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Speaker 1: Hey, everyone, Emily Aboudi here. Welcome to episode twenty five

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Speaker 1: of Hurdle, a podcast that talks to top CEOs and

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Speaker 1: entrepreneurs who got through some of life's most difficult moments

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Speaker 1: hurdles of sorts, by leaning into wellness. Today, I am

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Speaker 1: so excited to give you my conversation with Randy Hetrick,

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Speaker 1: the creator of TRX.

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Speaker 2: It's an exciting week.

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Speaker 1: Here in New York City because it is New York

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Speaker 1: City Marathon Week.

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Speaker 2: Exclamation point. I'm ampt.

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Speaker 1: I was running the last eight miles of the course

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Speaker 1: yesterday with my girlfriend Rachel. It'll be her first marathon,

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Speaker 1: and around mile five she was asking me.

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Speaker 2: What do you think you want your time to be

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Speaker 2: for this one?

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Speaker 1: And it's funny because I haven't really thought about it.

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Speaker 1: I guess it brings me back to the conversation I

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Speaker 1: had with Women's Health editor in chief Liz Plosser, and

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Speaker 1: we were saying that we both kind of have two

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Speaker 1: goals when it comes to running races. There's like the

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Speaker 1: goal that you're kind of public about that you tell

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Speaker 1: your friends, and then there's this kind a more secret

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Speaker 1: goal that you keep in your back pocket that maybe

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Speaker 1: you only talk to yourself about when.

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Speaker 2: You're alone in your apartments. I don't know.

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Speaker 1: I mean my personal record PR is three fifty one

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Speaker 1: forty one, and yeah, I'd love to see something faster

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Speaker 1: than that this time around. But I also just want

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Speaker 1: to have a good time and enjoy it and soak

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Speaker 1: in the city because the days so special. I'm just

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Speaker 1: gonna do my best and I can't believe it's finally here.

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Speaker 1: A quick shout out to the sponsor of today's episode,

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Speaker 1: Athletic Greens. When light is super hectic, like right now

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Speaker 1: leading up to race day, I look forward to my

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Speaker 1: morning routine more than ever, and it certainly includes the

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Speaker 1: Greens powder. I just mix it up with ten to

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Speaker 1: twelve ounces of water and feel so great knowing I'm

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Speaker 1: twelve servings of fruits and veggies deep before even walking

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Speaker 1: out from the door of my apartment in the morning.

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Speaker 1: They're offering a special deal to Hurdle listeners. It's twenty

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Speaker 1: first purchase. Just go to atlt greens dot com slash

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Speaker 1: Hurdle to claim it. No code necessary. Again, that's Athleticgreens

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Speaker 1: dot com slash hurdle. Now, let's talk about Randy. The

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Speaker 1: former Navy seal came up with TRX on a deployment

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Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety seven. And for those of you who

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Speaker 1: don't know what a TRX is, I'm sure you've seen

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Speaker 1: it before. It's essentially heavy duty Nihlon's jobs that hang

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Speaker 1: from an anchor in the ceiling with foam rubber handles.

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Speaker 1: You can do different bodyweight exercises on it, like lunges

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Speaker 1: and pushups and pull ups and curls and all the things.

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Speaker 1: Hetrick got out of the service, went to business school,

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Speaker 1: and then piled his savings into launching his company. But

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Speaker 1: he faced a huge hurdle moment in twenty ten when

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Speaker 1: he discovered counterfeiters were selling a rip off of his

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Speaker 1: products were cheaper on Amazon. In today's episode, we talked

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Speaker 1: about how he got through that, the way that he

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Speaker 1: incorporates movement regularly at TRX headquarters with his employees, and

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Speaker 1: the advice he'd offered anyone who feels like they're starting at.

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Speaker 2: Square one over and over again.

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Speaker 1: As always, please take a second to rate and you

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Speaker 1: hurdle in the iTunes store.

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Speaker 2: Follow along with Hurdle on Instagram.

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Speaker 1: And Twitter and Facebook, and pretty please post a screen

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Speaker 1: grab of you listening to the episode with some great takeaways,

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Speaker 1: and there are plenty of them this time around, and

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Speaker 1: I'll make sure to repost that from the Hurdle account.

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Speaker 1: If you need anything, you can always shoot me an

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Speaker 1: email Emily at hurdle dot us. And if you're in

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Speaker 1: the New York City area, come out to the next

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Speaker 1: Hurdle live taping tomorrow night, October thirtieth at Paragon Sports.

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Speaker 1: I'll be sitting down with the co founder of on Running,

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Speaker 1: Casper Copetti. You can get all the details about the

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Speaker 1: live podcast at Paragon on Hurdle's website hurdle dot us.

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Speaker 2: And that's it. Let's get to hurdling today.

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Speaker 1: I'm sitting here with Randy Hettrick. He is the founder

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Speaker 1: of TRX hi doing I'm doing great, great, I'm doing well.

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Speaker 1: He came in here this morning and he told me

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Speaker 1: about a nice little segment he did with the crew

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Speaker 1: at Fox and Friends.

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Speaker 3: There's nothing to get a morning going like standing out

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Speaker 3: on the curb in New York City with a bunch

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Speaker 3: of morning news folks on the suspension trainer. How do

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Speaker 3: you beat that?

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Speaker 2: I love it?

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Speaker 1: So why don't before we get going, you talk to

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Speaker 1: me a little bit about what the TRX is and

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Speaker 1: does that stand for anything?

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Speaker 3: Well, stands for a lot of things, but it technically

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Speaker 3: stands for total body resistance exercise. Now I know that

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Speaker 3: should be TBRE, but that's not sexy. And being a

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Speaker 3: military guy, I had to have an acronym. So as

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Speaker 3: I was describing to people what this tool did, I

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Speaker 3: would describe it as it's this total body resistance exercise system,

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Speaker 3: and over time that kind of morphed into t r X.

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Speaker 2: I love it. Okay, So what is the TRX.

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Speaker 3: It is in the most literal sense about you know,

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Speaker 3: twelve or thirteen feet of nylon webbing with some handles

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Speaker 3: and some foot cradles and some adjusters. But it started

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Speaker 3: out as a jiu jitsu belt and about six feet

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Speaker 3: of webbing that we used in the seal teams to

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Speaker 3: repair parachute harnesses and for all kinds of different purposes

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Speaker 3: that I had on an overseas deployment. I had kind

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Speaker 3: of created this way to train the climbing muscles, primarily

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Speaker 3: because I was we were on an overseas deployment for

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Speaker 3: an underway shipboarding mission, and you need to be able

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Speaker 3: to train the climbing muscles to get up side of

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Speaker 3: a freighter with eighty or ninety pounds of gear on

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Speaker 3: your back, and there's no way, no gyms, right, And

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Speaker 3: so I had accidentally deployed with my jiu jitsu belt

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Speaker 3: and whipped together this kind of this crazy idea to

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Speaker 3: put it over the top of a door, leaned back

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Speaker 3: against it, and lift my body against gravity. And that

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Speaker 3: was the beginning of it. And then you know what

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Speaker 3: it has become is obviously much more than that. But

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Speaker 3: for your listeners, it's essentially a non elastic harness that

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Speaker 3: allows you to lean back against gravity and pull your

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Speaker 3: body weight up against gravity, and that creates the weight

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Speaker 3: that lets you do hundreds of exercises.

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Speaker 2: So we just learned that you were in avc als.

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Speaker 1: Why don't you talk to me a little bit about

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Speaker 1: how you got into that that.

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Speaker 3: That's a good question. How did I get into that? I?

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Speaker 3: You know, I was a rower in college at USC

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Speaker 3: and I had an itch that needed scratching, and I

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Speaker 3: just got fascinated. I remember taking this anthropology class as

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Speaker 3: a I think I was a sophomore junior, and I

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Speaker 3: was studying this Indian tribe down in the rainforest in

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Speaker 3: Brazil called the Yana Mamo. And I got really interested

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Speaker 3: in this, this passage to manhood, right, this right that

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Speaker 3: they did to their young guys. And I started thinking,

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Speaker 3: when we have something like this, right, we just one

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Speaker 3: day turn eighteen and you're suddenly eligible to vote, eligible

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Speaker 3: to draft. Still can't drink legally, but and I got

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Speaker 3: interested in this idea of, you know, maybe I need

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Speaker 3: to go and test myself. And that kind of combined

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Speaker 3: with a desire and an interest in service, just sort

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Speaker 3: of sent me in the direction of the military. And

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Speaker 3: then because I have this sort of pathology for doing

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Speaker 3: hard things, I then the next thing was, oh, well,

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Speaker 3: which one of the programs has the biggest attrition rate

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Speaker 3: in selection? And that was the sole criteria for leading

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Speaker 3: me to the seal teams, you know, versus the Rangers

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Speaker 3: or the Green Berets or Marine Special Forces. Is eighty

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Speaker 3: five percent attrition during selection, and I thought that sounded

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Speaker 3: pretty cool.

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Speaker 1: I can't even imagine what goes into becoming a Navy Seal,

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Speaker 1: and I feel like people always pitch it all the time,

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Speaker 1: like in the writing that I do in PR It's

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Speaker 1: like try this Navy Seal workout, it's going to be

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Speaker 1: so to off, but.

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Speaker 2: Like, I'm sure that forty five minutes.

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Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, the funny thing about it is there is

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Speaker 3: no quote unquote Navy Seal workout. I always laugh when

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Speaker 3: I see these things too, because one of the one

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Speaker 3: of the hallmarks of the seal teams is that guys

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Speaker 3: they tend to be very mission focused and very unified

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Speaker 3: as a group, but very individualistic in you know, how

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Speaker 3: they do things and what things they like to do.

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Speaker 3: And so the idea that there's a quote unquote Navy

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Speaker 3: Seal workout is just marketing hype. It doesn't happen that way.

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Speaker 3: But in general, seals tend to do a lot of

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Speaker 3: body weight training, right. A lot of them come from

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Speaker 3: backgrounds and you know, things like wrestling and running and

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Speaker 3: swimming and rowing, so they came up through traditions of

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Speaker 3: body weight exercise. But guys do all different kinds of stuff,

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Speaker 3: and you know, the all they have to make sure

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Speaker 3: is that whatever the mission is that they're called to

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Speaker 3: do that day, they're ready.

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Speaker 2: So you went through basic training, Is that how it works?

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Speaker 3: Yeah, there's called BUDS Basic Underwater Demolition SLASH seal training

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Speaker 3: and that's the you know, the infamous six month grueling

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Speaker 3: selection process that's headquartered in Coronado, California, and that gets

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Speaker 3: you to the point at which you then assigned to

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Speaker 3: a seal team. And then at that seal team you

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Speaker 3: join up with an operational unit and you know, do

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Speaker 3: advanced training and become a real sealer.

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Speaker 2: So where was your seal team based out of?

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Speaker 3: My first one was based out of San Diego. I

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Speaker 3: was at Seal Team one, and I spent four years

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Speaker 3: there kind of deploying throughout Southeast Asia and Africa.

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Speaker 1: So you were deploying through Southeast Asia and Africa, and

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Speaker 1: it was when you were in Southeast Asia that you

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Speaker 1: kind of started playing with these jiu jitsu straps.

