On today's episode of Gathering the Kings. It's a commitment and to truly attack it and be successful with it. You have to go down that path and see a lot of rejection and 0 success and truly have the vision Chaz you're doing it correctly and that it's gonna take a while. You are listening to Gathering the Kings with Chaz Wolfe featuring fellow 78 and even 9 figure business owners who have real battle scars from business and life, but have prevailed as the king that they are designed to be.
We welcome high performing entrepreneurs to the stage in order to reveal the reel of the reel on what it takes to build successful business today. We dissect the good and bad decisions they've made along the way Chaz give a true and accurate picture of the journey of success and how you too can get there. Through this dialogue, you will learn the value of growing your network and surrounding yourself with power players and kings like today's guest.
Grab your pen and notebook because we're about to dive in. What's up, everybody? I'm Chaz Wolfe, gathering the king's pod cast today. I've got John Roman here on the King stage. My brother, John. How are we doing? Good. Good to be here. You know, man, I'm excited. About this conversation, your brand. I think it's just so fun. No no worry. No wonder you're a kind of a marketing guy, but, you gotta really just awesome fun brand.
I'm I'm super interested in learning more about your story as well, but tell us what kind of business that you have, John. Sure. Thank you. So battle box is a adventure outdoor survival gear brand to think from tents and knives to fire starters, to anything under the sun when it comes to, you know, getting getting in the outdoors. Yeah. Yeah. And and you guys help us prepare for all those things. Right.
From just from just, you know, a day hike to you know, hopefully knock on wood not needed, but something more more extreme. Yeah. Yeah. I love I love the the range there that you kinda just hinted at because there's all different types of consumers in that in that range as well. You've got the the folks that maybe have have never thought about the end of the world. But but have gone on a day hike, and they need a they need some some essentials.
And then you've got the the ones that have been prepping for generations for for a mass war. You know? Yeah. And we have win in our our customer makeup is is everything you described all under the sun. Right? From weekend weekend warrior weekend hiker to someone that's preparing for, you know, hit the fan scenario.
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think it you'll give some some interesting perspective when it comes to to business from that angle, but, obviously, you guys have an incredible brand, and I wanna get into some of that. But before we do, like, the story piece of it, for John, for for for Mister Roman, what's the deep burning desire on the inside? Like, why are you doing this? What's the bigger picture? World Domination. Okay. Okay. Accumulate accumulate all the chips. I love that answer.
Yeah. Just I See how big we can take this and take everything. Yeah. What do you think drives you to collect all the chips? If if I can do something day in, day out, battle box being the the current example, where where I I get a feeling that I'm making a difference, Whether it's in the lives of our team members, whether it's in the lives of our customers, just getting that satisfaction, For me, that checks the box.
And what I found is if I kind of treat that as the newer star, the the money and the success thing kinda just follows automatically. Sure. Yeah. Give us just a little bit of a picture. I mean, have you always been like that? Or did it start off as I gotta collect some chips and along the way you've realized that those kinda come secondary? It it's a good question. I mean, I think I'm always becoming a a a better, stronger, faster version of myself.
Sure. So I'm I'm constantly not the same person I was a year ago. Yeah. So I'm not the exact same version, but I don't know. I've had a I've had a, an interesting pass. So this is my, technically, my 3rd career. So the 1st career was to the surprise of my peers and friends and family after getting done with college. I just thought I was gonna be professional poker player. So did that for four and a half years. Conclusion, I was good. Maybe a b b plus player wasn't an a player.
And if you're not an a player, it's not a good game to be in. You look at people maybe 10, 15 years older than you that that aren't 8 players, and you're like, man, I really don't wanna become them. So that was that was the end of that chapter. I then tucked my tail between my legs and got an entry level sales job at 26. And, you know, coming onboarding with a bunch of twenty one, twenty two year olds, And, I I had to add to prove myself. Right?
And I I I did Chaz, so I had a lot of success in in b to b sales ended up building building sales teams and Yeah. And really targeting the the higher end of businesses. So started off in the S and B world, but then started really targeting the, call it, fortune 2000 brands and selling, selling to them and knowing how to to those decision makers.
A lot of the success from there just becoming a better version of myself was from that four and a half years playing poker professionally where I I was putting in a 12, 13, 14 hour days sometimes. And at the end of the day, Call it 70% of its skill set, but that 30% luck in poker meant that I could put in that grind session and really work hard and not only not have anything to show for it, but I could be negative, which sucks.
So I think taking that mindset of grinding into the sales world Yeah. Allowed me to kinda maybe out out work and out think and outsmart others and my peers and then fast forwarding for the end of that career, I was investing in startups. And so I had worked for a publicly traded company. We had gotten bought and taken private. So I had a decent little payday there, and I was making a decent amount of money where I wasn't spending all of it by any means.
So I started investing in in in companies predominantly in the ecommerce space, and that's kinda where Battlebox came into the mix and somehow. Pause career number 2, and jumped into career number 3, which is which is battle box. And and and direct to consumer brands. Right. Right. Yeah. Which is different than B2B. Completely, actually. Right. Okay. Well, I mean, you gave you gave quite a bit of information there.
