Be Open To Learning On Your Journey

Be Open To Learning On Your Journey

Chad Price
Devin Miller
The Inventive Journey Podcast for Entrepreneurs
4/27/2021

The Inventive Journey

Starting and growing a business is a journey. On The Inventive Journey, your host, Devin Miller walks with startups along their different journeys startups take to success (or failure). You also get to hear from featured guests, such as venture firms and angel investors, that provide insight on the paths to a successful inventive journey.

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look at it as a continuous journey you know there's no starting into it you know it's a it's something that you learn every day you get better at every single day so you know i i equate it to sports just because you know i played sports and in business athletically you don't have to lose anything you know your mind can just get sharper and sharper and sharper and i know now based on my experience in having made decisions the decisions i could have made better earlier in my career and there's no way for me to to improve on myself if i'm not a continuous learner uh throughout the process so yeah my number one advice would just be completely open to learning for the you know for the rest of your life or as long as you want to be an entrepreneur not not not getting stuck in your own brain [Music] hey everyone this is devin miller here with another episode of the inventive journey i'm your host devin miller the serial entrepreneur that's grown several startups in the seven and eight figure businesses as well as the founder and ceo of miller ip law where we help startups and small businesses with their patents and trademarks and if you ever need help with yours just go to strategymeeting.com grab some time with us to chat now today we've got another great guest on the up or on the podcast uh chad price and give you a bit of uh introduction so chad played college football at rice university always wanted to go into business so got a double major in a couple different things that he'll touch on um then worked for construction also played a bit of ball after graduation and decided he wanted to go into business for himself started a business with a couple friends and he'll talk a little bit about what that is and i believe it's still going and you can correct me if i'm wrong um and then kind of got to understand different types of stores and different types of niches so in addition to the the company with this friend which is i think kettlebell kings and todd goes about kettlebells also got into a bit of different brand building different contents different markets and expanded into i think living fit was another business you're in i'm starting doing interviews and other fitness and lifestyle products launched an app also got into i think a bit of cbd and uh hem company and uh is also i think partnered with that company with george foreman iii so all sorts of fun things lots of uh lots of fun parts to talk about his journey so with that much is an introduction welcome on the podcast chad all right thanks for having me so i gave this kind of the brief quick run through but maybe now going back a bit in time tell us a little bit about uh playing college football and rice and then um how or how things started from there sure i mean uh yeah well you know when when i'm still in college you know even at that point kind of in my life i i knew corporate america was kind of going to be a pit stop for me i i wanted to see what it was like to uh to work for a corporation but i i kind of knew in my heart that i wanted to own my own business um nobody in my family really owned their own business i did have an aunt who who owned their own business for a while who i worked with when i was younger that kind of motivated me to to choose that direction um but i hadn't seen anybody do it to the scale where you know someone's building a global brand or a recognizable brand and so uh even at that point that was always kind of one of my goals um that journey through rice just kind of helped me see uh you know different industries different um different paths in terms of corporate careers um as well as different types of businesses that you know could could could be a potential for a business that i could start um so you know after i graduated from rice one question before that just so because you were you were doing the college football and a lot of you know dream and not all or a lot of people don't make it but it's you know you play college ball and you go professional or you go do something with that as you're going into football was it hey i that's my dream or hey this will be a good way to be able to get into the scholarship or otherwise fund my you know fund my degrees or kind of you know going into that how did you decide between kind of the sports that you you know to be in a college level even if that is a great accomplishment and a you know big feat so how did you kind of decide i want to do business when you're also doing football well i mean i think that's a great question i think if you go to rice you have the mindset of kind of doing both you know i don't think many many athletes go to rice on full scholarship and don't think about what their career is after um you know i think it's a education focused curriculum and education focused system from the very beginning with that being said i think you know every every football player basketball player every athlete dreams about you know the the olympics the championship the super bowl whatever whatever that may be um so yeah i did have you know i did aspire to to you know play continue to play football uh but quite honestly you know even at that point i knew that was a temporary pit stop for me so if it was corporate america if it was football it was still going to end up with me having to you know do something to you know build for the rest of my life and in my mind that was always you know some type of business i didn't know what that was going to be but that that's kind of where where my thought process was at the time no definitely makes sense and so now you graduate you're coming out and i think you've got a double major is that right remind me what you got the degrees in yeah so yeah