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Speaker 3: Later on, right when I eventually got the opportunity to

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Speaker 3: go serve at the Special Missions Unit, which does all

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Speaker 3: kinds of crazy stuff around the world, and on one

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Speaker 3: of those deployments over again to Southeas Asia for a

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Speaker 3: counter piracy operation, I was in a little warehouse stashed

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Speaker 3: away trying to figure out how to train the climate muscles.

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Speaker 1: Can you talk to me about what a counter piracy

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Speaker 1: operation is?

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Speaker 3: Yeah, well, I mean, you know, piracy sort of comes

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Speaker 3: in and out of vogue around the world, and it

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Speaker 3: tends to shift venues because what happens is, you know,

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Speaker 3: some of the locals who are underemployed but have some

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Speaker 3: level of skills with boats, decide that the way to

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Speaker 3: do it is to go out and take over these freighters.

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Speaker 3: And you know, sometimes they take the freighter and you know,

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Speaker 3: drive it up a you know, an estuary and reflag

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Speaker 3: it and steal everything off of it and then go

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Speaker 3: try to sell it. Other times they do much worse things,

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Speaker 3: you know, hurt the crew, steal, steal whatever they can

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Speaker 3: take and then take off. And so you know, at

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Speaker 3: various times. I'm sure everybody's seen the heard about the

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Speaker 3: Captain Phillips rescue, which was down around the Horn of Africa,

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Speaker 3: but during my day, it was really it was through

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Speaker 3: the Straits of Malacca where a lot of piracy was happening.

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Speaker 3: And so, you know, you go out and basically reclaim

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Speaker 3: a freighter that's been taken over by pirates.

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Speaker 1: So you decide to throw some jiu jitsu straps up

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Speaker 1: over a doorframe and get to work, and to your

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Speaker 1: ex is born.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, it's not much more glamorous than that I had

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Speaker 3: accidentally deployed with my jiu jitsu blue belt, which had

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Speaker 3: been in my cage back to the command and as I,

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Speaker 3: you know, scooped up some stuff to put put my

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Speaker 3: bags together for the deployment, I accidentally scooped that up

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Speaker 3: under a flight suit and I ended up sitting in

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Speaker 3: this little warehouse along the coast of Malaysia, and I thought, well,

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Speaker 3: what the heck am I going to do with this thing?

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Speaker 3: And you know, we were We had originally gone in

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Speaker 3: and thought we were going to be there for a

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Speaker 3: little while, do the op and get out, and it

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Speaker 3: ended up dragging out, and so we need to stay

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Speaker 3: in shape. And I just came up with this sort

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Speaker 3: of crazy way to take a jiu jitsu belt, tie

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Speaker 3: a knot in it, put that over the top of

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Speaker 3: a door, close the door, lean back, and lift. And

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Speaker 3: that was the beginning of TRX.

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Speaker 2: Did the other guys think you were crazy?

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Speaker 3: Yeah? Well, I mean it's the great thing about the

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Speaker 3: seal teams, right, It's like the most hilarious place that

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Speaker 3: you could ever work. I mean, guys just have this

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Speaker 3: incredible dark humor and they take the piss out of

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Speaker 3: each other non stop, and so yeah, the second that

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Speaker 3: you start, you know, doing anything, somebody's over heckling you.

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Speaker 3: But they're also super resourceful and kind of innovative cats.

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Speaker 3: And so ten minutes later, the same guy that was

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Speaker 3: heckling me is saying, all right, get out of the way,

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Speaker 3: let me try it right, And so, you know, we

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Speaker 3: kind of did a little quick brainstorming and the seeds

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Speaker 3: of TRX were sown.

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Speaker 2: So this is in nineteen ninety seven.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, and you eventually get out of the sea and

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Speaker 1: you decide that you're going to go to business school.

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Speaker 1: Is that because you had this crazy idea or was

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Speaker 1: that just like a natural progression, this is what's next

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Speaker 1: for me.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, No, it didn't. I never thought of this as

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Speaker 3: a business ever. I mean I didn't really until I

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Speaker 3: was well into my first year at business school start

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Speaker 3: thinking about this. I this was just something that you know,

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Speaker 3: I thought was kind of fun. Guys liked it. You know.

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Speaker 3: I had a buddy who was a parachute rigger out

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Speaker 3: in the peril off to repaired parachute. So he was

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Speaker 3: basically a professional seamstress right in the Navy, and he

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Speaker 3: would make him for guys in exchange for a case

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Speaker 3: of beer, and I just thought it was kind of

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Speaker 3: fun and clever that that, you know, guys liked this

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Speaker 3: tool that I created. And you know, then I was

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Speaker 3: promoting out of the field. I was finishing my squadron command.

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Speaker 3: And I never, you know, I never really wanted to

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Speaker 3: be a Navy bureaucrat. That wasn't really my gig. I loved,

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Speaker 3: you know, being with troops in the field. And and

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Speaker 3: so I was, you know, nearing the end of that.

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Speaker 3: Just like guys in the NFL, right you get in

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Speaker 3: your thirties, you can hear the clock ticking, and so

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Speaker 3: I and I also had a baby on the way,

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Speaker 3: and you know, I had watched my buddies really struggle

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Speaker 3: with these deployments, you know, leaving for six months at

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Speaker 3: a time and leaving their two year old behind, and

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Speaker 3: it just looked brutal to me. And I wanted to be,

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Speaker 3: you know, the first of my friends to actually know

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Speaker 3: my kid. So I decided that I would apply to

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Speaker 3: a business school at Stanford, and if I got in,

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Speaker 3: then I'd resign my commission and go become a business

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Speaker 3: school student. And if I didn't, which I thought was

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Speaker 3: very likely that I would not get in, then my

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Speaker 3: you know, the die would be cast and I would

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Speaker 3: finish out twenty and figure out what I was going

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Speaker 3: to do next. And to my everlasting astonishment, they overlooked

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Speaker 3: my math skills and decided they needed to seal in

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Speaker 3: the recruiting poster. So I got it is.

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Speaker 2: There is there like an essay component to this application?

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Speaker 3: Thankfully?

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Speaker 2: Yes, what was your essay about my GEM?

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Speaker 3: Well, I, you know, I can't even remember to tell

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Speaker 3: you the truth, but I know that my GMAT scores,

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Speaker 3: which are primarily math, uh, we're not stellar. So someone

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Speaker 3: there at Stanford had vision.

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Speaker 2: We share a lack of great math skills. We do.

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Speaker 2: I think I got to see institute.

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Speaker 1: The worst class in college was statistics, and I, hands

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Speaker 1: down I think I got.

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Speaker 2: To see it.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, well you can imagine how I felt dropping it.

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Speaker 3: And I'd never taken anything. I'm old enough that you

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Speaker 3: could kind of get out of high school with Algebra

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Speaker 3: two and get into college and take you know, some

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Speaker 3: like business math for dummies, And that was what I

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Speaker 3: what I had done. And then one day I wake

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Speaker 3: up and find myself at Stanford Business School in the

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Speaker 3: equivalent of like third or fourth year statistics I've never

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Speaker 3: taken statistics, and I'm surrounded by all these you know,

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Speaker 3: twenty eight year old whipper snappers who have been you know,

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Speaker 3: working at banking shops. And yeah, it was it was

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Speaker 3: not a fun first year.

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Speaker 1: So you are at Stanford and you said it wasn't

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Speaker 1: until after the first year that you kind of started

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Speaker 1: to think about that thing that you were doing in

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Speaker 1: Southeast Asia.

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Speaker 3: Well, by that point. The funny thing is, by that

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Speaker 3: point I had become just a complete diehard on my

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Speaker 3: straps and I just, first of all, they go everywhere

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Speaker 3: with you, right, and I could do The ability to

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Speaker 3: create exercise movements is almost unlimited anyway the body can move.

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Speaker 3: You hang onto these straps or attach them to your feet,

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Speaker 3: and you load it with your body weight and you

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Speaker 3: can train it. And so I was really, you know,

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Speaker 3: at that point, it was kind of a renaissance for

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Speaker 3: me of discovering all the different stuff I could do

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Speaker 3: on these straps. So I had kind of stopped lifting

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Speaker 3: weights and this was all I was doing. And a

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Speaker 3: buddy of mine had been a running back on the

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Speaker 3: football team there as an undergrad and knew some guys

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Speaker 3: in the athlete training center and got us permission to

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Speaker 3: go out and train out there. So I would go out,

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Speaker 3: and Stanford as this world class athlete training center, but

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Speaker 3: I would go out with these mangy looking straps, hook

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Speaker 3: them up to the squat rack right, and just crush

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Speaker 3: these workouts. And the course of about I don't know,

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Speaker 3: five or six months, literally every one of the coaches

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Speaker 3: at Stanford who would be in there with their teams

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Speaker 3: would come walking over and say like, all right, you

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00:17:09,280 --> 00:17:11,400
Speaker 3: got to tell me what is this thing? And five

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00:17:11,400 --> 00:17:13,359
Speaker 3: minutes later they'd be asking me if i'd make some

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Speaker 3: for their team. And so you know, you hear that

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Speaker 3: enough times you're at business school, even you know somebody

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Speaker 3: with a thick nog and like mine, you start to realize, hey,

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00:17:22,320 --> 00:17:25,840
Speaker 3: maybe there's an opportunity here. And that was when I decided,

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Speaker 3: all right, maybe i'll maybe I'll see if there's legs

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Speaker 3: to this idea.

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Speaker 1: So what happens when you I mean, obviously you're in

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Speaker 1: business school and you're learning how to put together maybe

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Speaker 1: different business proposals and start something like this. But I

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Speaker 1: feel like there are so many people that feel like

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Speaker 1: they have a good idea and they don't even know

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Speaker 1: the first thing about creating this to be something. So

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Speaker 1: how did you go from like, Okay, this is the idea,

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Speaker 1: I'm using it. All the Stanford coaches are like this

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Speaker 1: looks pretty cool to like actually creating our product that

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Speaker 1: would one day be marketable.

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Speaker 3: Well, the question you're asking is a really great one,

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Speaker 3: and it's one of these you know, you can go

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Speaker 3: talk to successful entrepreneurs and almost all of them will

357
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Speaker 3: tell you that people come up to them all the

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Speaker 3: time and say, God, I had that idea, you know,

359
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Speaker 3: and it's I mean, you hear it all the time.

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Speaker 3: But that's the easy part, right, That's one of the

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Speaker 3: things that you learned is an idea, even a good one,

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Speaker 3: is the really easy part. The hard part is the execution.

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Speaker 3: I'm sure when you started thinking about your podcast, right,

364
00:18:24,720 --> 00:18:26,800
Speaker 3: well that's pretty easy. And you even think about, oh,

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Speaker 3: hey I do it up based on you know, entrepreneurship,

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Speaker 3: and you come up with the concept, Well then you

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Speaker 3: got to actually figure out all the pesky little details

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Speaker 3: of well how do I do it? And so yeah,

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Speaker 3: I was at Stanford Business School and I had a

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Speaker 3: luxury right of being surrounded by great professors, a lot

371
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Speaker 3: of a lot of classmates that had you know experience,

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Speaker 3: but even there it was really you know, you're flying

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Speaker 3: at ten thousand feet And turned out that as I

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Speaker 3: found out right after I graduated, you know, I needed

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Speaker 3: to know the grass level stuff like, oh, I need insurance,

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Speaker 3: how do I get supply chain set up? You know,

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Speaker 3: I need an office, I need some warehousing? Geez, how

378
00:19:08,119 --> 00:19:11,160
Speaker 3: do I ship this stuff? All of that And that

379
00:19:11,240 --> 00:19:12,960
Speaker 3: was all sort of learned on the job.