I love the love the the the journey, if you Wolfe, building sales teams for me also has has been a huge, you know, building block of of my career. I think that you learn not only just from the sales and sales process of doing it as a sales rep, but then being able to get other people to to do Chaz, almost like herding cats, especially if we're talking 21, 22, 23. 100%. It's a little bit of a unique environment. Let's just leave it at that.
Yeah. So what give us give us a little bit more of a story. The jump from b to b sales to to battle box. I mean, it was a company. You have been investing. You obviously took interest. I mean, how how did you end up where you are? Sure. So so we had so Battlebox, we founded Battlebox in February 2015. So myself, 2 other, technically, I guess, 3 other gentlemen. There were 4 of us originally, and I had went to school with all with the other 3 guys. We Chaz all stayed in touch.
2 of them had were were entrepreneurs, had a business, that they had been running. That was I don't wanna call it super successful. Moderately, it was paying the bills. Sure. And they were looking for the next next idea, next thing. And, in our friends or what the time I had probably been on the higher tier of of of success, with among my peers. So I I became kind of that that person people always talk to about the ideas and pitch the ideas too and get your opinion and I loved it.
And I I said, hey. I wanna be a part of this. Routed check. The original idea was advisement, very limited capacity, maybe a a few hours a month. Yeah. And, you know, next thing we knew in in 2015. I think we did right at 4 and a half $1,000,000. Wow. And we go into 2016. And I make a job change.
And I went to this startup that was, I think, doing 11, 12,000,000 in top line revenue And I had great compensation and a plan where I would have had a a decent equity position should we exit get acquired, but the reality is there's your phantom shares. They're not real. It's not real equity. Right? I'm not getting a k 1 or some kind of distribution check. And I jumped into that new Wolfe.
And it was not I don't wanna say I was sold because it wasn't malicious a bill of goods, but I think their leadership thought their tech was a little bit further along. My assessment was we need to to get to where we need to be. It's gonna take us 2 years to build, or we can probably get there in a year through acquisition. And I told them this, and they were like, okay. Well, which one do you wanna do?
And I'm not I have that thing on my resume at that point to suggest I can deal with acquisitions or or or managing a dev team. Right. And I'm looking at it, and I'm like, okay. Big decision here. And we're at about 11,000,000 in revenue. And I I don't have I'm I think technically, I had a VP title, but it wasn't. Right. Meanwhile, we have battle box, which Looking at the last couple of months, same run rate. It's a bigger company, and I have actual large amount of equity for it.
And I'm already kind of burning from both ends, putting in, call it, 50, 60 hours at both a week. So I'm already not sleeping. It's already causing causing an issue. And I was like, okay. Well, this is this is the opportunity. So I went in there, and I was like, recommendation 3. Terminate me. They wouldn't do that, but then I Sure. I put in a resignation. And by April, I joined BattleBox full time.
Yeah. Wow. So a lot of a lot of story there to to dissect, but so do you still have the partners at Battle Box, or is it is it mostly you? Yeah. So, yeah, so so there were 4 of us initially when I came on. My first task is being full time was to navigate purchasing out, buying out one of the partners. They weren't bringing any value to the table. It was it was just a free lunch at that point.
So if I was gonna jump in full time and try to grow this and and give my full attention, I mean, let's get the guy out with the free lunch now. So we quickly, and within a few months came to a deal, and then it became the 3 of us, myself, Daniel, and Patrick, and the 3 of us ran it together until 2021. To to Daniel was getting at a point where he didn't necessarily have the the drive anymore that Patrick and I had and kinda just wanted to retire and be done Yeah.
We had we had had some success that saw exponential growth rate at TV show on Netflix. And Chaz kinda just shot up the the revenue that at the same time is COVID, which was great for direct to consumer brands. So We had a weird thing. We we were agreeing on this valuations to multiply our off EBITDA. And, okay, let's call it. We're all comfortable with the 6 X EBITDA. Well, I don't wanna take my ball and go home yet.
I needed it, Patrick, but it didn't make sense for us to sell to us to buy Daniel out at a 6 x. It just didn't it it didn't make sense. Yeah. Personally. So we found a buyer that we thought aligned with us and in we were acquired in October 2021 Daniel got to retire like he wanted, and Patrick and myself got to got to stay on full time. Yeah. I love Chaz. In that example, thank you sharing that and and just being vulnerable there.
I think that that's super helpful for some listeners to be able to kinda hear the inner workings of a deal like that. But really what it the end result is that it doesn't like, there's so many different ways to split the pie, and you can really figure out whatever sort of deal you need to, whatever exit or a continuation, And even even even though you're still there, it was an exit of sorts for you as well. You know? So Yep. Pay pig got to pay off the house and pay off any any bills we had.
So, I mean, it was a win. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Okay. So so now we're we're operating, you know, at a at a whole different level. We're no longer a startup phase. We've got a little bit of a backing now and and some more, you know, procedures and things in place. I'm excited to hear what you would look back and go, this this one decision, what is that one decision that you can look back on and say, because we did this one thing, lot of other dominoes fell. What was that for you?