at the time rice didn't have a formal uh business degree they had basically it's managerial studies and then i also have a degree in sports management which is basically a you know a business degree in in sports and so it just talks or just focuses more on the uh professional sports and the marketing around that industry so now and so now you're coming out of school you've got your degrees you're saying okay you know i may need to get a bit of experience really my heart is in entrepreneurship and so i think after you graduated you had a short stint in kind of construction and doing a little bit with ball afterwards before deciding to get into business yourself is that about right yeah i think that's a good summary um construction's probably one of my favorite jobs i've ever had actually um interesting interesting enough it's it's hard work but it's rewarding work you know you get to you get to go from project to project you get to see something go from the beginning to the end and start over and so you know no two days are really the same especially if you're working on on larger projects so um i really like that part about construction when i was still kind of transitioning from you know what do i want to do full time with my life i wasn't at a point where i wanted to be tied down to a corporate job either and construction allowed me to kind of travel in and basically go from project to project versus you know clocking in nine to five uh you know 360 days a year or whatever no i think that definitely makes sense i mean for me i've never gotten to construction i've only been on the side of having a house built or other things seeing the construction but there's definitely i think would be you know a rewarding aspect of hey we see something it starts at nothing builds it up and you can say hey i helped build that and hey you know you can kind of point to that as something as an accomplishment would certainly be exciting now you're doing that for a period of time enjoying that now when you got into or how did you make that transition decide okay you wanted to go into business yourself was it just uh kind of i've decided i didn't want to be construction forever or i had a good opportunity or a good idea kind of what prompted that that shift a bit um so even when i was in construction you know i was working as a you know as a project manager so i was basically running a small crew basically from project to project so you know whether we're doing seating demolition [Music] remodeling you name it i worked on quite a few different things in construction but the the actual owner of that company was the dad of a guy who i played football with and so he was a small business owner um you know another good another mentor of mine from that's in that sense where i i really got to see what a small business was like being run at that level so you know even though i was doing the day-to-day work of a project manager for construction company i was on site day-to-day um i was still learning behind the scenes of how everything worked from a small business perspective um and at that time i you know i actually thought that i was gonna construction would be you know my my choice of business um it ended up not being that once i partnered with a couple of my buddies and looked at just the land general landscaping the potential behind um what i wanted to achieve but yeah it still allowed me to kind of see a small business from the inside out and and learn and learn and gain that experience no that's cool so now so you got it and that definitely makes sense so now you got into initial i think the first business you mentioned as you kind of went on your own as you got with a few friends and you started the kettlebell company is that right yeah so after i uh i worked in construction for a little bit i actually moved over and i started working in oil and gas and i was working as a gas controller um basically working working shift work you know 12-hour shifts maintaining a gas pipeline and in doing that you know that was a very traditional kind of corporate job you know great great pay great benefits um but it was you know a commitment from our standpoint and it was it was a long-term commitment if it was something that you know i was gonna do uh for the rest of my life and so during that process i had a couple other friends who were kind of in the same similar situation um one of them actually was working with me at the oil and gas company and another one was a friend of our uh he's best friends with a guy we went to college with and so it was very kind of tight circle um we kind of made a pact that we were going to start a company didn't know what that was we had a good reference of what e-commerce was because my friend was working at big commerce at the time so he had a very good insight of you know what makes it successful business he had you know he had a good chance to see you know companies come on board and go from nothing to something kind of overnight you know really studying studying niche markets and different opportunities for trying to create your own uh you know basically trying to trying to be noticed in in such a crowded space of e-commerce and so we felt like we had a little edge in that sense of really understanding how to do that um and we just started naming companies and so kettlebells was was one of the products that we wanted you know we at the time we were talking about uh so so many so many different things all all different types of fitness equipment um you know sleeping companies um you know basically any niche market that we could think of we were trying to go after kettlebells was just one of those things that at that time crossfit was becoming really big and we could really see the potential of this is you know this is a thing that's here to stay and it's going to be growing over the next 10 to 15 years and it's only going to get more kind of ingrained into fitness and into into what people consider a workout so kettlebell kings being so kind of literal was almost too good to pass up so to speak no it definitely makes sense now one question question on that is were you guys hey as you did your research was it you were you looking for something you thought was a good opportunity was