How to Achieve 8-Figure Freedom Using Core Values with Beardbrand

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[00:00:00] Eric Bandholz: We would prefer to have a company that gives us more freedom than one that gives us more wealth.

[00:00:08] And when you realize that, it allows you to have the confidence and the ability to focus on a more specific niche that is a more profitable niche than trying to build a company that’s like a, you know, a hundred million dollar company that you have to serve, the mass public.

[00:00:28]
[00:00:36] CJ: Today we’re joined by Eric Bandholz. He’s the founder and CEO of Beardbrand. And in this episode, Eric talks about a lot of things. His genesis story from being a financial advisor to starting a blog, to growing a community on YouTube to really shaping society in terms of how men think about growing out their facial hair, the big.

[00:00:57] Takeaway for me from this episode is how [00:01:00] Eric shares their core values. They have three core values and how those core values genuinely contributed to the growth of the company. And I think it’s a good reminder or kind of a playbook on how to use core values to really grow a company and not just have them.

[00:01:17] Because somebody in business school said that you’re supposed to have core values and it’s just a check the box and it’s corporate bs. Eric shares how a strong point of view actually contributes to really everything the brand does and how it helps grow the brand. So this one’s a real inspiration. I hope you enjoy.

[00:01:38]
[00:01:38] CJ: Maybe we just set it off with a quick origin story that you’ve probably told about 1400 times, but just give us some context of what is Beardbrand, what’s your role, how do you start? And then we’ll just take it from there and see where you are on the path.

[00:01:56] Eric Bandholz: Yeah, so [00:02:00] I started Beardbrand back in 20. Really, the idea came about when I used to be a financial advisor working at a mega bank, and I. This was probably like 2010, 2011. There’s a lot of pressure to look a certain way, dress a certain way, act a certain way, and you know, with, with good reason, I think people are looking for a little bit of, um, trust within that role.

[00:02:23] And historically, you know, suits and ties and, uh, you know, the All American look was kind of how you develop trust with your clients in that space. But I always thought it was kind of weird and arbitrary. You know, men genetically speaking, if you do nothing like beard is the standard default. Uh, so you have to actively be anti beard to kind of maintain this thing.

[00:02:46] So, like, from my perspective, like humans, you know, have evolutionarily speaking, grown beards, um, and it seems odd and arbitrary to just trim ’em off. So it didn’t sit right with me. I always [00:03:00] felt like I wanted to wear facial hair, wanted to wear a beard, but I always did feel this pressure to, to look and.

[00:03:07] Dress a certain way. And basically what happened is I, I ended up quitting working at the financial company, uh, started growing my beard out, you know, tried some, some other businesses on the side and ended up meeting other guys who were like me that didn’t really fit the traditional stereotype of, of what a bearded guy was.

[00:03:29] So, you know, these would be like doctors, lawyers, uh, entrepreneurs, businessmen, Or communicate to urban Beards men. Those are gonna be our audiences. And, uh, you know, so the, the guys with beards aren’t just the musicians and the ZZ tops and the Duck Dynasty and the, you know, construction workers and kind of like those traditional stereotypes of, of what a bearded guy was.

[00:03:56] And we started with, uh, like a Tumblr blog, a [00:04:00] YouTube channel, uh, for the first year just posting content and, and writing articles on how to care for your beard, how to grow your beard out, how to, you know, handle it when your, your wife or your boss or your your mom, uh, kind of gives you flack for growing out facial hair and, and ways that you might be able to overcome that.

[00:04:18] And um, from there I was able to convince my business partners, Jeremy and Lindsay to come on board with Beardbrand. And we decided to spin off the organic content and started, uh, offering products. And we started selling with beard oil and mustache wax and. From there, it’s been a, a long journey, a fun journey.

[00:04:38] Uh, we’re a bootstrap company. It’s still pretty small and, uh, focused more on building a journey that we enjoy rather than building a mega company that makes a lot of money and, um, leaves me shallow and empty on the inside.

[00:04:56] CJ: So when, when you say that, like what, what sucks in your mind that you [00:05:00] guys have actively not done? Because you could, but you don’t do it.

[00:05:05] Eric Bandholz: Yeah. So our core values are freedom, hunger, and trust. And those are really our, our North Star when making decisions within the company. So one of the things that’s important to us, uh, is well freedom. And when you, from my perspective. When you take debt or when you have outside investors, you are giving up a little bit of freedom.

[00:05:30] So you no longer, uh, are entirely in control of the business and the decisions of the business and doing it for your own benefit, you start to do it for the benefit of, you know, the bankers are doing it for the benefit of the investors. And I think, uh, it’s not to disparage anybody who chooses to go down that route, because I think you can build incredible things with incredible partners that allow you to do great things.

[00:05:54] So, but for me, I, I didn’t like that trade off of freedom. Uh, and fortunately for [00:06:00] me, my, my business partners are the same. Like we, we really desire being able to do things that we want to do. And I think there’s, it gives you the freedom and the flexibility to do things that maybe aren’t in the best financial interest of the company.

