now let me work on just making the conversion funnel go from 2% to two and a quarter. Right. And I feel like those things are more in your control, and I feel like there's not enough people focusing on things they can change and control, and they're more so blaming, like, oh, Facebook screwed me. Yeah, google screwed me. So I think for us, it's just the approach is we're not going to be able to bring the CPA down, so how can I get more people to buy? Yeah.

Tom Shea [00:44:59]:

And I think what's something that's interesting I was just speaking at that out of home conference, right, and something I was harping on was like, recognize that these platforms, they are engines that are designed to extract as much margin as they can from the situation. So if you're in Amazon and you're doing, like, paid advertising, you have two equivalent products. There's a business incentive, and they're a public company with, like, a fiduciary responsibility for them to try to extract. Hey, you have 20%.

Ron Shah [00:45:27]:

That's right.

Tom Shea [00:45:27]:

Gross margin. Well, we're taking five and then six, then seven, and then eight, and like, as high as you can before we start actually just probably ruining the company goes bankrupt. Yeah. That is, at their core, what they're designed to do.

Ron Shah [00:45:38]:

And then there's finite amount of inventory.

Tom Shea [00:45:41]:

Right?

Ron Shah [00:45:41]:

That's the other thing people I think people have even when you just look at TikTok real quick, people don't realize the For You page is the only place you can get served ads, right? There is literally millions of advertisers looking for a spot on a For You page. There is not much inventory. It's why you can't scale past day on TikTok. It's hard. So I think it's just shifting the narrative.

Tom Shea [00:46:06]:

Stop three. These questions are all sort of like brand intersection questions. So with each episode we did a lot of research of things you guys have in common, things that are different about your business, things that we thought the audience would want to hear. The same question, but potentially different takes on the responses. And so the first question is really just talking about leveraging community and organic flywheels. And I think we touched on this a little bit, but you guys are some of the best community builders that I've personally seen. And I think when you think about sustainable businesses, they always have community. And I think the reason that is, is community is what's there that acts as a hedge when the marketing winds are blowing in one direction to the other. And it feels like it's so volatile from week to week or month to month that having that core community is essentially just like what gives you enough time to figure out which way you have to reallocate resources.

Ron Shah [00:46:59]:

Absolutely.

Tom Shea [00:46:59]:

And things of that. So I want to just sort of speak to the role of community building and organic flywheels. I know they've been instrumental to your companies now and maybe how you guys think about them going forward. Over 7000 customers. Like Pet Lab, Chamberlain Coffee Hero Cosmetics, Spike Ball, Dossier, TB twelve Pit Viper 100 thieves. Tens of millions of packages shipped every year. 50 plus fulfillment centers across the US. Canada, UK, Europe and Australia. An app store with 50 plus integrations like Shopify, Amazon, NetSuite and many more. Managed inventory distribution d to C and B to B. Fulfillment capabilities 99.96% of order shipping on time, 99.95% order accuracy rate. Yep. We're talking about shipob again. We know picking a fulfillment partner or three PL is not easy. And equally importantly, we know you never want to have to move or pick another one. That's why we partnered with Shipop. From zero to 100 million in sales. Shipop has you covered.

Ron Shah [00:47:55]:

I'm going to go first.

Chris Meade [00:47:56]:

Yeah, you go first.

Ron Shah [00:47:58]:

I think for us, community, besides it being a great source of having definitive answers of what to do next for your brand, I think community has become a place where it is a source for so much. For us. You want UGC. We're going to go drop a quick comment in there and do a giveaway. And we'll have literally 40 pieces of UGC within 2 hours. Do you want feedback on your product? These are the most loyal people that will give you true feedback, not butter you up and say, oh, yeah, I love ABV. If you want people to learn from other people, there are people who come on our community and be like, I just took the Collagenic Burn, which is our fat loss product, is our number two bestseller. I have a massive migraine, right? We love comments like that because now there's like thousands of other people that are going to go to that post and be like, you didn't drink enough water. What did you take this with? When did you take it? Lower the dosage, go to two pills instead of four. There are people that are doing our job.

Tom Shea [00:48:58]:

Yeah, that's crazy.

