WEBVTT
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We did learn how to work hard, and that's helped
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us get eighty ninety percent of the way. You guys
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have the best tasting and best working pre work I
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have ever taken. You have a home run. Somebody brought
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in some Internet leads and we're like, what's the Internet?
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No matter where you are in your fitness journey, you're
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welcome to Bucked Up.
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You're listening to the Mountain West Capital Network podcast, your
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gateway to the Winner Circle. I'm Sherry, the executive director
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of Mountain West Capital Network.
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And I'm Jason, President of the Mountain West Capital Network
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and managing director at Protivity. Every episode, we sit down
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with Utah's most visionary business leaders to cover the ideas, risks,
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and wins behind the state's fastest growing companies.
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Mountain West Capital Network is best known for the Utah
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one hundred, our flagship event that recognizes the state's fastest
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growing businesses. But behind every number is a story. Announce
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what this podcast is all about.
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You're not just tuning in to hear what's happened, You're
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stepping inside the winner Circle to understand how it happened today.
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We are so thrilled to be joined by Jeff and
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Ryan Gardner the CXO and CEO of Bucked Up. Jeff
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and Ryan are brothers who now work as managing partners
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together for their supplement company here in Utah.
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Jeff and Ryan decide to start Bucked Up together in
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twenty sixteen. While Ryan worked on the day to day operations,
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Jeff was planning behind the scenes to make Bucked Up
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a worldwide brand. Jeff has utilized their ambassador partnerships to
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spread news of Bucked Up, making his dreams for the
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company come true. He has focused on ensuring that Bucked
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Up always stays ahead of the competition.
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With Jeff's help, Ryan has stayed busy to help Bucked
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Up become the number one best selling pre workout supplement,
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which is now available in over one hundred thousand stores worldwide.
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Back into two thousand and one, when Ryan saw that
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social media was helping his first business to skyrocket, he
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dove headfirst into it and bought the website Dear Antler
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spray dot com, which exploded their sales after a Super
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Bowl announcement. Once Bucked Up was launched, he did the
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same and now leads the path in the supplement world.
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You can find their products at bucked up dot com.
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Jeff and Ryan, Welcome to the Winter Circle.
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Thanks for having us on. Appreciate it. We're excited.
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So for those just getting to know you, how would
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you describe yourselves and tell the story behind Bucked Up
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and how it got started for the two of you.
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Well, first off, we are twins, yes, so gain Tel
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so you are. We get around twice as fast.
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I love it.
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People run across to you and they think they know you,
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and we always act like we are the other person,
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go with the flow. They don't even correct them, no secrets.
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And what's funny as our our father was an identical
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twin Oho and so we were told to play every
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trick that you can on the on the planet. And
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we've we've taken tests for each other, we've dated the
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same girl, graduated for each other, graduated for each other.
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It was great, we played, We played it all. So
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but it'd be some golfing. Yeah, maybe some golfing in
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there from different clubs. Who's better? Never know, you never know.
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We're too competitive. You're going to start a fight. Yeah
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you're going to find out in this podcast for the table.
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But yeah, that's really what it is. Is is. We're
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just twins, so we're always family focused and we're we
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we love working together. Sometimes it can be challenging, but
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since we're twins, we don't hold back, just fight it out.
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Five minutes later we're best friends again. Yeah. Yeah, so
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it's great because you could just move on and keep going. So,
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but I think Jeff said it right. Family is probably
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the most important thing to us. We both have four kids,
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you know, and even though we work hard and we
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work a lot, we really it all comes back to
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hanging out with your family and going and doing fun
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things with them.
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That's great.
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Tell us about how it all started. I know there
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are many people that understand the story, but there will
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be listeners that will not know completely. Like you know,
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dear Antler sprayed, I come and maybe just go go
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into maybe the highlights of how it started.
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Well, we have somebody in the room that kind of
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influenced our story. Ryan had some missionary companions. After a mission,
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he came down and worked with one of them on
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a sales floor and we were up selling, coaching and mentoring.
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In about thirty to forty five minutes, we were selling
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five to ten thousand dollars packages. You know, we figured
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out that the guy who was making all the money
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is the guy who's giving the leads to that sales floor.
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And back then and they were doing it by infomercials
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or seminars in the hotels. But somebody brought in some
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Internet leads and we're like, what's the internet. This is
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in nineteen before we even knew how to do an email,
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and it was crazy. And he goes, I really don't
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know what I'm doing. Because Ryan said, let me come
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work with you, and he said, well, I mean, I
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just put these banners on this website and people have
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to choose some numbers because it was called freelatto dot
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com and they would enter to win by clicking on
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one of these banners and visiting no website. After one
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hundred visitors, this guy would generate about two buyers from
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this little ad he put together, and he would give
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the leads to the sales floor. So Ryan said, well, yeah,
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let me come down. And I didn't want to be
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on the sales floor for the rest of my life.
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I was like, I don't want to be doing this,
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do you you know, can I get a job? That's
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what I said to him. But we were very good
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at sales, and we were out going, and we were
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very ethical, So we were very We weren't selling seventy
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year old ladies. We were we were kind of like
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I would say that we were kind of good guys
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selling because you could get a little off track just
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to make a sell, and we just wouldn't ever cross
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those lines. But Ryan figured out with this guy how
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to produce leads on the internet through emailers. You'd have
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people who had a list, an email list of their clients,
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and we would have them send our offer to that list.
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And there were many emailers out there that just started
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to come about. You know, when he started working, Like
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he said, he asked how to use his mouse to
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put something on the desktop and he knows it was
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for an attachment. I said, well, how do you make
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an attachment? I remember all of his guys turning around
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with you this, Okay, oh boy, who did you hire?
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And I'm like, I had I hadn't even used a
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computer at that point, basically. Yeah. So Ryan basically told
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me what he was doing and he said, Hey, Jeff,
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I'm gonna I want to start something where we can
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produce leads for everybody. Would you like to come and
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come aboard. And we said, I said, yeah, I don't
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want to be on the sales floor either. I let
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him pave the wave and try it first, right as
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it always has been. I'm the older one. I'm five
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minutes older than Jeff. He's used that a good whole.
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I say, respect your elders, come out. So we start
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a little business, and and all of a sudden we
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were producing leads for a lot of people, and that's
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really what how we started. And we were in the
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internet world before everybody was doing the internet, so we
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were a little ahead of people. And that's kind of
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what we pride ourselves on, like you said, is we
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like to stay ahead and see what's coming down the
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road and be, you know, always in front and have
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people following or chasing us, you know. And then as
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we were starting to produce leads and traffic and drive traffic,
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people would come into our office all the time and say, hey,
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I got this product. Will you drive traffic to our websites?
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We said, yeah, we'll do it. Well, we got it.
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Finally got sick of producing it for everybody else, and
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we said, hey, if we can drive traffic, let's just
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do it for our own products. A guy came in
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that very next day and said, hey, I got this
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product called l arginine and your dad uses it. And
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he told me to come see you, said you'd put
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you on You had put me on steroids. And I
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was like, well, not the drug steroids. But we can
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drive a lot of traffic, but we don't do it
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unless we own part of the company. And within thirty
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to forty five minutes we owned fifty percent of the
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company and he was doing about six or seven hundred
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dollars a day. Within three to four weeks, we were
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doing about thirty five hundred dollars a day. Because we
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took over his website. We started driving the traffic. We
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started buying a lot of paper click you know, on Google.
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And when that happened, all of a sudden, they turned
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off this product was called l Arginine Plus. They turned
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off all the pay per click for l arge nine plus.
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And we happened to go out and buy the domain
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name larg nine dot com about three weeks before that. Wow,
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and we were We spent twenty five grand on that
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domain name, and we were like, that was a big decision.
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We looked at each other and said should we do this.
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It's twenty five thousand just for the name, but it
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ranks number one because it was an exact match domain
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with what people were going and searching.
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Wow.
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And so we said we got lucky. You know, we
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were in the right place at the right time. We
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bought the domain name. Three or four weeks later, they
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turned off paper click and we got all the traffic.
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So we were doing five six thousand dollars. We ended
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up doing about four to five million dollars a year
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on that one single product for years.
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Wow.
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And that was a supplement. We were like, wow, supplements
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is where it's at. Well, then we read an article
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in Sports Illustrated that says dear Antler Spray is banned
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in Major League Baseball and we were like, what's dear
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Antler spray? What is it? A hunting product? What? We
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didn't even know? And we read this article. We went
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to Go Daddy and it was available for six dollars
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in ninety nine cents purchase and we bought it and
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we were like and we were like, this is another
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l argentine product. Don't run. Yeah. So and then I
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went and found a manufacturer in Florida, that produced dear
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Antler spray, and we were like, hey, this is going
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to be just like l Argin nine. We're going to
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rank number one. And we did. We started ranking pretty fast.
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But guess what, nobody read Sports Illustrated, So there was
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very little traffic for somebody looking for deer Antler spray.
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They read it for the swimsuit issue. I think they
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don't read the articles, all right, who doesn't study? But
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so then we produced about thirty five hundred bottles. We
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did the minimum order quantity of thirty five hundred bottles.
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We were selling like what ten to twelve a day?
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Five ten a day is all ten a day? And
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we were like, man, we better hope we run out
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before these expire. And then Jeff Teller like, one day
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we walk into the office and see we walk into
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one hundred orders and we're like, are we somebody scamming
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us or fraud and or using credit cards on our
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website or something? What's going on? And about five or
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ten minutes later, another one hundred orders, and a friend
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called us on the phone and said, turn on ESPN
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right now. And this was a Super Bowl media week
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of twenty thirteen, and at this media week, there was
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a press conference and a reporter pulled up some receipts
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and held them up and said, hey, ray Lewis, you
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had a torn tricep three weeks ago. How did you
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recover from this tricep? Tear self asked, and he said,
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I have proof that you receipts that you bought dear
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Antler spray, and that's banned in the NFL. He couldn't
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have done it better because he raised his hands and
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said I bought it, but I didn't take it. And
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everybody's like, uh huh sure. And it's not banned to
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the normal public, right, it's banned just in these in
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this professional sports because the theory is it gives them
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an unfair advantage. You can't really mess for it, and
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it helps you recover super fast because of this growth
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hormone in it and going from zero cells to one
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hundred cells every five minutes. We were like, market, you
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can't mark it up. So we marked it from thirty nine.
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Try to blow down the cells because we're like we're
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going to run out. We're going to run out. Mark
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it up to fifty nine, mark it up to seventy nine.
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We sold every bottle after the first couple hours for
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ninety nine dollars a bottle and sold out all the
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rest of our inventory, which is like twenty six hundred bottles,
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and yeah, that's that's there. Born. Then then a day
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or two later, GNC calls this and says, hey, how
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fast can you fulfill thirty thousand bottles? And I said, well,
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let me find out. So I called the manufacturer and
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I said, hey, this is Ryan with dear Antler spray.
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And he goes, I thought I'd be hearing from you.
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How many bottles do you need? I said, I need
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fifty thousand, as fast as you can make them, and
247
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he goes, I'll have him tea in three weeks. Wow.
248
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And we were selling thousands of bottles in four weeks.
249
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At GNC, we were selling thousands of bottles a week.
250
00:13:26.679 --> 00:13:29.440
At GenZ they had four thousand stores at the time,
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and we were doing thousands and thousands of bottles every week.
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And GNC was basically like, hey, we'll skip all the
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red tape. It may be banned in professional sports, but
254
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it's not banned for us. And everybody keeps asking for it,
255
00:13:42.919 --> 00:13:45.840
everybody coming. It's the number one search thing that the
256
00:13:45.879 --> 00:13:48.600
people were asking for it. And then we started going
257
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to expos and selling just dear Antler spray at these
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expos and these fitness expos. And then as we were
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looking around, we were like, what is everybody doing here?
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And they were all selling a pre work out and
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00:14:00.919 --> 00:14:02.320
we were like, what's a pre workout?
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Yeah?
263
00:14:03.120 --> 00:14:05.960
And they we went around and started taste testing, and
264
00:14:06.039 --> 00:14:09.039
it was I mean, they tasted terrible. Sometimes you almost
265
00:14:09.039 --> 00:14:10.919
had to plug your nose back. Then it was like,
266
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I don't know why they couldn't make a good tasting one,
267
00:14:14.120 --> 00:14:17.039
but they would just keep reassuring us it's because it works.
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It tastes bad because it works really good. And then
269
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we would start itching and we thought we were allergic
270
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to whatever. Try to free work. Keep in mind, we'd
271
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never try to be worked out at this point. Yeah,
272
00:14:29.879 --> 00:14:33.960
and they had like, you know, an iosin and beta alane,
273
00:14:34.039 --> 00:14:35.879
and we didn't know what that was. We just thought
274
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we were allergic and we were starting to itch and
275
00:14:38.679 --> 00:14:42.759
and whatnot. So you know, it's actually a really good ingredient.
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And nine percent of pre workouts contain beta alanine because
277
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it helps buffer lactic acid, so you could you should
278
00:14:50.039 --> 00:14:51.919
be able to push it a lot longer, a lot
279
00:14:51.960 --> 00:14:55.320
harder during your workout. So we we said, we need
280
00:14:55.360 --> 00:14:58.120
to come out with something more than just deer antler spray.
281
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Not everybody's taking this spray to recover and things. So
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we saw that pre workout was there, and we said,
283
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we just need to come out with the best tasting
284
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and best working and tell everybody what's in it. And
285
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one of the guys that was walking around, his name
286
00:15:11.600 --> 00:15:14.919
was Jose. He had a G and C store. He goes, well,
287
00:15:15.000 --> 00:15:17.320
I'll help consult you and tell you everything that you
288
00:15:17.320 --> 00:15:21.360
should put in this thing. And so we said, sounds great,
289
00:15:21.440 --> 00:15:23.759
come in and help us, help us create a line
290
00:15:24.200 --> 00:15:28.480
of good products that we can sell. And I remember
291
00:15:29.960 --> 00:15:33.279
when they made us a first bottle of a pre workout.
292
00:15:33.919 --> 00:15:37.519
We first off, we drank like three servings. We drink
293
00:15:37.519 --> 00:15:40.679
it all day long, and we didn't realize caffeine. We didn't.
294
00:15:40.960 --> 00:15:41.600
You can't do that.
295
00:15:42.080 --> 00:15:45.720
I had a massive headache going I we just had
296
00:15:45.759 --> 00:15:47.840
six hundred eight hundred MILLI drums in and says, hey,
297
00:15:47.879 --> 00:15:51.279
you can't drink that many. It tastes so good, though, Wow,
298
00:15:51.440 --> 00:15:53.759
it tastes so good and I felt focused, but it
299
00:15:53.799 --> 00:15:56.360
was so much caffeine I was like a thousand milligrams
300
00:15:56.519 --> 00:15:57.240
at caffeine.
301
00:15:57.360 --> 00:15:59.240
One day, I gave it to my buddy to try
302
00:15:59.240 --> 00:16:01.720
and he goes, let me try it, because I've tried
303
00:16:02.039 --> 00:16:05.440
fifteen different pre workouts and I worked for a supplement company.
304
00:16:05.480 --> 00:16:07.840
So I gave it to him. He took it to Vasa.
305
00:16:09.039 --> 00:16:11.320
He literally came back to my office and he came
306
00:16:11.360 --> 00:16:14.679
in and said, Jeff, you guys have the best tasting
307
00:16:14.799 --> 00:16:17.600
and best working pre workout I have ever taken. You
308
00:16:17.679 --> 00:16:19.720
have a home run. You just need to know how
309
00:16:19.759 --> 00:16:30.600
to market. Well, you're talking to the market, and really
310
00:16:30.639 --> 00:16:33.120
that's all it was. When we started off, we just
311
00:16:33.120 --> 00:16:35.600
said what should we call it? You know, this pre workout,
312
00:16:35.639 --> 00:16:39.399
and since we had deer antler spray, we stuck with
313
00:16:39.480 --> 00:16:43.200
the deer theme. Somebody's actually suggested it. One of our ambassadors.
314
00:16:43.240 --> 00:16:46.679
Actually we started an ambassador program by this time, and
315
00:16:46.759 --> 00:16:49.600
one of the ambassadors had suggested it. Yeah, he said,
316
00:16:49.720 --> 00:16:51.639
why don't you call it bucked up? And we go
317
00:16:51.720 --> 00:16:54.120
to go Daddy, that's the first thing I did. I
318
00:16:54.200 --> 00:16:57.720
was like, and it was for self. It was for
319
00:16:57.759 --> 00:17:02.120
sale for fifteen hundred dollars or best offer, and you know,
320
00:17:02.360 --> 00:17:06.279
we had bought large nine dot com twenty five thousand.
321
00:17:06.279 --> 00:17:09.519
We were like, we're not making this offer, We're just
322
00:17:09.559 --> 00:17:12.039
gonna pay it, and rhyme bought it right straight up
323
00:17:12.240 --> 00:17:15.640
fifteen hundred and we got the name and that's why
324
00:17:15.680 --> 00:17:18.240
we call it bucked Up. And my parents they hated.
325
00:17:18.400 --> 00:17:20.559
Oh when we said we're going to call it bucked up,
326
00:17:20.680 --> 00:17:23.200
they were like, no way are you going to call
327
00:17:23.200 --> 00:17:26.720
it that? And to be honest, like and we're super
328
00:17:26.759 --> 00:17:29.880
straight parents, Yeah, it is a kind of a parent
329
00:17:30.079 --> 00:17:33.000
It's kind of a sketchy name in a sense, like
330
00:17:33.119 --> 00:17:35.960
what you would name your brand right and have everything
331
00:17:36.039 --> 00:17:39.160
named after. But it went from being kind of a
332
00:17:39.200 --> 00:17:43.440
sketchy name to being where my parents hated the name
333
00:17:43.799 --> 00:17:47.599
to now they just love saying my boys boy's own
334
00:17:47.640 --> 00:17:49.720
bucked up, you know, yeah, and it's right off their
335
00:17:49.759 --> 00:17:52.319
tongue real easy now. And B, why you wouldn't let
336
00:17:52.359 --> 00:17:54.640
us go in because of the name at first and
337
00:17:54.839 --> 00:17:57.039
now they ask us to donate all the time. Yeah,
338
00:17:57.039 --> 00:18:00.000
B why you actually said we can't do it because
339
00:18:00.000 --> 00:18:02.000
because of the name, the name will never get approved.