380
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Speaker 1: And I'm sure that you know obviously the way that

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Speaker 1: you designed the first set of straps that those are

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00:19:18,800 --> 00:19:21,560
Speaker 1: not the TRX straps we had today. So talking to

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Speaker 1: me a little bit about the evolution of this, because

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Speaker 1: did you have test groups? Like how did this all

385
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Speaker 1: kind of yeah, ab and flowed?

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Speaker 3: Well, fortunately I knew how so so as a young

387
00:19:32,080 --> 00:19:34,800
Speaker 3: seal officer back in I mean I went into seal

388
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Speaker 3: teams in eighty eight, So eighty.

389
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Speaker 2: Seven, and how old are you at business school?

390
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Speaker 3: I was thirty six, okay, so I was the granddaddy

391
00:19:42,440 --> 00:19:44,639
Speaker 3: of the Stanford Business Wold class of two thousand and

392
00:19:44,680 --> 00:19:48,000
Speaker 3: three by like six or eight years. It was pathetic,

393
00:19:48,400 --> 00:19:50,960
Speaker 3: so the the but I knew how to sew because

394
00:19:51,600 --> 00:19:53,680
Speaker 3: all old seals at least it's Okay.

395
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Speaker 2: It's okay that I'm the granddaddy of business school because

396
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Speaker 2: I have a.

397
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Speaker 3: Mean so I'm a mean sower. Yeah, because back in

398
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Speaker 3: the day right there now, there's these boutique industries that

399
00:20:03,200 --> 00:20:06,440
Speaker 3: have grown up around the special operations guys, and they

400
00:20:06,560 --> 00:20:08,359
Speaker 3: do all this custom gear. Back in the day, we

401
00:20:08,440 --> 00:20:11,879
Speaker 3: got issued whatever the crappy Navy or Marine Corps issue

402
00:20:11,880 --> 00:20:14,879
Speaker 3: stuff was, and you had to basically take a raiser route,

403
00:20:15,680 --> 00:20:18,240
Speaker 3: cut off all the pockets and then refashion the stuff

404
00:20:18,280 --> 00:20:21,040
Speaker 3: that you needed for the seal missions. And so you'd

405
00:20:21,080 --> 00:20:22,800
Speaker 3: pay the rigor at case of beer, and the rigger

406
00:20:22,840 --> 00:20:25,080
Speaker 3: would teach you how to sew, and then you'd go

407
00:20:25,160 --> 00:20:26,960
Speaker 3: out and try it to stitch holes in your fingers

408
00:20:26,960 --> 00:20:29,320
Speaker 3: as you were learning to sew. So I knew I

409
00:20:29,400 --> 00:20:34,080
Speaker 3: knew how to sew pretty well, and that probably lent

410
00:20:34,160 --> 00:20:37,879
Speaker 3: itself to me creating you know, the TRX, because I

411
00:20:38,040 --> 00:20:40,119
Speaker 3: would sit in my garage. In fact, I took the

412
00:20:40,160 --> 00:20:42,439
Speaker 3: summer between my first and second year at business school

413
00:20:43,320 --> 00:20:46,760
Speaker 3: and I had this very chromagnon version of a harness

414
00:20:47,119 --> 00:20:49,760
Speaker 3: that worked, but nobody would have paid any money for it, right,

415
00:20:49,840 --> 00:20:52,480
Speaker 3: So in order to figure out well how to create

416
00:20:52,520 --> 00:20:55,440
Speaker 3: something that someone like you might actually you know, embrace

417
00:20:55,520 --> 00:20:58,920
Speaker 3: and buy. It needed a lot, It needed to adjust,

418
00:20:59,000 --> 00:21:02,000
Speaker 3: It needed to be optimized. It needed softer, you know,

419
00:21:02,080 --> 00:21:04,959
Speaker 3: comfortable handles and all that kind of stuff, right, And

420
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Speaker 3: so I took the summer between my first and second

421
00:21:08,160 --> 00:21:11,960
Speaker 3: year and I probably created I don't know, one hundred

422
00:21:12,000 --> 00:21:15,360
Speaker 3: different prototypes and says I had no money. Rather than

423
00:21:15,400 --> 00:21:17,560
Speaker 3: being able to make one, than if it didn't work,

424
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Speaker 3: throw it away. I'd have to take out the razor blade,

425
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Speaker 3: strip all the pieces back apart and fix whatever it

426
00:21:23,200 --> 00:21:25,720
Speaker 3: was that wasn't working. And so, but that was a

427
00:21:25,760 --> 00:21:29,360
Speaker 3: really great experience because when I talk to entrepreneurs now,

428
00:21:29,920 --> 00:21:32,920
Speaker 3: you know, young entrepreneurs, one of the things I always

429
00:21:32,960 --> 00:21:36,480
Speaker 3: tell them is like, you got to start at the

430
00:21:36,600 --> 00:21:40,280
Speaker 3: very bottom of your organization, Like you have to start

431
00:21:40,320 --> 00:21:43,800
Speaker 3: actually doing this stuff, because if you do, you'll be

432
00:21:44,080 --> 00:21:47,520
Speaker 3: much much much better as you start to succeed and

433
00:21:47,560 --> 00:21:50,199
Speaker 3: you bring people in to take over some of the

434
00:21:50,280 --> 00:21:53,199
Speaker 3: stuff that you know that at least you did, and

435
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Speaker 3: you understand it, and you understand what their challenges are,

436
00:21:55,880 --> 00:21:58,840
Speaker 3: and so you understand how to support them and help

437
00:21:58,880 --> 00:21:59,800
Speaker 3: them make it better.

438
00:22:00,040 --> 00:22:02,480
Speaker 1: One of the best pieces of advice I've ever gotten

439
00:22:02,560 --> 00:22:05,560
Speaker 1: from someone David CK who is on the podcast. He says,

440
00:22:05,720 --> 00:22:07,920
Speaker 1: if you try to do too many things good, you'll

441
00:22:07,920 --> 00:22:10,320
Speaker 1: never do one thing great. So it's like that idea

442
00:22:10,359 --> 00:22:13,960
Speaker 1: that you're talking about about having knowing when.

443
00:22:13,840 --> 00:22:16,080
Speaker 2: Like you might not be the person that should be

444
00:22:16,160 --> 00:22:16,960
Speaker 2: doing X, y Z.

445
00:22:17,119 --> 00:22:19,159
Speaker 1: Like you have people that manage your PR, you have

446
00:22:19,240 --> 00:22:21,840
Speaker 1: people that help you do advertising, you have people that

447
00:22:21,960 --> 00:22:22,880
Speaker 1: even work in HR.

448
00:22:23,000 --> 00:22:25,280
Speaker 2: How how big is your company now? How many employees?

449
00:22:25,560 --> 00:22:28,359
Speaker 3: Well, we've got about one hundred full time and then

450
00:22:28,400 --> 00:22:32,040
Speaker 3: about three hundred and fifty ten ninety nine course instructors

451
00:22:32,040 --> 00:22:33,680
Speaker 3: that teach our education, four.

452
00:22:33,560 --> 00:22:37,600
Speaker 1: Hundred and fifty people around the country internationally that work

453
00:22:37,640 --> 00:22:40,280
Speaker 1: with TRX, and I'm sure there are some of them

454
00:22:40,280 --> 00:22:42,080
Speaker 1: that do a lot of things better than you do.

455
00:22:42,240 --> 00:22:44,560
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, well, I mean and I have so you

456
00:22:44,600 --> 00:22:47,000
Speaker 3: said it was David, That was David C. Yeah, yeah,

457
00:22:47,040 --> 00:22:50,159
Speaker 3: I mean I have a you know, a kind of

458
00:22:50,160 --> 00:22:52,040
Speaker 3: a I don't know what to call it, a little

459
00:22:52,080 --> 00:22:54,800
Speaker 3: framework that I use, a lens that I look through

460
00:22:54,920 --> 00:22:58,520
Speaker 3: to try to sort my to do list. And I

461
00:22:58,560 --> 00:23:01,720
Speaker 3: don't remember who it was who told me to think

462
00:23:01,720 --> 00:23:03,680
Speaker 3: of it this way, but it was brilliant advice that

463
00:23:03,760 --> 00:23:05,119
Speaker 3: like if you if you kind of look at your

464
00:23:05,160 --> 00:23:07,439
Speaker 3: to do list and you say, all right, there's too

465
00:23:07,440 --> 00:23:09,719
Speaker 3: many things here for me to do for starters, But

466
00:23:10,119 --> 00:23:12,680
Speaker 3: if I sort it based on what are the things

467
00:23:12,680 --> 00:23:16,159
Speaker 3: on this list that only I can do? Right, And

468
00:23:16,200 --> 00:23:18,080
Speaker 3: it's a weird way to approach it, but like, hey,

469
00:23:18,119 --> 00:23:21,600
Speaker 3: if I look at something and myself, obviously I might

470
00:23:21,640 --> 00:23:23,120
Speaker 3: be able to do it, but there's two or three

471
00:23:23,160 --> 00:23:26,440
Speaker 3: other guys and gals should go to them, right, Because

472
00:23:26,480 --> 00:23:29,840
Speaker 3: if you constantly keep prioritizing your list based on what

473
00:23:29,880 --> 00:23:32,520
Speaker 3: are what things on this list can only I do?

474
00:23:33,080 --> 00:23:36,400
Speaker 3: It's actually a really clarifying, you know, way to help

475
00:23:36,520 --> 00:23:40,679
Speaker 3: triage and entrepreneurs to do list. And I do that constantly.

476
00:23:40,720 --> 00:23:44,159
Speaker 3: I am I am a crazy delegator, and I you know,

477
00:23:44,200 --> 00:23:46,600
Speaker 3: I try to have really good folks on my team

478
00:23:47,400 --> 00:23:49,960
Speaker 3: and I can, you know, give them a lot of rope.

479
00:23:50,280 --> 00:23:51,919
Speaker 1: This is going to be jumping around a little bit

480
00:23:51,920 --> 00:23:54,119
Speaker 1: because I still want to hear about what it was

481
00:23:54,200 --> 00:23:58,720
Speaker 1: like testing the first he rx's at Stanford. But what

482
00:23:58,800 --> 00:24:00,639
Speaker 1: was it like when you made your friend is higher?

483
00:24:02,520 --> 00:24:06,639
Speaker 3: Well, I mean it was briefly liberating, right because you

484
00:24:06,960 --> 00:24:09,040
Speaker 3: at first you're like, oh, yeah, that's so great. I

485
00:24:09,080 --> 00:24:11,480
Speaker 3: got some help. But then you start to realize, oh,

486
00:24:11,520 --> 00:24:14,040
Speaker 3: wait a minute, Before this gets easier, it's going to

487
00:24:14,119 --> 00:24:16,680
Speaker 3: get harder because I need to onboard this person, right,

488
00:24:16,720 --> 00:24:19,280
Speaker 3: I need to, you know, make sure this person has

489
00:24:19,400 --> 00:24:22,919
Speaker 3: all the supporting equipment that they need, they know what

490
00:24:22,960 --> 00:24:25,720
Speaker 3: their job is about. So that takes time and resources

491
00:24:25,760 --> 00:24:28,719
Speaker 3: before that person then turns around and becomes, you know,

492
00:24:28,880 --> 00:24:32,280
Speaker 3: a leveraged asset that can help you do more with less.