Ron Shah [00:49:00]:

The other thing that we did with Community is the way we don't spend any money to run it. So when I say that is our overhead for it is managed by eight admins and moderators. What we did, and I'll take my comment back, we do spend money, but what we did for it was we took our top ten customers, reached out to them and said, hey, would you like to be an admin and moderator on our Community? No requirements of ours. You just need to help customers if you see that they can be helped. Okay? You'll be listed as an admin and you'll be showcased as an admin. What you'll get from us is free product for life. That's it like nothing else. They all buy maybe two, three things a month, right? Cost to us, 25, $30.

Tom Shea [00:49:48]:

It's sort of captain.

Ron Shah [00:49:52]:

We give them some apparel, but we have eight people working round the clock. It's insane under the measures of because they want to help, right? And this community, they've grown it from literally zero to 65,000 women because they're constantly fostering helping. So you get to see that live. Even if I always tell people, you strip away obvi from me, that's fine, but I keep the community, right? Because that is one of the most important pieces of building something, because these women have all have relationships with each other.

Tom Shea [00:50:24]:

It's so crazy how you guys have nurtured it so well. It feels like it's so easy for it to go the other direction sometimes, where it's like if someone says something like, I have a migraine. What? From people, like, just jumping in and piling on.

Ron Shah [00:50:39]:

We do have a good snowball effect happen where like, oh, me too meet a lot of me too people, right.

Tom Shea [00:50:44]:

Which honestly, is probably good.

Ron Shah [00:50:45]:

It is great how you rate it's amazing. The one thing I think we like, and I think it goes with building in public, it's like, you have to be ready for the negatives. Right? We've reengineered our product three times because first time it's too sweet, second time it was too grainy, and then third time it was a bit too sweet and too grainy. We're always tinkering, but we wouldn't know.

Chris Meade [00:51:08]:

That if you didn't get the feedback.

Tom Shea [00:51:09]:

You didn't get feedback.

Chris Meade [00:51:10]:

Yeah, that's good for us, too. We'll use the community to drop new games. And it was like, yo, you're going to be the first one in America to have one of the ten samples.

Tom Shea [00:51:19]:

Right.

Chris Meade [00:51:19]:

And I want you to rip it apart and tell me what's wrong with it. How would you make it better? Because, like, Crosset that's now out in, like, a Walmart that's version 27 all the time. Not only to save cost, but also to make it better.

Tom Shea [00:51:31]:

Right.

Chris Meade [00:51:31]:

So being able to lean on these people is great. We don't have the active Facebook group because sadly, they're not 50 year old people talking about volleyball. Other volleyball groups think about it, which is sick.

Tom Shea [00:51:42]:

You've rethinking it now after hearing that you got the moms are buying, the.

Ron Shah [00:51:47]:

Moms are maybe just hop in ours. Drop some cross.

Chris Meade [00:51:52]:

Because the community has been really important, especially when you were just kind of harping on the CPAs being so negative as of late, especially in the winter. Seasonality, what we've kind of taken action with this year is stop overspending in December and pull back and rely on the community to create content. Do I need Content? Do I need, like, can I lean on these people already playing CrossFit at colleges all across America? Let's just tap them instead of just overspending.

Tom Shea [00:52:20]:

Totally. And with seasonality, too, you guys can instead of hiring someone and then not needing them in three months, you could sort of flex it up and on to how much you lean into it, which I think is interesting. Don't you have, like, talk about volleyball?

Chris Meade [00:52:34]:

ESPN and those all come from building in public.

Tom Shea [00:52:39]:

Totally.

Chris Meade [00:52:39]:

We had a 30 minutes special on ESPN where we had a Cross net. 30 minutes special.

Tom Shea [00:52:44]:

Crazy. What a dream.

Chris Meade [00:52:50]:

ESPN is televising it. That is just like the Craziest stamp of approval.

Tom Shea [00:52:54]:

Oh, my God.

Chris Meade [00:52:55]:

And they came in, though. They're like, Yo, we have a 30 minutes slot for you guys. Do you guys want it? And it was free. All we had to pay for was doing exactly what you're doing here.

Tom Shea [00:53:06]:

Right.

Chris Meade [00:53:06]:

We had to film it. We had to rent out a location. So in San Diego, there's an Olympic training facility, which is really cool. Like, all the Olympians are really just training, like, shredded people.

Tom Shea [00:53:20]:

Of course.