So for us, it was it was in 2017 where We we wanted to be more than just this subscription box. I mean, at the end of the day, 90% of our revenue is from the subscription box. But when you asked about battle box, it didn't say we were a subscription box because yet it's a product we offer, But we made this cognizant decision in 2017 where we were gonna lead with content. We're gonna lead with content and community building.
But that was kind of our focus and decisions we were gonna make around the business. We were always gonna take those 2 things. Content community into the decision making process. Yeah. How is this going to affect those? Yeah. And making that change and always just leading with content and becoming Content centric. It started opening up doors. Our traffic and following count started growing, which, of course, led to more organic sales.
And then it started opening this whole new world where production studio reached out to us and said, hey. We wanna shoot a sizzle reel and try to get you on a TV show. And it was just a whole new world that that, you know, most brands are not seeing because they're just not leading and and focusing so much on content. Everybody knows content's important. Right? Right. You know, content is king.
You you see it every day somewhere, but actually executing on it Chaz opposed to just talking about it, I think It was Chaz that was a pivotal moment for us. The pivotal. Yeah. The I love I love Chaz your, you know, content community. They kinda go together. Like, you're creating content, but what it does is it creates a community. Right? It's a 100%. And it was it was interesting.
So how we decided to do it We were so we were sending part of our initial go to market strategy when we launched in 2015. So we have four tiers basic to Pro Plus. The Pro Plus was 150 when we launched. Now it's 170 plus sales tax in the Uber majority of states and shipping ends up being about 200, but we were sending that pro plus, which is our most popular, about 45% of our base is actually in that box.
Yeah. Which is surprising and not the theory we had when we launched the subscription box, but we were sending about 30 of those out to YouTubers. And just that was part of our strategy. We wanted people giving unbiased reviews, content, SEO was was part of the strategy.
And you know, to to date ourselves, and it's such a cringe thing to say now when you talk about conversion rate optimization and stuff like that for your site, but we had a prepurchase survey where prior to even letting them give us the money, we said, hey. How'd you hear about us? Yeah. Usual suspects, Facebook. Twitter, Instagram, etcetera. And we had other where they could type in something we don't know about.
And we started seeing this huge influx of people clicking other, and they started clicking and typing it in and typing in current 17 76. Now at the time, we don't know who that is, what that is. We quickly find out it's a YouTube Chaz. This guy named Brandon Curran Chaz is putting out these YouTube reviews, jumped to our Google Sheet. He's not part of the 30 we're sending this to, so we find him in in the system. He's a paying customer.
He's paying 450 doing this, and we're getting this crazy amount of traffic from him. What? So we start tracking it After a couple of months, we reach out to him or okay, ma'am, we wanna just keep sending you the box. Don't don't stop what you're doing. We don't have to pay for it anymore. And then 5, 6 months down the road. Right? Hey, Brandon. We're also gonna give you $500 a month. In addition, just make sure you do the video at this date.
Like, we we can't have them stop this because it's continuing. And the next conversation was Hey, Brandon. So we know this is just like a side hustle for you, but do you wanna quit your day job and move the wife and your 3 kids? To Georgia and just do content full time. And he obviously talked to his family and said, yes. He's the face of the brand. If you'd seen a battle box video, you've seen him.
Yeah. And, as soon as he was, you know, part of the team in a full time capacity, We could then just lean in and not even, like, double down on content, but quadruple down on content. That's that's what we did. Wow. I I love the the detail there. I wanna go just one more layer because I'm I'm sure the listener is probably as interested as I am, but you know, providing valuable content. Like you said, content's king. That's what we're always like, okay. Well, what what does that look like?
So on a on a normal week, whether that's him in a on a YouTube channel or social, like, give us some practicals on what you guys are doing or maybe what suggest a business owner listening today that they can do to create quality content.
Sure. So the the the horrible short answer is you you wanna do a lot of testing and find out really what is gaining momentum and getting eyeballs and getting engagement, right, because the engagement part is what builds the community, which is the whole reason you're doing the content to begin with. With certainty, it's not It's not making a video trying to sell a product. That comes later in the funnel. That's that's not not what you wanna be doing with content.
Now you can occasionally pepper in a sale or some kind of call to action, but it can't be the the Uber majority living close to this be a has to be a very large minority. Of of of your content, it's it's really just, unfortunately, testing and trying to find find what it is. Right? So Sure. Our our largest channel is TikTok. We don't dance, which when we launched on TikTok was what TikTok was known for. Right. Right. It was it was it was a rebranded musically, and people were dancing on there.
And we knew that that was not our thing. No sleeping bags and hunting knives doing it dance together? Right. So so we it honestly is testing a bunch of stuff, and we found stuff that works us. So for us, outdoor gear company, a lot of our product videos were testing gear. We're seeing if it if it's up to the test, to be in a battle box at the same level. You know, another big thing we do, what we've always done is this is this unboxing review of of the box we send out.