493
00:24:32,800 --> 00:24:37,919
Speaker 3: But yeah, I mean my first hire was actually, you know,

494
00:24:38,040 --> 00:24:42,480
Speaker 3: I had a friend who was waiting tables up the

495
00:24:42,480 --> 00:24:45,760
Speaker 3: street from this pathetic little armpit of an office that

496
00:24:45,840 --> 00:24:50,240
Speaker 3: I had rented, and I needed to start to figure out, Okay,

497
00:24:51,359 --> 00:24:54,280
Speaker 3: I can sit here in pack boxes, but is that

498
00:24:54,359 --> 00:24:57,120
Speaker 3: the best use of my time? Right? And coming back

499
00:24:57,160 --> 00:24:59,320
Speaker 3: to the lens, I just mentioned to a you a

500
00:24:59,320 --> 00:25:01,960
Speaker 3: minute ago, is there somebody else who could do this?

501
00:25:02,080 --> 00:25:05,000
Speaker 3: And so I reached out and said, hey, would you,

502
00:25:05,000 --> 00:25:07,000
Speaker 3: you know, would you like a day job? I know

503
00:25:07,040 --> 00:25:08,640
Speaker 3: you wait tables at night, would you like a day

504
00:25:08,720 --> 00:25:12,159
Speaker 3: job down here answering phones and packing boxes? And I

505
00:25:12,280 --> 00:25:15,399
Speaker 3: was a good friend of mine named Soameshri Summer Rompersad,

506
00:25:15,440 --> 00:25:18,359
Speaker 3: and she said sure, you know, I'd love it. And

507
00:25:18,400 --> 00:25:20,240
Speaker 3: so she came down and started doing some of the

508
00:25:20,280 --> 00:25:23,959
Speaker 3: stuff that I could do but shouldn't, and that allowed

509
00:25:23,960 --> 00:25:25,960
Speaker 3: me to focus on, you know, some of the things

510
00:25:26,000 --> 00:25:27,040
Speaker 3: that only I could.

511
00:25:26,880 --> 00:25:29,800
Speaker 1: Do, the things that only you could do. Probably included

512
00:25:30,280 --> 00:25:34,200
Speaker 1: walking around campus having people try out your straps. Were

513
00:25:34,240 --> 00:25:36,960
Speaker 1: you like the old guy with the weird strops?

514
00:25:37,040 --> 00:25:39,760
Speaker 3: Like, how did you know? I think that's probably fair,

515
00:25:40,080 --> 00:25:42,440
Speaker 3: the old guy with the weird straps. Yeah, hey, I've

516
00:25:42,480 --> 00:25:48,680
Speaker 3: been called worse. I was in my first year when

517
00:25:48,720 --> 00:25:51,200
Speaker 3: I got the idea that all right, I'm gonna i'm

518
00:25:51,240 --> 00:25:53,800
Speaker 3: an experiment with this over the summer, and then if

519
00:25:53,840 --> 00:25:58,520
Speaker 3: I can create some prototypes that seem commercializable, then i'm

520
00:25:58,520 --> 00:26:00,680
Speaker 3: gonna come back my second year and I'm going to

521
00:26:00,760 --> 00:26:03,600
Speaker 3: turn the entire second year into an incubator. And that's

522
00:26:03,640 --> 00:26:05,760
Speaker 3: what I did. So I was like the weird guy

523
00:26:06,359 --> 00:26:09,719
Speaker 3: that was that was walking around, you know, recruiting people

524
00:26:09,760 --> 00:26:14,159
Speaker 3: from my class to every class project for every different course,

525
00:26:14,920 --> 00:26:19,439
Speaker 3: I bent to you know, my will and recruited people

526
00:26:19,480 --> 00:26:21,399
Speaker 3: to help me. So whether it was a marketing class,

527
00:26:21,440 --> 00:26:23,840
Speaker 3: you know, we'd do the brand plan for what would

528
00:26:23,840 --> 00:26:26,760
Speaker 3: become TRX. If it was operations. You know, we'd figure

529
00:26:26,760 --> 00:26:30,919
Speaker 3: out the supply chain plan for the company, and it

530
00:26:30,960 --> 00:26:33,880
Speaker 3: was really that was a luxury, right that I'm grateful

531
00:26:33,920 --> 00:26:34,480
Speaker 3: to have had.

532
00:26:35,320 --> 00:26:38,400
Speaker 2: So you launch the TRX in what year?

533
00:26:40,280 --> 00:26:43,000
Speaker 3: Well, I suppose it depends on how you define launch.

534
00:26:43,320 --> 00:26:47,640
Speaker 3: After I graduated, I went at it, but the first

535
00:26:47,800 --> 00:26:49,560
Speaker 3: you know, so that would have been the second half

536
00:26:49,600 --> 00:26:52,919
Speaker 3: of two thousand and three, but it literally was, you know,

537
00:26:52,920 --> 00:26:55,760
Speaker 3: you walk out the gates of Stanford Business School with

538
00:26:55,800 --> 00:26:58,119
Speaker 3: a diploma and one hundred and fifty thousand bucks an

539
00:26:58,160 --> 00:27:01,840
Speaker 3: MBA debt and no income. And so it really took

540
00:27:01,920 --> 00:27:05,280
Speaker 3: me about a year to figure out, Okay, well, geez,

541
00:27:05,280 --> 00:27:07,719
Speaker 3: I got to have some of these made. Well how

542
00:27:07,720 --> 00:27:09,600
Speaker 3: do I do that? Well, I need some money, you know,

543
00:27:09,640 --> 00:27:13,440
Speaker 3: And I had maybe fifty grand in lifetime savings after

544
00:27:13,480 --> 00:27:15,960
Speaker 3: fourteen years as a seal, and I poured it all

545
00:27:16,000 --> 00:27:19,640
Speaker 3: into the initial you know, the initial productions of some

546
00:27:19,720 --> 00:27:24,720
Speaker 3: working prototypes. I thankfully decided that I had created something

547
00:27:24,760 --> 00:27:28,080
Speaker 3: that was really unique and decided to apply for some

548
00:27:28,119 --> 00:27:31,440
Speaker 3: patent protection. And there went fifty grand.

549
00:27:31,560 --> 00:27:33,399
Speaker 2: I was going to say, because that's pretty expensive.

550
00:27:33,560 --> 00:27:35,199
Speaker 3: Yeah, So the very next thing I had to do

551
00:27:35,320 --> 00:27:37,280
Speaker 3: was figure out how to raise some money and how

552
00:27:37,320 --> 00:27:39,520
Speaker 3: did you do that? Well? I did it in kind

553
00:27:39,520 --> 00:27:45,119
Speaker 3: of the classic, you know, bootstrap finance approach with angel investors.

554
00:27:45,119 --> 00:27:47,879
Speaker 3: I went out and started out with you know, people

555
00:27:47,880 --> 00:27:51,640
Speaker 3: who knew me and friends of theirs who trusted their judgment,

556
00:27:51,920 --> 00:27:53,959
Speaker 3: and you know, it was it was one investor at

557
00:27:53,960 --> 00:27:57,200
Speaker 3: a time, going around and explaining what I the idea

558
00:27:57,240 --> 00:27:59,680
Speaker 3: that I had in mind, and kind of trying to

559
00:28:00,200 --> 00:28:04,119
Speaker 3: at some sort of a reasonable valuation. And then you know,

560
00:28:04,200 --> 00:28:06,080
Speaker 3: over the course of a couple of years, I think

561
00:28:06,119 --> 00:28:09,240
Speaker 3: I raised two or three rounds of about maybe five

562
00:28:09,280 --> 00:28:12,159
Speaker 3: million in total, but it was enough to get us

563
00:28:12,280 --> 00:28:13,280
Speaker 3: up and get us going.

564
00:28:13,480 --> 00:28:16,399
Speaker 1: And the product that you are pushing at this point,

565
00:28:16,480 --> 00:28:18,679
Speaker 1: is that the same TRX that we know today.

566
00:28:19,200 --> 00:28:24,119
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean today's has significantly evolved because obviously, you know,

567
00:28:24,600 --> 00:28:28,800
Speaker 3: any product company has to constantly be looking at materials

568
00:28:28,840 --> 00:28:31,600
Speaker 3: and designs, and for us, a lot of the evolution

569
00:28:31,720 --> 00:28:34,240
Speaker 3: that we've done around the suspension trainer has been the

570
00:28:34,280 --> 00:28:38,840
Speaker 3: supporting ecosystem of content and education, different ways to anchor

571
00:28:38,880 --> 00:28:41,920
Speaker 3: it in different locations. But you know, if you looked

572
00:28:41,920 --> 00:28:45,640
Speaker 3: from twenty yards away, yeah, the suspension trainer that we

573
00:28:45,680 --> 00:28:48,240
Speaker 3: sell today looks pretty much like the one that I

574
00:28:48,320 --> 00:28:51,040
Speaker 3: launched back in I'd call it two thousand and five

575
00:28:51,200 --> 00:28:53,720
Speaker 3: is probably when we first were out.

576
00:28:53,640 --> 00:28:56,680
Speaker 1: In the public, and then by two thousand and nine,

577
00:28:56,760 --> 00:28:59,760
Speaker 1: five years after launch, two, r REX already has more

578
00:28:59,800 --> 00:29:02,840
Speaker 1: than one million users in over sixty countries.

579
00:29:03,040 --> 00:29:07,040
Speaker 3: Well, fortunately for us, we hadn't sold a million straps

580
00:29:07,520 --> 00:29:10,880
Speaker 3: by that point, not even close. But the model that

581
00:29:11,280 --> 00:29:14,800
Speaker 3: I chose to pursue was to make trainers and group

582
00:29:14,840 --> 00:29:19,680
Speaker 3: fitness instructors and strength coaches my business partners. So I

583
00:29:19,800 --> 00:29:22,560
Speaker 3: set out to give them a tool and the knowledge

584
00:29:22,600 --> 00:29:26,600
Speaker 3: and the support to take it into their businesses, use

585
00:29:26,640 --> 00:29:29,920
Speaker 3: it with their personal training clients with the gym members,

586
00:29:30,120 --> 00:29:35,400
Speaker 3: and for athletic trainers with athletes and make those people successful. Right,

587
00:29:35,560 --> 00:29:38,560
Speaker 3: So the stat that you quoted there, you know, I

588
00:29:38,560 --> 00:29:41,200
Speaker 3: don't remember how many gyms we were in by twenty ten,

589
00:29:41,400 --> 00:29:45,760
Speaker 3: but the reach through those gyms, yeah, I'm sure was

590
00:29:45,840 --> 00:29:46,640
Speaker 3: at least a million.

591
00:29:46,800 --> 00:29:49,920
Speaker 1: So how did you first start getting the TRX into

592
00:29:49,960 --> 00:29:51,080
Speaker 1: the gyms themselves?