[00:06:14] Like we don’t have to do things. I mean, we do things in the, the interest of the shareholders, but the shareholders are me and, and my business partners. And money isn’t the only outcome that drives us. So, you know, we got recently sued, uh, with an a DA lawsuit, uh, a couple years ago. And most people make the financial decision to settle because it’s, uh, a lower investment, uh, to just settle than fight it.

[00:06:42] But, you know, because we tend to be a little more philosophically involved. And the way we look at it is if you settle, you are really encouraging more bad behavior. It makes sense for us to, you know, be as resistant to settling as possible. So we’ve effectively fought [00:07:00] that lawsuit a couple years ago and, uh, it took us about a year, year and a half, something like that.

[00:07:05] And then eventually they dropped it. Uh, ’cause they knew, uh. They’re gonna be not getting, getting anything from us or if to, to get something from us, they’d have to take us to court. And we were prepared to go that far as well. So, you know, that kind of decision making process isn’t gonna happen when you have an investor who’s like, oh, you could just settle for this amount, you know, settle and move on.

[00:07:28] But when you’re philosophically aligned, you can make those kind of decisions that maybe don’t have the best outcome financially, but do set you up to, to just kind of sleep good at night, for lack of better terms.

[00:07:42] CJ: that in like the public, like did you make it into content or was it really kind of didn’t have to do with the business? There wasn’t a good story there.

[00:07:51] Eric Bandholz: Yeah, I mean, we’ll talk about it. Um, you know, we’re, we’re not shy. I, I, I think lawsuits are tricky because you don’t want to say something that [00:08:00] is gonna put you in a position, uh, that hurts your ability to defend yourself. So I. Um, you know, at the end of the day, the way we build our companies, we want to serve all of our customers.

[00:08:14] Uh, I do believe a DA lawsuits, while there are some, uh, valid ones out there, I think a lot of them are more akin to ambulance chasing and, you know, trying to find, uh, a situation that doesn’t really exist. And we would serve our customer if they email us or if they want to call us. We can help. Like, we want to sell you products.

[00:08:39] We’re not going to make that hard. Um, and we wanna make the website, uh, to, to the best of all visitors processes. But at, at the end of the day, you’ve got, you know, uh, 7 billion people out there. There’s no way I can accommodate for all 7 billion shoppers out there. And just like, uh, you [00:09:00] know, I don’t sell women’s products, you know, naturally and inherently.

[00:09:05] The world is, has exclusions to it and, and that that’s inevitable. And, and so I’m going like kind of down like my,

[00:09:14] CJ: We’re

[00:09:14] Eric Bandholz: know, the, the logic brain and you know, like,

[00:09:17] CJ: my friend. You are towing

[00:09:18] Eric Bandholz: yeah. Yeah. So, so I do, like, I do think, like, you know, I want to be like, I don’t want to be hypocritical. Like that’s something that’s always been important to me and, and kind of being logically consistent is important to me.

[00:09:32] But, um, you know, at a, at the end of the day, um, you know,

[00:09:40] CJ: It’s

[00:09:40] Eric Bandholz: we have a great website that’s, we have a great website that, that serves people of all, all walks and lives. Uh, and we do it to the best of our abilities with the resources that we have.

[00:09:50] CJ: so it was like an accessibility thing on the site? Is that what I’m hearing?

[00:09:54] Eric Bandholz: Yeah, they argue that they couldn’t purchase on our website, um, which, um, I.

[00:09:59] Zoë : take it back [00:10:00] to slightly off topic. So you mentioned at the beginning that you just started with blogs and your YouTube channel and your organic content. When did that start to pop off for you? Like when did you start to see your real tracks in gain, um, gaining as you sort of started up this blog and YouTube channel?

[00:10:14] Eric Bandholz: Yeah, so I mean, we, uh, had success on Tumblr in the early days. We had success on YouTube in the early days. I think for us, you know, success is, is very relative because we, we bootstrapped this company. So what that means for me is, especially in the early days, we had more time than money. Uh, so when you have more time than money, you do things that are more time intensive than, than money intensive.

[00:10:42] So that is why we were doing our blogging and, you know, building publicly and, and stuff like that. So, uh, I say we had success that first year. I think we had like 400 subscribers. On YouTube. So it wasn’t like we had this mega audience and like, we’re gonna just [00:11:00] leverage this audience. We did really kind of simultaneously build our audience and our products kind of side by side.

[00:11:06] CJ: how did you guys, um, scale with inventory? Because at the beginning, did you just like cash out a 401k to do the first order? And then do you guys have, do you finance it now or is it fully just, kept up by sales? Maybe

[00:11:24] Eric Bandholz: So

[00:11:25] CJ: like from the beginning. Obviously I’m sure it’s changed now, but like how do you, how do you do that?

[00:11:29] Um, at the beginning then versus now?