It's a 25 to 30 minute video. Well, we shoot it in a way where Brandon and and whatever the main character main focus is is kind of center in our filming. So we take a lot. We'll take that 30 minute video. And from that, we'll be able to chop 5, 6, 7, sometimes more short form pieces of content from that. Right. So I'd say 70% of our content that's short form, which is our focus, is repurposed, reedited from from a possibly horizontal form video.
In addition to that, we're we're we're trying to really show the human side. Of the brand. We we want to really show that because that's a key part for that connection to occur. Right? So Yeah. You you wanna you wanna format that connection. That's that's part of the community building You look at if you're selling a product where it is on kind of a need want scale.
Sure. You know, unfortunately, Battlebox is For some people, it probably is on the on the need side, but for a lot of people, it's probably closer on on the want side. It's a disposable income that we're competing for. That's right. And when something is farther on the want side, consumers want to identify have some sort of relationship connection with that brand. And this is a consumer behavior that year over year has become more and more truths.
It's occurred for a while, but, like, It's just every year becoming more of a trend. Yeah. If if a consumer is buying something with your disposable audience and it's not you know, dire need, just pure want, there has to be some sort of connection. And that's how we're we're forming that by building this relationship with the community. So long answer did not really give you a direct answer. No. It's good stuff, man.
Wolfe you say that that relationship that you're building, I think it's applicable to so many businesses listening, even if their marketing company or, you know, installing windows. There can be a need, quote, unquote, in certain times But for the most part, we're all needing to create this relationship that you're talking about. I think that that it it is the absolute way to to doing business in today's world.
I also think it's the, like, it's like the lever that we don't really understand fully that we're pulling even as we're networking at doing a business podcast between the two of us, like, who knows where this relationship goes or who I refer or who you were like, you just don't know the power of the lever until you start doing it on a regular basis, and you're like, oh, wow. This is really powerful.
And so inside of that, I guess my question to you is is that relationship Chaz building, do you find that it stemmed from, like, okay. As the consumer, yeah, they they see me. Is that is that the relationship piece, or I feel heard, or is it, like, a uplevel my status? Because I'm a battle box member. Like, what's the in, like, the value inside of the relationship for your consumer. Sure. So it's a great question.
So so in addition to the content piece, we have a It was a it was just a website that was a Reddit style forum. We unpopular opinion have converted it over to a Facebook group. We like it as a Facebook group. It's a lot easier to moderate and manage. So if you're an active subscriber, you're allowed access to that group. Not everybody takes advantage of it. We have maybe eight thousand people in there right now.
That's that's a place and it it it combines that with commenting on Facebook and TikToks and and YouTube shorts, but it's it's just it's connecting other people. Right? Yeah. So so Chaz, you and I might both be battle box customers. And because of all the engagement, that we're showing towards the battle box brand in the Facebook group. We're then meeting, and we're then forming forming a relationship. And we both live 20 minutes from each other when we both like to go camping.
Well, now we're going to go camping together. Yeah. And that's that's the value at our we're connecting like minded individuals Yeah. And giving them a platform to connect, learn from each other, and buy a bottle box, but also you get a product you don't like. You have 8000 people you can post and try to trade it for something else or sell it. Right. So, Roy, the the value is an actual actual community, and there's additional value add, like, Sure.
You know, we're giving them there'll be free giveaways we do and Yeah. And unique exclusive stuff. But at its core Chaz the value lies is that we've created friendships. Yeah. And it's it's not like There's there's no other argument. Chaz and John became friends because they were both battle box customers. Yeah. And and and Chaz and John both know that, which is which is pretty cool. Yeah. It's actually really cool. I wanna encourage the listener because this can happen in any business.
In fact, just wanna like in this real quick because I I haven't had anybody articulate it quite as well as you just did, but it's actually exactly what I've done with Gathering the Kings. Number 1 is a Master group.
Number 2 is a podcast because not only Mastermind members get together and what you just described is exactly what a Mastermind does, But even an extension to that, I have a Facebook group for all my podcast guests, and sometimes seeing podcast guests get together because they both met me is extremely fulfilling whether any of them pay me money or not. I just know that it it levels up the value of the brand, which then somewhere else organically is gonna get me exposure in a deal.
And I think that the way you articulated it around community and actually pouring into what relationship are built on can be applicable to any business. Would you agree? A 100%. And and will you describe it? I'm smiling inside because it's exactly the same spot on. Right? And then you're back to checking that box that I was talking about where that satisfaction like, seeing that, like, you know what you're doing is right Yeah. Which is extra motivating. Yeah. Continue to go down that path. 100%.
Yeah. I I'm I'm already and I usually do this anyway, but I'm always, like, even in the midst of a conversation, a podcast or somebody that I and I'm doing business with or or even one of the mastermind members. It's like, oh, man. I met John Roman the other day. You need to, like, boom. Connection. Boom. Just like, hey. You need to meet. You need to meet. You need to meet.
And, and really what it is, like you're saying, by building the community, you're building, like, this deeper level of value that has nothing to do with the actual product, the actual trip, or the actual podcast, or the actual, you know, box that has all the products in it. So Right. What do you think is keeping I just I wanna hang here for just another half second because I think it's just so valuable. What do you think is keeping most brands or most just even entrepreneurs listening right now?