it something you guys are familiar with was it something you're passionate about you know as an example did you like kettlebells were you using it for workout was it more of just hey this is a growing space and a little bit we don't care what this space is we just want to find something that we can drive and grow and that type of thing or kind of how did you land on kettlebells yeah i think it was you know it definitely because it was a growing space uh you know that that was one of the the driving factors but then also with um you know our background in sports and fitness at the time we were we're all trying to find our routine for you know what is my health and wellness routine look like after sports right i think if you if you play collegiate or professional sports it's a much different workout regimen than you know this is my daily life so this is my you know monthly lifestyle type of workout routine and so me personally like i didn't like going to a gym so i i hate going to 24 hour fitness or you know any of these gyms where it's just a bunch of people there waiting on machines jumping over people you know people working out at different level of intensities that's just not my you know my speed for for working out and so homework i became a big thing for us and in kettlebells and minimal space workout was kind of one of the trending uh things that was happening kind of just in the fitness industry in itself and so we we really like that personally i think that fit our uh our personal you know kind of goals for our own health and wellness but then i think we saw that to be kind of the future of health and wellness is you know it is much more of a personal journey the minimal space space athlete you know i think you've seen or we've all seen kind of with covet that kind of your home fitness workout is the core of your health and wellness what you do you know in the space that you are that you have available to you is is more important than you know where you go or what what you know big pieces of equipment you have available to you and so we really want to create a lifestyle and community around that no i think that that definitely makes sense i mean finding something that's a good opportunity that you're interested in that you're you know use a product yourself and as an up-and-coming market all makes sense now as you guys started this out were you guys doing it as a side job or kind of a side hustle getting it started and did it is it still a side hustle or did you guys kind of transition as it got as it grew to be a full-time gig yeah i mean the first year and a half um i was still working full-time so you know one of the luxuries of working a shift shift work is you know you work 12-hour shifts rotating shifts and you know sometimes you're working 12 hours during the day sometimes you're working 12 hours during the night so 12 hours during the night used to probably be the the best time for me to get work done because i could work during the day after i got up and then you know at night it's a lot more peaceful in the control room and so you can do a lot of research and reading and and just kind of all the the the my new things around building a business you know i was able to do that uh you know over those night shifts and things like that and so after about a year and a half of us having something and really seeing okay we have sales you know we we prove the concept of kettlebell kings we see the trajectory going up going in the direction that we like you know someone always has to kind of just jump in there and kind of go go full throttle and so at that point i quit my job um you know went to do this full-time you know we were still shipping out of a storage facility like a 10 by 10 storage facility but it was enough to that somebody had to go over there every day someone had to you know deal with customers every single day and so about six months after that um we got to the point where it was and it was almost too much for one person um and so my business partner did the same thing as well so he quit his job and yeah from there we just kept going so you know we're at probably eight employees right now uh and growing up probably eight full-time employees and still growing um and so it's just been kind of a never-ending growth process since that point hey that's always a great place to be to be in that growth and to have things expanding going in the right direction is definitely exciting now and i i think as we chatted a bit before the podcast you know you know you have kettlebell keens but then you guys kind of started i don't know and i say you guys maybe it was you your your partners or otherwise he started to expand into other areas was that kind of out of a diversification and or you had other opportunities or excited about other things or kind of how did you start to expand into additional businesses and growing other things yeah i mean about three or four years ago uh once we really knew kettlebell kings had you know it we had a branch you know we were getting globally recognized um you know we're going getting quite a few quite a bit of attention from uh you know other companies and just kind of in our space we were one of the one of the most credible companies for kettlebell so um a lot of that was because we knew we had that solid now we need to diversify and a lot of our revenue was generated through equipment sales um at the time and still right now people were talking about you know the trade wars with china um trade wars in general you know economic bubble whatever might happen to put a damper on our supply line for equipment sales we needed to figure out okay how can we diversify and sell things that don't require that supply line digital products became an easy and easy target so kettlebell workouts you know we knew people were selling kettlebell workouts kettlebell programs that became became low-hanging fruit but we wanted to expand on that and be more than just a kettlebell so living fit not only does kettlebells but it also does battle ropes dumbbells nutrition resistance bands and it'll it'll continue to keep expanding almost into every single fitness category so what we're forming now is not only the work outside so if you can think of like your