[00:11:33] Eric Bandholz: no, it, it hasn’t really changed. I think when building a business, you’re presented a lot of options and one of the key decisions that we’ve made. Is focusing on our, you know, our freedom, hunger, and trust. Going back to that and understanding that, you know, we would prefer to have a company that gives us more freedom than one that gives us more wealth.[00:12:00]
[00:12:00] And when you realize that, it allows you to have the confidence and the ability to focus on a more specific niche that is a more profitable niche than trying to build a company that’s like a, you know, a hundred million dollar company that you have to serve, uh, the mass public. So because of that, we’re able to focus on developing great products at a higher price point, um, and do things in a way that, uh, maintain margins.

[00:12:31] CJ: bummer because it’s like you could, even if you have a relationship with somebody who’s not an asshole and that’s the person you’re doing business with, but then something like that happens, you know, they’re just gonna, the contract just gets kicked to some other legal department, procurement, whatever, and they don’t know you and they don’t care.

[00:12:47] And their job is to get the money. And so,

[00:12:50] Eric Bandholz: Yeah,

[00:12:50] CJ: know, it’s unfortunate, but you do have to spend time combing through those contracts. I remember I heard a, a story and uh, knew this brand got [00:13:00] trash in target today, but, uh, they got, um, distribution in

[00:13:04] Eric Bandholz: keep, I’ve got more too.

[00:13:06] CJ: We got distribution in Target and there was a clause buried into their, um, into their contract that if they didn’t hit their sales thresholds, they had to buy back all the inventory at MSRP, uh, they didn’t hit the thresholds.

[00:13:19] They target enforced it, put ’em outta business, they’re gone.

[00:13:23] Eric Bandholz: Yeah.

[00:13:23] CJ: just crazy. Uh, you just gotta read the fine print, I guess, but,

[00:13:28] Eric Bandholz: well not only that, the thing is like we negotiated, like Lindsay, my business partner’s a great negotiator and she negotiated very specific things within our contract. And basically Target was arguing that we had to, um. Buyback inventory or, or handle chargebacks or something like that. But according to our contract, if they marked it down, we were not responsible for it and they literally would not read their own contract.

[00:13:56] And they still, because they have boilerplate contracts they were trying [00:14:00] to, to collect on us. But long story short, target never paid for about $200,000 of product that they, they bought from, bought from us and stiffed us $200,000 as a small business. And when it reply to our emails, when it goes as we asked for arbitration and stuff like that, target with Beardbrand, uh, they were a great partner until they weren’t.

[00:14:24] And at the very end, and you know, so

[00:14:27] CJ: Yep. Had a

[00:14:28] Eric Bandholz: we would have these circular conversations with our buyer. I’m like, this is the conversation. We had copy and paste. And then they’re like, give us your most recent contract. I’m like, well we don’t have the recent contract ’cause you didn’t renew with us. So like, here’s the contract.

[00:14:40] It goes back like. Two years and the, yeah, so it was, it was, it was not a fun time, you know, dealing with that where Target’s trying to get $200,000 from us and, uh, we’re trying to get $200,000 from them. Yeah. It was just not a fun time. Not a fun time.

[00:14:56] CJ: let’s flip it. Let’s go positive. We gotta change the, [00:15:00] change the tone here. The, uh, do you think, other than, uh, you know, building the brand off of a, you know, strong point of view and starting with content first and community first. Like, what do you think has been critical to the, to the success of the brand and building it and to getting to where you are now that you know you’re proud of?

[00:15:23] Eric Bandholz: I mean, I think what makes, in, in my opinion, I think Beard Brain’s a quite remarkable company with quite remarkable products. Um, we, you know, our, our tagline is Keep on growing and that’s allowed us to, I. You know, spread a message that’s kind of beyond the beard. Um, like this right here is, is called the Book of Reminders.

[00:15:47] There’s a little booklet that I wrote that has, uh, you know, the, the nine different reminders that I tell myself as I face adversity. And none of this is about growing a beard. It’s about growth and becoming a better version of [00:16:00] yourself and kind of working through issues. And we, uh, sell this book, but we also for certain periods of time will include it in orders free of charge.

[00:16:09] And the people who will get this, and they’re at a point in their life where that messaging can resonate with the adversity they’re facing, have shared just great emotional, um, things like, for instance, um, I had one person who, uh, I think they were in a. Now, this was years ago that this story was told to me, so I, I may mis be mis-remembering it, but had a terrible accident where basically they were in a car wreck and their wife and kids died and they didn’t.

[00:16:40] And uh, just dealing with that grief and that guilt, um, and in the, the Book of reminders is one of the reminders is like things that happened in the past or in the past, and you can, it’s okay to leave ’em in the past and it’s important to focus on the [00:17:00] present. You know, like in this moment right now, you know, you, you are not that person who is in the wreck.