Chris Meade [00:53:21]:

So they had this volleyball court. We rented it out. It was a doubles tournament. So men, it was coeds doubles tournament. 30 different teams. And so they're competing on all different nets. And then they worked their way down, like, on a big tournament bracket, and the winner got $10,000. Wow, that's pretty. So they were going crazy.

Tom Shea [00:53:41]:

I'm sure that was, like, a lot.

Chris Meade [00:53:43]:

And because normally a normal volleyball tournament, some volleyball tournaments, you're only making, like, two grand.

Tom Shea [00:53:49]:

Totally.

Chris Meade [00:53:49]:

Yeah. This is actually, like, good, real money for these people, dedicate their life. To the sport.

Tom Shea [00:53:54]:

Totally.

Chris Meade [00:53:54]:

So it was an awesome all day banger. And ESPN actually gave us three commercial spots that we could go sell to make our money back.

Tom Shea [00:54:03]:

Wow.

Chris Meade [00:54:03]:

So we sold the three advertising.

Ron Shah [00:54:06]:

Wait, what?

Tom Shea [00:54:07]:

Who advertised?

Chris Meade [00:54:08]:

We had manscape. Wow.

Tom Shea [00:54:11]:

Dream client.

Chris Meade [00:54:12]:

I used the other. Just so, like, we ran our own crossing the ad within it. And then we sold this to somebody else for super cheap.

Ron Shah [00:54:17]:

But like a sweet talker, I got to bring them everywhere.

Tom Shea [00:54:23]:

Plug the address.

Chris Meade [00:54:25]:

And then you take the ESPN logo, right? And then you go to Wilson, and Wilson gives us a co branded Wilson Ball. And then you take the Wilson logo and you get into Walmart. And it's just like leveraging those relationships.

Tom Shea [00:54:35]:

Totally serious.

Chris Meade [00:54:35]:

And it doesn't happen unless you're actively sharing your stories. People naturally unless you're a, like, want somebody like myself to win. Because I'm actually totally I sacrificed my entire life to create four way volleyball fan.

Ron Shah [00:54:52]:

People love their dog.

Tom Shea [00:54:53]:

People love when the good guys win. So I'm with you. Another interesting commonality between your respective businesses is that they're both largely bootstraps. And I know that's changed, but you guys got so far with essentially nothing, almost like the level of growth that you would expect because of venture money. And so in the consumer space, you think about all the working capital needs. It's a cash intensive business, even arguably more so than mine, and yet you guys didn't raise venture money to pull it off. So how are you able to sort of make that work? Especially in the beginning?

Chris Meade [00:55:30]:

Growing up with our mindset, we didn't get into it a little bit earlier on, but where I grew up, dude, I was literally recycling cans to keep the electricity on for me and Greg to play World of Warcraft growing up.

Tom Shea [00:55:42]:

What was your character?

Chris Meade [00:55:44]:

Well, actually sorry, it was also a good game. Guild wars was that game. But yeah, we grew from there. That combled the games. We had food on the table. I'd get the new Madden game, but there's times where shit was getting pretty dark. And so I think that mindset of growing up in that kind of environment has allowed us to become better business owners. Because if I wouldn't spend it from my own personal bank account, the company's not spending it from the company's bank account, because, dude, the money is the same. It's my money. You got to have that mindset. So we'd sell 50, we rebuy back 100, we rebuy back 250. And we just kept scaling that way. And it wasn't like the best thing was we weren't bringing on a ton of inventory that was collecting stuff.

Tom Shea [00:56:27]:

Right.

Chris Meade [00:56:27]:

And then eventually you get to a point where you just need so much for the retailers. And that's kind of when things started getting very capital intensive.

Tom Shea [00:56:34]:

Right.

Chris Meade [00:56:34]:

But it's going slow. It's knowing your margins. In the beginning, before we had a team and everything like that. We were virtually like, my CPA is $50. I'm selling it for 150. My cogs are 30. I know that I'm making $25 on each sale.

Tom Shea [00:56:47]:

Right.

Chris Meade [00:56:48]:

How many sales a day can I make to hit our overhead? It was a pretty easy model until it got very convoluted.

Tom Shea [00:56:55]:

We'll talk about retail real soon. And so, Ron, what about you guys?

Ron Shah [00:56:59]:

Yeah, for us, it was different. We wanted to challenge ourselves to start with the little and see how far we can get. I think what was a big advantage for us was three founders in three completely distinct skill sets that literally did not require us to have any overhead. Like, you want a website done. You got unkid, you want paid marketing done. You have Ash, you want Ops and finance and supply chain, you have me.