From doing what it is that you're talking about. So it's it's a commitment and to truly attack it and be successful with it. You have to go down that path and see a lot of rejection and 0 success and and truly have the the vision that you're doing it correctly and that it's gonna take a while. TikTok, for example. So we launched and we grabbed the name in the beginning of COVID and then literally for a year until early 2021, just sat on it. We had the account. We didn't make a single post.
We weren't even logging in, and we jumped in early 2021 and we really felt that we had already missed the ball, but we were still gonna give it a give it a good good try. The reality is we we had not missed the ball yet, and we wish to even though we I was starting today, hasn't missed the ball. Would you agree? Correct. 100%. But those first 6, 7 months, almost a year, it was 99% failure.
It Wolfe got to the point where my team started to probably think I was crazy because I was like, no. We're gonna keep doing this. Like, this is eventually going to work. And our audience lives on TikTok. We just haven't found them yet. We're gonna keep trying different types of content. I even convinced Brandon to do a dance on. I was like, let's just try a dance. It didn't work. Of course. And but it was but it was funny.
And, like, I think he even put the text, like, the boss is making me do this right now. Right. But we just kept trying different approaches, and it was insane because it was constant failure. But I think to answer your question, that's people fail because they don't get that instantaneous results that they're looking for. That's right. And they give up, oh, it's not working. This is not a a quick return. This is probably if you're familiar with SEO, where it's were we a long, long game?
Yep. This is this is even a longer game. Right? Yeah. You're putting these seeds in and trying to grow these roots in this infrastructure, but you're you're never going underground. So you don't really see the the build until, you know, when you see that little little Little pot. Route. Yeah. Yep. The reality is the roots are huge underneath it a lot at times. Right? Yep. And I think it's human nature to not see that little spread, that little boop, and you're like, not working.
I'm gonna give it up. In reality, you had built this entire root system and just it was days away or months away from sprouting and you just didn't stick with it. Yeah. And I think it's it's tough to to not see results and continue to go down that path, almost religiously. But you have to have the confidence that you're you're doing it right. And I think that's that's where the failure happen. People people don't commit. Chaz long.
I was, like, air all the word that was just pounding on my brain Chaz you're talking his commitment. It's no. I'm seeing this through. All the way. Right. I know it's gonna feel a little bit weary at times, but, no, I'm I'm gonna press in. What you were just talking about as far as the sprout and, you know, the roots, you know, I try to teach my my children this, and it's difficult sometimes to get them to think long term.
I mean, they're 3 and 7 and 9, you know, in 9 months, so she's not even thinking yet. Yeah. But The reality is is my my wife has been taking my son. We they found an Acorn and and they're they planted it in a cup. And, you know, it's got, like, 2 inches of soil in it, and it's in a clear cup so he can see it. Just the other day, poop. A little sprout came up, and he was so excited. He was daddy. Trying to use his words and and try to explain what was happening.
And and and so my wife reaches down and goes whispers to him and tells him to show me what was happening underneath. And so he flips o open the, you know, the the cup. Baus spills it all out. You know, luckily, we caught it, but He want he was showing me all the roots under there and how, like I mean, they were just, like, everywhere, right, in there. And, of course, once it gets a little bit bigger, they're gonna take it outside, and it's gonna grow into a big old tree.
For that to, like, have, like, been working all this time. You know, it's only been a week or 2 or 3 or whatever it's been, but the reality of it is is for a four year old. Like, a really long time. Yeah. It's it's the It's the same time. Analogy. Yeah, man. It's good. We get we get distracted. We get bored. We get you know, we don't have enough persistence or perseverance. We're not committed. Really, we're really not all in. Right. 100%. Same thing. Chaz. Alright. Well, let's flip the coin.
You've given us some really valuable information on a good decision. What was that bad decision that you made that we can we can learn from? So a a bad decision, one of the first ones that that we had, and it was it's honestly In in hindsight, it's easy to say it's a bad decision. It was Right. It was really because of naive. So for the 1st year, we we were advertising on on one channel. We were we had we had 1 lead source, Facebook. Facebook ads.
When we had some organic stuff, I, you know, kind of had, alluded to the YouTube video. So but from a from a paid Uber majority of our leads and new customers were one place Facebook. And It was all great until, you know, our example, going into labor day weekend, Friday at 6 PM, We're gonna have our biggest weekend we've ever had. Literally, it's gonna be impossible not to be our biggest weekend ever. We're having a sale. We never have sales.
And not only do all of our ads get declined, rejected, our account gets deleted, canceled, you're dead Friday at 7 PM going into the 3 day weekend. And we went from it's our only lead source. So all of a sudden, we went from These consistent sales every day to literally Nothing. From 15 new customers a day. Now we have one. That came organically from a from a YouTube review. Right. Right. And we were super, super fortunate in this situation.
Where at the time it was our Redditlight group, and one of our customers worked for Facebook. Oh, wow. This is this is pre COVID, so this is people went into an office. And his office row of cubes were, like, a few cube rows down from the the manual team that was, like, in charge of those ads. And he was like, hey. I'm gonna go ask them. And he, like, walked over. Oh, this is on on a Tuesday following all this. To someone came back. Dropped on our our forum.