[00:17:06] And, uh, uh, and she talked about how, uh, it was her hus, her husband, he remarried to, to her. And, and how that book, the book of reminders for him was a very remarkable reminder. And it’s stuff like that that, you know, makes me proud to do the things that we’re doing and I think sets the brand apart. Um, because we’re not just focused on pushing products and moving products, but we’re focused on, uh, helping the man love the person, looking back at them in the mirror.

[00:17:36] And we believe that when this person loves himself, that they can become better husbands, better partners, better fathers, better stewards of the community, and through more of a grassroots effort, we’re gonna make a world a better place rather than most people who focus on like a top down like political vote our way to, to success.

[00:17:55] And personally, I believe that society is as good or bad as it [00:18:00] is based on the individuals within that society. So if we can help level up those individuals, uh, we will make the world a better place. And that’s kind of what’s driving us at Beardbrand and, and how we’re trying to make our impact on the world.

[00:18:13] CJ: God, Eric, that’s so, I mean, what’s going through my head is. How do you take that as a, you know, visionary leader, super, like, can articulate that really, really well. How does somebody bring that and through into the culture of their company and get, because I am just thinking about companies that are larger and there’s, I have a particular, a few in mind.

[00:18:38] I’m just like, could, there’s no way they could pull off that richness, that authenticity and bring it through down to, you know, a book that they throw into some orders sometimes. You know, like, ’cause it just would it would never make it to that point. But it also, if did, it would probably get so cut up by paper cuts and people trying to put their stamp on it that it would [00:19:00] lose all its soul, you know? Is there anything that

[00:19:03] Eric Bandholz: I mean, I, I do think, I, I think there’s, um, you know, no one is going to have the audacity that a founder is going to have. And, and you know, I think I. Uh, Elon Musk is a great example of a person who’s willing to, to push the conventional norms. Uh, the cyber truck being a great example like that, that truck should not exist by like, if that was designed by committee or like personnel.

[00:19:30] If it didn’t come from him, there’s no, it would just be like a ho-hum, you know, truck. And it’s not to say it is a great performer or it was a great move or anything, but it exists. It happened. And I do think, you know, it makes sense to try to create a culture, um, that is able to, to take risk. And there’s certainly people who can do that and people who can’t do that.

[00:19:53] Um, so how I do it from a tactical standpoint is in the interview [00:20:00] process, one of the early stages is we say our core values are freedom, hunger, and trust. Tell me what those values mean to you. And so like from the get-go, one, we’re setting the expectation and the. Uh, that we are a core values driven company, and then we see how those core values represent, you know, them and, and their beliefs of that.

[00:20:21] And if people are like, oh, freedom means I get to take off time to work whenever I wanna work, and I get a, you know, sleep in and, you know, then we’re like, okay, well, their interpretation of freedom, it doesn’t really align with our interpretation of freedom. Um, so that kind of sets the standards. And then, you know, it, we’re a small team, so being a small team, I get to spend a lot of time with my team members and, you know, just through asking me questions like I, I feel like they, they know what I’m gonna say when they have a question.

[00:20:54] So once a day they get to that point, they’re like, well, you’re gonna say this. [00:21:00] It, it typically comes like, we, we just developed a new fragrance called Desert Road and, uh, our are. Art director sent me the icon, which was a motorcycle. And you know, I, I think sometimes she sends me stuff just to kind of keep me in the loop and I think sometimes she sends me stuff because she’s, she knows it’s not quite hitting the mark, and then I can kind of give those refinements.

[00:21:26] Um, but I’ll ask her, you know, is like, what am I gonna say? Or what do you think is the one, and, you know, nine times outta 10 we’re going to agree on it because we’ve just spent that time together. The copywriter is the same thing. We’ve spent a lot of time together working on copy. I think he can speak on the brand voice better than I can at this point.

[00:21:45] Um, so it kind of starts with like, when you live these core values, when you have these philosophies and you, you’re not afraid to share them. You’re going to attract like-minded people. And, um, I mean, to the point [00:22:00] where it’s such a small team, like, uh, two of my team members ended up getting married, uh, because, you know, that’s just like the, they’re beard brainers.

[00:22:09] Like beard brainers because, you know,

[00:22:12] Zoë : Yeah.

[00:22:13] Eric Bandholz: we see the world very similarly.

[00:22:15] CJ: you had to immediately let one of them go. ’cause that’s against

[00:22:17] Eric Bandholz: No, no, no, no. They’re, they’re, I mean, everyone’s great at Beardbrand, so

[00:22:23] Zoë : what do you think is

[00:22:24] Eric Bandholz: it’s,

[00:22:24] Zoë : few? You mentioned about just keep growing, but that goes beyond just like selling products for, almost like selling this lifestyle. And you obviously spoke about your book and new fragrances. Just yeah, what, what’s next? Where’s your head at with where you want it to go?

[00:22:40] Eric Bandholz: yeah, we’ve, uh, one of our struggles has been growth, uh, ironically. And, uh, we try to grow primarily through PPC, uh, meta. Facebook and Instagram primarily. And, and that’s been very challenging. The cost get higher and [00:23:00] audience gets tighter. Um, there are new channels that we think we can explore, um, that are, you know, no longer like D two C style channels.