Tom Shea [00:57:29]:

Right.

Ron Shah [00:57:29]:

So there was no need to hire for literally like the first year and a half. That's dope. Until customer service was our first role. We hired after a year and a half.

Tom Shea [00:57:40]:

Was it copackers and stuff?

Ron Shah [00:57:42]:

Yeah, we did a three PL.

Tom Shea [00:57:43]:

Yeah. Heavy operational lift to my business. I wish I could operate leaner.

Ron Shah [00:57:48]:

Yeah, because you have so much direct sales. Right, too. So for us, I think being able to not have overhead and then number two, we're coming hot off of a marketing agency of just running media. Right. So, like, day one, when we launched June 1, 2019, we spent $500 that day on Facebook ads. We were Facebook ads minute one into the brand. There was no even like, launching this to our friends. First it was, we are launching on Facebook ads. So we had to make the numbers work from day one until we got to the $30 million mark. We were great. And that's when iOS, all the other shit happened.

Tom Shea [00:58:34]:

Selfishly. Best thing that's ever happened for you.

Ron Shah [00:58:39]:

And that's when it became challenging, man. It became harder. But up until that point, I think because we leveraged the founder set to have a lot of coverage. And then number two, I think coming off of direct experience to run media, I think helped us a lot. And then lastly, it's like what you guys said in the beginning, too. This is not hard to sell. The problem is getting more people to consume it. Right. If you give me $50, $60 CAC, I'll get you unlimited sales.

Tom Shea [00:59:12]:

Right.

Ron Shah [00:59:13]:

The problem is getting $150. LTV right.

Tom Shea [00:59:19]:

So, next question. I think one of the main reasons I wanted you guys together on this episode is you two are some of the best builders in public. You've been doing it really since day one. And folks have generally said to me, if you don't have a content engine, you need to acquire one or you need to build one. And obviously this is building one. We'll see how that goes. But you guys have successfully really weaved together your personal brand and your professional brand. And I think in a world where you have some people who are sort of cagey of what's working for them and their secret sauce, you guys have really been just ruthless about everything that's going wrong, everything that's going right. Here's my secret. Here's what's not working, here's what we learned, stuff like that. And so what's the bullcase for building in public? And why do you think people should do it?

Chris Meade [01:00:08]:

For me, like, when I started, it was out of necessity. I didn't have venture backed friends. I didn't know, barely knew what shopify was. I didn't know what venture capital was, the kid from a farm with a four way volleyball net. And so the only way I knew how to do it was just post on LinkedIn and share my story. And at first it'd be ten people that would like it, then it was 50, then it's 100, then it's 1000. And it just grew and it was, hey guys, this is what's going on for us and this is how we're expanding. And I just posted that story because I have so many friends and people I've met in my life that are just stuck at their full time jobs, and there's nothing wrong with that. But I know because they tell me every day how miserable they are and that they have an idea, but they're too scared to launch it because maybe they just don't want to failure. They don't want to risk what could happen, what could go wrong. So instead they text me and say, hey man, only 42 more years till I can retire. It's just like rough. It's sad. It's not saying one life is better than the other, but I just want to empower people to at least take a chance on themselves. Because you could always go back to your other job. I could always go get a job at Uber again, I've always felt that way. You could always go back, especially with a college degree.

Tom Shea [01:01:17]:

Also with all the people you learn along you meet along the way. Anyone's company went boom.

Chris Meade [01:01:27]:

The way I think about it is I think this whole concept of regret is just like such a disgusting thing. And thankfully I'll never have that for myself, but I don't want that for my friends and I also don't want other people. So it's really empowering to get people to even just in the comments or writing back to my newsletter being like, yo, thank you so much. This is really resonating and this is helping me start my company. Makes me feel good. Even if they're not buying CrossNet, maybe they're sharing it in a conversation. Maybe they know the program director at the YMCA makes a suggestion totally because he read my newsletter and it struck like so it's building up that good feel good.

Tom Shea [01:02:04]:

And also just goodwill.

Chris Meade [01:02:05]:

Yeah, it's just goodwill and it just works and it's just like who I am as a person because fuck am I? I grew up in a farm in Connecticut and now we're in. That's kind of what I've been doing. And then I ended up connecting with the buyers and they're seeing that story.