340
00:18:02.640 --> 00:18:05.680
Like a year later, they were back at our office saying, hey,
341
00:18:05.720 --> 00:18:10.000
we want you to sponsor, and of course, so you
342
00:18:10.039 --> 00:18:13.119
know it's it's funny that people. We appreciate your donations.
343
00:18:13.160 --> 00:18:15.839
Thank you. It kind of turned from a sketchy kind
344
00:18:15.839 --> 00:18:19.759
of name to start a company after to actually mainstream
345
00:18:19.799 --> 00:18:23.240
where everybody is like accept accepting it, and then it
346
00:18:23.279 --> 00:18:27.119
became popular and everybody wanted to be part of it. Yeah,
347
00:18:27.160 --> 00:18:28.599
so it was it was really fun I.
348
00:18:28.599 --> 00:18:31.279
Don't like the word sketchy. I think edgy, edgy.
349
00:18:31.359 --> 00:18:33.960
Edgy edgy is better. Yeah, I like that too, ye
350
00:18:34.160 --> 00:18:37.279
Edgi for Utah, it was really edgy.
351
00:18:37.440 --> 00:18:40.400
Yeah, no, it really is. But like it's I mean,
352
00:18:40.400 --> 00:18:41.519
you see it everywhere.
353
00:18:41.880 --> 00:18:44.000
Some of the other names that we have for some
354
00:18:44.079 --> 00:18:48.480
of our products, yeah, they're even more. We had to
355
00:18:48.559 --> 00:18:51.119
explain to our parents several times the names and what
356
00:18:51.160 --> 00:18:54.960
they meant, and like WOKF we told them it stands
357
00:18:55.000 --> 00:18:57.680
for Woke American four because that's where we make.
358
00:18:59.160 --> 00:19:02.559
It. Can I mean they can yeah.
359
00:19:02.599 --> 00:19:04.480
But yeah, that's the story of how we how we
360
00:19:04.880 --> 00:19:07.319
it all got started. And now, like we say, we're
361
00:19:07.359 --> 00:19:10.359
in G and c's vitamin shops, mom and pop supplement
362
00:19:10.400 --> 00:19:14.440
shops throughout the country, Dicks Shills, all the main stores,
363
00:19:14.599 --> 00:19:17.279
and now we have an energy drink that we've done
364
00:19:17.359 --> 00:19:20.960
since twenty twenty one. Last year we sold seventy five
365
00:19:20.960 --> 00:19:23.799
million energy drinks and this year we'll do well over
366
00:19:23.839 --> 00:19:27.039
one hundred million. And so we're in convenience stores all
367
00:19:27.079 --> 00:19:29.880
throughout the country. We have a one hundred percent distribution
368
00:19:30.000 --> 00:19:33.319
network that we can go to and distribute our drinks
369
00:19:33.359 --> 00:19:37.200
throughout the country. And we're now in hundreds of thousands
370
00:19:37.200 --> 00:19:40.599
of locations and starting to do a lot of international
371
00:19:40.640 --> 00:19:41.400
business as well.
372
00:19:41.519 --> 00:19:43.440
Right, and where's an international lokay?
373
00:19:44.359 --> 00:19:49.440
So mostly mostly international too. You know, Canada has really
374
00:19:49.480 --> 00:19:51.920
taken off this year. They're just exploded and they can't
375
00:19:52.000 --> 00:19:55.240
hardly keep the supplements in. But we just launched in
376
00:19:55.359 --> 00:20:00.039
costcos with the energy drinks. They're killing it. And and
377
00:20:00.119 --> 00:20:05.440
then we introduce protein, the RTD Protein drinks and they're
378
00:20:05.480 --> 00:20:08.920
loving it. So Kenna's killing it. Australia is doing really well.
379
00:20:09.440 --> 00:20:12.599
We're we're in we now got all approval from Mexico,
380
00:20:12.680 --> 00:20:15.519
so that's about to kick off. And you know over
381
00:20:15.559 --> 00:20:19.759
in the UK and EU, Yes, it's fantastic, and we're
382
00:20:19.799 --> 00:20:22.440
in about thirty one countries because it's all over the place,
383
00:20:22.559 --> 00:20:23.759
so it's fun.
384
00:20:24.200 --> 00:20:25.000
That's crazy.
385
00:20:25.200 --> 00:20:28.480
But speaking of you know, it's something about the brand
386
00:20:29.079 --> 00:20:33.839
I think something about this this buck, it just resonates
387
00:20:33.920 --> 00:20:36.319
with a lot of people, and it kind of looks aggressive,
388
00:20:36.960 --> 00:20:40.759
it kind of has a little edge to it. And
389
00:20:40.759 --> 00:20:42.920
and they know Mississippi, they sell it just because it
390
00:20:42.960 --> 00:20:44.960
has a deer logo on it. They're like, I want
391
00:20:44.960 --> 00:20:46.920
that just because it has a buck logo on it.
392
00:20:47.000 --> 00:20:50.640
But anywhere you go across the country, they seem to resonate.
393
00:20:50.720 --> 00:20:54.599
So we were very fortunate to be in the right
394
00:20:54.599 --> 00:20:57.200
spot at the right time. And sometimes we say the
395
00:20:57.240 --> 00:21:00.799
harder you work, the luckier you get. And we're just
396
00:21:00.960 --> 00:21:03.759
truly blessed to be in the right spots at the
397
00:21:03.839 --> 00:21:05.519
right time. So I love that.
398
00:21:06.200 --> 00:21:10.599
So has the logo changed at all evolved since twenty sixteen.
399
00:21:10.640 --> 00:21:13.920
It has not evolved. It's always been this buck logo.
400
00:21:14.240 --> 00:21:17.200
Before that, when we had deer Antler Spray, we did
401
00:21:17.240 --> 00:21:19.440
have a deer logo on it, but it wasn't really
402
00:21:19.480 --> 00:21:22.839
it was just called deer Antler Spray. And so we
403
00:21:22.960 --> 00:21:26.079
ended up transforming that from the old logo to the
404
00:21:26.119 --> 00:21:28.359
new one, and that was this one. We had a
405
00:21:28.400 --> 00:21:30.920
designer and we said, hey, we like these logos, we
406
00:21:31.079 --> 00:21:33.519
like the way these look. Let's do one that looks
407
00:21:33.519 --> 00:21:35.119
pretty similar except different.
408
00:21:35.359 --> 00:21:38.400
You know, so you've also so you've got the supplements
409
00:21:38.400 --> 00:21:40.400
and energy drinks and all of that, but like you
410
00:21:40.480 --> 00:21:41.759
also have an apparel.
411
00:21:43.559 --> 00:21:46.519
Do we do have a and Jeff's actually Jeff's I'm
412
00:21:46.559 --> 00:21:49.200
also in charge of apparel now sign has me doing
413
00:21:49.240 --> 00:21:50.599
all sorts of stuff in the company.
414
00:21:50.680 --> 00:21:52.839
Right, he's the best sales person at all.
415
00:21:54.720 --> 00:21:57.279
But like I said, the brand resonated so well that
416
00:21:57.359 --> 00:21:59.359
we didn't even want to sell. When we first went
417
00:21:59.400 --> 00:22:01.160
to these exposed, we said, how are we going to
418
00:22:01.240 --> 00:22:04.839
sell this pre workout? And we are so frugal, I
419
00:22:04.839 --> 00:22:07.680
mean from Utah. I think it's it's dread in us
420
00:22:07.680 --> 00:22:10.119
a little bit, right, just to not go in dead
421
00:22:10.240 --> 00:22:12.799
and want a good deal and want a good deal.
422
00:22:13.200 --> 00:22:15.480
And we said, how are we going to get people
423
00:22:15.559 --> 00:22:18.640
to buy this product? And we we went to this expo.
424
00:22:19.240 --> 00:22:22.319
We said if you buy two of these, and we
425
00:22:22.319 --> 00:22:25.519
didn't give away any samples. We only let them taste
426
00:22:25.559 --> 00:22:28.680
it out of a little dispenser and we said, hey,
427
00:22:28.720 --> 00:22:31.240
if you like how it tastes, wait till you see
428
00:22:31.240 --> 00:22:33.720
how it works, you need to buy it. But if
429
00:22:33.759 --> 00:22:36.119
you buy two today, we'll give you a free shirt.
430
00:22:36.599 --> 00:22:39.559
And at first, right, well, we are not giving away
431
00:22:39.599 --> 00:22:42.759
a free shirt five dollars a T shirt. I said, Ryan,
432
00:22:42.920 --> 00:22:45.079
these guys are going to be walking billboards for us.
433
00:22:45.200 --> 00:22:47.200
It's the best five dollars we can ever best thing
434
00:22:47.240 --> 00:22:50.440
he's ever convinced me in doing so. We ended up
435
00:22:50.440 --> 00:22:55.119
selling one our first one thousand bottles in two days
436
00:22:55.119 --> 00:22:58.119
at La fit Expo because of that, and everybody started
437
00:22:58.119 --> 00:23:00.759
wearing our peril and we made the sh shirt's good
438
00:23:00.839 --> 00:23:04.799
enough so they wanted to wear it. And we didn't
439
00:23:04.839 --> 00:23:08.960
go cheap. We wanted a good quality shirt. Now of
440
00:23:09.000 --> 00:23:11.480
this just one flag shirt that we were given away,
441
00:23:12.279 --> 00:23:15.759
we probably buy thirty to fifty thousand shirts a month.
442
00:23:16.240 --> 00:23:18.319
Wow of the one shirt.
443
00:23:18.839 --> 00:23:19.200
Wow.
444
00:23:20.200 --> 00:23:23.480
We do funnels, so we do sell them through you know,
445
00:23:23.519 --> 00:23:26.240
they call them click funnels right now, but we called
446
00:23:26.240 --> 00:23:28.880
them landing pages. And we've been doing click Somebody came
447
00:23:28.920 --> 00:23:30.640
to us and says, yeah, a click funnel. Have you
448
00:23:30.680 --> 00:23:32.720
ever heard of it? And I'm like, no, what is it? Oh,
449
00:23:32.799 --> 00:23:35.920
We've been doing landing pages for years. You know, they
450
00:23:36.000 --> 00:23:39.759
just happened to coin it click click funnel. But you know,
451
00:23:39.799 --> 00:23:42.799
we give out we give free T shirts with trying
452
00:23:42.799 --> 00:23:45.440
our samples and products and stuff. So we do a
453
00:23:45.480 --> 00:23:47.960
lot that way, and so all these people are out
454
00:23:47.960 --> 00:23:51.279
there wearing our brand. I was in Costa Rica on
455
00:23:51.359 --> 00:23:53.759
the beach and then here comes a guy walking through
456
00:23:53.920 --> 00:23:56.279
and he's wearing a bucked up shirt. I'm like, boys,
457
00:23:56.319 --> 00:24:00.160
we've made it. We've made it, so but now we
458
00:24:00.200 --> 00:24:02.359
do you know how much? How many millions are we
459
00:24:02.400 --> 00:24:04.400
going to do this year on just apparel? Eight nine
460
00:24:04.440 --> 00:24:06.799
million this year on just apparel? And we're not an
461
00:24:06.799 --> 00:24:09.279
apparel company, We're not in apparel. It's kind of tough
462
00:24:09.319 --> 00:24:12.119
because you have to carry the Smalls and the double
463
00:24:12.279 --> 00:24:15.079
x's and stuff that that may not sell as well.
464
00:24:15.119 --> 00:24:18.279
But you know, it's it's fun and it's a but
465
00:24:18.319 --> 00:24:22.440
it's a necessary thing for RAMP and people just enjoy
466
00:24:22.480 --> 00:24:24.559
wearing it. And we try to make good quality, just
467
00:24:24.599 --> 00:24:27.079
like our pre workouts and things. We try to make
468
00:24:27.119 --> 00:24:30.119
it as good a quality as possible and people just
469
00:24:30.359 --> 00:24:32.079
enjoy wearing it. That's awesome.
470
00:24:32.519 --> 00:24:34.759
I mean, I would love to understand, you know, just
471
00:24:34.799 --> 00:24:38.880
your product innovation process. I mean obviously, yeah, you've highlighted,
472
00:24:38.960 --> 00:24:42.160
you know, kind of the the life cycle of these products.
473
00:24:42.200 --> 00:24:46.160
The Dear Antler Spray pre workout. I mean, you talked
474
00:24:46.160 --> 00:24:49.359
about the energy drink. What's the process that you go
475
00:24:49.480 --> 00:24:53.319
through to identify, Hey, here's here's a need in the market.
476
00:24:53.480 --> 00:24:56.640
You know, let's go after it. Obviously, you guys, you know,
477
00:24:56.759 --> 00:25:00.279
speed to execution is huge, maybe highlight for the listen.
478
00:25:00.519 --> 00:25:03.359
Well, so you know, I'm one of the main guys
479
00:25:03.400 --> 00:25:06.240
that runs that does all the innovation and make sure
480
00:25:06.279 --> 00:25:08.960
that we come out with different categories that are doing
481
00:25:09.000 --> 00:25:12.039
really well and different gaps that are in the market.
482
00:25:12.279 --> 00:25:13.880
Those are the things that I look at. We go
483
00:25:13.920 --> 00:25:17.200
to an ingredient show every year called Supply Side West
484
00:25:17.720 --> 00:25:19.880
and we go to Vegas and that's where they hold
485
00:25:19.920 --> 00:25:22.640
this ingredient show, and we're just trying to find diamonds
486
00:25:22.640 --> 00:25:25.599
in the rough and find these people who have clinical
487
00:25:25.640 --> 00:25:28.519
studies behind ingredients and what they do, and we want
488
00:25:28.519 --> 00:25:31.680
to make sure that what we're giving people actually works.
489
00:25:32.119 --> 00:25:35.920
And so that's kind of how we've innovated at Bucked
490
00:25:36.000 --> 00:25:38.160
Up is we'll go to one of these shows and
491
00:25:38.200 --> 00:25:40.920
we'll see an ingredient that they say, hey, it increases
492
00:25:41.200 --> 00:25:44.519
VO two max and it increases absorption of el cicrallin.
493
00:25:44.799 --> 00:25:48.759
We'll add those ingredients to our products and we'll be like, hey,
494
00:25:48.960 --> 00:25:52.359
even though we may not have the most because it
495
00:25:52.359 --> 00:25:57.079
can absorb sixty six percent better. Helps that product absorbs.
496
00:25:57.960 --> 00:26:00.279
We'll show you proof is in the pudding till you
497
00:26:00.319 --> 00:26:02.720
try our product. And so that's kind of how we
498
00:26:02.759 --> 00:26:05.799
go about innovating and coming up with different things. But
499
00:26:05.920 --> 00:26:09.359
you know, the bigger you get, the more complex the
500
00:26:09.400 --> 00:26:12.880
business kids and right now they kind of slow us
501
00:26:12.920 --> 00:26:14.839
down and put the reins because I could keep pumping
502
00:26:14.839 --> 00:26:17.759
out products all day long. But if you have too many,
503
00:26:18.640 --> 00:26:20.640
you just get saty. You're like, hey, we got to
504
00:26:20.680 --> 00:26:23.400
focus on what's really moving the needle, you know, because
505
00:26:23.440 --> 00:26:25.400
we'd love to come up with stuff for us, you know.
506
00:26:25.440 --> 00:26:28.160
We we like certain stuff all the time and we're like, hey,
507
00:26:28.160 --> 00:26:30.079
we want to do this, and we're like, but that's
508
00:26:30.160 --> 00:26:32.640
just for us, you know what I mean. So you know,
509
00:26:32.839 --> 00:26:35.119
we'll make you a few samples and just be good
510
00:26:35.160 --> 00:26:38.119
with it. But we do try to be innovative. And
511
00:26:38.799 --> 00:26:41.200
that's what's brought us here to where we are today,
512
00:26:41.279 --> 00:26:45.039
is that we've innovated and most of the people are honestly,
513
00:26:45.119 --> 00:26:47.519
most of the people are following exactly what we're doing.
514
00:26:48.079 --> 00:26:51.839
We're we do a hockey phrase and we say, hey,
515
00:26:52.000 --> 00:26:54.440
we're going to skate to where the puck's going to be,
516
00:26:54.599 --> 00:26:57.359
not where it is, And so we always try to
517
00:26:57.400 --> 00:26:59.599
look for the future and say, hey, this is what
518
00:26:59.640 --> 00:27:03.079
we want to do. Even now, we do stuff where
519
00:27:03.079 --> 00:27:05.240
we want to be innovative and come up with new things,
520
00:27:05.480 --> 00:27:08.119
and we get some pushback from our coming like AI.
521
00:27:08.480 --> 00:27:12.200
We want to be really involved in AI and help
522
00:27:12.279 --> 00:27:15.319
their jobs become that much more efficient, and sometimes we
523
00:27:15.319 --> 00:27:17.759
get a lot of pushback. We started a year ago,
524
00:27:17.799 --> 00:27:20.440
I said, when chat GPT first came out, I said,
525
00:27:20.759 --> 00:27:24.799
everybody gets chat GPT, your jobs will be that much easier.
526
00:27:25.400 --> 00:27:28.960
I want everybody buying it, will pay for all the subscriptions,
527
00:27:29.839 --> 00:27:32.440
go get it today, and people are like, oh okay.
528
00:27:33.000 --> 00:27:35.400
And we would kind of I would have meetings and
529
00:27:35.519 --> 00:27:38.519
focus just on AI and say, hey, guys, we're all
530
00:27:38.559 --> 00:27:42.240
going to push this direction and get on board with
531
00:27:42.279 --> 00:27:45.640
the AI movement, and we're going to start in this department.
532
00:27:45.720 --> 00:27:51.319
And sometimes it's pretty difficult because, for instance, we started
533
00:27:51.359 --> 00:27:54.680
it with customer support. It's taken a little bit to
534
00:27:54.759 --> 00:27:59.039
catch on. But since then we can have all of
535
00:27:59.079 --> 00:28:04.319
our customer or support answered by email or by chat.