[00:23:11] So, you know, working with whole, you know, wholesale relationships, um, I think there is opportunity. We kind of pulled off of Amazon for a number of, of, uh, years while we were in Target. And then now that we’re out of Target, I do think there’s opportunity to continue to grow, uh, on, on Amazon and to, to leverage that channel as well.

[00:23:32] So it’s kind of like expanding more channels. But one of the things I think we kind of miss a mark on from a marketing, from a tactical marketing standpoint is, you know, we, we talk about PPC and getting that positive return on ad spend and getting that customer acquisition cost and really focused on the conversion.

[00:23:50] We, I think we’ve gotten away from the brand and the story that we’re trying to build and, and I think Beardbrand has such a cool story to tell, and [00:24:00] we’ve, we’ve helped so many people over the years that, you know, when we’re just like, oh, buy this oil, it softens your beer, you know, buy this sea salt spray, you get beachy hair.

[00:24:09] You know, it’s like, okay, well now we’re just another company with like, you know, liquids in a product and, and, and our, our value prop is, you know, incredibly, um, diminished from that. And I think we’ve got incredible products that can stand on their own merits, but it, it gets harder when you don’t include brands.

[00:24:29] So one of the things that I think we want to do is get back into leaning on the brand and get back into saying divisive things that we believe in. Not for the sake of being divisive, but just because we have core beliefs and trying to attract people who align with those beliefs.

[00:24:44] CJ: Yeah, you gotta, I, we’ve been, obviously AI is a big topic of discussion and it’s just like, it, it’s with AI and then influencer content being so like, easy, easy these days. It’s just pushing everything to kind of this [00:25:00] center point. so you gotta figure out some way to break through. And if that’s, you know, saying something a bit provocative, you know, that that’ll help.

[00:25:08] Or, or just having a, an opinion, you know, having

[00:25:11] Eric Bandholz: Yeah.

[00:25:11] CJ: vanilla. Um,

[00:25:14] Eric Bandholz: I, I, I think it’s, again, not being provocative for the sake of being provocative, but you know, like, it, it’s not common to, you know, like focus on this, uh, more grassroots effort and, and so it’s like, well, we, we intentionally do this. We focus on the individual. I think it’s okay to call out people who don’t focus on the individual because like, clearly we don’t agree with that.

[00:25:36] Clearly we disagree with it. So like there is aspect to that where you can. Uh, kind of lean into that as well, and, uh, telling that story. I do think it’s, uh, it is hard, like it is a crowded space, and you’ve gotta figure out there might be opportunity in, in real life. You talk about ai, there’s gonna be this commoditization of, of [00:26:00] effectively content.

[00:26:01] Uh, we’re not gonna know what’s real or not, uh, what’s fake anymore online, how, however, in person, you know, you can’t take that away. Like you, you put on events, you know, bring people together, have experiences, um, that might be the way that the world has to go so that they know you’re real and that they know you’re authentic and that, um, the people have a little bit of soul left.

[00:26:28] It’s not just AI slop everywhere.

[00:26:31] CJ: Yeah, I could totally see it working, getting back to, you know what you’re saying, just having a point of view and making some of the creative about that. And then, oh, by the way, we have this stuff that you could buy and, um, you know, that stuff should, uh, you know, could catch at the top of funnel. I think it’s, I mean, but it’s

[00:26:49] Eric Bandholz: Yeah.

[00:26:49] CJ: like the balance between like the brand building stuff and then the product stuff with, to your point, the rising media costs. Man, if I gunned to my head and I had to put, I had to choose [00:27:00] between two different ads. I’m going product ad at the beginning. If that, if you’re, if that’s what you care about is return on ad spend, like. sometimes it’s hard to beat and it’s such a long game for the, uh, for the brand building, or you have to have the budget to be able to of balance it to run stuff at.

[00:27:18] You have to be willing to run stuff at a loss if you’re gonna do

[00:27:22] Eric Bandholz: Yeah.

[00:27:22] CJ: and then capture at the bottom of the funnel

[00:27:25] Eric Bandholz: I was, uh, following, uh, the, one of the chubby founders and he had a good tweet that’s like,

[00:27:33] CJ: I bet.

[00:27:33] Eric Bandholz: yeah. He was basically like, um. 5% of your audience is ready to buy right now, and 95% is in this kind of like, you know, not, not ready to buy. So branding is marketing to that 95%, and it’s like there’s more people out there.

[00:27:52] Why would you not focus on marketing to those 95% rather than that 5%? That’s so competitive. So I think he made a good point. [00:28:00] And, uh, but brand can be hard too. I mean, you really do have to have like purpose and core values and, uh, you know, like a, um, well, a philosophy for, for how you can convey that message.

[00:28:13] So.