Tom Shea [01:02:22]:

What about you, Ron?

Ron Shah [01:02:23]:

Yeah, I think I connect a lot of what Chris said. For me, I think there's mainly two things. One was I feel like there is this. When we started the brand, there was a lot of secrecy, right? Like, oh, dude, I figured it out. I know how to run ads. I can't tell you, though, am I going to tell you anything? Right. Or I have a supplier. I can't let you figure out who micropackers fire. Yeah. And my three PL is so good.

Tom Shea [01:02:51]:

But I can't tell you who it is.

Ron Shah [01:02:52]:

And I'm just like, wait, that sucks. Yeah, sucks. And I'm going to figure it out, but why are you doing this? And so I was like, what if we went completely the other opposite side? Like, just share it. All right. What's really going to happen? Are you going to start another AVV?

Tom Shea [01:03:08]:

Cool.

Ron Shah [01:03:09]:

To be honest, that's going to help our category it's in a way because now there's even more. You're going to expose it to more people. So more people know about collagen. They're going to look for collagen. Overall trickle effect. It's our job to market.

Tom Shea [01:03:22]:

Thanks for paying for all those. Exactly.

Ron Shah [01:03:26]:

So went with that one theory and then number two, I think was I feel like this is definitely not the last thing I'm going to do. So personal brand, selfishly speaking, for Ash, Unkid and I is very important to grow at the same time because obvious one of the many things we hope to do.

Tom Shea [01:03:45]:

Yeah. The last question in a stop three here was really the evolution from D to C to retail. And so I'm curious how that's changed your respective businesses because it's really almost like a full reset and restart and at least you're armed with everything you learned while you were scaling direct to consumer. But I'm just really curious, and I think a lot of people are curious what has had to change as you've thought about having retail where people aren't getting all that education and support that you've been building online? Can you just talk about that transition for your respective organizations?

Chris Meade [01:04:21]:

For us, it was always important because I wanted to be sold wherever sports were sold. You're going to the beach. You're on your Martha's Vineyard vacation for two days. You go to Dick Sporting as you pick up a volleyball net.

Tom Shea [01:04:31]:

Right.

Chris Meade [01:04:31]:

And so it was important for us to be in that category. And the nice thing that worked with us that our game is pretty innovative and it's a very stale category, like I was talking about before.

Ron Shah [01:04:40]:

True.

Chris Meade [01:04:41]:

So the buyers have always been super receptive, even just cold DMs. Like, yo, I got this dope four way volleyball game in your category, and they're like, yeah, they actually would look sick. Like, you're absolutely right.

Tom Shea [01:04:51]:

Also, just being super authentic in the DM, do the same thing. I'm just going to be myself. It might be a curse word or something.

Chris Meade [01:04:58]:

100%, dude. So that's worked really well with the buyers. And also, I mean, it's translated to sales. Like, we haven't got kicked out of any stores yet.

Tom Shea [01:05:05]:

Right.

Chris Meade [01:05:05]:

And they keep ordering.

Tom Shea [01:05:06]:

Hey, dude, God bless. That's a rare thing to say. I feel like none of the hard.

Chris Meade [01:05:10]:

Resets, but it does allow you to think about things in a different light because you do need operation specialists to print the labels. One horror story I always shared, like, the first time we sold them to Dix, we had to label off by, like, bro, two inches. There's like a $45,000 chargeback on like, a $500,000 order. It's just like so petty and what's.

Tom Shea [01:05:31]:

It explain a chargeback real quick.

Chris Meade [01:05:33]:

A chargeback is when Dix is supposed to pay you 500K in 60 days and they pay you 500 minus I'm not going to do math on Spot. You don't get the money.

Tom Shea [01:05:47]:

Why do you get a charge back?

Chris Meade [01:05:48]:

Because the labels in the wrong spot or you don't route the truck at the right time. Just stupid petty.

Tom Shea [01:05:54]:

Right.

Chris Meade [01:05:55]:

And you have to have a full time employee that has to read routing guides all day long and does stuff to make sure you're compliant. Right, but it's just so annoying and it really hurts your cash flow when you get a 50K charge back that.

Ron Shah [01:06:06]:

You weren't expecting, especially if you've spent that money.

Chris Meade [01:06:09]:

Right, exactly. But no, it's been good. But also on the flip side of things, it allows us to become much more predictable when we're building our 2023 model.