peloton-like experience it's also an educational side to it as well that allows trainers to earn certifications and earn specialty uh credits towards their uh whatever certifying body that they're using for their personal their personal training certification they can get these specialty credits through this same type of app and program no definitely makes sense and so now as you launch you know the the next kind of expansion or you know where our business is kind of expanding on that original idea going into the additional verticals and kind of keeping that fitness lifestyle doing all that was it the same you know was it the same experience and it was just kind of building what you had or is every startup different you had different uh opportunities different difficulties or kind of how was that kind of starting that over again or building that up again for a second time in a different area um i mean i think every everyone is going to be different so it's definitely a huge difference between you know selling digital products instead of selling physical products um you know luckily for us we've only gotten more and more attention on our surprise on our products so demand for us has just increased since since we've since we've you know been in business um but for the digital products is not the same so you know you're you have to work quite a bit harder to make those sales compared to uh you know kettlebells which are kind of hard to find right now um and so i think that's that's probably the biggest difference in just in the shift of the actual product itself for a lot of the other pieces of equipment like dumbbells um because it's the same industry it's all it's it's honestly it's easier because more more people are looking for dumbbells than they are kettlebells so i think it just it just varies on you know what what product that is no definitely makes sense so now and now as you expanded you also i think is mentioned before you got into a bit of cbd or hemp and you got partnered up with george foreman the third was that an extension of your business or different opportunity how did you kind of or add that into the mixer grow that as part of the diversity uh sure yeah i mean so that that's something i branched out on my own and started you know i i have a vision for this company you know of being kind of a natural uh you know i want to source basically the natural the most natural plant products that i can so whether that's supplements um you know salves creams any any product that we can source from from plants or from mother nature uh is the way we wanna you know kind of build the company so the community that we're trying to build there is is fitness focus but i would say it's more health and wellness focused um you know george george foreman iii actually went to rice with me as well we weren't you know super close at rice uh i think we had a couple classes together but he after we graduated he got he he actually went into the fitness industry as well and was um he basically founded a boxing certification and boxing gym that he was that he was working on i believe it was called everybody fights and so he was doing that and so there was a lot of overlap just kind of in our experience in uh where we were in our careers and so you know we just kind of touched base kept kept in lose contact and once he found out about the the life girls green opportunity um we just kind of went into discussions about how you know both of our networks and experience could work together to really really build this into something we both kind of had already kind of visualized no that's cool and you know it's always interesting the connections we make whether they're close connections or not close connections how you know commonalities whether it's going to the same school taking a few classes together being in similar industries how you never know how those connections will come back around and that sounds like it did it there as well so analogy kind of you know that kind of catches us up to a bit of where you're at today kind of now looking in the next six to 12 months where do you see things headed where what are the opportunities that they'll look to explore to continue to explore or explore into um quite a few so um you know i think one of the the biggest things or the biggest challenges for any company when you're trying to scale to you know from a single million dollar company to multi-million or 100 million dollar type of company is really trying to find capital and strategically um make the right decisions so that you're you know you're maximizing your equity but you're also helping the company grow as fast as you can possibly grow it um so you know right now for living feeding cattle kings you know we're doing a fundraise right now to try to raise funds to continue to build our supply lines here and here in america uh like i was saying we're expanding into different so many different categories uh you know we only had kettlebells you know we need the same amount of room for dumbbells barbells um you know weight benches you name it every other kind of category has to have that same amount of capital inventory uh or initial initial capital to build that inventory so that you're able to just support a demand so we're in we're in fundraising mode pretty hard for that um and then the same thing for my other company um you know we're in fundraising as well where we have everything established kind of online uh and we're really looking to make a push nationally with kind of a sales and marketing approach with george coming on board and uh really going after the kind of looking at the cbd or the hemp derived product space uh from a recovery and wellness perspective and really going after that niche initially uh and trying to take that over okay no sounds like a lot of fun opportunities a lot of opportunities to grow and to continue to expand the business so with that as we start to wrap towards the end of the podcast i always have two questions i'd love to ask at the end so we'll go ahead and jump to those now first question is is along your journey what was the worst business decision you ever made and what did you learn from it um the worst decision i've ever made probably not bringing on experts early