536
00:28:04.640 --> 00:28:09.319
And there's so many rare, rare incidences that it actually
537
00:28:09.359 --> 00:28:12.440
hands off to a human because it's gotten better and better.
538
00:28:13.039 --> 00:28:15.160
So it's been it's been real fun. But we again,
539
00:28:15.200 --> 00:28:18.759
we try to stay ahead and most people follow.
540
00:28:19.720 --> 00:28:23.240
Yeah, for sure. One of the things I really haven't heard.
541
00:28:23.279 --> 00:28:25.200
I mean, you guys are out there, so there's there's
542
00:28:25.240 --> 00:28:26.920
a lot of talking and a lot of shows that
543
00:28:26.920 --> 00:28:29.480
you've been on. And but one of the things I
544
00:28:29.559 --> 00:28:32.119
really want to talk about is that's all the good stuff.
545
00:28:32.920 --> 00:28:34.519
There's got to be hard stuff too.
546
00:28:35.240 --> 00:28:39.640
Right, Yeah, when we introduce ourselves, we introduce ourselves as
547
00:28:39.720 --> 00:28:42.000
the Janitors. We go around and clean up a lot
548
00:28:42.039 --> 00:28:45.160
of mess and fires. You know, we are a fireman
549
00:28:45.319 --> 00:28:47.039
or with a lot of stuff. But there's a lot
550
00:28:47.039 --> 00:28:49.640
of stuff that we do clean up. But sometimes it's
551
00:28:49.680 --> 00:28:52.160
caused by us too, so you know what I mean.
552
00:28:52.279 --> 00:28:55.559
So but but yeah, I mean, the bigger you get,
553
00:28:55.599 --> 00:28:58.359
the more complex it gets. We had one instant where
554
00:28:58.359 --> 00:29:00.599
we came out with energy drinks. When we first came
555
00:29:00.640 --> 00:29:02.440
out with energy drinks, believe it or not, it was
556
00:29:02.480 --> 00:29:06.440
twenty nineteen and we released them at fit Con that
557
00:29:06.519 --> 00:29:10.519
happened in April. We produced these energy drinks. We thought
558
00:29:10.519 --> 00:29:13.480
they were so good. Well, when we received them, they
559
00:29:13.519 --> 00:29:16.640
actually increased two of the ingredients in there that caused
560
00:29:16.680 --> 00:29:18.839
it to taste really, really bitter, and we didn't know
561
00:29:18.920 --> 00:29:22.839
until we received two hundred thousand cans. Wow, and we said,
562
00:29:23.680 --> 00:29:25.559
we can't do this. We took them to fit Con
563
00:29:25.599 --> 00:29:29.319
and I remember one person posting and saying, you know,
564
00:29:29.960 --> 00:29:32.519
I've enjoyed all their products, but this is the one
565
00:29:32.599 --> 00:29:36.200
thing that it just doesn't taste that great. And at
566
00:29:36.240 --> 00:29:39.599
that time, I said, hey, pull them all back. We're
567
00:29:39.599 --> 00:29:41.680
going to run them over with a steamroller or whatever
568
00:29:41.720 --> 00:29:43.440
we got to do to get rid of them, and
569
00:29:43.480 --> 00:29:45.759
we did. We want to make sure that we produce
570
00:29:45.759 --> 00:29:48.200
a product. I said, we've only got one shot at
571
00:29:48.319 --> 00:29:51.480
energy drinks. They've got to be good. And I mean,
572
00:29:51.519 --> 00:29:55.640
even though the performance was unreal, these two ingredients caused
573
00:29:55.680 --> 00:29:57.559
it to taste bitter on the end, and I'm like,
574
00:29:58.200 --> 00:30:02.519
no one's going to drink it again. So we quickly adjusted,
575
00:30:02.759 --> 00:30:06.240
made modifications, and now then we produced a bunch of
576
00:30:06.599 --> 00:30:09.720
I mean, when you get big, it's a matter of
577
00:30:09.759 --> 00:30:13.960
getting everybody bought into that idea and then being able
578
00:30:14.039 --> 00:30:16.759
to execute. The one thing Ryan and I were good
579
00:30:16.759 --> 00:30:18.680
at in the beginning is just going by the sea
580
00:30:18.720 --> 00:30:21.759
of our pants and getting something done, you know, and
581
00:30:21.799 --> 00:30:27.480
there wasn't a lot of people to get in our way.
582
00:30:26.720 --> 00:30:29.759
And you know, some people like to have everything in
583
00:30:29.799 --> 00:30:32.359
a row, their ducks in a row. We did it.
584
00:30:32.440 --> 00:30:34.960
We started with the first step and then we figured
585
00:30:34.960 --> 00:30:36.759
it out as we went to the second step, and
586
00:30:36.839 --> 00:30:39.119
we didn't even know what we were doing. We just
587
00:30:39.680 --> 00:30:43.160
worked and worked hard until we figured it out. But
588
00:30:43.240 --> 00:30:46.440
that also helped us be able to be fast, you know,
589
00:30:46.519 --> 00:30:49.000
like you mentioned, you have to be fast and be
590
00:30:49.440 --> 00:30:52.599
pretty nimble today too, we're able to make adjustment. But
591
00:30:52.599 --> 00:30:56.279
getting everybody to go with your idea and get it
592
00:30:56.319 --> 00:31:00.599
to cross the finish line and execute, that's a real challenge.
593
00:31:00.640 --> 00:31:06.039
At times, you've both highlighted other people involved in you know,
594
00:31:06.319 --> 00:31:09.880
helping and supporting your growth. I mean I've heard, you know,
595
00:31:09.960 --> 00:31:13.119
just doing my research just seeing new hires, whether it's
596
00:31:13.119 --> 00:31:17.880
a CFO or others, maybe highlight what impact have those
597
00:31:18.039 --> 00:31:21.880
individuals made. Where are you at now from a headcount perspective,
598
00:31:22.119 --> 00:31:24.519
and just give us a highlight of people and the
599
00:31:24.559 --> 00:31:26.839
importance of the culture that you've built.
600
00:31:27.519 --> 00:31:31.519
We have two hundred and sixty seven people employee employees
601
00:31:31.559 --> 00:31:35.519
now and looking back and if I had it all
602
00:31:35.559 --> 00:31:38.880
over again. I'd hire people with experience right off the
603
00:31:38.920 --> 00:31:42.279
bat instead of being frugal. There's sometimes that we passed
604
00:31:42.440 --> 00:31:45.920
opportunities to hire somebody because we are too frugal. Now
605
00:31:46.000 --> 00:31:48.480
I'm looking at it. We ended up, you know, we
606
00:31:49.000 --> 00:31:54.960
sold four million energy drinks in twenty twenty one, and
607
00:31:55.000 --> 00:31:57.200
we had a group come to us and they said, hey,
608
00:31:57.279 --> 00:32:00.440
we want to invest in your company. We were like,
609
00:32:00.759 --> 00:32:02.680
we have plenty of money. We don't need your investment.
610
00:32:02.720 --> 00:32:04.279
We don't need your money, and they go, but we
611
00:32:04.319 --> 00:32:07.559
can help you level up. We have a person that
612
00:32:07.599 --> 00:32:09.599
would like to come in and he will work with
613
00:32:09.640 --> 00:32:12.400
you and he'll build out your whole distribution network. He's
614
00:32:12.440 --> 00:32:15.880
the former CEO of Doctor Pepper. And at that point
615
00:32:15.920 --> 00:32:19.799
we were like, what's a distribution network? Yeah, exactly. We
616
00:32:19.839 --> 00:32:22.240
said what's a distributor, let's start there and they.
617
00:32:22.119 --> 00:32:24.039
Were like, understood Pepper.
618
00:32:25.920 --> 00:32:28.200
Yeah. But even at that time we were like, what,
619
00:32:28.799 --> 00:32:30.880
you know, we didn't have the experience, we didn't know
620
00:32:30.920 --> 00:32:31.519
what we were doing.
621
00:32:31.519 --> 00:32:32.240
Do we need that?
622
00:32:32.720 --> 00:32:35.759
We yeah, And when we we ended up hiring the guy,
623
00:32:35.920 --> 00:32:38.680
and now, look, we have one hundred percent distribution throughout
624
00:32:38.680 --> 00:32:41.079
the country. We're going to sell over one hundred million
625
00:32:41.400 --> 00:32:45.759
energy drinks and that comes with experience. Looking back, I
626
00:32:45.920 --> 00:32:48.920
just wish, man, I wish we would have hired people
627
00:32:49.000 --> 00:32:52.799
a lot sooner that had the experience. So you know,
628
00:32:52.960 --> 00:32:55.000
I read. I do remember a guy coming in and
629
00:32:55.039 --> 00:32:59.640
that we were wanting to produce energy drinks and we said, hey,
630
00:33:00.400 --> 00:33:03.319
we're looking to have somebody come in and invest to
631
00:33:03.359 --> 00:33:06.920
help us get energy drinks off the ground. And he's like, well,
632
00:33:07.279 --> 00:33:09.920
I can already tell you what your problem is. You're
633
00:33:09.920 --> 00:33:12.160
trying to do it all. You're trying to be the CFO,
634
00:33:12.279 --> 00:33:16.759
the CMO, all these different departments. We were wearing multiple hats.
635
00:33:16.759 --> 00:33:20.240
All of us were wearing five hats each, and they said,
636
00:33:20.279 --> 00:33:22.799
that's your issue. And as soon as he told us that,
637
00:33:22.839 --> 00:33:25.200
we went out and hired a CFO and he came
638
00:33:25.240 --> 00:33:27.160
in and within the first week he's like, you guys
639
00:33:27.200 --> 00:33:28.799
have plenty of money. You don't need to raise money.
640
00:33:28.839 --> 00:33:31.960
We're like, oh wow, okay, And it helped us make
641
00:33:32.000 --> 00:33:37.000
decisions right, And that's the thing at the very first starting. Yeah,
642
00:33:37.039 --> 00:33:39.480
it's hard work and getting something off the ground, but
643
00:33:39.559 --> 00:33:42.920
then it's hiring the right people. Even now, I want
644
00:33:42.920 --> 00:33:44.559
to be able to hire people who are a lot
645
00:33:44.599 --> 00:33:47.519
smarter than me at this because I don't know what
646
00:33:47.559 --> 00:33:51.680
I'm doing basically, especially at this level, it gets way bigger.
647
00:33:51.759 --> 00:33:55.519
We've never done it before. We're just we even may
648
00:33:55.960 --> 00:33:58.039
step back a little bit so that other day to.
649
00:33:58.640 --> 00:34:03.000
Can do yuh, but it's your baby too, so that
650
00:34:03.160 --> 00:34:06.319
takes a lot, I mean a lot of trust and
651
00:34:06.440 --> 00:34:10.360
a lot of vulnerability and showing that Okay, yeah, you know,
652
00:34:10.440 --> 00:34:14.400
maybe we don't need to be making all those decisions.
653
00:34:14.199 --> 00:34:17.039
Decisions well, that would be really hard. And to be truthful,
654
00:34:17.760 --> 00:34:22.239
there's so many meetings now, yeah, we hate I hate meetings,
655
00:34:22.400 --> 00:34:26.039
So like, please somebody take this over, because you know,
656
00:34:26.159 --> 00:34:27.920
this is just not fun anymore. You know, when you're
657
00:34:27.960 --> 00:34:34.320
starting out and you're doing in starting in the trenches,
658
00:34:34.400 --> 00:34:36.920
working the expos. We show up at the expos still
659
00:34:37.480 --> 00:34:39.960
and we like to see and get the beat on
660
00:34:40.079 --> 00:34:43.519
the stream, to see meet customers and see what see
661
00:34:43.519 --> 00:34:45.079
what's going to be the next thing that we need
662
00:34:45.119 --> 00:34:47.239
to come out with. We did go to the Arnold
663
00:34:47.280 --> 00:34:50.159
and people are like, you're still coming to these I'm like, yeah,
664
00:34:50.199 --> 00:34:53.559
I know, right, so, but we still go to them
665
00:34:53.599 --> 00:34:57.280
and we love, you know, mingling with the people. I guess,
666
00:34:57.360 --> 00:34:58.400
so it's our baby.
667
00:34:58.679 --> 00:35:00.760
I love that. I think that it's great that you
668
00:35:00.880 --> 00:35:02.000
show up and.
669
00:35:02.119 --> 00:35:03.840
You're I think we're one of the only brands that
670
00:35:03.920 --> 00:35:07.599
do it. Most people don't even know the owners of
671
00:35:07.599 --> 00:35:10.280
the most brands, so and they know that we show up.
672
00:35:10.840 --> 00:35:14.400
Yeah you do. I was that scheduling.
673
00:35:14.960 --> 00:35:18.719
Yes, yeah, this last winter, I've got a heavy dose
674
00:35:18.719 --> 00:35:20.559
of that. And it was so fun because you just
675
00:35:20.599 --> 00:35:23.159
know when the when the Bucked Up crew shows up,
676
00:35:23.320 --> 00:35:27.239
it's a party. And so not only do you show up,
677
00:35:27.360 --> 00:35:30.159
but your teams show up.
678
00:35:30.400 --> 00:35:31.400
And I love it.
679
00:35:31.480 --> 00:35:35.000
And you know, it does take a little trust, but
680
00:35:35.480 --> 00:35:40.920
you have to have these people, these processes, these systems
681
00:35:40.960 --> 00:35:44.880
in place, Otherwise you just bottleneck it and it's that
682
00:35:45.079 --> 00:35:47.639
rock in the funnel that doesn't let anything go past.
683
00:35:48.360 --> 00:35:52.320
And once you have the right people, which you know,
684
00:35:52.360 --> 00:35:54.239
we've had some great people to help us get to
685
00:35:54.239 --> 00:35:58.639
where we are, and we put these crazy systems in
686
00:35:58.679 --> 00:36:01.119
place that cost lots of money and we're like, wait,
687
00:36:01.199 --> 00:36:04.400
what what are we spending? But it then opens that
688
00:36:04.440 --> 00:36:06.960
funnel and you're like, oh, this is why we needed this.
689
00:36:07.360 --> 00:36:08.800
I didn't want to do it, but we did it.
690
00:36:08.840 --> 00:36:12.559
And then you're making decisions based off facts, not just guesses.
691
00:36:13.199 --> 00:36:15.280
You know, before we were throwing things against the wall
692
00:36:15.480 --> 00:36:19.239
hopefully that they stick. Now we're actually going, hey, let's
693
00:36:19.239 --> 00:36:24.280
make a calculated decision and and it tends to work
694
00:36:24.320 --> 00:36:25.400
a lot lot better for us.
695
00:36:26.360 --> 00:36:30.079
So you're based in Utah, you Clearfield is where?
696
00:36:30.280 --> 00:36:33.360
Yeah, we were basically born and raised in Clearfield on
697
00:36:33.400 --> 00:36:37.199
a farm up there, went to Clearfield High School. Falcons
698
00:36:37.280 --> 00:36:40.800
number one. You know, we we we hated being farmer.
699
00:36:40.880 --> 00:36:43.239
We're like, this is too hard to work, Like nobody
700
00:36:43.280 --> 00:36:47.119
wants to be a farmer. Now that we've gotten this business,
701
00:36:47.159 --> 00:36:50.559
and we're guess what we're going back to? Are we
702
00:36:50.679 --> 00:36:53.360
going back to I now have a bunch of I
703
00:36:53.360 --> 00:36:56.480
got horses. I'm like, what am I doing? We're going
704
00:36:56.519 --> 00:36:59.320
back to being farmers. Isn't that weird? My Dad's like, well,
705
00:36:59.360 --> 00:37:01.559
why didn't you have horse? Is sooner? I'm like I did.
706
00:37:01.599 --> 00:37:05.039
I had a one hundred and ten horse side by
707
00:37:05.119 --> 00:37:08.400
side razor. Yeah, there's razor, and I didn't have to
708
00:37:08.400 --> 00:37:10.400
feed it every day. Now look what I'm doing.
709
00:37:10.599 --> 00:37:13.880
Yeah. So well, my question that goes along with that
710
00:37:14.119 --> 00:37:18.559
is how much does your success come from being based
711
00:37:18.599 --> 00:37:22.880
in Utah and founded in Utah and growing from here,
712
00:37:22.960 --> 00:37:26.239
tell me, like, give us that Utah story.
713
00:37:26.599 --> 00:37:30.639
Utah is an unbelievable place to start a business. Number One,
714
00:37:31.199 --> 00:37:34.119
you usually know a lot of people because everybody knows
715
00:37:34.119 --> 00:37:37.159
their neighbors kind of network, and you know, people talk.
716
00:37:37.599 --> 00:37:40.840
And that's what's awesome about Utah is that, you know,
717
00:37:40.880 --> 00:37:42.800
it's a great place to start a brand because if
718
00:37:42.840 --> 00:37:46.159
it really starts, they tell a lot of people about it.
719
00:37:46.519 --> 00:37:48.079
And you know, at the end, at the end of
720
00:37:48.119 --> 00:37:50.400
the day, we were going, hey, it's not about these
721
00:37:50.400 --> 00:37:54.199
big influencers. It's about these micro influencers that really get
722
00:37:54.239 --> 00:37:57.320
behind you and really move the needle. You would rather
723
00:37:57.400 --> 00:38:00.400
have an army of people rather than just one person.