Tom Shea [01:06:19]:

Right.

Chris Meade [01:06:19]:

Because I already have all of my preorders in from all of my retail accounts last November, assuming that they order everything they say they're going to order, which is also another conversation, but I know I'm going to make X amount of money from retail this year. I can now build out my operating model around that, and it also have stretch goals for sales.

Tom Shea [01:06:37]:

Yeah, that's a good point. Predictability you're getting a PO.

Chris Meade [01:06:41]:

I'm getting a PO. I know my margin. This is my opex. How do I build the model that's profitable and then how I build a stretch goal? And what happens when we hit those stretch goals?

Ron Shah [01:06:49]:

It helps a lot. Yeah, helps a lot.

Chris Meade [01:06:51]:

So that's what we're leaning into this year is like, Amazon and the B two B side, right? And D to C is like, our lowest channel. Amazon is number two and B to B is number one.

Tom Shea [01:07:00]:

It's crazy. You spend like, years focusing on D to C and then goes boom.

Ron Shah [01:07:06]:

You got to follow the money.

Tom Shea [01:07:07]:

Ron, what about you guys?

Ron Shah [01:07:09]:

So, for us, retail is the biggest challenge in the world. We are so bad at it in the sense of there's so many things we didn't know when we did our first retail rollout, which was Vitamin Shop. And if you look at our packaging, there are little things that we never even caught. Our logo is so damn small, you don't even know what the brand is.

Tom Shea [01:07:31]:

I mean, this looks good on shelf, though.

Ron Shah [01:07:32]:

It looks good on shelf, but that's all it is. It looks good. You're not picking it up and buying it because it doesn't tell the full story. Like, why is it a protein? Why isn't it just called collagen? Right? Or why is the brand smaller than the product name? Right? Like, there's so many things we didn't catch. So Vitamin Shop, I think we're a very average brand there. We're not going to be kicked off. They renewing us. But we are not, like, crushing. We're not crushing now because we got to learn from it and not have to lose a lot of money from learning the Walmart rollout we have nationwide in August, I think we're doing a.

Tom Shea [01:08:16]:

Top like Walmart nationwide, August.

Ron Shah [01:08:20]:

Like, even if you see our logo there versus this, we're in the midst right now of a complete refresh. Right. And it's all because we're going to Walmart. What I'll say is the impact retail can have on your brand is like, you'll literally reconsider everything for it. And I don't think that there's a right or wrong answer here. I think you have to do what works for you. What we did with Vitamin Shop was, okay, this is working on D to C. It should work here. It didn't. We're very average.

Tom Shea [01:08:51]:

Completely different game.

Ron Shah [01:08:52]:

Completely different game. Now with Walmart, though, we're going to be way more prepped because we're changing everything, the whole thing. So it's a big learning there.

Tom Shea [01:09:01]:

And do you think you're going to fully change both the D to C and the Walmart?

Ron Shah [01:09:04]:

We have to.

Tom Shea [01:09:05]:

Yeah, you have to, because eventually that needs to become a pill.

Ron Shah [01:09:09]:

That was a pill to swallow. But we've realized if we want to crack 50 million or like 50 to that 100 million dollar range, you have to do retail. If you want to do retail, our packaging has to change and our branding has to change. And if we want to change packaging and branding, it has to change on D to C, too. So you reverse back out of what your end exit goal is. And if you realize you have to do these things, then you have to get ahead of it.

Tom Shea [01:09:34]:

Yeah.

Chris Meade [01:09:34]:

I think it's also really important that you learned with Vitamin Shop before Walmart. Oh, my God, talk to all these people. And I want to be in Target tomorrow. No.

Tom Shea [01:09:46]:

I mean people being like, I'm rolling out nationwide. It's like, and this is their first retail exhibition. I'm like, that's actually probably the worst.

Ron Shah [01:09:53]:

Thing you can do. I was really upset. Not upset, but I wasn't too happy that Walmart was rolling us out nationwide because it was like, it's not what we asked for, but they just see so much excitement in the category right now. So they wanted to do it, but now it's like, you got to support it. You got to support it. But it's a lot of work.

Tom Shea [01:10:09]:

Yeah, absolutely. All right, guys, so stop four on our route today is the tongue in cheek version of the hot Seat, which we're calling the Hot box today.