593
00:29:51,240 --> 00:29:53,360
Speaker 3: Hey, it's funny to be in New York. Every time

594
00:29:53,440 --> 00:29:55,560
Speaker 3: I come to New York, I am reminded of those

595
00:29:55,600 --> 00:29:59,680
Speaker 3: early days because I can remember vividly coming to New

596
00:29:59,760 --> 00:30:03,040
Speaker 3: York with a backpack full of straps. I would have

597
00:30:03,160 --> 00:30:06,280
Speaker 3: called in advance. Right, this was the earliest days of Google.

598
00:30:06,360 --> 00:30:08,520
Speaker 3: You could you could actually go and find I might

599
00:30:08,560 --> 00:30:12,000
Speaker 3: even have used the Yellow Pages right to find the

600
00:30:12,080 --> 00:30:14,480
Speaker 3: local gyms. And I'd call and I'd set up an

601
00:30:14,520 --> 00:30:17,960
Speaker 3: appointment with the fitness manager and say, look, here's here's

602
00:30:18,000 --> 00:30:20,840
Speaker 3: who I am, here's what I'm doing. Could I come

603
00:30:20,880 --> 00:30:22,800
Speaker 3: in and would you give me a half hour with

604
00:30:22,920 --> 00:30:25,280
Speaker 3: you and your staff, and I'll leave a couple of

605
00:30:25,280 --> 00:30:27,880
Speaker 3: them for you, and you know, I promise I will

606
00:30:27,880 --> 00:30:30,800
Speaker 3: not disappoint you. And that was basically my pitch. And

607
00:30:30,880 --> 00:30:33,000
Speaker 3: you know they heard like, all right, this guy, Navy

608
00:30:33,040 --> 00:30:36,880
Speaker 3: Seal Stanford, NBA, like he maybe a knucklehead, but he

609
00:30:36,920 --> 00:30:39,680
Speaker 3: can't be a complete knucklehead. So they give me a

610
00:30:39,760 --> 00:30:41,800
Speaker 3: you know, they'd give me a half hour of Usually

611
00:30:41,880 --> 00:30:43,800
Speaker 3: they'd try to coordinate it when they had their staff

612
00:30:43,840 --> 00:30:46,320
Speaker 3: in for like their monthly training, and they'd give me

613
00:30:46,360 --> 00:30:48,200
Speaker 3: a half hour and I would go in and dance

614
00:30:48,240 --> 00:30:50,840
Speaker 3: for my dinner and you know, hook up six or

615
00:30:50,840 --> 00:30:53,560
Speaker 3: eight straps onto. Usually back then it was like the

616
00:30:53,640 --> 00:30:57,720
Speaker 3: cable crossover tower, right, because we hadn't created the first

617
00:30:57,720 --> 00:30:59,120
Speaker 3: bodyweight training rack yet.

618
00:30:59,160 --> 00:31:01,520
Speaker 1: And when you say and you said, use the word

619
00:31:01,560 --> 00:31:04,400
Speaker 1: anchor before. So these drops need to be like hooked

620
00:31:04,440 --> 00:31:07,320
Speaker 1: and secured onto something so they're stable, so then you

621
00:31:07,360 --> 00:31:08,960
Speaker 1: can use your body weight movement on that.

622
00:31:09,080 --> 00:31:11,040
Speaker 3: Correct. Yeah, they could go over the top of a door.

623
00:31:11,040 --> 00:31:12,480
Speaker 3: We have a door anchor. You just throw over the

624
00:31:12,520 --> 00:31:14,720
Speaker 3: top of a door and close it, lean back against

625
00:31:14,760 --> 00:31:17,520
Speaker 3: the door and lift your body weight. But in the

626
00:31:17,600 --> 00:31:20,360
Speaker 3: gym you need to hook them up to something overhead

627
00:31:20,360 --> 00:31:24,360
Speaker 3: to pull up bar or you know, the selectorized plate

628
00:31:24,480 --> 00:31:28,600
Speaker 3: crossover pulley towers, anything that's you know, wouldn't tip over basically,

629
00:31:28,840 --> 00:31:30,360
Speaker 3: So I'd go in and hook up five or six

630
00:31:30,400 --> 00:31:32,440
Speaker 3: of these and then you know, try to get the

631
00:31:32,480 --> 00:31:35,720
Speaker 3: trainers as quickly as possible to think it was genius

632
00:31:35,760 --> 00:31:38,320
Speaker 3: and sometimes it worked and other times not so much.

633
00:31:38,480 --> 00:31:40,760
Speaker 1: And what was it like for you that that moment

634
00:31:40,800 --> 00:31:42,640
Speaker 1: And I'm sure you did see it time and time

635
00:31:42,680 --> 00:31:45,480
Speaker 1: again when you started to see that the people.

636
00:31:45,160 --> 00:31:48,400
Speaker 2: Around you realized that you had something that was really legit.

637
00:31:49,160 --> 00:31:52,560
Speaker 3: Well, trainers are funny, right, because they're skeptics. I mean

638
00:31:52,600 --> 00:31:55,640
Speaker 3: they're serious skeptics, and with good reason. There's a gazillion,

639
00:31:55,960 --> 00:31:58,640
Speaker 3: you know, fitness gizmos that come out every year, and

640
00:31:58,680 --> 00:32:02,640
Speaker 3: most of them are garbage, but they also are entrepreneurs

641
00:32:02,840 --> 00:32:05,560
Speaker 3: because trainers have to dance for their dinners, right, They

642
00:32:05,600 --> 00:32:07,719
Speaker 3: got to go out and you know, keep getting new

643
00:32:07,760 --> 00:32:11,480
Speaker 3: clients and keep delighting those clients. And so I targeted

644
00:32:11,520 --> 00:32:17,960
Speaker 3: trainers because they were quick adopters to the suspension trainer,

645
00:32:17,960 --> 00:32:19,920
Speaker 3: because it did things that nothing else had ever done.

646
00:32:20,040 --> 00:32:21,640
Speaker 3: And most of them would go like at first, they'd

647
00:32:21,720 --> 00:32:23,240
Speaker 3: kind of give you the stink guy, like, what's this

648
00:32:23,320 --> 00:32:25,600
Speaker 3: guy going to show me? Right? But a few minutes

649
00:32:25,680 --> 00:32:28,200
Speaker 3: later and I would usually I would pick whoever the biggest,

650
00:32:28,200 --> 00:32:31,000
Speaker 3: gnarliest looking guy was in the group, and I'd pull

651
00:32:31,080 --> 00:32:34,320
Speaker 3: him out and let him beast himself one of these things,

652
00:32:34,480 --> 00:32:37,440
Speaker 3: because then I'd immediately have the respect of the other trainers, right,

653
00:32:37,440 --> 00:32:40,800
Speaker 3: It's like, holy cow, if that guy's struggling, then this

654
00:32:40,880 --> 00:32:42,719
Speaker 3: must be real. But then I'd have to back up

655
00:32:42,840 --> 00:32:45,880
Speaker 3: very quickly and show how it was good for a

656
00:32:45,960 --> 00:32:48,800
Speaker 3: sixty five year old grandmother, right, because otherwise the trainers

657
00:32:48,800 --> 00:32:50,440
Speaker 3: would be like, yeah, I don't have any clients.

658
00:32:50,120 --> 00:32:51,520
Speaker 2: That look like him, right.

659
00:32:51,800 --> 00:32:55,040
Speaker 3: So it was this really interesting but again back to

660
00:32:55,120 --> 00:32:59,200
Speaker 3: my initial premise about I'm a much better sales guy,

661
00:33:00,080 --> 00:33:04,200
Speaker 3: much better sales manager, and now an executive over you know,

662
00:33:04,360 --> 00:33:08,280
Speaker 3: sales organization because I actually had to do it. I

663
00:33:08,440 --> 00:33:11,480
Speaker 3: know how hard it is to sell somebody something because

664
00:33:11,560 --> 00:33:13,640
Speaker 3: I was the guy who was out there, you know,

665
00:33:13,720 --> 00:33:15,959
Speaker 3: with people looking and saying, man, that's an ugly baby.

666
00:33:16,000 --> 00:33:18,560
Speaker 3: Like you don't want to have somebody tell your baby's ugly, right,

667
00:33:18,600 --> 00:33:20,480
Speaker 3: And how do you take that on board with a

668
00:33:20,520 --> 00:33:23,760
Speaker 3: smile and then say, yeah, well maybe this baby is

669
00:33:24,240 --> 00:33:26,240
Speaker 3: not that pretty, but let me show you how brilliant

670
00:33:26,280 --> 00:33:31,160
Speaker 3: it is, right and constantly be able to anticipate objections,

671
00:33:31,720 --> 00:33:34,080
Speaker 3: get in front of them and turn that you know,

672
00:33:34,160 --> 00:33:35,600
Speaker 3: skeptic into a customer.

673
00:33:43,040 --> 00:33:46,080
Speaker 1: Quick break from today's episode to give the sponsor Athletic

674
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676
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677
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Speaker 1: crucial for my sanity. Next to my coffee, Athletic Greens

678
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679
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681
00:34:08,880 --> 00:34:13,560
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682
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683
00:34:16,120 --> 00:34:17,560
Speaker 2: There's nothing it doesn't have.

684
00:34:18,320 --> 00:34:21,280
Speaker 1: They're offering a special deal to hurdle listeners for twenty

685
00:34:21,400 --> 00:34:24,480
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686
00:34:24,560 --> 00:34:27,840
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687
00:34:27,920 --> 00:34:31,680
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688
00:34:31,680 --> 00:34:33,200
Speaker 1: dot com slash hurdle.

689
00:34:33,800 --> 00:34:34,799
Speaker 2: Let's get back to it.

690
00:34:43,719 --> 00:34:47,680
Speaker 1: I'm back here sitting with Randy Hetrick, the founder of TRX.

691
00:34:47,960 --> 00:34:50,160
Speaker 1: He's telling me about how he was going into all

692
00:34:50,200 --> 00:34:53,640
Speaker 1: of these gyms, bringing his straps, converting these people to

693
00:34:53,680 --> 00:34:57,880
Speaker 1: be TRX fans, and as successful as that proved to be,

694
00:34:58,440 --> 00:35:01,040
Speaker 1: there are probably some other things that helped get the

695
00:35:01,200 --> 00:35:04,279
Speaker 1: TRX name out there. So when you were young, what

696
00:35:04,400 --> 00:35:07,720
Speaker 1: else and young in age and young as a company

697
00:35:08,000 --> 00:35:11,000
Speaker 1: as opposed to old as I am. Now what you

698
00:35:11,320 --> 00:35:14,759
Speaker 1: mean when the company was young, Randy, what else were

699
00:35:14,760 --> 00:35:16,560
Speaker 1: you guys doing to get the TRX.

700
00:35:16,200 --> 00:35:21,160
Speaker 3: Name out there? Well, we had no money, right, and

701
00:35:21,200 --> 00:35:24,879
Speaker 3: I mean like no money. So because I had sort

702
00:35:24,920 --> 00:35:26,920
Speaker 3: of you know the little bit of life savings that

703
00:35:26,920 --> 00:35:28,960
Speaker 3: I earned as a seal had been deployed very very

704
00:35:29,000 --> 00:35:32,600
Speaker 3: early in this and we kept raising little rounds of

705
00:35:33,120 --> 00:35:37,040
Speaker 3: angel investment capital, but little is the operative term there.