724
00:38:01.000 --> 00:38:03.559
And that's what we did with our brand. We said, hey,
725
00:38:04.599 --> 00:38:07.360
no matter where you are in your fitness journey, you're
726
00:38:07.360 --> 00:38:11.639
welcome to Bucked Up. It doesn't matter if you're skinny, fat,
727
00:38:11.760 --> 00:38:13.559
want to put on muscle, want to lose weight, it
728
00:38:13.599 --> 00:38:16.199
didn't matter. We got we got teased at first, actual,
729
00:38:16.280 --> 00:38:19.639
yeah we did, because when you were taking just anybody
730
00:38:19.679 --> 00:38:22.559
on and they're like, you don't even have any bodybuilders
731
00:38:22.639 --> 00:38:26.480
or any of these like really good fitness influencers, and
732
00:38:26.519 --> 00:38:33.440
we're like, well that's we that's us. Come on, dude,
733
00:38:33.719 --> 00:38:35.440
I've been working out for a year. You know in
734
00:38:35.599 --> 00:38:39.039
Utah is so good. It also is like, if you
735
00:38:39.079 --> 00:38:41.440
want to start a company, Utah is a great place
736
00:38:41.480 --> 00:38:44.079
to do it because you have people that speak languages
737
00:38:44.440 --> 00:38:47.119
because they've been on missions. You can start a whole
738
00:38:47.119 --> 00:38:50.360
sales floor in two seconds with all these return missionaries
739
00:38:50.760 --> 00:38:56.079
and you can immediately explode cells. But UTA's so great
740
00:38:56.199 --> 00:39:01.519
and the people are all respecting here. People people talk
741
00:39:01.599 --> 00:39:03.519
to each other. I mean that's at the end of
742
00:39:03.519 --> 00:39:07.880
the day. They just everybody knows. You could I honestly,
743
00:39:07.920 --> 00:39:11.039
you can probably name someone and it's like two degrees
744
00:39:11.079 --> 00:39:13.639
of Kevin Bacon within two people, you can find out
745
00:39:13.920 --> 00:39:15.199
somebody that's related to them.
746
00:39:15.320 --> 00:39:16.960
As you know, we did that when you guys first
747
00:39:17.000 --> 00:39:20.760
walked in. Yeah, instantly we already knew people that you knew.
748
00:39:20.800 --> 00:39:24.159
And yeah, I just loved what you've highlighted today. I
749
00:39:24.559 --> 00:39:27.599
think one of my last things is is just we've
750
00:39:27.639 --> 00:39:30.639
recognized you as part of the Mountain West Capitol Network,
751
00:39:30.639 --> 00:39:33.360
as part of one of the fastest companies. You know,
752
00:39:33.400 --> 00:39:37.000
you've been recognized I think over three years. Yeah, the
753
00:39:37.079 --> 00:39:38.519
last year was twenty twenty four.
754
00:39:39.199 --> 00:39:40.599
But what is that.
755
00:39:40.719 --> 00:39:43.159
How does that make you feel? Like? How does that,
756
00:39:43.360 --> 00:39:46.280
you know, motivate you? What does that mean to you
757
00:39:46.679 --> 00:39:49.519
to be recognized not just by Mount and West Capitol Network,
758
00:39:49.559 --> 00:39:52.079
but I mean there's a lot of others that And.
759
00:39:52.000 --> 00:39:54.719
We're super competitive. We were fighting to get out of
760
00:39:54.760 --> 00:39:57.400
the womb here. I mean we were we were super
761
00:39:57.440 --> 00:39:59.760
competitive all growing your wombmates.
762
00:40:00.239 --> 00:40:00.440
Yeah.
763
00:40:01.840 --> 00:40:05.599
So there was one point in our lives so that
764
00:40:05.639 --> 00:40:08.480
we were so competitive that they sent me to Alaska.
765
00:40:08.880 --> 00:40:10.360
They shipped me off my parents ship.
766
00:40:10.519 --> 00:40:11.039
You are the one.
767
00:40:11.119 --> 00:40:18.079
We were somehow. I had a guy who okay, now
768
00:40:19.760 --> 00:40:23.119
you know, but we we ended up separating because we
769
00:40:23.119 --> 00:40:26.119
were so competitive. It was just a battle every day.
770
00:40:26.119 --> 00:40:28.000
And we would fight three or four times a day
771
00:40:28.280 --> 00:40:30.880
because we were going out playing basketball on the driveway.
772
00:40:31.119 --> 00:40:33.320
Next thing you know, we're fighting. Five minutes later, we're
773
00:40:33.320 --> 00:40:35.400
fine and we go play again. My parents are like,
774
00:40:35.440 --> 00:40:38.280
we're done doing this. We're done. You guys are physically
775
00:40:38.360 --> 00:40:40.920
hurting each other. We're done doing this. So I got
776
00:40:40.960 --> 00:40:43.960
sent up to Alaska for about three months and came
777
00:40:44.000 --> 00:40:46.480
back and everything seemed to kind of chill out a
778
00:40:46.480 --> 00:40:50.000
little bit and realized we're better together than we are apart.
779
00:40:50.039 --> 00:40:53.719
But we are super competitive. So when we see these numbers, right,
780
00:40:53.760 --> 00:40:56.880
and we see these, we're like, how are we not higher?
781
00:40:57.039 --> 00:40:59.760
You know, like, you know, we we are doing some
782
00:41:00.480 --> 00:41:02.719
I mean we're going to probably hit three hundred million
783
00:41:02.800 --> 00:41:07.199
this year in revenue, and we're still like, hey, we
784
00:41:07.280 --> 00:41:10.480
still are so competitive about what we got to just
785
00:41:10.559 --> 00:41:13.320
work hard. We still think we're the little guys, which
786
00:41:13.440 --> 00:41:15.599
we are in the big scheme. I mean, look who
787
00:41:15.599 --> 00:41:18.079
we're going up against. We're going up against red bulls
788
00:41:18.159 --> 00:41:21.920
and monsters and and different things. But yeah, we're we're
789
00:41:21.960 --> 00:41:25.159
the little guys. And we did learn how to work hard,
790
00:41:25.760 --> 00:41:29.679
and that's helped us get I would say probably eighty
791
00:41:29.840 --> 00:41:33.800
ninety percent of the way because sometimes even though we
792
00:41:33.800 --> 00:41:35.480
didn't know what we were doing and we just kind
793
00:41:35.480 --> 00:41:39.239
of outworked people, so that that helped us a lot.
794
00:41:39.400 --> 00:41:41.559
I love that's that's a key to your story. I
795
00:41:41.599 --> 00:41:44.119
think that just the work ethic and your you know,
796
00:41:44.239 --> 00:41:46.199
speed and execution.
797
00:41:46.079 --> 00:41:48.960
And really we just think we're hustlers. You know, we
798
00:41:49.000 --> 00:41:52.119
still think we're twenty five, but our bodies tell us different.
799
00:41:52.159 --> 00:41:55.719
But you know, we are hustlers. You enjoy the hustle, yeah,
800
00:41:55.760 --> 00:41:59.039
we do, and we like starting one of our straits
801
00:41:59.079 --> 00:42:01.840
is starting things, you know, and then hiring the people
802
00:42:01.840 --> 00:42:05.079
to help us finish, you know. So it's great, that's
803
00:42:05.119 --> 00:42:07.800
that's what we like to do. Well, we hope you apply.
804
00:42:08.000 --> 00:42:11.519
We're applications are open right now, so we'll love to
805
00:42:11.559 --> 00:42:14.119
recognize this, this great company that you've built.
806
00:42:14.239 --> 00:42:17.280
It's just amazing. It's funny because we'll get people that
807
00:42:17.320 --> 00:42:20.199
we haven't met. They'll come up and say, I'm so
808
00:42:20.320 --> 00:42:24.159
proud of you. We're like, we don't even know these people,
809
00:42:25.159 --> 00:42:27.719
and so it's fun. That's great. Yeah, it's fun and
810
00:42:27.719 --> 00:42:30.400
it's fun to be you know, you go to different
811
00:42:30.400 --> 00:42:32.599
places and you see your brand and you see someone
812
00:42:32.639 --> 00:42:35.199
wearing it. We'll go to like a UFC fight down
813
00:42:35.280 --> 00:42:37.000
in Vegas and there's a couple of people in the
814
00:42:37.039 --> 00:42:40.800
audience that are wearing your your flying shirt and you're like, yeah,
815
00:42:41.760 --> 00:42:44.320
this is awesome. So it's just it's just fun to
816
00:42:44.360 --> 00:42:47.880
see and and and recognize that it's gotten this big.
817
00:42:48.119 --> 00:42:50.719
The first actually the really biggest first time that I
818
00:42:50.760 --> 00:42:53.599
was like, wow, this is actually we're onto something. We
819
00:42:53.840 --> 00:42:57.280
went with our kids to California, the Disneyland. We stopped
820
00:42:57.280 --> 00:42:59.960
at a subway. My little daughter was wearing a buck
821
00:43:00.119 --> 00:43:02.599
up shirt and the guy behind the counter was like, hey,
822
00:43:02.639 --> 00:43:04.320
do you know bucked up? How are you wearing a
823
00:43:04.360 --> 00:43:07.559
bucked up T shirt? And they were She was like, Dad,
824
00:43:07.559 --> 00:43:10.320
tell them who you are. And I'm like, no, fuddy,
825
00:43:10.639 --> 00:43:13.360
I'm really I'm the janitor and I worked there. No,
826
00:43:13.639 --> 00:43:16.360
But that's when I was like, Wow, we were really onto.
827
00:43:16.559 --> 00:43:19.440
We actually have a brand, yeah, and let's just make
828
00:43:19.480 --> 00:43:21.159
it really grow. And that's where we are today. So
829
00:43:21.199 --> 00:43:25.920
it's been awesome. It's been a fun ride. It's crazy fun.
830
00:43:26.079 --> 00:43:26.639
You've got a.
831
00:43:26.719 --> 00:43:29.960
Ton of people just cheering you on and supporting you
832
00:43:30.679 --> 00:43:36.920
from all walks actually, and just really quick, what's next?
833
00:43:37.239 --> 00:43:42.519
So we've talked about we talked about that, like what where,
834
00:43:42.800 --> 00:43:44.519
what should we be looking for down the road? Can
835
00:43:44.559 --> 00:43:45.280
you even share that?
836
00:43:46.079 --> 00:43:49.000
Yeah, I mean I think I think Ryan. Then in July,
837
00:43:50.960 --> 00:43:54.360
we're trying to take a little step back from the
838
00:43:54.440 --> 00:43:57.039
day to day. We sometimes feel like we're getting in
839
00:43:57.079 --> 00:44:01.760
the way now and it's just not what we're good at.
840
00:44:02.000 --> 00:44:04.840
We would want to focus on stuff that, you know,
841
00:44:04.920 --> 00:44:08.360
like founder led you know, events and different things where
842
00:44:08.360 --> 00:44:11.440
we can go out and associate and network and do
843
00:44:11.480 --> 00:44:15.280
what we're good at. But that's kind of we're trying
844
00:44:15.280 --> 00:44:18.960
to take it's been ten years of hard going and
845
00:44:19.079 --> 00:44:21.559
we have even family members that are there. We told
846
00:44:21.599 --> 00:44:23.840
them they still have ten years to catch up to us,
847
00:44:24.039 --> 00:44:27.159
but you know, and they're really good in the in
848
00:44:27.199 --> 00:44:30.920
the company. So we appreciate our family being there along
849
00:44:30.960 --> 00:44:33.280
the way. We used to feel all the orders at
850
00:44:33.280 --> 00:44:36.440
first with our families and it was it's it's really
851
00:44:36.480 --> 00:44:40.480
been a good family focused business. But yeah, we're we're
852
00:44:40.559 --> 00:44:42.559
kind of taking a little we want to take a
853
00:44:42.559 --> 00:44:45.000
little step back from the day to day roles and
854
00:44:45.039 --> 00:44:47.280
we like to see the future, right like, we like
855
00:44:47.360 --> 00:44:49.400
to do things that are different than everybody else. We
856
00:44:49.400 --> 00:44:53.639
think longevity. We've invested in a stem cell company that
857
00:44:53.639 --> 00:44:56.039
we're going to help push here in the future. And
858
00:44:56.559 --> 00:44:59.599
there's just some things that we have and we also
859
00:44:59.639 --> 00:45:03.159
believe AI is really big and we feel like that
860
00:45:03.360 --> 00:45:06.239
is going to be whether people like it or not,
861
00:45:06.400 --> 00:45:08.159
that's going to be a big part of the future
862
00:45:08.679 --> 00:45:12.119
of our life. And so we're kind of on you
863
00:45:12.119 --> 00:45:15.159
know where we're maybe even thinking about consulting companies on
864
00:45:15.199 --> 00:45:17.760
how to implement AI into their businesses like we're doing
865
00:45:17.800 --> 00:45:20.559
with ours. And so those are some of the things.
866
00:45:20.760 --> 00:45:23.199
Some ideas that we have, but we'll see what happens
867
00:45:23.199 --> 00:45:26.480
when we actually, you know, step away from the day
868
00:45:26.519 --> 00:45:30.000
to day operations. I guess it's awesome. We'll see what
869
00:45:30.079 --> 00:45:34.079
happens here in the future. We're cheering for you. Well,
870
00:45:34.119 --> 00:45:36.519
we appreciate it, and you know, we want to thank
871
00:45:36.559 --> 00:45:39.360
everyone that's supported our brand over the years. It's been
872
00:45:39.440 --> 00:45:42.519
ten years and we've seen amazing growth and we couldn't
873
00:45:42.519 --> 00:45:45.719
do it without the people here in Utah and everywhere
874
00:45:45.719 --> 00:45:49.360
else that support our brand. It's just awesome. We had
875
00:45:49.360 --> 00:45:53.000
a warehouse cell two weeks ago and is the turnout
876
00:45:53.119 --> 00:45:58.000
is crazy? They were lined up around. Yeah, it was wild.
877
00:45:58.679 --> 00:46:01.559
We just can't thank people. We almost did five hundred
878
00:46:01.639 --> 00:46:04.679
thousand dollars in one day and these are selling five
879
00:46:04.719 --> 00:46:07.880
dollars T shirts. Yeah, I mean it was crazy. People
880
00:46:07.880 --> 00:46:10.719
were walking out with piles of clothes and we put
881
00:46:10.719 --> 00:46:13.239
them in trash bags because they needed a trash bag
882
00:46:13.280 --> 00:46:16.639
to carry stuff out. Yeah, just crazy. What's fun? Awesome? Wow,
883
00:46:16.880 --> 00:46:21.039
I love that. But thanks for having us on. We
884
00:46:21.440 --> 00:46:22.039
appreciate it.
885
00:46:22.159 --> 00:46:26.039
No, we're grateful that you could share your story with us.
886
00:46:26.639 --> 00:46:28.519
Been a fan for a while, and we're excited to
887
00:46:28.519 --> 00:46:31.400
see our golf tournament in July. You guys are just
888
00:46:31.440 --> 00:46:34.119
really great at like giving back and supporting, and so
889
00:46:34.559 --> 00:46:34.920
thank you.
890
00:46:35.000 --> 00:46:36.519
We feel that's a big part of it, you know.
891
00:46:37.039 --> 00:46:39.559
And we do have people that come to our warehouse,
892
00:46:39.639 --> 00:46:41.800
like teams have us hit us up all the time.
893
00:46:41.960 --> 00:46:43.480
We say, come into our warehouse and you can earn
894
00:46:43.519 --> 00:46:45.519
as much as you want. We had one team earned
895
00:46:45.519 --> 00:46:49.599
thirty something thousand dollars traveled over to Europe to play soccer.
896
00:46:50.280 --> 00:46:52.480
One high school team because they were able to come
897
00:46:52.519 --> 00:46:54.960
in and we'll say, hey, do whatever you want, well
898
00:46:55.639 --> 00:46:58.599
we'll help. We gave them stuff to do to help
899
00:46:58.719 --> 00:47:01.760
support their team as well an opportunity to make money.
900
00:47:02.079 --> 00:47:04.880
So cool, and it's just a great example I think
901
00:47:04.960 --> 00:47:07.800
of giving back and supporting the community. So I think
902
00:47:07.840 --> 00:47:13.119
that that just is awesome. We are so thankful for
903
00:47:13.159 --> 00:47:16.800
you to join us today. It has been just amazing
904
00:47:16.800 --> 00:47:18.760
to hear the story and to get to know you
905
00:47:18.800 --> 00:47:22.079
both a little more individually.
906
00:47:22.599 --> 00:47:23.519
Together together.
907
00:47:24.360 --> 00:47:26.760
Your story of hard work and passion is an example
908
00:47:26.800 --> 00:47:29.239
to all of us who chase what matters most and
909
00:47:29.280 --> 00:47:33.000
shoot for the stars. We are proud to highlight your
910
00:47:33.039 --> 00:47:35.320
work here at Mountain West Capital Network.
911
00:47:35.400 --> 00:47:37.280
And for our listeners who want to learn more, how
912
00:47:37.360 --> 00:47:38.760
do they find you?
913
00:47:39.599 --> 00:47:41.960
Really, they just go to bucked up dot com and
914
00:47:42.039 --> 00:47:45.239
they can see basically what we have as far as
915
00:47:45.320 --> 00:47:48.559
products and things that we sell, and then they can
916
00:47:48.559 --> 00:47:51.800
follow us on Instagram as well. Mine's Bucked Up CEO
917
00:47:51.960 --> 00:47:56.119
and mine is j Way ninety nine, but Jeff Gardner
918
00:47:56.119 --> 00:47:57.519
if you look up yea.
919
00:47:59.079 --> 00:48:02.199
And to everyone, thank you for joining us. A special
920
00:48:02.239 --> 00:48:05.280
thanks to the launch Pod team, Johnny and Christine for
921
00:48:05.320 --> 00:48:08.280
producing our show, Zachary Reid for his vision and direction
922
00:48:08.360 --> 00:48:13.440
as producer, Katie Brown, Operations Specialist for keeping us in
923
00:48:13.440 --> 00:48:15.920
line and on track, and Garrett Lawson and Kevin Jessup
924
00:48:15.920 --> 00:48:19.760
for serving as our Mountain West Capital Network podcast chairs.
925
00:48:20.159 --> 00:48:22.320
And don't forget to leave us a five star review
926
00:48:22.360 --> 00:48:25.960
and subscribe to stay updated on Utah's fastest growing companies
927
00:48:26.039 --> 00:48:29.239
and the leaders shaping our business future. There's nothing we
928
00:48:29.280 --> 00:48:32.679
appreciate more than hearing from our listeners, rate, review, and share.
929
00:48:33.360 --> 00:48:34.719
Welcome to the Warnes Circle.