Ron Shah [01:10:20]:

I love it.

Tom Shea [01:10:21]:

So it's going to be sort of a this or that. Could call it Hot Wheels. Hot Wheels. It's going to be a this or that focused game where I'm going to give you two things, and as quick as you can, you pick the one that's more appealing to you or you identify better with. So we'll do. Chris, I'm going to ask the question you're both going to answer. Chris, we'll have you go first. Ron, you go immediately after. Okay. You guys ready? Yeah. All right. We still need to figure out a sponsor for this really good low hanging fruit. We sold 6 million our first year and did $80 million in sales last year. That's what the COO of Adventure Challenge, a longtime customer of Shipob's, shared with Shipob the other day. The pace of growth for Adventure Challenge has been insane, but it wasn't all positive. It started with a failed crowdfunding project. Then investors assured them that their business would fail. They raised $0 in outside capital, and it somehow only took a few years to hit $80 million in sales. They started off fulfilling all orders themselves. They'd have U Hauls packed with thousands of products, making endless trips from their storage unit to the post office. It was not scalable. It was definitely hurting their growth, and it definitely wasn't fun. That's when Shipob started their partnership with Adventure challenge. By being able to focus on growing the business and product development, sales took off like a rocket. Ship. While Adventure Challenge initially focused on D to C sales, their popularity started driving other conversations. They started to stock several hundred smaller boutiques across the country. Then Francesca's, then Kohl's. And while they're based in California and most of their customers are in the US. The word of mouth and viral videos on TikTok and Instagram started driving demand around the world. So then they started filling orders out of Canada and then the UK. And now Australia. From a failed Kickstarter and getting $0 in outside investment on day one to over $80 million in revenue, adventure Challenge has defied the ODS and built a global powerhouse brand alongside their partnership with Shipob. Who's there to help you completely unlock your brand's growth? Read the entire story@shipob.com. Adventurechallenge. Coffee or tea? Coffee. Sunrise or sunset?

Chris Meade [01:12:27]:

Sunset.

Tom Shea [01:12:28]:

Sunset. D two C or DTC? Neat or messy?

Chris Meade [01:12:35]:

Neat.

Ron Shah [01:12:36]:

Neat.

Tom Shea [01:12:36]:

Corgi or golden retriever?

Chris Meade [01:12:38]:

Corgi.

Ron Shah [01:12:39]:

Golden retriever.

Tom Shea [01:12:40]:

Winter or summer?

Ron Shah [01:12:42]:

Winter.

Tom Shea [01:12:43]:

Yeah, we get it. Tennis or golf?

Chris Meade [01:12:46]:

Tennis.

Ron Shah [01:12:46]:

Golf.

Tom Shea [01:12:47]:

Pineapple. Pizza or candy corn?

Chris Meade [01:12:52]:

Candy corn.

Tom Shea [01:12:54]:

Live music or DJ?

Ron Shah [01:12:55]:

Live.

Tom Shea [01:12:56]:

Advertisement or advertisement?

Chris Meade [01:12:59]:

The first one.

Tom Shea [01:13:04]:

Live in space or underwater? Space. I hate fish. Bite. One horse sized duck. Or 1000 duck sized horses?

Chris Meade [01:13:13]:

One horse sized duck.

Tom Shea [01:13:14]:

One horse size duck. Sweet snacks or salty snacks? Sweet. Call or text? Or I probably should add the random audio messages.

Ron Shah [01:13:22]:

Voice note.

Tom Shea [01:13:23]:

Voice note. Reading or writing?

Chris Meade [01:13:27]:

Reading.

Ron Shah [01:13:28]:

Reading.

Tom Shea [01:13:28]:

Work remote or work on site?

Ron Shah [01:13:30]:

On site.

Tom Shea [01:13:32]:

Do laundry or do the dishes?

Chris Meade [01:13:34]:

Laundry.

Tom Shea [01:13:36]:

Twitter, LinkedIn. Instagram or TikTok.

Chris Meade [01:13:38]:

LinkedIn.

Tom Shea [01:13:38]:

Twitter. Dancing or people watching?

Ron Shah [01:13:42]:

Dancing, people watching.

Tom Shea [01:13:44]:

Cocktails or beers?

Ron Shah [01:13:45]:

Cocktails.