Hey. I just spoke to someone over there. They're looking at it right now and, like, within 30 minutes, we were back. That's pure luck happenstance. Like, we got lucky. Wow. But it it was a wake up call on a on a mistake we were making. I think this is true for for all businesses. Right? Like, you never wanna be completely dependent on one vendor, one source, one one One customer. Right?
Like, yeah, you think about places where you have this giant customer that's 90% of your revenue, like, That's a problem. Yep. Rescue disaster. And that that's the mistake we made, and and now we we we're far from ever it's not possible to make that mistake now. But I think that's a huge mistake people make.
Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting because you you hear a lot of gurus talk about, you know, one product, one Chaz, and I think that that's true for a period of time, you know, typically, you know, to maybe to get to 7 figures. But then you have to you have to be able to go other places. Otherwise, you run you run too great of a risk. But I wanna point out, I don't actually think it was luck that saved you that day. I think it was your intentionality behind building relationships and a community.
Well, you right. So you could I'm a firm believer that you create your own lock. Right? And and yeah. So you could very strongly argue that because of that community approach, we put ourselves in the best situation possible to tell, to lock out. The fact that you told everybody, hey. We're down. Like, that's a pretty vulnerable thing to share even with your current desperation. Thanks for the clarity on that. That wasn't it wasn't a self righteous moment. That was a Oh, we're gonna Right.
Yeah. It's good stuff, man. It but you're right. It's the power of community, and you intentionally doing the thing Right. Be way way before. And and I can, you know, not to circle this all the way back to, you know, the power of groups and and community and masterminds and stuff, but it it is exactly what you're talking about. Everything that we need or want can come from a relationship. And and sometimes we don't know we need or want something until it happens.
Right, in the moment, and you're like, oh, but if you've already been planning and and and, you know, serving or or spreading seed out of good, not out of expectation necessarily? Exactly. Knowing that that there is an expectation of a harvest, but don't necessarily know exactly where it's gonna be and and and at what time. Right? Yeah. It's huge, man. Alright. What about, like, something comes across your desk today, You gotta make a decision on it. Do you have a magic decision making formula?
Help us make some good decisions here. John? No. I I I don't have, like, a a a perfect perfect process. I think it it depends on on what what's crossing my desk. Right? So is it is it a Is it an acquisition that we're looking at to to fold into to our portfolio? Is it is it a marketing approach? I I don't have a a perfect process. I am very process driven. Almost to a fault where I have to sometimes say, okay.
Like, human turn human mode back on, but it's all it's all it's so dependent on on the exam. Sure. Sure. Okay. So what I'm taking away from that is have a process, but but be intentional about what specifically we're talking about. 100%. K. It's good. What would you say just for good making good decisions in life? Kinda a little bit more, maybe, you know, thirty thousand foot up. How have you you know, made good decisions repeatedly.
So anything important, at least personally, my biggest thing is I've state the emotion out of it. I I and I think most people initially, there's some emotion in their decision if they try to make a quick decision. Sure. And in taking the emotion out of it, but it seems so silly to say, but sleeping on it. It's not necessarily that, like, sleeping on the actual decision is gonna make a difference. It's Right. It's allow the emotion to completely pull pull from it.
So I think I'm very calculated in in that sense. I sometimes you have to make a decision. Right? Sometimes something Yep. Something's happening. If you go with your guy, you have to go right then, and there there's a motion involved in Chaz, and you hope that it didn't sway your decision, but any meaningful decisions, it's ensuring that the emotion is completely out of it. Yep. Which sometimes, for most people, means you have to take some time.
Yep. Yeah. I didn't hear you say delay and procrastinate. I heard you say Wait and take a breath, and that breath might be a day or 2 or however long Right. To be able to exhale the emotion and make a logical choice. Yeah. But it it yeah. It's not it's not procrastinating and push it out. Right? It's push it out the the I don't even like saying push it out.
Just as little of time as possible, and everybody is different, but knowing that the emotions out of it and you're looking at it, surely from, you know, in a black and white sense. It's good. It's good. Alright. I'm gonna go over to to the speed round. First question's around KPIs. I like to say it like this. If you could only pick one thing to track, especially being a marketing guy, this is gonna be good. What would be that one thing that you attract? Ben, this this question gives me anxiety.
Yes. So we're we're so data driven, and we make all of our so many decisions, the majority on so many KPIs. So to to come and bring it down to 1, my anxiety meter. If I had to pick 1, Yeah. I would say actually profit.
K. Yeah. Or or EBIT us because with with with that, you can at least assuming you're blind on all of your data and KPIs, you at least know you have x amount that you can reinvest And now you don't know if it's profitable or not because you're not looking at these KPIs, but if you only have one, it's profit because you know at least you can throw more. You can throw that back. Into the game and try to build from it. Yeah. I love it. That's that's your play.