1
00:00:03.279 --> 00:00:06.400
We did learn how to work hard, and that's helped
2
00:00:06.440 --> 00:00:09.599
us get eighty ninety percent of the way. You guys
3
00:00:09.640 --> 00:00:12.439
have the best tasting and best working pre work I
4
00:00:12.439 --> 00:00:16.280
have ever taken. You have a home run. Somebody brought
5
00:00:16.320 --> 00:00:18.960
in some Internet leads and we're like, what's the Internet?
6
00:00:19.280 --> 00:00:22.039
No matter where you are in your fitness journey, you're
7
00:00:22.039 --> 00:00:23.000
welcome to Bucked Up.
8
00:00:26.879 --> 00:00:30.079
You're listening to the Mountain West Capital Network podcast, your
9
00:00:30.160 --> 00:00:33.399
gateway to the Winner Circle. I'm Sherry, the executive director
10
00:00:33.439 --> 00:00:35.399
of Mountain West Capital Network.
11
00:00:35.159 --> 00:00:37.640
And I'm Jason, President of the Mountain West Capital Network
12
00:00:37.679 --> 00:00:41.240
and managing director at Protivity. Every episode, we sit down
13
00:00:41.240 --> 00:00:45.679
with Utah's most visionary business leaders to cover the ideas, risks,
14
00:00:45.759 --> 00:00:48.840
and wins behind the state's fastest growing companies.
15
00:00:49.240 --> 00:00:51.880
Mountain West Capital Network is best known for the Utah
16
00:00:51.920 --> 00:00:55.560
one hundred, our flagship event that recognizes the state's fastest
17
00:00:55.600 --> 00:01:00.399
growing businesses. But behind every number is a story. Announce
18
00:01:00.399 --> 00:01:02.280
what this podcast is all about.
19
00:01:02.520 --> 00:01:05.159
You're not just tuning in to hear what's happened, You're
20
00:01:05.200 --> 00:01:09.760
stepping inside the winner Circle to understand how it happened today.
21
00:01:09.959 --> 00:01:12.239
We are so thrilled to be joined by Jeff and
22
00:01:12.319 --> 00:01:17.159
Ryan Gardner the CXO and CEO of Bucked Up. Jeff
23
00:01:17.200 --> 00:01:20.560
and Ryan are brothers who now work as managing partners
24
00:01:20.560 --> 00:01:23.280
together for their supplement company here in Utah.
25
00:01:23.920 --> 00:01:26.959
Jeff and Ryan decide to start Bucked Up together in
26
00:01:26.959 --> 00:01:30.680
twenty sixteen. While Ryan worked on the day to day operations,
27
00:01:31.040 --> 00:01:33.560
Jeff was planning behind the scenes to make Bucked Up
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a worldwide brand. Jeff has utilized their ambassador partnerships to
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spread news of Bucked Up, making his dreams for the
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company come true. He has focused on ensuring that Bucked
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Up always stays ahead of the competition.
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With Jeff's help, Ryan has stayed busy to help Bucked
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Up become the number one best selling pre workout supplement,
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which is now available in over one hundred thousand stores worldwide.
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Back into two thousand and one, when Ryan saw that
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social media was helping his first business to skyrocket, he
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dove headfirst into it and bought the website Dear Antler
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spray dot com, which exploded their sales after a Super
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Bowl announcement. Once Bucked Up was launched, he did the
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same and now leads the path in the supplement world.
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You can find their products at bucked up dot com.
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Jeff and Ryan, Welcome to the Winter Circle.
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Thanks for having us on. Appreciate it. We're excited.
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So for those just getting to know you, how would
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you describe yourselves and tell the story behind Bucked Up
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and how it got started for the two of you.
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Well, first off, we are twins, yes, so gain Tel
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so you are. We get around twice as fast.
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I love it.
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People run across to you and they think they know you,
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and we always act like we are the other person,
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go with the flow. They don't even correct them, no secrets.
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And what's funny as our our father was an identical
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twin Oho and so we were told to play every
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trick that you can on the on the planet. And
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we've we've taken tests for each other, we've dated the
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same girl, graduated for each other, graduated for each other.
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It was great, we played, We played it all. So
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but it'd be some golfing. Yeah, maybe some golfing in
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there from different clubs. Who's better? Never know, you never know.
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We're too competitive. You're going to start a fight. Yeah
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you're going to find out in this podcast for the table.
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But yeah, that's really what it is. Is is. We're
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just twins, so we're always family focused and we're we
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we love working together. Sometimes it can be challenging, but
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since we're twins, we don't hold back, just fight it out.
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Five minutes later we're best friends again. Yeah. Yeah, so
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it's great because you could just move on and keep going. So,
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but I think Jeff said it right. Family is probably
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the most important thing to us. We both have four kids,
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you know, and even though we work hard and we
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work a lot, we really it all comes back to
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hanging out with your family and going and doing fun
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things with them.
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That's great.
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Tell us about how it all started. I know there
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are many people that understand the story, but there will
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be listeners that will not know completely. Like you know,
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dear Antler sprayed, I come and maybe just go go
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into maybe the highlights of how it started.
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Well, we have somebody in the room that kind of
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influenced our story. Ryan had some missionary companions. After a mission,
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he came down and worked with one of them on
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a sales floor and we were up selling, coaching and mentoring.
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In about thirty to forty five minutes, we were selling
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five to ten thousand dollars packages. You know, we figured
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out that the guy who was making all the money
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is the guy who's giving the leads to that sales floor.
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And back then and they were doing it by infomercials
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or seminars in the hotels. But somebody brought in some
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Internet leads and we're like, what's the internet. This is
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in nineteen before we even knew how to do an email,
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and it was crazy. And he goes, I really don't
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know what I'm doing. Because Ryan said, let me come
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work with you, and he said, well, I mean, I
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just put these banners on this website and people have
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to choose some numbers because it was called freelatto dot
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com and they would enter to win by clicking on
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one of these banners and visiting no website. After one
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hundred visitors, this guy would generate about two buyers from
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this little ad he put together, and he would give
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the leads to the sales floor. So Ryan said, well, yeah,
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let me come down. And I didn't want to be
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on the sales floor for the rest of my life.
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I was like, I don't want to be doing this,
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do you you know, can I get a job? That's
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what I said to him. But we were very good
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at sales, and we were out going, and we were
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very ethical, So we were very We weren't selling seventy
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year old ladies. We were we were kind of like
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I would say that we were kind of good guys
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selling because you could get a little off track just
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to make a sell, and we just wouldn't ever cross
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those lines. But Ryan figured out with this guy how
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to produce leads on the internet through emailers. You'd have
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people who had a list, an email list of their clients,
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and we would have them send our offer to that list.
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And there were many emailers out there that just started
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to come about. You know, when he started working, Like
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he said, he asked how to use his mouse to
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put something on the desktop and he knows it was
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for an attachment. I said, well, how do you make
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an attachment? I remember all of his guys turning around
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with you this, Okay, oh boy, who did you hire?
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And I'm like, I had I hadn't even used a
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computer at that point, basically. Yeah. So Ryan basically told
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me what he was doing and he said, Hey, Jeff,
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I'm gonna I want to start something where we can
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produce leads for everybody. Would you like to come and
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come aboard. And we said, I said, yeah, I don't
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want to be on the sales floor either. I let
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him pave the wave and try it first, right as
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it always has been. I'm the older one. I'm five
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minutes older than Jeff. He's used that a good whole.
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I say, respect your elders, come out. So we start
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a little business, and and all of a sudden we
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were producing leads for a lot of people, and that's
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really what how we started. And we were in the
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internet world before everybody was doing the internet, so we
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were a little ahead of people. And that's kind of
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what we pride ourselves on, like you said, is we
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like to stay ahead and see what's coming down the
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road and be, you know, always in front and have
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people following or chasing us, you know. And then as
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we were starting to produce leads and traffic and drive traffic,
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people would come into our office all the time and say, hey,
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I got this product. Will you drive traffic to our websites?
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We said, yeah, we'll do it. Well, we got it.
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Finally got sick of producing it for everybody else, and
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we said, hey, if we can drive traffic, let's just
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do it for our own products. A guy came in
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that very next day and said, hey, I got this
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product called l arginine and your dad uses it. And
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he told me to come see you, said you'd put
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you on You had put me on steroids. And I
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was like, well, not the drug steroids. But we can
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drive a lot of traffic, but we don't do it
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unless we own part of the company. And within thirty
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to forty five minutes we owned fifty percent of the
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company and he was doing about six or seven hundred
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dollars a day. Within three to four weeks, we were
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doing about thirty five hundred dollars a day. Because we
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took over his website. We started driving the traffic. We
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started buying a lot of paper click you know, on Google.
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And when that happened, all of a sudden, they turned
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off this product was called l Arginine Plus. They turned
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off all the pay per click for l arge nine plus.
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And we happened to go out and buy the domain
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name larg nine dot com about three weeks before that. Wow,
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and we were We spent twenty five grand on that
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domain name, and we were like, that was a big decision.
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We looked at each other and said should we do this.
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It's twenty five thousand just for the name, but it
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ranks number one because it was an exact match domain
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with what people were going and searching.
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Wow.
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And so we said we got lucky. You know, we
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were in the right place at the right time. We
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bought the domain name. Three or four weeks later, they
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turned off paper click and we got all the traffic.
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So we were doing five six thousand dollars. We ended
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up doing about four to five million dollars a year
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on that one single product for years.
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Wow.
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And that was a supplement. We were like, wow, supplements
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is where it's at. Well, then we read an article
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in Sports Illustrated that says dear Antler Spray is banned
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in Major League Baseball and we were like, what's dear
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Antler spray? What is it? A hunting product? What? We
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didn't even know? And we read this article. We went
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to Go Daddy and it was available for six dollars
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in ninety nine cents purchase and we bought it and
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we were like and we were like, this is another
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l argentine product. Don't run. Yeah. So and then I
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went and found a manufacturer in Florida, that produced dear
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Antler spray, and we were like, hey, this is going
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to be just like l Argin nine. We're going to
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rank number one. And we did. We started ranking pretty fast.
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But guess what, nobody read Sports Illustrated, So there was
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very little traffic for somebody looking for deer Antler spray.
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They read it for the swimsuit issue. I think they
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don't read the articles, all right, who doesn't study? But
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so then we produced about thirty five hundred bottles. We
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did the minimum order quantity of thirty five hundred bottles.
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We were selling like what ten to twelve a day?
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Five ten a day is all ten a day? And
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we were like, man, we better hope we run out
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before these expire. And then Jeff Teller like, one day
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we walk into the office and see we walk into
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one hundred orders and we're like, are we somebody scamming
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us or fraud and or using credit cards on our
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website or something? What's going on? And about five or
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ten minutes later, another one hundred orders, and a friend
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called us on the phone and said, turn on ESPN
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right now. And this was a Super Bowl media week
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of twenty thirteen, and at this media week, there was
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a press conference and a reporter pulled up some receipts
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and held them up and said, hey, ray Lewis, you
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had a torn tricep three weeks ago. How did you
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recover from this tricep? Tear self asked, and he said,
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I have proof that you receipts that you bought dear
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Antler spray, and that's banned in the NFL. He couldn't
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have done it better because he raised his hands and
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said I bought it, but I didn't take it. And
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everybody's like, uh huh sure. And it's not banned to
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the normal public, right, it's banned just in these in
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this professional sports because the theory is it gives them
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an unfair advantage. You can't really mess for it, and
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it helps you recover super fast because of this growth
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hormone in it and going from zero cells to one
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hundred cells every five minutes. We were like, market, you
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can't mark it up. So we marked it from thirty nine.
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Try to blow down the cells because we're like we're
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going to run out. We're going to run out. Mark
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it up to fifty nine, mark it up to seventy nine.
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We sold every bottle after the first couple hours for
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ninety nine dollars a bottle and sold out all the
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rest of our inventory, which is like twenty six hundred bottles,
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and yeah, that's that's there. Born. Then then a day
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or two later, GNC calls this and says, hey, how
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fast can you fulfill thirty thousand bottles? And I said, well,
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let me find out. So I called the manufacturer and
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I said, hey, this is Ryan with dear Antler spray.
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And he goes, I thought I'd be hearing from you.
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How many bottles do you need? I said, I need
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fifty thousand, as fast as you can make them, and
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he goes, I'll have him tea in three weeks. Wow.
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And we were selling thousands of bottles in four weeks.
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At GNC, we were selling thousands of bottles a week.
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At GenZ they had four thousand stores at the time,
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and we were doing thousands and thousands of bottles every week.
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And GNC was basically like, hey, we'll skip all the
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red tape. It may be banned in professional sports, but
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it's not banned for us. And everybody keeps asking for it,
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everybody coming. It's the number one search thing that the
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people were asking for it. And then we started going
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to expos and selling just dear Antler spray at these
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expos and these fitness expos. And then as we were
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looking around, we were like, what is everybody doing here?
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And they were all selling a pre work out and
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we were like, what's a pre workout?
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Yeah?
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And they we went around and started taste testing, and
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it was I mean, they tasted terrible. Sometimes you almost
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had to plug your nose back. Then it was like,
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I don't know why they couldn't make a good tasting one,
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but they would just keep reassuring us it's because it works.
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It tastes bad because it works really good. And then
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we would start itching and we thought we were allergic
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to whatever. Try to free work. Keep in mind, we'd
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never try to be worked out at this point. Yeah,
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and they had like, you know, an iosin and beta alane,
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and we didn't know what that was. We just thought
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we were allergic and we were starting to itch and
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and whatnot. So you know, it's actually a really good ingredient.
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And nine percent of pre workouts contain beta alanine because
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it helps buffer lactic acid, so you could you should
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be able to push it a lot longer, a lot
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harder during your workout. So we we said, we need
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to come out with something more than just deer antler spray.
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Not everybody's taking this spray to recover and things. So
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we saw that pre workout was there, and we said,
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we just need to come out with the best tasting
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and best working and tell everybody what's in it. And
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one of the guys that was walking around, his name
286
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was Jose. He had a G and C store. He goes, well,
287
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I'll help consult you and tell you everything that you
288
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should put in this thing. And so we said, sounds great,
289
00:15:21.440 --> 00:15:23.759
come in and help us, help us create a line
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00:15:24.200 --> 00:15:28.480
of good products that we can sell. And I remember
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00:15:29.960 --> 00:15:33.279
when they made us a first bottle of a pre workout.
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We first off, we drank like three servings. We drink
293
00:15:37.519 --> 00:15:40.679
it all day long, and we didn't realize caffeine. We didn't.
294
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You can't do that.
295
00:15:42.080 --> 00:15:45.720
I had a massive headache going I we just had
296
00:15:45.759 --> 00:15:47.840
six hundred eight hundred MILLI drums in and says, hey,
297
00:15:47.879 --> 00:15:51.279
you can't drink that many. It tastes so good, though, Wow,
298
00:15:51.440 --> 00:15:53.759
it tastes so good and I felt focused, but it
299
00:15:53.799 --> 00:15:56.360
was so much caffeine I was like a thousand milligrams
300
00:15:56.519 --> 00:15:57.240
at caffeine.
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00:15:57.360 --> 00:15:59.240
One day, I gave it to my buddy to try
302
00:15:59.240 --> 00:16:01.720
and he goes, let me try it, because I've tried
303
00:16:02.039 --> 00:16:05.440
fifteen different pre workouts and I worked for a supplement company.
304
00:16:05.480 --> 00:16:07.840
So I gave it to him. He took it to Vasa.
305
00:16:09.039 --> 00:16:11.320
He literally came back to my office and he came
306
00:16:11.360 --> 00:16:14.679
in and said, Jeff, you guys have the best tasting
307
00:16:14.799 --> 00:16:17.600
and best working pre workout I have ever taken. You
308
00:16:17.679 --> 00:16:19.720
have a home run. You just need to know how
309
00:16:19.759 --> 00:16:30.600
to market. Well, you're talking to the market, and really
310
00:16:30.639 --> 00:16:33.120
that's all it was. When we started off, we just
311
00:16:33.120 --> 00:16:35.600
said what should we call it? You know, this pre workout,
312
00:16:35.639 --> 00:16:39.399
and since we had deer antler spray, we stuck with
313
00:16:39.480 --> 00:16:43.200
the deer theme. Somebody's actually suggested it. One of our ambassadors.
314
00:16:43.240 --> 00:16:46.679
Actually we started an ambassador program by this time, and
315
00:16:46.759 --> 00:16:49.600
one of the ambassadors had suggested it. Yeah, he said,
316
00:16:49.720 --> 00:16:51.639
why don't you call it bucked up? And we go
317
00:16:51.720 --> 00:16:54.120
to go Daddy, that's the first thing I did. I
318
00:16:54.200 --> 00:16:57.720
was like, and it was for self. It was for
319
00:16:57.759 --> 00:17:02.120
sale for fifteen hundred dollars or best offer, and you know,
320
00:17:02.360 --> 00:17:06.279
we had bought large nine dot com twenty five thousand.
321
00:17:06.279 --> 00:17:09.519
We were like, we're not making this offer, We're just
322
00:17:09.559 --> 00:17:12.039
gonna pay it, and rhyme bought it right straight up
323
00:17:12.240 --> 00:17:15.640
fifteen hundred and we got the name and that's why
324
00:17:15.680 --> 00:17:18.240
we call it bucked Up. And my parents they hated.
325
00:17:18.400 --> 00:17:20.559
Oh when we said we're going to call it bucked up,
326
00:17:20.680 --> 00:17:23.200
they were like, no way are you going to call
327
00:17:23.200 --> 00:17:26.720
it that? And to be honest, like and we're super
328
00:17:26.759 --> 00:17:29.880
straight parents, Yeah, it is a kind of a parent
329
00:17:30.079 --> 00:17:33.000
It's kind of a sketchy name in a sense, like
330
00:17:33.119 --> 00:17:35.960
what you would name your brand right and have everything
331
00:17:36.039 --> 00:17:39.160
named after. But it went from being kind of a
332
00:17:39.200 --> 00:17:43.440
sketchy name to being where my parents hated the name
333
00:17:43.799 --> 00:17:47.599
to now they just love saying my boys boy's own
334
00:17:47.640 --> 00:17:49.720
bucked up, you know, yeah, and it's right off their
335
00:17:49.759 --> 00:17:52.319
tongue real easy now. And B, why you wouldn't let
336
00:17:52.359 --> 00:17:54.640
us go in because of the name at first and
337
00:17:54.839 --> 00:17:57.039
now they ask us to donate all the time. Yeah,
338
00:17:57.039 --> 00:18:00.000
B why you actually said we can't do it because
339
00:18:00.000 --> 00:18:02.000
because of the name, the name will never get approved.