enough um i think you know when i think when you're an entrepreneur in the beginning you have to have this kind of i'm gonna do it myself attitude i can get anything done myself and once you really have something and you really have proven your model out you don't necessarily know how you don't know the lack of efficiency you have and how much that could affect the growth of your business and so you may be hammering something out yourself that you know you should prepare professionals to do because your business would grow a lot faster and you're actually um bottlenecking your growth versus helping it by you know doing it the mom and pop way of doing it a stubborn way so if i could go back and you know learn it would be you know things like at what point to transition from owning a warehouse and sending out every single package yourself and going to a fulfillment center like like different examples like that of when to make those transitions numerically and kind of uh from a business perspective rather than a um a personal or ego perspective of just trying to kind of earn earn your way there so to speak no i i think that you know there's a lot of expertise and even just you know offloading things as well all too often as an entrepreneur you think hey i've got to hustle or i got to do it myself because i got to make sure it's done right or you know i don't want to pay someone else to do it because we need to save every penny and you know sometimes that there's some truth to that and you some you know you don't always have the ability to start out to pay for every expert and hire everybody you'd always want but at the same point if you don't at some point as you reach the ability to do that start to offload it to your point i think you can hamper a business or hamper the growth a bit or keep it from growing as fast as it could because you're not bringing on those people that can help bring it to the next level so i definitely think that's a good lesson to learn well the second question i always ask is you know if you're now talking to somebody that's just getting to a startup or a small business what would be the one piece of advice you'd give them um look at it as a continuous journey you know there's no starting into it you know it's a it's something that you learn every day you get better at every single day so you know i i equate it to sports just because you know i play sports in in business athletically you don't have to lose anything you know your mind can just get sharper and sharper and sharper and i know now based on my experience in having made decisions the decisions i could have made better earlier in my career and there's no way for me to to improve on myself if i'm not a continuous learner uh throughout the process so yeah my number one advice would just be completely open to learning for the you know for the rest of your life or as long as you want to be an entrepreneur not knockout not getting stuck in your own uh in your own brain or in your own way no and i think that that is a great you know i like the idea that you really as an entrepreneur you don't you don't have to you don't maybe at some point you get old enough and you get you know at some point but for a long period of time as opposed to you know sports is you look at you know even at the highest professional level they they only last a few years most of time before they're having to step back because they're not able to maintain the same level whereas the fun thing about entrepreneurship is as long as you're taking that attitude as you mentioned that you're continually growing that it's not just a hey we reach this level when i'm done but rather it's continuing to improve and to make it better and to grow and diversify you can always have those opportunities as long as you're working so i love that piece of advice well as we wrap up just as a reminder to all the listeners we do have the bonus epis or bonus question on this episode we're going to talk just about a little bit about intellectual property so if you want to hear a little bit about that uh that top question stay tuned for after the normal episode but as we wrap up otherwise if people want to find out more about your businesses they want to be a customer or a client they want to be an investor they want to be an employee they want to be your next best friend any or all of the above what's the best way to reach out find out more um several different ways so you can reach you can find out more about me at chadpryce.com um just talks about my journey if you you know want to do business get in contact with me that's probably the best way uh checkpoints.com um but then i also have the several different websites you have kettlebellkings.com living.fit and lifegrowthgreen.com so any of those companies you know their health and wellness companies cbd related companies um generally towards any anything that's trying to be productive or put growth into today's society so all right well i definitely encourage everybody to check out any or all of the websites reach out to chad if you have some i want need a kettlebell you need sportiness or sport gear you want to invest you want to find out about cbd lots of different things chad has going on definitely worth reaching out well as we wrap up thank you again chad for coming on stay tuned for the the bonus question but uh thank you for coming on now for all of you that are listeners if you have your own journey to tell um feel free to go to inventiveguest.com apply to be on the podcast couple more things as listeners one make sure to click subscribe in your podcast players so you know when all of our awesome episodes come out and two leave us a review so new people can find out about the podcast as well last but not least if you ever need help with your uh patents trademarks or anything else the business just go to strategymeeting.com so now as we wrap up the normal part of the episode we get it you i said the fun part for him at least me because i always get to be in a bit of a driver's seat ask the questions and you have to respond now we got to flip the tables a bit and you get asked me your number one question and i get to talk a little bit about something i'm passionate about which is intellectual property