[00:28:13] CJ: Yeah. He’s, if nobody, if, if anybody’s listening is not following Preston on LinkedIn, you gotta, I, I’ve actually taken like all of his posts and put them in AI to create like a playbook, like to help me understand it. ’cause some of it gets pretty heady, especially when he gets into like contribution margin.

[00:28:29] I’m like. I thought I understood this, but I, I, I don’t know if I do like, um, but yeah, he’s dropping some fire. We’re gonna try to get him on the podcast if we can. Um, Oh

[00:28:42] Eric Bandholz: Gotta get you off LinkedIn though, man.

[00:28:44] CJ: Yeah.

[00:28:44] Eric Bandholz: That’s the worst thing you said. I’ll, I’ll interview.

[00:28:47] CJ: Where’s all, where all the kids

[00:28:48] Eric Bandholz: Everybody’s on X.

[00:28:49] CJ: Oh, we gotta go on X. Controversial,

[00:28:51] Eric Bandholz: Everybody’s on X. Yeah. This is where the, the, uh, the hotter takes are. You get the, the, [00:29:00] the weird takes on LinkedIn, like,

[00:29:01] CJ: I did, uh, I did download Truth Social for a second and like created account just to, just outta curiosity and I was like, oh, I am certainly on a list now because

[00:29:12] Eric Bandholz: Hmm, yeah,

[00:29:13] CJ: little rough on truth social, uh, so,

[00:29:17] Eric Bandholz: Any of the echo chambers. You gotta stay off of like blue sky truth gab. Uh, X is nice because you, you, you pretty much have both sides, uh,

[00:29:27] CJ: Yeah.

[00:29:28] Eric Bandholz: on there, or, or all the sides. And I.

[00:29:30] CJ: podcast, but it’s certainly not, I am very like, kind of in the middle on here, but it’s like was, I, I was, I was fact checking somebody who had like a thing that Trump posted. I’m like, no way. He said that. I’m like, I gotta go to the source. I’m like, oh yeah, he said that.

[00:29:49] Eric Bandholz: Oh yeah. Yeah.

[00:29:50] CJ: Yep. Okay. All right. All right.

[00:29:52] Eric Bandholz: We’re, we’re living in strange times and I mean, I think there, there might even be like some marketing, you know, lessons [00:30:00] in this, because I feel like the days of, you know, politicians speaking and their, their typical like robotic, you know, like ambiguous world is no longer effective. Uh, uh, it seems like direct communication that is provocative and calls people out seems to resonate with our audience, what that says about society, I don’t really know.

[00:30:27] It’s not a point about that, but it does kind of show an indication that, you know, like. And there’s a market for that style of communication.

[00:30:37] CJ: Yeah. Yeah. Our podcast is in its infancy, but it’s like, uh, there’s this recurring theme when we talk to brands even in the first, you know, half dozen episodes here that just like, Hey,

[00:30:48] Eric Bandholz: I.

[00:30:48] CJ: you don’t need everything to be polished and super brandy. And actually our highest performing stuff is definitely not, which, you know, kind of hurts our, hurts us on the inside.

[00:30:59] ’cause we’re a [00:31:00] creative agency that likes to make stuff that’s really polished. Although we have seen a great. Great success in a mix of that. ’cause I think that there is a place for polished stuff, particularly at the bottom of the funnel where people want to feel that, oh, this brand is legit. but, uh, I think it just falls right in line with what’s working in politics too, is like you, you, you have, you have to at least appear like you tell it like it is. Um, whether you’re being honest or not, who knows? But, know, again,

[00:31:31] Eric Bandholz: it, it, it’s, uh, it’s interesting times, you know, interesting times. I think

[00:31:35] CJ: leave it at that. Uh,

[00:31:39] Eric Bandholz: don’t want my takes.

[00:31:40] CJ: Yeah. Listen, uh, yeah, we’re, let’s just steer away from that minefield. Um, man, I wanna be

[00:31:47] Eric Bandholz: I.

[00:31:47] CJ: of your time. Any, any other or stuff that we should have asked you or Zoe, if you got one in the chamber, fire away, like,

[00:31:56] Zoë : No, I

[00:31:56] CJ: but anything else?

[00:31:57] Zoë : really did still my question that is, if you could go back again, [00:32:00] like what would be the three main things, um, which you did, you did mainly touch on a lot of them. Um, but yeah, I guess just one, one point of advice that you would give someone start to scale up brand, they’re coming to market for the first time they’re trying to get in retail. What, what would be one of your biggest takeaways?

[00:32:17] Eric Bandholz: Yeah, I mean, so, so the advice I have for companies kind of depends on the stage they’re at. I I if they haven’t gotten any traction yet, I think the, the, the major mistake most people make for early brands is they overthink it. They over prepare it. They, they, they focus too much on their business plan. It needs to just be on action.

[00:32:35] You gotta recognize, again, going back to what I said earlier, is you, uh, Jo, your job as a founder and owner is to identify problems, prioritize those problems, and then solve those problems. So in the early days, your number one problem is ignorance towards your brand. So, as much time as possible needs to be going to the solving that problem.