340
00:18:02.640 --> 00:18:05.680
Like a year later, they were back at our office saying, hey,
341
00:18:05.720 --> 00:18:10.000
we want you to sponsor, and of course, so you
342
00:18:10.039 --> 00:18:13.119
know it's it's funny that people. We appreciate your donations.
343
00:18:13.160 --> 00:18:15.839
Thank you. It kind of turned from a sketchy kind
344
00:18:15.839 --> 00:18:19.759
of name to start a company after to actually mainstream
345
00:18:19.799 --> 00:18:23.240
where everybody is like accept accepting it, and then it
346
00:18:23.279 --> 00:18:27.119
became popular and everybody wanted to be part of it. Yeah,
347
00:18:27.160 --> 00:18:28.599
so it was it was really fun I.
348
00:18:28.599 --> 00:18:31.279
Don't like the word sketchy. I think edgy, edgy.
349
00:18:31.359 --> 00:18:33.960
Edgy edgy is better. Yeah, I like that too, ye
350
00:18:34.160 --> 00:18:37.279
Edgi for Utah, it was really edgy.
351
00:18:37.440 --> 00:18:40.400
Yeah, no, it really is. But like it's I mean,
352
00:18:40.400 --> 00:18:41.519
you see it everywhere.
353
00:18:41.880 --> 00:18:44.000
Some of the other names that we have for some
354
00:18:44.079 --> 00:18:48.480
of our products, yeah, they're even more. We had to
355
00:18:48.559 --> 00:18:51.119
explain to our parents several times the names and what
356
00:18:51.160 --> 00:18:54.960
they meant, and like WOKF we told them it stands
357
00:18:55.000 --> 00:18:57.680
for Woke American four because that's where we make.
358
00:18:59.160 --> 00:19:02.559
It. Can I mean they can yeah.
359
00:19:02.599 --> 00:19:04.480
But yeah, that's the story of how we how we
360
00:19:04.880 --> 00:19:07.319
it all got started. And now, like we say, we're
361
00:19:07.359 --> 00:19:10.359
in G and c's vitamin shops, mom and pop supplement
362
00:19:10.400 --> 00:19:14.440
shops throughout the country, Dicks Shills, all the main stores,
363
00:19:14.599 --> 00:19:17.279
and now we have an energy drink that we've done
364
00:19:17.359 --> 00:19:20.960
since twenty twenty one. Last year we sold seventy five
365
00:19:20.960 --> 00:19:23.799
million energy drinks and this year we'll do well over
366
00:19:23.839 --> 00:19:27.039
one hundred million. And so we're in convenience stores all
367
00:19:27.079 --> 00:19:29.880
throughout the country. We have a one hundred percent distribution
368
00:19:30.000 --> 00:19:33.319
network that we can go to and distribute our drinks
369
00:19:33.359 --> 00:19:37.200
throughout the country. And we're now in hundreds of thousands
370
00:19:37.200 --> 00:19:40.599
of locations and starting to do a lot of international
371
00:19:40.640 --> 00:19:41.400
business as well.
372
00:19:41.519 --> 00:19:43.440
Right, and where's an international lokay?
373
00:19:44.359 --> 00:19:49.440
So mostly mostly international too. You know, Canada has really
374
00:19:49.480 --> 00:19:51.920
taken off this year. They're just exploded and they can't
375
00:19:52.000 --> 00:19:55.240
hardly keep the supplements in. But we just launched in
376
00:19:55.359 --> 00:20:00.039
costcos with the energy drinks. They're killing it. And and
377
00:20:00.119 --> 00:20:05.440
then we introduce protein, the RTD Protein drinks and they're
378
00:20:05.480 --> 00:20:08.920
loving it. So Kenna's killing it. Australia is doing really well.
379
00:20:09.440 --> 00:20:12.599
We're we're in we now got all approval from Mexico,
380
00:20:12.680 --> 00:20:15.519
so that's about to kick off. And you know over
381
00:20:15.559 --> 00:20:19.759
in the UK and EU, Yes, it's fantastic, and we're
382
00:20:19.799 --> 00:20:22.440
in about thirty one countries because it's all over the place,
383
00:20:22.559 --> 00:20:23.759
so it's fun.
384
00:20:24.200 --> 00:20:25.000
That's crazy.
385
00:20:25.200 --> 00:20:28.480
But speaking of you know, it's something about the brand
386
00:20:29.079 --> 00:20:33.839
I think something about this this buck, it just resonates
387
00:20:33.920 --> 00:20:36.319
with a lot of people, and it kind of looks aggressive,
388
00:20:36.960 --> 00:20:40.759
it kind of has a little edge to it. And
389
00:20:40.759 --> 00:20:42.920
and they know Mississippi, they sell it just because it
390
00:20:42.960 --> 00:20:44.960
has a deer logo on it. They're like, I want
391
00:20:44.960 --> 00:20:46.920
that just because it has a buck logo on it.
392
00:20:47.000 --> 00:20:50.640
But anywhere you go across the country, they seem to resonate.
393
00:20:50.720 --> 00:20:54.599
So we were very fortunate to be in the right
394
00:20:54.599 --> 00:20:57.200
spot at the right time. And sometimes we say the
395
00:20:57.240 --> 00:21:00.799
harder you work, the luckier you get. And we're just
396
00:21:00.960 --> 00:21:03.759
truly blessed to be in the right spots at the
397
00:21:03.839 --> 00:21:05.519
right time. So I love that.
398
00:21:06.200 --> 00:21:10.599
So has the logo changed at all evolved since twenty sixteen.
399
00:21:10.640 --> 00:21:13.920
It has not evolved. It's always been this buck logo.
400
00:21:14.240 --> 00:21:17.200
Before that, when we had deer Antler Spray, we did
401
00:21:17.240 --> 00:21:19.440
have a deer logo on it, but it wasn't really
402
00:21:19.480 --> 00:21:22.839
it was just called deer Antler Spray. And so we
403
00:21:22.960 --> 00:21:26.079
ended up transforming that from the old logo to the
404
00:21:26.119 --> 00:21:28.359
new one, and that was this one. We had a
405
00:21:28.400 --> 00:21:30.920
designer and we said, hey, we like these logos, we
406
00:21:31.079 --> 00:21:33.519
like the way these look. Let's do one that looks
407
00:21:33.519 --> 00:21:35.119
pretty similar except different.
408
00:21:35.359 --> 00:21:38.400
You know, so you've also so you've got the supplements
409
00:21:38.400 --> 00:21:40.400
and energy drinks and all of that, but like you
410
00:21:40.480 --> 00:21:41.759
also have an apparel.
411
00:21:43.559 --> 00:21:46.519
Do we do have a and Jeff's actually Jeff's I'm
412
00:21:46.559 --> 00:21:49.200
also in charge of apparel now sign has me doing
413
00:21:49.240 --> 00:21:50.599
all sorts of stuff in the company.
414
00:21:50.680 --> 00:21:52.839
Right, he's the best sales person at all.
415
00:21:54.720 --> 00:21:57.279
But like I said, the brand resonated so well that
416
00:21:57.359 --> 00:21:59.359
we didn't even want to sell. When we first went
417
00:21:59.400 --> 00:22:01.160
to these exposed, we said, how are we going to
418
00:22:01.240 --> 00:22:04.839
sell this pre workout? And we are so frugal, I
419
00:22:04.839 --> 00:22:07.680
mean from Utah. I think it's it's dread in us
420
00:22:07.680 --> 00:22:10.119
a little bit, right, just to not go in dead
421
00:22:10.240 --> 00:22:12.799
and want a good deal and want a good deal.
422
00:22:13.200 --> 00:22:15.480
And we said, how are we going to get people
423
00:22:15.559 --> 00:22:18.640
to buy this product? And we we went to this expo.
424
00:22:19.240 --> 00:22:22.319
We said if you buy two of these, and we
425
00:22:22.319 --> 00:22:25.519
didn't give away any samples. We only let them taste
426
00:22:25.559 --> 00:22:28.680
it out of a little dispenser and we said, hey,
427
00:22:28.720 --> 00:22:31.240
if you like how it tastes, wait till you see
428
00:22:31.240 --> 00:22:33.720
how it works, you need to buy it. But if
429
00:22:33.759 --> 00:22:36.119
you buy two today, we'll give you a free shirt.
430
00:22:36.599 --> 00:22:39.559
And at first, right, well, we are not giving away
431
00:22:39.599 --> 00:22:42.759
a free shirt five dollars a T shirt. I said, Ryan,
432
00:22:42.920 --> 00:22:45.079
these guys are going to be walking billboards for us.
433
00:22:45.200 --> 00:22:47.200
It's the best five dollars we can ever best thing
434
00:22:47.240 --> 00:22:50.440
he's ever convinced me in doing so. We ended up
435
00:22:50.440 --> 00:22:55.119
selling one our first one thousand bottles in two days
436
00:22:55.119 --> 00:22:58.119
at La fit Expo because of that, and everybody started
437
00:22:58.119 --> 00:23:00.759
wearing our peril and we made the sh shirt's good
438
00:23:00.839 --> 00:23:04.799
enough so they wanted to wear it. And we didn't
439
00:23:04.839 --> 00:23:08.960
go cheap. We wanted a good quality shirt. Now of
440
00:23:09.000 --> 00:23:11.480
this just one flag shirt that we were given away,
441
00:23:12.279 --> 00:23:15.759
we probably buy thirty to fifty thousand shirts a month.
442
00:23:16.240 --> 00:23:18.319
Wow of the one shirt.
443
00:23:18.839 --> 00:23:19.200
Wow.
444
00:23:20.200 --> 00:23:23.480
We do funnels, so we do sell them through you know,
445
00:23:23.519 --> 00:23:26.240
they call them click funnels right now, but we called
446
00:23:26.240 --> 00:23:28.880
them landing pages. And we've been doing click Somebody came
447
00:23:28.920 --> 00:23:30.640
to us and says, yeah, a click funnel. Have you
448
00:23:30.680 --> 00:23:32.720
ever heard of it? And I'm like, no, what is it? Oh,
449
00:23:32.799 --> 00:23:35.920
We've been doing landing pages for years. You know, they
450
00:23:36.000 --> 00:23:39.759
just happened to coin it click click funnel. But you know,
451
00:23:39.799 --> 00:23:42.799
we give out we give free T shirts with trying
452
00:23:42.799 --> 00:23:45.440
our samples and products and stuff. So we do a
453
00:23:45.480 --> 00:23:47.960
lot that way, and so all these people are out
454
00:23:47.960 --> 00:23:51.279
there wearing our brand. I was in Costa Rica on
455
00:23:51.359 --> 00:23:53.759
the beach and then here comes a guy walking through
456
00:23:53.920 --> 00:23:56.279
and he's wearing a bucked up shirt. I'm like, boys,
457
00:23:56.319 --> 00:24:00.160
we've made it. We've made it, so but now we
458
00:24:00.200 --> 00:24:02.359
do you know how much? How many millions are we
459
00:24:02.400 --> 00:24:04.400
going to do this year on just apparel? Eight nine
460
00:24:04.440 --> 00:24:06.799
million this year on just apparel? And we're not an
461
00:24:06.799 --> 00:24:09.279
apparel company, We're not in apparel. It's kind of tough
462
00:24:09.319 --> 00:24:12.119
because you have to carry the Smalls and the double
463
00:24:12.279 --> 00:24:15.079
x's and stuff that that may not sell as well.
464
00:24:15.119 --> 00:24:18.279
But you know, it's it's fun and it's a but
465
00:24:18.319 --> 00:24:22.440
it's a necessary thing for RAMP and people just enjoy
466
00:24:22.480 --> 00:24:24.559
wearing it. And we try to make good quality, just
467
00:24:24.599 --> 00:24:27.079
like our pre workouts and things. We try to make
468
00:24:27.119 --> 00:24:30.119
it as good a quality as possible and people just
469
00:24:30.359 --> 00:24:32.079
enjoy wearing it. That's awesome.
470
00:24:32.519 --> 00:24:34.759
I mean, I would love to understand, you know, just
471
00:24:34.799 --> 00:24:38.880
your product innovation process. I mean obviously, yeah, you've highlighted,
472
00:24:38.960 --> 00:24:42.160
you know, kind of the the life cycle of these products.
473
00:24:42.200 --> 00:24:46.160
The Dear Antler Spray pre workout. I mean, you talked
474
00:24:46.160 --> 00:24:49.359
about the energy drink. What's the process that you go
475
00:24:49.480 --> 00:24:53.319
through to identify, Hey, here's here's a need in the market.
476
00:24:53.480 --> 00:24:56.640
You know, let's go after it. Obviously, you guys, you know,
477
00:24:56.759 --> 00:25:00.279
speed to execution is huge, maybe highlight for the listen.
478
00:25:00.519 --> 00:25:03.359
Well, so you know, I'm one of the main guys
479
00:25:03.400 --> 00:25:06.240
that runs that does all the innovation and make sure
480
00:25:06.279 --> 00:25:08.960
that we come out with different categories that are doing
481
00:25:09.000 --> 00:25:12.039
really well and different gaps that are in the market.
482
00:25:12.279 --> 00:25:13.880
Those are the things that I look at. We go
483
00:25:13.920 --> 00:25:17.200
to an ingredient show every year called Supply Side West
484
00:25:17.720 --> 00:25:19.880
and we go to Vegas and that's where they hold
485
00:25:19.920 --> 00:25:22.640
this ingredient show, and we're just trying to find diamonds
486
00:25:22.640 --> 00:25:25.599
in the rough and find these people who have clinical
487
00:25:25.640 --> 00:25:28.519
studies behind ingredients and what they do, and we want
488
00:25:28.519 --> 00:25:31.680
to make sure that what we're giving people actually works.
489
00:25:32.119 --> 00:25:35.920
And so that's kind of how we've innovated at Bucked
490
00:25:36.000 --> 00:25:38.160
Up is we'll go to one of these shows and
491
00:25:38.200 --> 00:25:40.920
we'll see an ingredient that they say, hey, it increases
492
00:25:41.200 --> 00:25:44.519
VO two max and it increases absorption of el cicrallin.
493
00:25:44.799 --> 00:25:48.759
We'll add those ingredients to our products and we'll be like, hey,
494
00:25:48.960 --> 00:25:52.359
even though we may not have the most because it
495
00:25:52.359 --> 00:25:57.079
can absorb sixty six percent better. Helps that product absorbs.
496
00:25:57.960 --> 00:26:00.279
We'll show you proof is in the pudding till you
497
00:26:00.319 --> 00:26:02.720
try our product. And so that's kind of how we
498
00:26:02.759 --> 00:26:05.799
go about innovating and coming up with different things. But
499
00:26:05.920 --> 00:26:09.359
you know, the bigger you get, the more complex the
500
00:26:09.400 --> 00:26:12.880
business kids and right now they kind of slow us
501
00:26:12.920 --> 00:26:14.839
down and put the reins because I could keep pumping
502
00:26:14.839 --> 00:26:17.759
out products all day long. But if you have too many,
503
00:26:18.640 --> 00:26:20.640
you just get saty. You're like, hey, we got to
504
00:26:20.680 --> 00:26:23.400
focus on what's really moving the needle, you know, because
505
00:26:23.440 --> 00:26:25.400
we'd love to come up with stuff for us, you know.
506
00:26:25.440 --> 00:26:28.160
We we like certain stuff all the time and we're like, hey,
507
00:26:28.160 --> 00:26:30.079
we want to do this, and we're like, but that's
508
00:26:30.160 --> 00:26:32.640
just for us, you know what I mean. So you know,
509
00:26:32.839 --> 00:26:35.119
we'll make you a few samples and just be good
510
00:26:35.160 --> 00:26:38.119
with it. But we do try to be innovative. And
511
00:26:38.799 --> 00:26:41.200
that's what's brought us here to where we are today,
512
00:26:41.279 --> 00:26:45.039
is that we've innovated and most of the people are honestly,
513
00:26:45.119 --> 00:26:47.519
most of the people are following exactly what we're doing.
514
00:26:48.079 --> 00:26:51.839
We're we do a hockey phrase and we say, hey,
515
00:26:52.000 --> 00:26:54.440
we're going to skate to where the puck's going to be,
516
00:26:54.599 --> 00:26:57.359
not where it is, And so we always try to
517
00:26:57.400 --> 00:26:59.599
look for the future and say, hey, this is what
518
00:26:59.640 --> 00:27:03.079
we want to do. Even now, we do stuff where
519
00:27:03.079 --> 00:27:05.240
we want to be innovative and come up with new things,
520
00:27:05.480 --> 00:27:08.119
and we get some pushback from our coming like AI.
521
00:27:08.480 --> 00:27:12.200
We want to be really involved in AI and help
522
00:27:12.279 --> 00:27:15.319
their jobs become that much more efficient, and sometimes we
523
00:27:15.319 --> 00:27:17.759
get a lot of pushback. We started a year ago,
524
00:27:17.799 --> 00:27:20.440
I said, when chat GPT first came out, I said,
525
00:27:20.759 --> 00:27:24.799
everybody gets chat GPT, your jobs will be that much easier.
526
00:27:25.400 --> 00:27:28.960
I want everybody buying it, will pay for all the subscriptions,
527
00:27:29.839 --> 00:27:32.440
go get it today, and people are like, oh okay.
528
00:27:33.000 --> 00:27:35.400
And we would kind of I would have meetings and
529
00:27:35.519 --> 00:27:38.519
focus just on AI and say, hey, guys, we're all
530
00:27:38.559 --> 00:27:42.240
going to push this direction and get on board with
531
00:27:42.279 --> 00:27:45.640
the AI movement, and we're going to start in this department.