706
00:35:37,080 --> 00:35:40,200
Speaker 3: So we never had money to really go in and

707
00:35:40,440 --> 00:35:44,080
Speaker 3: throw at you know, TV advertisements or anything like that.

708
00:35:45,640 --> 00:35:47,759
Speaker 3: And at the time I thought that was an inconvenience,

709
00:35:47,760 --> 00:35:50,440
Speaker 3: but I think in retrospect it was It was actually

710
00:35:50,440 --> 00:35:52,799
Speaker 3: probably fortunate because one of the things I've learned is

711
00:35:52,800 --> 00:35:57,319
Speaker 3: if you have money, you do some smart things and

712
00:35:57,360 --> 00:36:00,560
Speaker 3: some very dumb things with it. And we didn't have luxury.

713
00:36:00,640 --> 00:36:04,640
Speaker 3: So the way that we went about evangelizing was with

714
00:36:04,680 --> 00:36:08,480
Speaker 3: the trainers and the group fitness instructors and the strength coaches,

715
00:36:09,440 --> 00:36:13,200
Speaker 3: and we built a movement. And that's that's really the

716
00:36:13,560 --> 00:36:16,719
Speaker 3: way that I describe it today. You know, we have

717
00:36:17,840 --> 00:36:22,560
Speaker 3: millions of ambassadors out there around our brand that are

718
00:36:22,640 --> 00:36:25,000
Speaker 3: our customers, you know, but they they fell in love

719
00:36:25,040 --> 00:36:28,160
Speaker 3: with with the brand, and so we started early on,

720
00:36:28,880 --> 00:36:33,120
Speaker 3: you know, really encouraging word of mouth. It was a

721
00:36:33,360 --> 00:36:36,879
Speaker 3: very fundamentally different kind of tool that people hadn't seen.

722
00:36:37,800 --> 00:36:40,560
Speaker 3: It had some glitz and some glamor around it because

723
00:36:40,680 --> 00:36:42,640
Speaker 3: you know, it came from the seal teams, and then

724
00:36:42,920 --> 00:36:47,680
Speaker 3: very early we started getting really marquee level athletes. One

725
00:36:47,719 --> 00:36:51,680
Speaker 3: of my you know, first big blessings of this business

726
00:36:52,000 --> 00:36:56,759
Speaker 3: was becoming pals with a trainer, really great trainer in

727
00:36:56,800 --> 00:37:00,239
Speaker 3: the industry named Todd Durkin, who's subsequently and I've built

728
00:37:00,239 --> 00:37:02,000
Speaker 3: our businesses next to each other and he's become one

729
00:37:02,000 --> 00:37:05,400
Speaker 3: of my best friends. But through him, I met a

730
00:37:05,440 --> 00:37:08,800
Speaker 3: cat who was rehabbing his shoulder because he had torn

731
00:37:08,920 --> 00:37:11,120
Speaker 3: his labor him in his throwing shoulder, a guy named

732
00:37:11,160 --> 00:37:13,840
Speaker 3: Drew Brees who at the time had just been released

733
00:37:13,840 --> 00:37:17,000
Speaker 3: from the Chargers because of his shoulder injury, and Todd

734
00:37:17,080 --> 00:37:22,919
Speaker 3: was helping Drew rehab Well. Turned out, Drew rehabbed pretty well, right,

735
00:37:23,040 --> 00:37:26,040
Speaker 3: and he used the suspension trainer as a big piece

736
00:37:26,080 --> 00:37:28,640
Speaker 3: of what he was doing and became, you know, as

737
00:37:28,640 --> 00:37:30,520
Speaker 3: he was doing it in physical therapy, which a lot

738
00:37:30,560 --> 00:37:33,440
Speaker 3: of people come to our strafts through physical therapists, and

739
00:37:33,480 --> 00:37:35,319
Speaker 3: then they realized, well, this was great when I was hurt,

740
00:37:35,320 --> 00:37:38,080
Speaker 3: It's even better when I'm not hurt. And Drew became

741
00:37:38,120 --> 00:37:40,880
Speaker 3: one of those guys, and you know, he ended up

742
00:37:40,960 --> 00:37:45,280
Speaker 3: becoming just a great pro bono ambassador for the brand

743
00:37:45,480 --> 00:37:47,120
Speaker 3: to the point at which you know, a few years

744
00:37:47,200 --> 00:37:49,120
Speaker 3: later he said, man, I you know, I hope I

745
00:37:49,120 --> 00:37:52,080
Speaker 3: didn't miss my chance to invest and became one of

746
00:37:52,120 --> 00:37:57,759
Speaker 3: our investors, and he was absolutely critical to helping get

747
00:37:57,760 --> 00:38:00,560
Speaker 3: the word out right. So a big evangel like that

748
00:38:00,680 --> 00:38:03,520
Speaker 3: can go a long long way in a short period

749
00:38:03,520 --> 00:38:04,120
Speaker 3: of time for you.

750
00:38:04,680 --> 00:38:08,600
Speaker 1: So you start selling your straps in two thousand and

751
00:38:08,640 --> 00:38:11,680
Speaker 1: eight on Amazon. Also, just to backtrack for a quick second,

752
00:38:11,719 --> 00:38:13,920
Speaker 1: I need to start referring to my friends as cats,

753
00:38:13,960 --> 00:38:16,320
Speaker 1: Like I think that's something that started to say.

754
00:38:16,320 --> 00:38:18,960
Speaker 3: I do have some seal team parlance, right.

755
00:38:19,200 --> 00:38:21,400
Speaker 2: Some cats, I mean, my cats are growing up.

756
00:38:21,480 --> 00:38:25,040
Speaker 1: Later, you're selling on Amazon two thousand and eight, and

757
00:38:25,080 --> 00:38:30,240
Speaker 1: by twenty eleven, that's when knockoff listing start forming.

758
00:38:30,760 --> 00:38:32,879
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it was a little later than that,

759
00:38:33,000 --> 00:38:35,880
Speaker 3: but it was. It was probably the first ones popped

760
00:38:35,960 --> 00:38:39,480
Speaker 3: up in eleven. And honestly, when somebody first told me that, hey,

761
00:38:39,480 --> 00:38:42,840
Speaker 3: I think I think I saw a counterfeit one of

762
00:38:42,840 --> 00:38:46,040
Speaker 3: your straps a counterfeit, I thought you got to be joking, Like,

763
00:38:46,080 --> 00:38:48,200
Speaker 3: there's no way, you know, we can barely sell these things.

764
00:38:48,239 --> 00:38:52,080
Speaker 3: Who wants to knock us off? But what started as

765
00:38:52,160 --> 00:38:55,279
Speaker 3: kind of, you know, a joke became not funny at

766
00:38:55,280 --> 00:38:58,839
Speaker 3: all within a couple of years because what happened was

767
00:38:59,560 --> 00:39:03,879
Speaker 3: the Chinese counterfeiting areas southern China that have a lot

768
00:39:03,880 --> 00:39:08,680
Speaker 3: of stitches. So got turned on to our brand by

769
00:39:08,719 --> 00:39:13,000
Speaker 3: this unscrupulous distributor that we had in Australia who jacked

770
00:39:13,000 --> 00:39:15,920
Speaker 3: the prices way up. We didn't know enough at the time.

771
00:39:16,120 --> 00:39:18,160
Speaker 3: I didn't know enough the time about how to set

772
00:39:18,200 --> 00:39:20,759
Speaker 3: up a distribution agreement, and so we ended up giving

773
00:39:20,760 --> 00:39:24,399
Speaker 3: this guy an exclusive with no performance requirements. And what

774
00:39:24,440 --> 00:39:27,200
Speaker 3: happens in that kind of environment usually is they become

775
00:39:27,239 --> 00:39:31,440
Speaker 3: profit maximizers, cranked the price up, you know, way above

776
00:39:32,000 --> 00:39:34,840
Speaker 3: what anybody else in the world is selling. But because

777
00:39:34,840 --> 00:39:36,960
Speaker 3: they have the exclusive, they can do it. And what

778
00:39:37,000 --> 00:39:40,040
Speaker 3: he did was, I think he had TRX's for sale

779
00:39:40,080 --> 00:39:45,120
Speaker 3: for five hundred bucks and that didn't take long before

780
00:39:45,480 --> 00:39:48,919
Speaker 3: some of the enterprising knockoff guys in China said, hey,

781
00:39:48,960 --> 00:39:51,680
Speaker 3: that's a great target. And so next thing I knew,

782
00:39:51,760 --> 00:39:56,560
Speaker 3: we had this explosion of counterfeit TRX's. I mean, it

783
00:39:56,680 --> 00:39:59,960
Speaker 3: was as bad as Gucci or you know, Louis Vuittant

784
00:40:01,040 --> 00:40:06,239
Speaker 3: or Rolex ever dreamt of and it really became the

785
00:40:06,360 --> 00:40:08,840
Speaker 3: single biggest challenge that I'd ever faced in the business

786
00:40:08,880 --> 00:40:09,880
Speaker 3: within a couple of years.

787
00:40:10,040 --> 00:40:13,520
Speaker 1: So you're a young entrepreneur. You're getting these TRX straps

788
00:40:13,600 --> 00:40:15,719
Speaker 1: out of people are buying them on Amazon, and then

789
00:40:15,719 --> 00:40:19,000
Speaker 1: you hit this massive hurdle, which is how in the

790
00:40:19,080 --> 00:40:21,960
Speaker 1: world do I figure out how to make this stop?

791
00:40:22,040 --> 00:40:24,320
Speaker 1: Because I'm sure at this point you're losing tons of money.

792
00:40:25,239 --> 00:40:25,479
Speaker 3: Yeah.

793
00:40:25,640 --> 00:40:27,680
Speaker 1: Also, I'm sorry to interrupt you, but how much is

794
00:40:27,680 --> 00:40:28,719
Speaker 1: the TRX retail for?

795
00:40:29,320 --> 00:40:32,160
Speaker 3: I think at the time it was probably around one

796
00:40:32,719 --> 00:40:36,239
Speaker 3: nine I'm still in that vicinity, but it depending on

797
00:40:36,280 --> 00:40:39,399
Speaker 3: the model. As I recall, at the time we only

798
00:40:39,440 --> 00:40:42,000
Speaker 3: had one model, and so it was about one hundred

799
00:40:42,000 --> 00:40:45,000
Speaker 3: and forty nine bucks. Which you know, if you just

800
00:40:45,120 --> 00:40:49,480
Speaker 3: look at something, as you know, an assemblage of some

801
00:40:49,680 --> 00:40:53,920
Speaker 3: materials might seem high. But the thing you don't realize

802
00:40:54,239 --> 00:40:57,520
Speaker 3: when you look at a branded product is how much

803
00:40:57,640 --> 00:41:02,640
Speaker 3: money is going into creating education, creating content for the

804
00:41:02,760 --> 00:41:06,680
Speaker 3: end user at you know, brand advertising to make somebody like,

805
00:41:06,719 --> 00:41:09,360
Speaker 3: how do you even see it? And people don't realize

806
00:41:09,400 --> 00:41:11,359
Speaker 3: sometimes when you look at a product and you think, oh,

807
00:41:11,360 --> 00:41:14,279
Speaker 3: that's so expensive for you know, in our case, so

808
00:41:14,320 --> 00:41:17,640
Speaker 3: it's just some webbing and some handles, and it is

809
00:41:17,960 --> 00:41:20,440
Speaker 3: first of all, that stuff isn't actually all that cheap

810
00:41:20,640 --> 00:41:23,720
Speaker 3: if you're buying quality materials. And then secondly, you're putting

811
00:41:23,719 --> 00:41:26,320
Speaker 3: all this money into the market to try to educate

812
00:41:26,360 --> 00:41:28,840
Speaker 3: the marketplace, right, and that money's got to come from somewhere.