It it's not to buy a boat or take a vacation. Although, I'm sure those things are your in your thought at some point, but it's to play the game. I wanna keep playing the game. Right. 100%. Yeah. Love that. What book? What resource would you recommend for a business owner trying to trying to grow? So so this was, this is a question that I've I think it's an unpopular opinion. So k. You see all these books that you're gonna read that are gonna help and and and take you to the next step.
And I I occasionally read. I don't read as much as as probably other other CEOs and other people. I I don't wanna say that it's a specific book. I I think honestly it's it's what we've already both hinted at the group, the the community, the mastermind groups. That's to me, that's that's the value. When I when I'm going to conferences in industry conferences, like, the most important thing that I'm trying to accomplish is is is networking. And it's not it it's networking.
It's Chaz. You're gonna be here. I wanna be I wanna actually get to know you. Right? Yeah. Like, I wanna have an actual connection with you. And I think I think that's of so much so much more value. Right? You can you can read a book where this person's gonna give an example of how they did something that might not be even close to apples to apples or even be comparable to to your business or what you're trying to accomplish.
You then try to try to fit that square peg in the round hole for your business, and it You think you understand it, but you don't know if you really do. And then so many of the books are Like ivory tower management styles just they're giving you just enough information, but it's They they they're not giving you the actual There's no implementation. There's none. And and that to me is the is the paramount part. And with a mastermind group. You're talking to peers.
You're talking to people that have tried doing this or you were trying to accomplish this for your business and 3 other guys in the group have done something very similar, and and you can talk through what they did, what worked, what didn't work their learnings, and and and, like, troubleshoot together. Yep. And that's worth that's worth a 1000 books.
Yeah. In in in in my opinion, unpopular opinion, maybe, but I'd rather be in a a mastermind group and be using that 2 hours a week in that group Right. Versus spending that 2 hours reading. Yeah. It's super powerful when again, again, we've we've talked about this in almost the entire show, but I had one of my master my members. This was probably a month or so ago.
I had a guest speaker come in and He talked about the eightytwenty rule, which seems pretty simple, but there's an actual, like, strategy behind it. He's done it with several private equity purchases. He comes in and overlays this strategy and helps them grow, and then they sell. And the afterwards, this member, he reached out and he said, hey. How If you had to quantify the value of that, you know, hour a half, what do you think that that was?
And I was like, well, Obviously, I can only speak for me, but millions. And, he was like, yeah, at at a minimum, you know, but but some people don't realize that. Like, that information, yeah, I'm sure it's in a book somewhere. But I not only not only the presentation itself, but then the agitating questions afterwards, that got us to think and dissect. Like you were saying, just a little bit differently afterwards, it's like, wow.
You can go apply that, and it can it can literally mean millions to your business. Right. The big deal. Okay. What about family, John? I wanna know how you've obsessed about your business, and your family at the same time. I am I'm I'm a firm believer that there's no such thing as belief or a balance. I'm a big believer in belief. Balance is what I'm not a believer in. Okay? So I believe that in order to be successful in business, we gotta be all in committed obsessed?
I I believe the same thing for my marriage. I believe the same thing for my kiddos. How have you been able to do that? Same all in all at the same time. It's tough. So I don't think work I mean, work life balance, it doesn't does it exist. I don't think it does. I think both are important. Honestly, I believe family is is higher up on the importance. Right? Than than the business yet. You're bleeding, sweating for both, and they they work together. So it's I do. It's it's not easy.
I I think having dedicated time, and it's tough. And I'm my my poor wife, like, she looks at me and It'll be we'll be doing something, and she looks I mean, I'm looking in my phone because there's some kind of fire or something's going on. But You know, as as we've grown and the relationship Chaz grown, she she understands, like, I'm doing Chaz. For her, It's tough. There's not to me, there's not a good answer.
I think I'm a constant work in progress, and I think hopefully this the 2023 version or the 2024 version would be better than the 2023 version. It would be better than my 2022 version, but I'm not great at it. I I and, you know, I think it's it's tough. And I I'm I'm constantly working on it, but I'm not yeah. I there's tons of area for improvement. Yeah. It's not a good answer. So It it's a real answer, and so therefore, it is a good answer.
I've I've asked that question too, at this point, a couple hundred people. And and maybe even more than that, because I ask it all the time really kinda wherever I go. And it's always the same answer. It's oh, oh, I know I need to get better at that. And but it's not it's not like we're not doing it. It just means that we know that there's area for improvement, and I would say that that's probably across the board for all entrepreneurs.
That's why this work life obsession is what I call rather than the balance because I don't believe, actually, that they that they are separate and that there's a balance. I think that it's actually all together, and that we gotta be all in on all of it. Otherwise, otherwise, how can you? In fact, I actually I'll I'll say this to you really as an encouragement because my listeners may have heard it on a podcast before, but I had another guest that said it like this.
He said, you know, if your business is a mistress, then you keep her from your wife. And your wife's always wondering what you're doing and wondering whether you're thinking about her or whether you're thinking about the the mistress and or, in your kids, your kids don't know who the mistress is. You know, it's like so forth and so on down the down the story. Right?