Tom Shea [01:13:46]:

Feel too hot or too cold? Too hot. You get one animal to protect you against a horde. Who wrote this? Against a horde of zombies. You picking a gorilla or a grizzly bear?

Ron Shah [01:13:58]:

Grizzly bear.

Tom Shea [01:13:58]:

Grizzly bear. Give up. Bread for life or cheese for life.

Ron Shah [01:14:03]:

Oh, god.

Chris Meade [01:14:04]:

Bread.

Ron Shah [01:14:05]:

Oh, cheese.

Tom Shea [01:14:07]:

Air guitar or air drums?

Ron Shah [01:14:09]:

Air guitar. Air guitar.

Tom Shea [01:14:11]:

Board games or video games? Video games.

Chris Meade [01:14:13]:

Board games.

Tom Shea [01:14:14]:

$50 on red or black?

Ron Shah [01:14:16]:

Black.

Tom Shea [01:14:17]:

Start early, leave late.

Ron Shah [01:14:20]:

Leave late.

Chris Meade [01:14:22]:

Leave late.

Tom Shea [01:14:23]:

Fiction or nonfiction?

Chris Meade [01:14:24]:

Fiction.

Ron Shah [01:14:25]:

Fiction.

Tom Shea [01:14:26]:

Where you travel next? Europe or Asia?

Chris Meade [01:14:28]:

Europe.

Tom Shea [01:14:29]:

Europe. Rich and famous or rich and unknown?

Chris Meade [01:14:32]:

Rich and unknown.

Ron Shah [01:14:33]:

Rich and unknown.

Tom Shea [01:14:34]:

As we built in public.

Ron Shah [01:14:35]:

Literally.

Tom Shea [01:14:40]:

Podcasts. Playlist playlist. Cardio or weights?

Chris Meade [01:14:44]:

Weights.

Ron Shah [01:14:45]:

Weights.

Tom Shea [01:14:45]:

Pancakes or waffles?

Chris Meade [01:14:47]:

Waffles.

Ron Shah [01:14:47]:

Pancakes.

Tom Shea [01:14:48]:

Speak to animals or speak ten languages?

Ron Shah [01:14:51]:

Speak ten languages.

Chris Meade [01:14:52]:

Animals.

Tom Shea [01:14:52]:

Yeah, I think it's animals too. Netflix or YouTube?

Ron Shah [01:14:56]:

Netflix.

Tom Shea [01:14:57]:

Beach house or lake cabin? Do that beach house. Telepathy or teleport?

Chris Meade [01:15:02]:

Teleport.

Ron Shah [01:15:03]:

Teleport.

Tom Shea [01:15:03]:

Truck ads or billboards? Don't fuck ads. Receive good news or bad news first?

Chris Meade [01:15:09]:

Bad news.

Tom Shea [01:15:10]:

All right, well, the bad news is we have come to stop five driving performance transition.

Ron Shah [01:15:16]:

But that has to work.

Tom Shea [01:15:19]:

But yeah, guys, honestly, this is a lot of fun. Thanks for joining me today. I want to quickly give you guys a chance to plug yourselves. So where can people find where can people find Crosshand? And also where can they find you guys if they want to learn more?

Chris Meade [01:15:31]:

Yeah, Crossnetgame.com. A bunch of major retailers. Sell it. Follow me on Chris Mead on LinkedIn or Twitter or social Instagram. And also I write a weekly newsletter called Cross Commerce. It's literally about everything we talked about today. All your fuck ups, all the lessons we're going through, and just trying to help you become an entrepreneur.

Tom Shea [01:15:48]:

And what retailers we got.

Chris Meade [01:15:51]:

Dicks Academy, shields wegmans Dillards Toys R US. Walmart Sam's Club. The list keeps going, but yeah, all those are there.

Tom Shea [01:15:59]:

Go get CrossNet.

Ron Shah [01:16:01]:

Yeah. Avi. You can find it@myavi.com. You can find myself Avi CEO on Twitter or Ron Shaw on LinkedIn. Just released a podcast called Chew on this, where we do bite size D to C, commentary about our brand and other things that are going on in the space. So check out. Chewon this IO and you can also find Avdi in vitamin shop and then Walmart in August.

Tom Shea [01:16:27]:

Cool. Well, let's go take this truck and check out some of those places.

Ron Shah [01:16:31]:

Let's do it.

Chris Meade [01:16:34]:

Great job. Great job. Dream close.