813
00:41:29,320 --> 00:41:34,560
Speaker 3: So the counterfeitters prey on that because they they only

814
00:41:34,680 --> 00:41:38,640
Speaker 3: pick brands that are out there really doing well in

815
00:41:38,680 --> 00:41:41,480
Speaker 3: the market, which means spending a lot of money in

816
00:41:41,520 --> 00:41:44,839
Speaker 3: the market, and the counterfeitters come in behind them with

817
00:41:44,920 --> 00:41:48,080
Speaker 3: a knockoff that they can price at, you know, thirty

818
00:41:48,120 --> 00:41:52,040
Speaker 3: percent fifty percent less. They're not spending any money to

819
00:41:53,000 --> 00:41:56,600
Speaker 3: educate the marketplace, right, and usually they use really cheap materials.

820
00:41:56,640 --> 00:41:58,280
Speaker 3: And that's the other thing is, you know, we started

821
00:41:58,280 --> 00:42:00,680
Speaker 3: seeing a lot of people getting hurt around the world

822
00:42:00,680 --> 00:42:05,000
Speaker 3: who had bought counterfeits off of Amazon or the other marketplaces,

823
00:42:05,360 --> 00:42:09,040
Speaker 3: and the counterfeiters use really cheap components. And so you're

824
00:42:09,040 --> 00:42:11,960
Speaker 3: in the middle of you know, a steep leaning back

825
00:42:12,200 --> 00:42:15,000
Speaker 3: row and the next thing you know you experience is

826
00:42:15,080 --> 00:42:18,640
Speaker 3: the carabiner snaps and your head is smashing off the concrete, right.

827
00:42:18,719 --> 00:42:21,239
Speaker 3: And then those would come back to us, and you know,

828
00:42:21,320 --> 00:42:23,880
Speaker 3: people would call irate, telling us, you know, your strap

829
00:42:24,040 --> 00:42:27,440
Speaker 3: just broke. Well, we use we use componentry like you know,

830
00:42:27,640 --> 00:42:31,359
Speaker 3: aircraft grade aluminum. We use nylon that can you know,

831
00:42:31,400 --> 00:42:33,560
Speaker 3: lift twenty five hundred pounds, So we know there's no

832
00:42:33,760 --> 00:42:36,839
Speaker 3: chance that our stuff is going to break, right, And

833
00:42:37,080 --> 00:42:42,040
Speaker 3: that became a huge problem and a hurdle of epic proportions.

834
00:42:42,280 --> 00:42:47,239
Speaker 1: So in these counterfeit TRX straps, I know, I go

835
00:42:47,280 --> 00:42:49,319
Speaker 1: down to Canal Street, I want to buy a fake

836
00:42:49,360 --> 00:42:51,760
Speaker 1: Louis Vuitton and some of them even have the logos

837
00:42:51,760 --> 00:42:54,080
Speaker 1: on them. Were these counterfeits? Did they have the TRX

838
00:42:54,120 --> 00:42:55,480
Speaker 1: brending and everything on them as well?

839
00:42:55,560 --> 00:42:58,279
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, technically to be a counterfeit, it has to

840
00:42:58,600 --> 00:43:02,520
Speaker 3: it has to have the mark, Okay, so you know

841
00:43:02,640 --> 00:43:04,560
Speaker 3: the the Yeah, the ones that you see down in

842
00:43:04,600 --> 00:43:07,920
Speaker 3: Canal Street, right, those are counterfeits. They are positioning themselves

843
00:43:08,120 --> 00:43:12,480
Speaker 3: as Rolex right, you know, Cardier Louis Vuitton. Same thing

844
00:43:12,520 --> 00:43:14,800
Speaker 3: happened with us. And what was funny is the package

845
00:43:14,840 --> 00:43:18,040
Speaker 3: at the time that we had had my back on

846
00:43:18,080 --> 00:43:20,440
Speaker 3: the cover, right, because I was you know, early on

847
00:43:20,560 --> 00:43:22,919
Speaker 3: in the forty models, so I was in pretty good shape.

848
00:43:22,960 --> 00:43:25,560
Speaker 3: So I said, all right, I'll double in for this,

849
00:43:26,239 --> 00:43:30,000
Speaker 3: and it was just it was so you know, irritating.

850
00:43:30,040 --> 00:43:33,400
Speaker 3: You can only imagine that you see these cheap, crappy

851
00:43:33,480 --> 00:43:36,520
Speaker 3: knockoffs coming out of China positioned as tear exits with

852
00:43:36,560 --> 00:43:39,239
Speaker 3: your own image on them, right, it was really it

853
00:43:39,280 --> 00:43:43,600
Speaker 3: was really a frustrating experience. And you don't know what

854
00:43:43,680 --> 00:43:47,959
Speaker 3: to do because you don't have money to go file lawsuits.

855
00:43:48,120 --> 00:43:50,880
Speaker 3: And even if you did, this stuff was all coming

856
00:43:50,920 --> 00:43:53,000
Speaker 3: out of these little shops in China. They're not going

857
00:43:53,080 --> 00:43:55,600
Speaker 3: to respond to a lawsuit. They disappear as quickly as

858
00:43:55,640 --> 00:43:59,760
Speaker 3: they appeared. But meanwhile, on the in the dot com,

859
00:44:00,239 --> 00:44:05,440
Speaker 3: you know, e commerce environment, you have uninitiated potential customers

860
00:44:05,440 --> 00:44:08,319
Speaker 3: that are coming. They're looking at an image. The counterfeiters

861
00:44:08,320 --> 00:44:11,719
Speaker 3: would rip our images off of our website and put

862
00:44:11,719 --> 00:44:16,040
Speaker 3: them on their advertisements. So to the uninitiated customer, oh, well,

863
00:44:16,080 --> 00:44:17,680
Speaker 3: why would I pay one hundred and fifty bucks for

864
00:44:17,719 --> 00:44:20,279
Speaker 3: this one when I can pay ninety nine for what

865
00:44:20,400 --> 00:44:23,240
Speaker 3: looks to be the same thing, right, And it really

866
00:44:23,280 --> 00:44:28,520
Speaker 3: began to just hammer our online sales. And you know,

867
00:44:28,560 --> 00:44:30,759
Speaker 3: we were in the earliest stages of trying to do

868
00:44:31,320 --> 00:44:33,879
Speaker 3: club retail and the clubs would say, well, why are

869
00:44:33,880 --> 00:44:36,600
Speaker 3: you pricing you, you know, yours at one hundred and

870
00:44:36,640 --> 00:44:39,279
Speaker 3: fifty when I can go online on Amazon and buy

871
00:44:39,280 --> 00:44:42,400
Speaker 3: one for ninety. It was a it was a real

872
00:44:42,440 --> 00:44:44,600
Speaker 3: problem that we had to figure out how to solve.

873
00:44:44,800 --> 00:44:48,799
Speaker 1: So obviously, as a seal, working out has been a

874
00:44:48,920 --> 00:44:52,000
Speaker 1: huge part of your being for a very long time now.

875
00:44:52,120 --> 00:44:54,520
Speaker 1: I'm sure you know when things get hard for me,

876
00:44:54,680 --> 00:44:57,400
Speaker 1: especially God, I feel like whenever I'm going through a

877
00:44:57,400 --> 00:44:59,200
Speaker 1: major hurdle in life, I like start training for a

878
00:44:59,200 --> 00:45:01,760
Speaker 1: new marathon, like, oh, I should just start running my

879
00:45:01,960 --> 00:45:03,120
Speaker 1: brains out, and this is.

880
00:45:03,040 --> 00:45:04,560
Speaker 3: Going to help me get the rest stress away.

881
00:45:04,719 --> 00:45:07,840
Speaker 1: So for you, like, how how did you mentally handle

882
00:45:07,880 --> 00:45:09,719
Speaker 1: this hurdle? And that's what I want to tackle first,

883
00:45:09,760 --> 00:45:11,920
Speaker 1: and then of course I want to hear about, you know,

884
00:45:11,960 --> 00:45:14,279
Speaker 1: in your business, how you kind of took action.

885
00:45:15,920 --> 00:45:23,759
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, for me, exercise is my uh meditation, right,

886
00:45:23,800 --> 00:45:28,160
Speaker 3: I mean, it is my sanity maker. And that's part

887
00:45:28,160 --> 00:45:31,280
Speaker 3: of why I decided to go into this line of work,

888
00:45:31,560 --> 00:45:35,400
Speaker 3: is you know, I loved I really loved the idea

889
00:45:35,760 --> 00:45:41,000
Speaker 3: of an entrepreneurial venture. I loved working out, and I

890
00:45:41,040 --> 00:45:43,800
Speaker 3: had created this tool that you know, some high performance

891
00:45:43,880 --> 00:45:46,960
Speaker 3: guys thought was pretty cool. So that was sort of

892
00:45:47,000 --> 00:45:50,719
Speaker 3: the the ingredients, and I decided, well, you know, if

893
00:45:50,719 --> 00:45:52,719
Speaker 3: I'm gonna, if I'm going to pick any industry to

894
00:45:52,760 --> 00:45:55,200
Speaker 3: go work in outside of the seal teams, I had

895
00:45:55,200 --> 00:45:57,480
Speaker 3: to do something in physical fitness because I love it

896
00:45:57,960 --> 00:46:01,920
Speaker 3: and and that's that was a fortunate choice because I

897
00:46:01,960 --> 00:46:05,680
Speaker 3: think that the stresses of being a startup entrepreneur are

898
00:46:05,840 --> 00:46:09,719
Speaker 3: roughly equivalent in any segment of the economy. Right, It's

899
00:46:09,719 --> 00:46:14,520
Speaker 3: not that one one entrepreneur has, you know, has more

900
00:46:14,600 --> 00:46:16,600
Speaker 3: stress than another. I think I think we all deal

901
00:46:16,640 --> 00:46:20,719
Speaker 3: with with relatively similar demands. But one of the things

902
00:46:20,760 --> 00:46:23,160
Speaker 3: that was different from me is part of my job

903
00:46:23,280 --> 00:46:25,360
Speaker 3: was working out, right, So I would whether I was

904
00:46:25,400 --> 00:46:28,479
Speaker 3: out in the field doing sales presentations and demoing, whether

905
00:46:28,520 --> 00:46:31,000
Speaker 3: I was developing content with you know, the trainers that

906
00:46:31,040 --> 00:46:34,319
Speaker 3: I brought in to help build workouts for the for

907
00:46:34,360 --> 00:46:36,960
Speaker 3: the end users, I was constantly working out and I

908
00:46:37,040 --> 00:46:42,120
Speaker 3: think that really helped keep me sane during some of

909
00:46:42,160 --> 00:46:45,479
Speaker 3: these some of these challenges that are inevitable when you're

910
00:46:45,560 --> 00:46:46,440
Speaker 3: starting a company.