[00:32:57] As you get larger and you [00:33:00] have solved that problem, you’re gonna find you have operational problems. So it’s like, we’ve got all these people who wanna buy our products, but we can’t get the products to ’em. So then you can start focusing on those problems. I do think another mistake that I made, and probably a lot of other entrepreneurs make, is in the hiring process.

[00:33:17] Um, I don’t think, I think hiring is a very hard process, especially for entrepreneurs who want to create products, tell stories. Um, there needs to be a system behind it. We leverage top grading or elements of top grading, which is basically every step of the interview process. You let your, your candidates know that you’re gonna be doing a reference check.

[00:33:39] Uh, you’ll ask questions about like, you know, your past supervisor John Doe, when we call him up, how is he going to describe you? So you’re asking questions in, in the position of something, and then you call up John Doe. And you ask those questions. Um, so we found that that process really helped us understand the type of [00:34:00] talent that we’re getting in our team, and I wish we had done that, uh, from the get go.

[00:34:04] So, uh, improving your hiring process to, to one that really you do hire slow, you go through a lot of steps, a lot of processes, and then, um, you know, be quick to cut with people who maybe aren’t aligned. If you’re a small company under 50 employees, I think you can fire people for any reason, uh, that you want.

[00:34:24] So yes, your unemployment insurance may go up or something like that. We try to do right and give ’em severance if we can. Um, but yeah, don’t hang on to people that you know are not gonna be a good fit for your team.

[00:34:38] CJ: Do you guys more subscribe to, um, you know, hiring people with less experience and building them up and training them into what you want to be? Or do you go like, no, we, we’d rather pay more, get somebody with more experience. Higher caliber, caliber person. I know there’s just two different camps on that.

[00:34:54] Maybe it depends, but where’s your head at with that?

[00:34:56] Eric Bandholz: Yeah, I mean, I think, um, in the [00:35:00] early days when you have more time than money, you just, you’re kind of forced to hire people who don’t have the, the skills and expertise. I do think there are probably some jobs that are easier to train up. We do try to hire for the core values, do they align with those philosophically?

[00:35:14] And then I do think a lot of people can learn anything. But, um, if you have more resources, kind of where we’re at now, I do believe there would be some value in hiring people who have like, like let’s say I need, you know, my business partner, she stepped down, uh, from the COO role. It would be nice to, to bring in a COO who’s, you know, operated and scaled up an e-commerce business rather than trying to.

[00:35:39] To, to, to train that because it’s such a high level and, and it is so complex for what we’re doing now. So I think the answer is kind of a mix of both. It depends on the role and the job, but um, as we’ve gotten larger, the need for more, you know, it moves from like the jack of all trades to individual roles.

[00:35:59] And I would [00:36:00] probably say rather than hiring someone who’s a jack of all trade, it’s probably better to hire multiple agencies that are part-time, uh, would be my recommendation. I.

[00:36:10] Zoë : you balance, um, you said you obviously take, um, a lot of time hiring very talented and creative people. How do you balance when you’re such a small company, when you hire such talented and enthusiast people, q but allowing to also grow versus like bringing on more people into the agency? Because there’s that tension point between like, okay, we’re growing, we could hire somebody else, or we could let our current talent grow within that role.

[00:36:37] Eric Bandholz: Yeah, I mean, I would not claim to be, uh, an excellent person when it comes to management of team. Uh, we’ve, we’ve hired our, our team, we’ve got a, a team of about nine people. And just due to the nature of the business, um, we haven’t fired anyone over the past couple years. Um, but we haven’t had to hire anyone [00:37:00] either.

[00:37:00] So we’re kind of in this position that’s, you know, moving sideways. Um, I, I think, you know, understanding what your team members’ needs and goals are in life is important. I never want Beardbrand to be a restriction on their opportunities. So because Beardbrand’s not in a phase where it’s growing rapidly and the opportunities for growth might not be there, I want to have clear expectations that, Hey, I want you on the team.

[00:37:28] I love what you do, but you might just kind of be doing what you’re doing for a period of time, uh, until we see growth again. And if you’re okay with that, that’s cool. And fortunately for us, we have team members who have been okay, like taking, you know, moving from a full-time role to a part-time role and, you know, someone had a baby so they could spend more time with their baby.

[00:37:51] You know, like things have just kind of worked out. Um, but it’s just being transparent and honest with where you’re at. And then, you know, I’ve, I’ve been [00:38:00] of the book like, if, if there aren’t opportunities within Beardbrand and someone’s looking for growth in their career, um, I’m happy to be a reference for them and I’m happy with that, being transparent so that we can prepare for when they move on.

[00:38:12] And. And we can give them a positive, uh, reference as well and help them with the next stage. Like, I, I want the best for, for all team members and the best for Beardbrand. And when those don’t align, you know, like, it, it’s not like a personal thing. It’s, it’s just the nature of the world.