so with that i turn it over to you a bit what's your number one intellectual property question um do you do on there do you deal with international intellectual property that's a simple question for me then how how do how do you build an international portfolio and how do you kind of how do you gauge what things are worth investing in and what things are kind of just paper i mean i think that at the end of the day that's suggested yeah and that's a great question it's a hard one especially to start up small business is you always have aspirations of going you know going international being worldwide and selling it and yet the cost of doing that is substantial i mean if you're going to go into multiple countries you have to file whether it's a patent or a trademark in each of the individual countries that cost adds up and it can be it can be a great benefit if you have it but it can also be a big killer if you don't if you spend all of your money there such as to detriment the company so generally what i would advise is where you start to look is where it's going to be the highest the biggest concentration where is your marketplace going to be so here's an example of hey really 90 of where we're going to and foreseeable future we're going to sell into is going to be in the u.s and sure there's going to be a little bit in europe or china but 90 percent of our marketplace is from the u.s i'd probably say focus your intellectual property on there because you're protecting your biggest market and the other ones that you are going to be much smaller you simply don't go and protect you know you simply go and compete without intellectual property and let that be in supplemental income but if somebody comes along and knocks off or otherwise competes in those marketplaces it's probably not worthwhile the investment on the other hand let's say you said okay europe is a huge market everybody wants you know i'll use example kettlebells 55 percent of our market they're 35 percent in the us and 20 in canada i don't think i have my math added up i think i had over 100 but then i would start to say okay then we probably want to protect in those few countries probably makes sense because those are big enough markets we are going to sell into enough that we're going to want to actually follow in protection so when you get into international it's one where you can spend a lot of money and not get a good return or if you're careful and you look and say now it's as much as making a business case because you ask a typically you ask an intellectual property attorney and if they give you a legal advice is yeah we can file in all these countries here is the cost it's going to be you should file on every one because you never know where it's going to be but i'd really take a step back and say there's a much more of a business case that you should be looking at where's our market where do we see us growing into what is where's the what where do we want to protect our competitive advantage and that's where you invest in and then you just simply say we can't afford it to go everywhere we're going to protect our biggest markets and then we'll just simply other opportunities where we could have filed into we'll just compete without intellectual property does that make sense yeah no that definitely makes sense is i think just the way the way my mind works is i'm always trying to make that into a number and when when you're thinking about you know what's worth protecting right like so what what's what size you know or what volume of uh whether that's revenue profit however you want to cut that how do you how do you equate that to to a number so you know if you have a company that is doing a million dollars in a country is that worth it is a hundred thousand dollars worth it when you're talking about protecting your irp how do you really you know justify what threshold you make that decision yeah i mean it's always a bit of a business i mean because if you say a hundred thousand dollars in revenue versus profit hey if you're only making five thousand dollars of profit for revenue then it probably doesn't make sense but i would put it as giving an example most countries you know and there's exceptions higher low but on average to go and get a patent internationally you're probably looking on the low side ten thousand dollars on the high side up to twenty thousand that's a pretty big range i would usually say fifty or twelve twelve thousand dollars if i say country by country to get through all the bases so if now you're saying okay we're doing a hundred thousand dollar net profit or we're doing seven figures a million dollars in that country then it probably makes sense because you're gonna have okay for that smaller investment twelve thousand dollars we can protect what we're doing proprietary keep us in or and it could be a trademark as well if we have a really great brand and we wanna protect them then you're saying you know trademarks are even more so because you know to get the trademark in a given country you're probably anywhere from fifteen hundred to two thousand dollars as an average and so you're saying okay i would look at it as if we're you know you're getting to where that is if you're saying ten percent of the and this is a hard question but ten percent of the net profits is going to be in that country or we see the next two or three years that's where the trajectory is headed i'd probably say you're getting into that range of 10 to 15 of net profits if you reinvest in that would probably give you a pretty good range okay sounds good all right well with that it was certainly a fun question to talk a little about intellectual property and certainly the international and the the foreign scene as well appreciate you coming on the podcast again chad now if anybody else any of you anybody else out there have any other questions or if you chat even have any other questions later down the road feel free to go to strategymedia.com grab a bit more time with us to chat always happy to answer those questions now as we wrap up thank you again chad and wish the next leg of your journey even better than the last thank you i appreciate your time today you English (auto-generated) All Sales Recently uploaded Watched