Or it's another kid in the family, and it sits at the table, and everybody knows its name, and everybody knows when, you know, the events are. And and everybody has t shirts, and it's like, Everybody knows this. Yeah. It's just like your wife is involved. The kids are involved. Like, it's gotta be together. Gotta be all in on all of It's like, that's that's I love that. That's great. Big deal. One last question here for you, John.
This might seem odd just because we're both young guys, but powerful, nonetheless. If you had a chance to whisper in the younger John's ear, what would you say? Oh, man. That's deep. Gotta take a break for that one. Yeah. I mean, it'd probably give Stuck advice. You're the first one. Oh my gosh. Sandy, my production, she she's gonna she's gonna freak out because she asked me after hundreds of people She's like, what would be your answer? Oh, Bitcoin? Apple? Yes. Yeah. Like, stock advice.
Tell maybe tell tell me who's gonna win the Wolfe series? Like Yeah. Yeah. She she said to me, which I'll say to you, okay. Fine. But what's the real answer? I think that is the real answer. I know. I know. Yeah. It would be a hack some information to make everything easier. Gotta come up with something else, though, because you're right. Because that's not that's the the back to the future answer doesn't count. It's real, though. I I I know it because that that's what I felt for a long time.
So we can go with it if it's real. Yeah. It's real. I I don't I think giving an answer of, like, a learning that, you know, I've I have the older John has to give to the younger John The reality is the younger John, Old Jonga Tell Young John, Chaz, and I'm gonna trust, but I'm still gonna verify it. Right. I'm not gonna take it at face value. I'm still going to challenge, and I'm probably still gonna go down that path.
And and I'll it'll be a theory at that point or a hypothesis that I'm testing. But I'm probably still not just gonna take it for face value, so it doesn't matter. Yeah. But if you told me about a stock, I'm at least gonna give me a stock with, you know, not just a 200% return, like, something insane over time. And I'm gonna I'm gonna take a shot at it. Yeah. Regardless. Totally. It's it it's interesting.
I I, you know, I dissect some of the, like, you know, just psycho pieces of of why are our answers like this? The best the description I can give to listener is that it's just a super high logic strategic person who's answering this because that's how that's how I think. It's like, well, if I had this one opportunity, to talk to the the younger Chaz. I mean, I feel like, you know, yeah. Okay. Persist. Everything's gonna be okay. You know, keep going. Like, all those things are great. Like, yes.
That would have been super encouraging to hear at 20 that the thirty six year old Chaz is like, hey, bro. Like, Things are working out pretty good. Just keep your head down. Keep focused. But super strategic, very logical, like, xplusyequalsz. I would have been, like, bet. All in. Let's go. Yeah. 100%. Back to the future, here is that the sports book. Here's the package. The Sports Almanac for the next 10 years. Yeah. Yeah. That's funny, man. Well, I wanna know how can we find a battle box?
How can, like, give us a little promo on your on your product. Where can we find? And then, also, where can we find you as a business? Sure. So battlebox is battlebox.combat l b o x. No e in that. If you put an e, you're gonna end up on a Disney site. Disney owned site. Go to Netflix. Go to the search bar. Type in battle box. Our show will pop up. We're on all social media, TikTok, and YouTube are our 2 biggest channels.
On on me personally, Unpop third unpopular opinion of of this show, LinkedIn is my preferred platform. So I'm most active on LinkedIn. Also on Twitter, I have a blog called onlinekso.com. I tried to walk people through initiatives things we're doing, and I try to not sugarcoat it. I'm I'm not just posting the wins. I'm trying to post some of our losses because I think they're probably more important because there's lessons learned Yeah.
In those and the thought process, like, can save someone else. Chaz the trouble. Totally. Well, then yep. Love that. You gave us a Wolfe smorgasport of ways to connect. Appreciate that. And it will put all that in the show notes as well. But, awesome, John. This has been a super fun interview. I look forward to building a an actual connection with you, like you said. Same. And what an honor. I get to get to do that. And thank you for being here.
Blessings on your family, your business, all the people that you're touching all across the world with your products. We we thank you for being here. Thank you. You as well. Thanks for having me, Chaz. This was this was a lot of fun. Thank you for listening to gathering the Kings today hope that you were able to pull out a few nuggets to go apply into your business right away.
More importantly, though, I hope that you're realizing that it takes more to be successful than just being by yourself doing it all on your own, carrying the weight all by yourself. What I have realized, not only in my own journey from multiple businesses and multiple different industries and now interviewing literally over 2 or 300 other very successful 7, 8, and 9 figure business owners is that it's tough to do it alone.
And so gathering the Kings literally exists to bring together successful entrepreneurs. In fact, we are putting together 1000 kings, specifically who are grateful, but not done. We're intentionally assembling kings who fight tooth and nail for their business, family, and communities, and here's what we believe. That in the pursuit of excellence in those areas, that it ignites within us the responsibility to govern power and forge a lasting legacy.
So if that relates and and resonates with you and you know that you need people around you, sharp, qualified, other very successful business owners. I want you to go to gatheringthekings.com. I want you to take a look at what we're doing and see if it makes sense for you to be part of our pursuit to 1000 kings. Talk soon.