[00:38:30] Zoë : for you ’cause I obviously wanna be respect for your time as well, but just business. Owner, creative entrepreneur, what is one moment that you’re most proud of out of this whole experience?

[00:38:42] Eric Bandholz: Um,

[00:38:50] I have a lot of, uh, a lot of things that are, uh, notable that, that I’ve, I’ve, I’ve experienced, uh, in the course of building this [00:39:00] business.

[00:39:00] Zoë : was a little bit of a harsh question.

[00:39:02] Eric Bandholz: Yeah, I mean, I could ramble on for a while and, and I’m trying to think of like, you know, one that makes me seem humble and then, you know, not to brag it.

[00:39:11] CJ: No

[00:39:11] Eric Bandholz: Bragga Bragga does.

[00:39:12] Yeah. Yeah. Um, but I do think, you know, effectively changing the perception of acceptability, of, of growing facial hair and the, and the environment and, and obviously I can’t take an entire full credit to that, but Beardbrand, uh, you know, we’ve built an audience of 2 million subscribers on YouTube on our big channel, a couple hundred thousand on a small channel.

[00:39:36] Our social media has a hundred thousand followers. And the messaging that we’ve had and the resources that we’ve had certainly have inspired people to grow and care for their beards in ways that they might not have. And I do think at the end of the day, we started off as a battle to change the way society views beards men.

[00:39:55] And I think we, we did that. I think there is nobody, [00:40:00] uh, going into a corporate environment who feels pressure that they can’t grow facial hair if they don’t want to. And that was not the case when we started growing the company. And I think while we, we can’t take a hundred percent re uh, responsibility for that, I would like to say that we did play a part in that.

[00:40:15] CJ: Yeah. Kudos to you, man. Yeah, it’s, uh, it’s impressive. Okay, last question. Um, one of the ways that we just like to end is, um, you know, what, what question do you have that we can go help answer? Meaning like, what’s, what’s keeping you up at night that we can go find an expert on and interview essentially on your behalf to try to help untangle that question?

[00:40:40] Eric Bandholz: Um, you know, uh, I want to say I need, I, I know everything. Um,

[00:40:48] CJ: Humble

[00:40:49] Eric Bandholz: I have a pretty clear, like I’ve, I, I’ve, you know, I’ve been in the game a long time, so I kind of know the things that we need to do and, and how we need to do it. [00:41:00] Um, you, you we’re gonna try to get into, I. Some products that are information based.

[00:41:08] So you know, understanding how to sell those, the value add, the conversion, how do you deliver it in a way that your customers love The product is gonna be something that I could probably pick somebody’s brand on.

[00:41:24] CJ: Oh, cool. And that’s, uh, you don’t have to wait, give away your whole strategy there, but I, I’m, are you envisioning that that’s tied into the physical products as well? Right. Kind of the same playbook as, you know, yesteryear of providing value through content and community there’s a halo effect to the physical stuff.

[00:41:44] Eric Bandholz: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:41:45] CJ: Yeah.

[00:41:45] Eric Bandholz: I’d say that’s probably pretty accurate. But yeah, focusing on not giving away products like we, we give away content on our blog and our newsletter, but actually selling, uh, products that people would pay for and buy that are digital.

[00:41:59] CJ: [00:42:00] Yeah. Super interesting. Yeah, that’s a good question. ’cause what does that look like in the age of ai? I don’t know. Um, I do know like digital marketer, which I was a big fan of, uh, uh, up and coming learning. Like they shuttered it. They just said we’re done. And the open letter from Ryan Dice was, makes it too easy.

[00:42:19] We’re basically irrelevant. So was like, whoa. Uh, that was pretty crazy. Um, but yeah, that’s a good one. Uh, the schools of the world, uh, with the S-K-O-O-L, like what’s going on with that? That could be an

[00:42:31] Eric Bandholz: Yeah,

[00:42:31] CJ: thing to go look into. Cool, man. Uh, any questions for us? Otherwise, thank you for having, having or, um, coming on.

[00:42:40] Eric Bandholz: now it’s good to chat again. Hopefully I’ll see you again in the Beardbrand Barbershop.

[00:42:44] CJ: For sure I’ll be there. I, I mean, I got, uh, I’m working on it, uh, not a beard. I, I, uh, unfortunately, um, you know,

[00:42:51] Eric Bandholz: Oh, that’s nice.

[00:42:51] CJ: but it’s coming about time. Might, might come in for the

[00:42:54] Eric Bandholz: Well, yeah, if you want to do, we do a lot of major transformations and reactions from people. That’s [00:43:00] our, uh, that’s our style now. So if you want to get a reaction from your family and cut it all off, we can make that happen.

[00:43:07] CJ: me lose like 20 pounds too?

[00:43:10] Eric Bandholz: I mean, I could, and I can give you my plan, so

[00:43:13] CJ: You do know it all.

[00:43:15] Eric Bandholz: I do know it. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.