532
00:27:45.720 --> 00:27:51.319
And sometimes it's pretty difficult because, for instance, we started
533
00:27:51.359 --> 00:27:54.680
it with customer support. It's taken a little bit to
534
00:27:54.759 --> 00:27:59.039
catch on. But since then we can have all of
535
00:27:59.079 --> 00:28:04.319
our customer or support answered by email or by chat.
536
00:28:04.640 --> 00:28:09.319
And there's so many rare, rare incidences that it actually
537
00:28:09.359 --> 00:28:12.440
hands off to a human because it's gotten better and better.
538
00:28:13.039 --> 00:28:15.160
So it's been it's been real fun. But we again,
539
00:28:15.200 --> 00:28:18.759
we try to stay ahead and most people follow.
540
00:28:19.720 --> 00:28:23.240
Yeah, for sure. One of the things I really haven't heard.
541
00:28:23.279 --> 00:28:25.200
I mean, you guys are out there, so there's there's
542
00:28:25.240 --> 00:28:26.920
a lot of talking and a lot of shows that
543
00:28:26.920 --> 00:28:29.480
you've been on. And but one of the things I
544
00:28:29.559 --> 00:28:32.119
really want to talk about is that's all the good stuff.
545
00:28:32.920 --> 00:28:34.519
There's got to be hard stuff too.
546
00:28:35.240 --> 00:28:39.640
Right, Yeah, when we introduce ourselves, we introduce ourselves as
547
00:28:39.720 --> 00:28:42.000
the Janitors. We go around and clean up a lot
548
00:28:42.039 --> 00:28:45.160
of mess and fires. You know, we are a fireman
549
00:28:45.319 --> 00:28:47.039
or with a lot of stuff. But there's a lot
550
00:28:47.039 --> 00:28:49.640
of stuff that we do clean up. But sometimes it's
551
00:28:49.680 --> 00:28:52.160
caused by us too, so you know what I mean.
552
00:28:52.279 --> 00:28:55.559
So but but yeah, I mean, the bigger you get,
553
00:28:55.599 --> 00:28:58.359
the more complex it gets. We had one instant where
554
00:28:58.359 --> 00:29:00.599
we came out with energy drinks. When we first came
555
00:29:00.640 --> 00:29:02.440
out with energy drinks, believe it or not, it was
556
00:29:02.480 --> 00:29:06.440
twenty nineteen and we released them at fit Con that
557
00:29:06.519 --> 00:29:10.519
happened in April. We produced these energy drinks. We thought
558
00:29:10.519 --> 00:29:13.480
they were so good. Well, when we received them, they
559
00:29:13.519 --> 00:29:16.640
actually increased two of the ingredients in there that caused
560
00:29:16.680 --> 00:29:18.839
it to taste really, really bitter, and we didn't know
561
00:29:18.920 --> 00:29:22.839
until we received two hundred thousand cans. Wow, and we said,
562
00:29:23.680 --> 00:29:25.559
we can't do this. We took them to fit Con
563
00:29:25.599 --> 00:29:29.319
and I remember one person posting and saying, you know,
564
00:29:29.960 --> 00:29:32.519
I've enjoyed all their products, but this is the one
565
00:29:32.599 --> 00:29:36.200
thing that it just doesn't taste that great. And at
566
00:29:36.240 --> 00:29:39.599
that time, I said, hey, pull them all back. We're
567
00:29:39.599 --> 00:29:41.680
going to run them over with a steamroller or whatever
568
00:29:41.720 --> 00:29:43.440
we got to do to get rid of them, and
569
00:29:43.480 --> 00:29:45.759
we did. We want to make sure that we produce
570
00:29:45.759 --> 00:29:48.200
a product. I said, we've only got one shot at
571
00:29:48.319 --> 00:29:51.480
energy drinks. They've got to be good. And I mean,
572
00:29:51.519 --> 00:29:55.640
even though the performance was unreal, these two ingredients caused
573
00:29:55.680 --> 00:29:57.559
it to taste bitter on the end, and I'm like,
574
00:29:58.200 --> 00:30:02.519
no one's going to drink it again. So we quickly adjusted,
575
00:30:02.759 --> 00:30:06.240
made modifications, and now then we produced a bunch of
576
00:30:06.599 --> 00:30:09.720
I mean, when you get big, it's a matter of
577
00:30:09.759 --> 00:30:13.960
getting everybody bought into that idea and then being able
578
00:30:14.039 --> 00:30:16.759
to execute. The one thing Ryan and I were good
579
00:30:16.759 --> 00:30:18.680
at in the beginning is just going by the sea
580
00:30:18.720 --> 00:30:21.759
of our pants and getting something done, you know, and
581
00:30:21.799 --> 00:30:27.480
there wasn't a lot of people to get in our way.
582
00:30:26.720 --> 00:30:29.759
And you know, some people like to have everything in
583
00:30:29.799 --> 00:30:32.359
a row, their ducks in a row. We did it.
584
00:30:32.440 --> 00:30:34.960
We started with the first step and then we figured
585
00:30:34.960 --> 00:30:36.759
it out as we went to the second step, and
586
00:30:36.839 --> 00:30:39.119
we didn't even know what we were doing. We just
587
00:30:39.680 --> 00:30:43.160
worked and worked hard until we figured it out. But
588
00:30:43.240 --> 00:30:46.440
that also helped us be able to be fast, you know,
589
00:30:46.519 --> 00:30:49.000
like you mentioned, you have to be fast and be
590
00:30:49.440 --> 00:30:52.599
pretty nimble today too, we're able to make adjustment. But
591
00:30:52.599 --> 00:30:56.279
getting everybody to go with your idea and get it
592
00:30:56.319 --> 00:31:00.599
to cross the finish line and execute, that's a real challenge.
593
00:31:00.640 --> 00:31:06.039
At times, you've both highlighted other people involved in you know,
594
00:31:06.319 --> 00:31:09.880
helping and supporting your growth. I mean I've heard, you know,
595
00:31:09.960 --> 00:31:13.119
just doing my research just seeing new hires, whether it's
596
00:31:13.119 --> 00:31:17.880
a CFO or others, maybe highlight what impact have those
597
00:31:18.039 --> 00:31:21.880
individuals made. Where are you at now from a headcount perspective,
598
00:31:22.119 --> 00:31:24.519
and just give us a highlight of people and the
599
00:31:24.559 --> 00:31:26.839
importance of the culture that you've built.
600
00:31:27.519 --> 00:31:31.519
We have two hundred and sixty seven people employee employees
601
00:31:31.559 --> 00:31:35.519
now and looking back and if I had it all
602
00:31:35.559 --> 00:31:38.880
over again. I'd hire people with experience right off the
603
00:31:38.920 --> 00:31:42.279
bat instead of being frugal. There's sometimes that we passed
604
00:31:42.440 --> 00:31:45.920
opportunities to hire somebody because we are too frugal. Now
605
00:31:46.000 --> 00:31:48.480
I'm looking at it. We ended up, you know, we
606
00:31:49.000 --> 00:31:54.960
sold four million energy drinks in twenty twenty one, and
607
00:31:55.000 --> 00:31:57.200
we had a group come to us and they said, hey,
608
00:31:57.279 --> 00:32:00.440
we want to invest in your company. We were like,
609
00:32:00.759 --> 00:32:02.680
we have plenty of money. We don't need your investment.
610
00:32:02.720 --> 00:32:04.279
We don't need your money, and they go, but we
611
00:32:04.319 --> 00:32:07.559
can help you level up. We have a person that
612
00:32:07.599 --> 00:32:09.599
would like to come in and he will work with
613
00:32:09.640 --> 00:32:12.400
you and he'll build out your whole distribution network. He's
614
00:32:12.440 --> 00:32:15.880
the former CEO of Doctor Pepper. And at that point
615
00:32:15.920 --> 00:32:19.799
we were like, what's a distribution network? Yeah, exactly. We
616
00:32:19.839 --> 00:32:22.240
said what's a distributor, let's start there and they.
617
00:32:22.119 --> 00:32:24.039
Were like, understood Pepper.
618
00:32:25.920 --> 00:32:28.200
Yeah. But even at that time we were like, what,
619
00:32:28.799 --> 00:32:30.880
you know, we didn't have the experience, we didn't know
620
00:32:30.920 --> 00:32:31.519
what we were doing.
621
00:32:31.519 --> 00:32:32.240
Do we need that?
622
00:32:32.720 --> 00:32:35.759
We yeah, And when we we ended up hiring the guy,
623
00:32:35.920 --> 00:32:38.680
and now, look, we have one hundred percent distribution throughout
624
00:32:38.680 --> 00:32:41.079
the country. We're going to sell over one hundred million
625
00:32:41.400 --> 00:32:45.759
energy drinks and that comes with experience. Looking back, I
626
00:32:45.920 --> 00:32:48.920
just wish, man, I wish we would have hired people
627
00:32:49.000 --> 00:32:52.799
a lot sooner that had the experience. So you know,
628
00:32:52.960 --> 00:32:55.000
I read. I do remember a guy coming in and
629
00:32:55.039 --> 00:32:59.640
that we were wanting to produce energy drinks and we said, hey,
630
00:33:00.400 --> 00:33:03.319
we're looking to have somebody come in and invest to
631
00:33:03.359 --> 00:33:06.920
help us get energy drinks off the ground. And he's like, well,
632
00:33:07.279 --> 00:33:09.920
I can already tell you what your problem is. You're
633
00:33:09.920 --> 00:33:12.160
trying to do it all. You're trying to be the CFO,
634
00:33:12.279 --> 00:33:16.759
the CMO, all these different departments. We were wearing multiple hats.
635
00:33:16.759 --> 00:33:20.240
All of us were wearing five hats each, and they said,
636
00:33:20.279 --> 00:33:22.799
that's your issue. And as soon as he told us that,
637
00:33:22.839 --> 00:33:25.200
we went out and hired a CFO and he came
638
00:33:25.240 --> 00:33:27.160
in and within the first week he's like, you guys
639
00:33:27.200 --> 00:33:28.799
have plenty of money. You don't need to raise money.
640
00:33:28.839 --> 00:33:31.960
We're like, oh wow, okay, And it helped us make
641
00:33:32.000 --> 00:33:37.000
decisions right, And that's the thing at the very first starting. Yeah,
642
00:33:37.039 --> 00:33:39.480
it's hard work and getting something off the ground, but
643
00:33:39.559 --> 00:33:42.920
then it's hiring the right people. Even now, I want
644
00:33:42.920 --> 00:33:44.559
to be able to hire people who are a lot
645
00:33:44.599 --> 00:33:47.519
smarter than me at this because I don't know what
646
00:33:47.559 --> 00:33:51.680
I'm doing basically, especially at this level, it gets way bigger.
647
00:33:51.759 --> 00:33:55.519
We've never done it before. We're just we even may
648
00:33:55.960 --> 00:33:58.039
step back a little bit so that other day to.
649
00:33:58.640 --> 00:34:03.000
Can do yuh, but it's your baby too, so that
650
00:34:03.160 --> 00:34:06.319
takes a lot, I mean a lot of trust and
651
00:34:06.440 --> 00:34:10.360
a lot of vulnerability and showing that Okay, yeah, you know,
652
00:34:10.440 --> 00:34:14.400
maybe we don't need to be making all those decisions.
653
00:34:14.199 --> 00:34:17.039
Decisions well, that would be really hard. And to be truthful,
654
00:34:17.760 --> 00:34:22.239
there's so many meetings now, yeah, we hate I hate meetings,
655
00:34:22.400 --> 00:34:26.039
So like, please somebody take this over, because you know,
656
00:34:26.159 --> 00:34:27.920
this is just not fun anymore. You know, when you're
657
00:34:27.960 --> 00:34:34.320
starting out and you're doing in starting in the trenches,
658
00:34:34.400 --> 00:34:36.920
working the expos. We show up at the expos still
659
00:34:37.480 --> 00:34:39.960
and we like to see and get the beat on
660
00:34:40.079 --> 00:34:43.519
the stream, to see meet customers and see what see
661
00:34:43.519 --> 00:34:45.079
what's going to be the next thing that we need
662
00:34:45.119 --> 00:34:47.239
to come out with. We did go to the Arnold
663
00:34:47.280 --> 00:34:50.159
and people are like, you're still coming to these I'm like, yeah,
664
00:34:50.199 --> 00:34:53.559
I know, right, so, but we still go to them
665
00:34:53.599 --> 00:34:57.280
and we love, you know, mingling with the people. I guess,
666
00:34:57.360 --> 00:34:58.400
so it's our baby.
667
00:34:58.679 --> 00:35:00.760
I love that. I think that it's great that you
668
00:35:00.880 --> 00:35:02.000
show up and.
669
00:35:02.119 --> 00:35:03.840
You're I think we're one of the only brands that
670
00:35:03.920 --> 00:35:07.599
do it. Most people don't even know the owners of
671
00:35:07.599 --> 00:35:10.280
the most brands, so and they know that we show up.
672
00:35:10.840 --> 00:35:14.400
Yeah you do. I was that scheduling.
673
00:35:14.960 --> 00:35:18.719
Yes, yeah, this last winter, I've got a heavy dose
674
00:35:18.719 --> 00:35:20.559
of that. And it was so fun because you just
675
00:35:20.599 --> 00:35:23.159
know when the when the Bucked Up crew shows up,
676
00:35:23.320 --> 00:35:27.239
it's a party. And so not only do you show up,
677
00:35:27.360 --> 00:35:30.159
but your teams show up.
678
00:35:30.400 --> 00:35:31.400
And I love it.
679
00:35:31.480 --> 00:35:35.000
And you know, it does take a little trust, but
680
00:35:35.480 --> 00:35:40.920
you have to have these people, these processes, these systems
681
00:35:40.960 --> 00:35:44.880
in place, Otherwise you just bottleneck it and it's that
682
00:35:45.079 --> 00:35:47.639
rock in the funnel that doesn't let anything go past.
683
00:35:48.360 --> 00:35:52.320
And once you have the right people, which you know,
684
00:35:52.360 --> 00:35:54.239
we've had some great people to help us get to
685
00:35:54.239 --> 00:35:58.639
where we are, and we put these crazy systems in
686
00:35:58.679 --> 00:36:01.119
place that cost lots of money and we're like, wait,
687
00:36:01.199 --> 00:36:04.400
what what are we spending? But it then opens that
688
00:36:04.440 --> 00:36:06.960
funnel and you're like, oh, this is why we needed this.
689
00:36:07.360 --> 00:36:08.800
I didn't want to do it, but we did it.
690
00:36:08.840 --> 00:36:12.559
And then you're making decisions based off facts, not just guesses.
691
00:36:13.199 --> 00:36:15.280
You know, before we were throwing things against the wall
692
00:36:15.480 --> 00:36:19.239
hopefully that they stick. Now we're actually going, hey, let's
693
00:36:19.239 --> 00:36:24.280
make a calculated decision and and it tends to work
694
00:36:24.320 --> 00:36:25.400
a lot lot better for us.
695
00:36:26.360 --> 00:36:30.079
So you're based in Utah, you Clearfield is where?
696
00:36:30.280 --> 00:36:33.360
Yeah, we were basically born and raised in Clearfield on
697
00:36:33.400 --> 00:36:37.199
a farm up there, went to Clearfield High School. Falcons
698
00:36:37.280 --> 00:36:40.800
number one. You know, we we we hated being farmer.
699
00:36:40.880 --> 00:36:43.239
We're like, this is too hard to work, Like nobody
700
00:36:43.280 --> 00:36:47.119
wants to be a farmer. Now that we've gotten this business,
701
00:36:47.159 --> 00:36:50.559
and we're guess what we're going back to? Are we
702
00:36:50.679 --> 00:36:53.360
going back to I now have a bunch of I
703
00:36:53.360 --> 00:36:56.480
got horses. I'm like, what am I doing? We're going
704
00:36:56.519 --> 00:36:59.320
back to being farmers. Isn't that weird? My Dad's like, well,
705
00:36:59.360 --> 00:37:01.559
why didn't you have horse? Is sooner? I'm like I did.
706
00:37:01.599 --> 00:37:05.039
I had a one hundred and ten horse side by
707
00:37:05.119 --> 00:37:08.400
side razor. Yeah, there's razor, and I didn't have to
708
00:37:08.400 --> 00:37:10.400
feed it every day. Now look what I'm doing.
709
00:37:10.599 --> 00:37:13.880
Yeah. So well, my question that goes along with that
710
00:37:14.119 --> 00:37:18.559
is how much does your success come from being based
711
00:37:18.599 --> 00:37:22.880
in Utah and founded in Utah and growing from here,
712
00:37:22.960 --> 00:37:26.239
tell me, like, give us that Utah story.
713
00:37:26.599 --> 00:37:30.639
Utah is an unbelievable place to start a business. Number One,
714
00:37:31.199 --> 00:37:34.119
you usually know a lot of people because everybody knows
715
00:37:34.119 --> 00:37:37.159
their neighbors kind of network, and you know, people talk.
716
00:37:37.599 --> 00:37:40.840
And that's what's awesome about Utah is that, you know,
717
00:37:40.880 --> 00:37:42.800
it's a great place to start a brand because if
718
00:37:42.840 --> 00:37:46.159
it really starts, they tell a lot of people about it.
719
00:37:46.519 --> 00:37:48.079
And you know, at the end, at the end of
720
00:37:48.119 --> 00:37:50.400
the day, we were going, hey, it's not about these
721
00:37:50.400 --> 00:37:54.199
big influencers. It's about these micro influencers that really get
722
00:37:54.239 --> 00:37:57.320
behind you and really move the needle. You would rather
723
00:37:57.400 --> 00:38:00.400
have an army of people rather than just one person.
724
00:38:01.000 --> 00:38:03.559
And that's what we did with our brand. We said, hey,
725
00:38:04.599 --> 00:38:07.360
no matter where you are in your fitness journey, you're
726
00:38:07.360 --> 00:38:11.639
welcome to Bucked Up. It doesn't matter if you're skinny, fat,
727
00:38:11.760 --> 00:38:13.559
want to put on muscle, want to lose weight, it
728
00:38:13.599 --> 00:38:16.199
didn't matter. We got we got teased at first, actual,
729
00:38:16.280 --> 00:38:19.639
yeah we did, because when you were taking just anybody
730
00:38:19.679 --> 00:38:22.559
on and they're like, you don't even have any bodybuilders
731
00:38:22.639 --> 00:38:26.480
or any of these like really good fitness influencers, and
732
00:38:26.519 --> 00:38:33.440
we're like, well that's we that's us. Come on, dude,
733
00:38:33.719 --> 00:38:35.440
I've been working out for a year. You know in
734
00:38:35.599 --> 00:38:39.039
Utah is so good. It also is like, if you
735
00:38:39.079 --> 00:38:41.440
want to start a company, Utah is a great place
736
00:38:41.480 --> 00:38:44.079
to do it because you have people that speak languages
737
00:38:44.440 --> 00:38:47.119
because they've been on missions. You can start a whole
738
00:38:47.119 --> 00:38:50.360
sales floor in two seconds with all these return missionaries
739
00:38:50.760 --> 00:38:56.079
and you can immediately explode cells. But UTA's so great
740
00:38:56.199 --> 00:39:01.519
and the people are all respecting here. People people talk
741
00:39:01.599 --> 00:39:03.519
to each other. I mean that's at the end of
742
00:39:03.519 --> 00:39:07.880
the day. They just everybody knows. You could I honestly,
743
00:39:07.920 --> 00:39:11.039
you can probably name someone and it's like two degrees
744
00:39:11.079 --> 00:39:13.639
of Kevin Bacon within two people, you can find out
745
00:39:13.920 --> 00:39:15.199
somebody that's related to them.
746
00:39:15.320 --> 00:39:16.960
As you know, we did that when you guys first
747
00:39:17.000 --> 00:39:20.760
walked in. Yeah, instantly we already knew people that you knew.
748
00:39:20.800 --> 00:39:24.159
And yeah, I just loved what you've highlighted today. I
749
00:39:24.559 --> 00:39:27.599
think one of my last things is is just we've
750
00:39:27.639 --> 00:39:30.639
recognized you as part of the Mountain West Capitol Network,
751
00:39:30.639 --> 00:39:33.360
as part of one of the fastest companies. You know,
752
00:39:33.400 --> 00:39:37.000
you've been recognized I think over three years. Yeah, the
753
00:39:37.079 --> 00:39:38.519
last year was twenty twenty four.
754
00:39:39.199 --> 00:39:40.599
But what is that.
755
00:39:40.719 --> 00:39:43.159
How does that make you feel? Like? How does that,
756
00:39:43.360 --> 00:39:46.280
you know, motivate you? What does that mean to you
757
00:39:46.679 --> 00:39:49.519
to be recognized not just by Mount and West Capitol Network,
758
00:39:49.559 --> 00:39:52.079
but I mean there's a lot of others that And.
759
00:39:52.000 --> 00:39:54.719
We're super competitive. We were fighting to get out of
760
00:39:54.760 --> 00:39:57.400
the womb here. I mean we were we were super
761
00:39:57.440 --> 00:39:59.760
competitive all growing your wombmates.
762
00:40:00.239 --> 00:40:00.440
Yeah.
763
00:40:01.840 --> 00:40:05.599
So there was one point in our lives so that
764
00:40:05.639 --> 00:40:08.480
we were so competitive that they sent me to Alaska.
765
00:40:08.880 --> 00:40:10.360
They shipped me off my parents ship.
766
00:40:10.519 --> 00:40:11.039
You are the one.
767
00:40:11.119 --> 00:40:18.079
We were somehow. I had a guy who okay, now
768
00:40:19.760 --> 00:40:23.119
you know, but we we ended up separating because we
769
00:40:23.119 --> 00:40:26.119
were so competitive. It was just a battle every day.
770
00:40:26.119 --> 00:40:28.000
And we would fight three or four times a day
771
00:40:28.280 --> 00:40:30.880
because we were going out playing basketball on the driveway.
772
00:40:31.119 --> 00:40:33.320
Next thing you know, we're fighting. Five minutes later, we're
773
00:40:33.320 --> 00:40:35.400
fine and we go play again. My parents are like,
774
00:40:35.440 --> 00:40:38.280
we're done doing this. We're done. You guys are physically
775
00:40:38.360 --> 00:40:40.920
hurting each other. We're done doing this. So I got
776
00:40:40.960 --> 00:40:43.960
sent up to Alaska for about three months and came
777
00:40:44.000 --> 00:40:46.480
back and everything seemed to kind of chill out a
778
00:40:46.480 --> 00:40:50.000
little bit and realized we're better together than we are apart.
779
00:40:50.039 --> 00:40:53.719
But we are super competitive. So when we see these numbers, right,
780
00:40:53.760 --> 00:40:56.880
and we see these, we're like, how are we not higher?
781
00:40:57.039 --> 00:40:59.760
You know, like, you know, we we are doing some
782
00:41:00.480 --> 00:41:02.719
I mean we're going to probably hit three hundred million
783
00:41:02.800 --> 00:41:07.199
this year in revenue, and we're still like, hey, we
784
00:41:07.280 --> 00:41:10.480
still are so competitive about what we got to just
785
00:41:10.559 --> 00:41:13.320
work hard. We still think we're the little guys, which
786
00:41:13.440 --> 00:41:15.599
we are in the big scheme. I mean, look who
787
00:41:15.599 --> 00:41:18.079
we're going up against. We're going up against red bulls
788
00:41:18.159 --> 00:41:21.920
and monsters and and different things. But yeah, we're we're
789
00:41:21.960 --> 00:41:25.159
the little guys. And we did learn how to work hard,
790
00:41:25.760 --> 00:41:29.679
and that's helped us get I would say probably eighty
791
00:41:29.840 --> 00:41:33.800
ninety percent of the way because sometimes even though we
792
00:41:33.800 --> 00:41:35.480
didn't know what we were doing and we just kind
793
00:41:35.480 --> 00:41:39.239
of outworked people, so that that helped us a lot.
794
00:41:39.400 --> 00:41:41.559
I love that's that's a key to your story. I
795
00:41:41.599 --> 00:41:44.119
think that just the work ethic and your you know,
796
00:41:44.239 --> 00:41:46.199
speed and execution.
797
00:41:46.079 --> 00:41:48.960
And really we just think we're hustlers. You know, we
798
00:41:49.000 --> 00:41:52.119
still think we're twenty five, but our bodies tell us different.
799
00:41:52.159 --> 00:41:55.719
But you know, we are hustlers. You enjoy the hustle, yeah,
800
00:41:55.760 --> 00:41:59.039
we do, and we like starting one of our straits
801
00:41:59.079 --> 00:42:01.840
is starting things, you know, and then hiring the people
802
00:42:01.840 --> 00:42:05.079
to help us finish, you know. So it's great, that's
803
00:42:05.119 --> 00:42:07.800
that's what we like to do. Well, we hope you apply.
804
00:42:08.000 --> 00:42:11.519
We're applications are open right now, so we'll love to
805
00:42:11.559 --> 00:42:14.119
recognize this, this great company that you've built.
806
00:42:14.239 --> 00:42:17.280
It's just amazing. It's funny because we'll get people that
807
00:42:17.320 --> 00:42:20.199
we haven't met. They'll come up and say, I'm so
808
00:42:20.320 --> 00:42:24.159
proud of you. We're like, we don't even know these people,
809
00:42:25.159 --> 00:42:27.719
and so it's fun. That's great. Yeah, it's fun and
810
00:42:27.719 --> 00:42:30.400
it's fun to be you know, you go to different
811
00:42:30.400 --> 00:42:32.599
places and you see your brand and you see someone
812
00:42:32.639 --> 00:42:35.199
wearing it. We'll go to like a UFC fight down
813
00:42:35.280 --> 00:42:37.000
in Vegas and there's a couple of people in the
814
00:42:37.039 --> 00:42:40.800
audience that are wearing your your flying shirt and you're like, yeah,
815
00:42:41.760 --> 00:42:44.320
this is awesome. So it's just it's just fun to
816
00:42:44.360 --> 00:42:47.880
see and and and recognize that it's gotten this big.
817
00:42:48.119 --> 00:42:50.719
The first actually the really biggest first time that I
818
00:42:50.760 --> 00:42:53.599
was like, wow, this is actually we're onto something. We
819
00:42:53.840 --> 00:42:57.280
went with our kids to California, the Disneyland. We stopped
820
00:42:57.280 --> 00:42:59.960
at a subway. My little daughter was wearing a buck
821
00:43:00.119 --> 00:43:02.599
up shirt and the guy behind the counter was like, hey,
822
00:43:02.639 --> 00:43:04.320
do you know bucked up? How are you wearing a
823
00:43:04.360 --> 00:43:07.559
bucked up T shirt? And they were She was like, Dad,
824
00:43:07.559 --> 00:43:10.320
tell them who you are. And I'm like, no, fuddy,
825
00:43:10.639 --> 00:43:13.360
I'm really I'm the janitor and I worked there. No,
826
00:43:13.639 --> 00:43:16.360
But that's when I was like, Wow, we were really onto.
827
00:43:16.559 --> 00:43:19.440
We actually have a brand, yeah, and let's just make
828
00:43:19.480 --> 00:43:21.159
it really grow. And that's where we are today. So
829
00:43:21.199 --> 00:43:25.920
it's been awesome. It's been a fun ride. It's crazy fun.
830
00:43:26.079 --> 00:43:26.639
You've got a.
831
00:43:26.719 --> 00:43:29.960
Ton of people just cheering you on and supporting you
832
00:43:30.679 --> 00:43:36.920
from all walks actually, and just really quick, what's next?
833
00:43:37.239 --> 00:43:42.519
So we've talked about we talked about that, like what where,
834
00:43:42.800 --> 00:43:44.519
what should we be looking for down the road? Can
835
00:43:44.559 --> 00:43:45.280
you even share that?
836
00:43:46.079 --> 00:43:49.000
Yeah, I mean I think I think Ryan. Then in July,
837
00:43:50.960 --> 00:43:54.360
we're trying to take a little step back from the
838
00:43:54.440 --> 00:43:57.039
day to day. We sometimes feel like we're getting in
839
00:43:57.079 --> 00:44:01.760
the way now and it's just not what we're good at.
840
00:44:02.000 --> 00:44:04.840
We would want to focus on stuff that, you know,
841
00:44:04.920 --> 00:44:08.360
like founder led you know, events and different things where
842
00:44:08.360 --> 00:44:11.440
we can go out and associate and network and do
843
00:44:11.480 --> 00:44:15.280
what we're good at. But that's kind of we're trying
844
00:44:15.280 --> 00:44:18.960
to take it's been ten years of hard going and
845
00:44:19.079 --> 00:44:21.559
we have even family members that are there. We told
846
00:44:21.599 --> 00:44:23.840
them they still have ten years to catch up to us,
847
00:44:24.039 --> 00:44:27.159
but you know, and they're really good in the in
848
00:44:27.199 --> 00:44:30.920
the company. So we appreciate our family being there along
849
00:44:30.960 --> 00:44:33.280
the way. We used to feel all the orders at
850
00:44:33.280 --> 00:44:36.440
first with our families and it was it's it's really
851
00:44:36.480 --> 00:44:40.480
been a good family focused business. But yeah, we're we're
852
00:44:40.559 --> 00:44:42.559
kind of taking a little we want to take a
853
00:44:42.559 --> 00:44:45.000
little step back from the day to day roles and
854
00:44:45.039 --> 00:44:47.280
we like to see the future, right like, we like
855
00:44:47.360 --> 00:44:49.400
to do things that are different than everybody else. We
856
00:44:49.400 --> 00:44:53.639
think longevity. We've invested in a stem cell company that
857
00:44:53.639 --> 00:44:56.039
we're going to help push here in the future. And
858
00:44:56.559 --> 00:44:59.599
there's just some things that we have and we also
859
00:44:59.639 --> 00:45:03.159
believe AI is really big and we feel like that
860
00:45:03.360 --> 00:45:06.239
is going to be whether people like it or not,
861
00:45:06.400 --> 00:45:08.159
that's going to be a big part of the future
862
00:45:08.679 --> 00:45:12.119
of our life. And so we're kind of on you
863
00:45:12.119 --> 00:45:15.159
know where we're maybe even thinking about consulting companies on
864
00:45:15.199 --> 00:45:17.760
how to implement AI into their businesses like we're doing
865
00:45:17.800 --> 00:45:20.559
with ours. And so those are some of the things.
866
00:45:20.760 --> 00:45:23.199
Some ideas that we have, but we'll see what happens
867
00:45:23.199 --> 00:45:26.480
when we actually, you know, step away from the day
868
00:45:26.519 --> 00:45:30.000
to day operations. I guess it's awesome. We'll see what
869
00:45:30.079 --> 00:45:34.079
happens here in the future. We're cheering for you. Well,
870
00:45:34.119 --> 00:45:36.519
we appreciate it, and you know, we want to thank
871
00:45:36.559 --> 00:45:39.360
everyone that's supported our brand over the years. It's been
872
00:45:39.440 --> 00:45:42.519
ten years and we've seen amazing growth and we couldn't
873
00:45:42.519 --> 00:45:45.719
do it without the people here in Utah and everywhere
874
00:45:45.719 --> 00:45:49.360
else that support our brand. It's just awesome. We had
875
00:45:49.360 --> 00:45:53.000
a warehouse cell two weeks ago and is the turnout
876
00:45:53.119 --> 00:45:58.000
is crazy? They were lined up around. Yeah, it was wild.
877
00:45:58.679 --> 00:46:01.559
We just can't thank people. We almost did five hundred
878
00:46:01.639 --> 00:46:04.679
thousand dollars in one day and these are selling five
879
00:46:04.719 --> 00:46:07.880
dollars T shirts. Yeah, I mean it was crazy. People
880
00:46:07.880 --> 00:46:10.719
were walking out with piles of clothes and we put
881
00:46:10.719 --> 00:46:13.239
them in trash bags because they needed a trash bag
882
00:46:13.280 --> 00:46:16.639
to carry stuff out. Yeah, just crazy. What's fun? Awesome? Wow,
883
00:46:16.880 --> 00:46:21.039
I love that. But thanks for having us on. We
884
00:46:21.440 --> 00:46:22.039
appreciate it.
885
00:46:22.159 --> 00:46:26.039
No, we're grateful that you could share your story with us.
886
00:46:26.639 --> 00:46:28.519
Been a fan for a while, and we're excited to
887
00:46:28.519 --> 00:46:31.400
see our golf tournament in July. You guys are just
888
00:46:31.440 --> 00:46:34.119
really great at like giving back and supporting, and so
889
00:46:34.559 --> 00:46:34.920
thank you.
890
00:46:35.000 --> 00:46:36.519
We feel that's a big part of it, you know.
891
00:46:37.039 --> 00:46:39.559
And we do have people that come to our warehouse,
892
00:46:39.639 --> 00:46:41.800
like teams have us hit us up all the time.
893
00:46:41.960 --> 00:46:43.480
We say, come into our warehouse and you can earn
894
00:46:43.519 --> 00:46:45.519
as much as you want. We had one team earned
895
00:46:45.519 --> 00:46:49.599
thirty something thousand dollars traveled over to Europe to play soccer.
896
00:46:50.280 --> 00:46:52.480
One high school team because they were able to come
897
00:46:52.519 --> 00:46:54.960
in and we'll say, hey, do whatever you want, well
898
00:46:55.639 --> 00:46:58.599
we'll help. We gave them stuff to do to help
899
00:46:58.719 --> 00:47:01.760
support their team as well an opportunity to make money.
900
00:47:02.079 --> 00:47:04.880
So cool, and it's just a great example I think
901
00:47:04.960 --> 00:47:07.800
of giving back and supporting the community. So I think
902
00:47:07.840 --> 00:47:13.119
that that just is awesome. We are so thankful for
903
00:47:13.159 --> 00:47:16.800
you to join us today. It has been just amazing
904
00:47:16.800 --> 00:47:18.760
to hear the story and to get to know you
905
00:47:18.800 --> 00:47:22.079
both a little more individually.
906
00:47:22.599 --> 00:47:23.519
Together together.
907
00:47:24.360 --> 00:47:26.760
Your story of hard work and passion is an example
908
00:47:26.800 --> 00:47:29.239
to all of us who chase what matters most and
909
00:47:29.280 --> 00:47:33.000
shoot for the stars. We are proud to highlight your
910
00:47:33.039 --> 00:47:35.320
work here at Mountain West Capital Network.
911
00:47:35.400 --> 00:47:37.280
And for our listeners who want to learn more, how
912
00:47:37.360 --> 00:47:38.760
do they find you?
913
00:47:39.599 --> 00:47:41.960
Really, they just go to bucked up dot com and
914
00:47:42.039 --> 00:47:45.239
they can see basically what we have as far as
915
00:47:45.320 --> 00:47:48.559
products and things that we sell, and then they can
916
00:47:48.559 --> 00:47:51.800
follow us on Instagram as well. Mine's Bucked Up CEO
917
00:47:51.960 --> 00:47:56.119
and mine is j Way ninety nine, but Jeff Gardner
918
00:47:56.119 --> 00:47:57.519
if you look up yea.
919
00:47:59.079 --> 00:48:02.199
And to everyone, thank you for joining us. A special
920
00:48:02.239 --> 00:48:05.280
thanks to the launch Pod team, Johnny and Christine for
921
00:48:05.320 --> 00:48:08.280
producing our show, Zachary Reid for his vision and direction
922
00:48:08.360 --> 00:48:13.440
as producer, Katie Brown, Operations Specialist for keeping us in
923
00:48:13.440 --> 00:48:15.920
line and on track, and Garrett Lawson and Kevin Jessup
924
00:48:15.920 --> 00:48:19.760
for serving as our Mountain West Capital Network podcast chairs.
925
00:48:20.159 --> 00:48:22.320
And don't forget to leave us a five star review
926
00:48:22.360 --> 00:48:25.960
and subscribe to stay updated on Utah's fastest growing companies
927
00:48:26.039 --> 00:48:29.239
and the leaders shaping our business future. There's nothing we
928
00:48:29.280 --> 00:48:32.679
appreciate more than hearing from our listeners, rate, review, and share.
929
00:48:33.360 --> 00:48:34.719
Welcome to the Warnes Circle.