911
00:46:46,600 --> 00:46:48,880
Speaker 2: What did your fitness your team look like at this time?

912
00:46:49,920 --> 00:46:52,160
Speaker 3: Well, I mean it's pretty much been. I'm a creature

913
00:46:52,160 --> 00:46:54,960
Speaker 3: of habit so so I you know, I've been doing

914
00:46:55,000 --> 00:46:59,160
Speaker 3: more or less the same thing for almost twenty years now,

915
00:46:59,320 --> 00:47:01,680
Speaker 3: you know, ever since I created my straps, I you know,

916
00:47:01,680 --> 00:47:04,560
Speaker 3: two or three days a week minimum if I can get,

917
00:47:04,640 --> 00:47:08,040
Speaker 3: if I can get you know, four days in on

918
00:47:08,200 --> 00:47:11,200
Speaker 3: the straps. Now we have you know, we expanded our

919
00:47:11,200 --> 00:47:12,839
Speaker 3: product line over the years, so we have a whole

920
00:47:12,960 --> 00:47:16,560
Speaker 3: range of basically every functional training tool that you would

921
00:47:16,560 --> 00:47:21,959
Speaker 3: want to use, from kettlebells to slam balls, med balls, strength.

922
00:47:21,640 --> 00:47:24,120
Speaker 2: Bands, RX brandeds all this time.

923
00:47:24,200 --> 00:47:26,160
Speaker 3: We do all of that now, okay. And we started

924
00:47:26,160 --> 00:47:29,600
Speaker 3: doing that really because our big commercial accounts, our big clubs,

925
00:47:29,960 --> 00:47:32,560
Speaker 3: were coming to us saying, look, why are you making

926
00:47:32,600 --> 00:47:34,520
Speaker 3: me go I love your brand, I love your education.

927
00:47:34,640 --> 00:47:37,759
Speaker 3: Why are you making me go to different catalogs to

928
00:47:37,800 --> 00:47:40,360
Speaker 3: get my balls or my bands or why don't you

929
00:47:40,400 --> 00:47:42,560
Speaker 3: just make this stuff? And at first, you know, I

930
00:47:42,600 --> 00:47:47,800
Speaker 3: had this sort of you know, jobs and affinity for innovation,

931
00:47:47,920 --> 00:47:49,719
Speaker 3: and I was like, no, we're not doing anything that's

932
00:47:49,760 --> 00:47:53,759
Speaker 3: not fundamentally innovative, right, But when you hear your customers

933
00:47:53,800 --> 00:47:55,799
Speaker 3: ask enough times and they say, look, if you make

934
00:47:55,840 --> 00:47:58,200
Speaker 3: it all buy it. Then you got to kind of

935
00:47:58,239 --> 00:48:00,919
Speaker 3: put your common sense hat on and all right, we'll

936
00:48:00,920 --> 00:48:05,400
Speaker 3: do innovation every couple of years, but in between, let's

937
00:48:05,719 --> 00:48:09,680
Speaker 3: let's produce great gear that our customers need. And so,

938
00:48:09,680 --> 00:48:12,480
Speaker 3: so my my routine, you know, has been a few

939
00:48:12,520 --> 00:48:17,000
Speaker 3: days a week. I'm doing functional training, sometimes high intensity

940
00:48:17,400 --> 00:48:20,800
Speaker 3: sometimes you know, heavier loads. So I kind of I

941
00:48:20,880 --> 00:48:24,200
Speaker 3: kind of bounce back and forth between high intensity interval

942
00:48:24,280 --> 00:48:29,040
Speaker 3: training and you know, more strength based slower stuff. And

943
00:48:29,080 --> 00:48:31,680
Speaker 3: then I do you know, I was a Rower in college,

944
00:48:31,719 --> 00:48:33,880
Speaker 3: so I've been living on the concept too, you know,

945
00:48:34,080 --> 00:48:38,320
Speaker 3: Rower forever since before it had a digital you know, readout,

946
00:48:38,600 --> 00:48:41,480
Speaker 3: and I run, I keep you know, I'm not a

947
00:48:41,560 --> 00:48:45,040
Speaker 3: I no longer am a long distance guy because as

948
00:48:45,040 --> 00:48:49,560
Speaker 3: a Clydesdale over fifty, you know, anything above ten miles

949
00:48:49,719 --> 00:48:53,120
Speaker 3: starts to make you pay more than it gives.

950
00:48:53,520 --> 00:48:56,000
Speaker 2: A Clydesdale sounds so special.

951
00:48:55,560 --> 00:48:58,800
Speaker 3: Though I don't know how. It doesn't feel very special

952
00:48:58,840 --> 00:49:01,719
Speaker 3: when I'm clopping my way down down the road. But

953
00:49:01,840 --> 00:49:04,960
Speaker 3: you know, so I do. I like to mix it

954
00:49:05,040 --> 00:49:07,799
Speaker 3: up and I do different stuff. I'll go jump in

955
00:49:07,840 --> 00:49:10,040
Speaker 3: on a soul cycle spin class. I do a lot

956
00:49:10,040 --> 00:49:13,680
Speaker 3: of hot yoga, love a good hot yoga. Yeah, me too.

957
00:49:14,080 --> 00:49:17,320
Speaker 1: So you are doing all the things and you're trying

958
00:49:17,360 --> 00:49:21,000
Speaker 1: to sweat out this stress, and in the meantime, you've

959
00:49:21,000 --> 00:49:25,200
Speaker 1: got to figure out how to get these counterfeitters to stop.

960
00:49:25,719 --> 00:49:27,319
Speaker 2: So how does one even do that?

961
00:49:28,080 --> 00:49:30,560
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's one of these there's no books for this.

962
00:49:30,880 --> 00:49:33,080
Speaker 3: Right you can go talk to a law firm and

963
00:49:33,080 --> 00:49:37,120
Speaker 3: they'll say, oh, well, we'll sue them. That gets you nowhere.

964
00:49:37,520 --> 00:49:41,880
Speaker 3: In most cases, right litigation is generally it's a last resort,

965
00:49:42,000 --> 00:49:45,440
Speaker 3: and for us, we ultimately did have to bring a

966
00:49:45,520 --> 00:49:49,200
Speaker 3: lawsuit because what happened was, you know, I built a

967
00:49:49,239 --> 00:49:52,880
Speaker 3: relationship with the folks at Amazon uh and became one

968
00:49:52,920 --> 00:49:56,480
Speaker 3: of their brand protection partners, so one of the brands

969
00:49:56,520 --> 00:50:00,120
Speaker 3: that works very closely with Amazon to help try to

970
00:50:00,200 --> 00:50:05,440
Speaker 3: keep the platform free of fraud. But the challenge is

971
00:50:05,520 --> 00:50:09,080
Speaker 3: the counterfeitters morphed and they realized if I put this

972
00:50:09,120 --> 00:50:12,160
Speaker 3: guy's trademark on my product, you know, Amazon and the

973
00:50:12,200 --> 00:50:16,160
Speaker 3: others will take it down. If I don't, somehow my product,

974
00:50:16,200 --> 00:50:20,200
Speaker 3: my knockoff stays up. And that's because the difference between

975
00:50:20,200 --> 00:50:24,920
Speaker 3: a utility patent and a trademark is a lot and

976
00:50:25,000 --> 00:50:28,799
Speaker 3: a utility patent. You know, litigation around a patent takes

977
00:50:28,840 --> 00:50:31,320
Speaker 3: a lot of money and a lot of expertise and

978
00:50:31,440 --> 00:50:35,040
Speaker 3: involves mechanical engineers, and it's a it's a drawn out process.

979
00:50:35,160 --> 00:50:38,120
Speaker 3: But eventually we had to bring suit against one of

980
00:50:38,160 --> 00:50:41,960
Speaker 3: the US based infringers to go win a case that

981
00:50:42,000 --> 00:50:45,000
Speaker 3: then I could take to Amazon and Amazon would enforce

982
00:50:45,120 --> 00:50:47,719
Speaker 3: across their platform. And that's ultimately how we did it.

983
00:50:48,040 --> 00:50:52,560
Speaker 1: And so in twenty and fourteen, this all kind of came.

984
00:50:53,239 --> 00:50:55,200
Speaker 3: We brought the suit in fourteen.

985
00:50:54,880 --> 00:50:58,640
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, we tried to take three years. Wow, so

986
00:50:58,719 --> 00:51:01,480
Speaker 1: this is like not to long ago. You came out

987
00:51:01,560 --> 00:51:01,919
Speaker 1: on top.

988
00:51:02,120 --> 00:51:05,520
Speaker 2: Yeah last spring, So spoiler alert, and this is all

989
00:51:05,520 --> 00:51:09,319
Speaker 2: said and done, you are then awarded six point eight

990
00:51:09,480 --> 00:51:11,040
Speaker 2: million dollars in damages.

991
00:51:11,719 --> 00:51:15,239
Speaker 3: Yeah that was in lost profits. To think about that, right,

992
00:51:15,400 --> 00:51:19,320
Speaker 3: So you know that implied something around twenty to twenty

993
00:51:19,320 --> 00:51:22,840
Speaker 3: five million in lost sales over a four year period

994
00:51:22,960 --> 00:51:25,880
Speaker 3: to one infringer. So that just you know, what that

995
00:51:26,360 --> 00:51:28,520
Speaker 3: told us was, Wow, we waited too long to bring

996
00:51:28,560 --> 00:51:33,239
Speaker 3: this suit because we've been hemorrhaging you know, a huge

997
00:51:33,280 --> 00:51:36,759
Speaker 3: amount of sales to these knockoff guys, and so we

998
00:51:36,760 --> 00:51:38,440
Speaker 3: were really we were very glad that we brought it

999
00:51:38,520 --> 00:51:42,200
Speaker 3: now unfortunately part of a In most of these cases,

1000
00:51:42,680 --> 00:51:45,320
Speaker 3: the victory is pyrrhic, meaning, you know, you spend a

1001
00:51:45,320 --> 00:51:47,200
Speaker 3: lot of money to get this victory, and the second

1002
00:51:47,239 --> 00:51:50,239
Speaker 3: you get it, they declare bankruptcy. And that is what

1003
00:51:50,400 --> 00:51:52,960
Speaker 3: happened in our case. You know, these these bad actors

1004
00:51:53,080 --> 00:51:57,839
Speaker 3: just instantly folded. But I knew that was coming, and

1005
00:51:57,880 --> 00:52:00,960
Speaker 3: that was part of the strategy to create the partnership

1006
00:52:00,960 --> 00:52:04,120
Speaker 3: with Amazon, because Amazon then did what I think was

1007
00:52:04,160 --> 00:52:05,839
Speaker 3: a really great thing, and they said, hey, I mean,

1008
00:52:05,960 --> 00:52:10,000
Speaker 3: I think Amazon is serious about trying to have a clean,

1009
00:52:10,760 --> 00:52:14,879
Speaker 3: uh you know, credible platform. It's just a hard thing

1010
00:52:14,920 --> 00:52:17,839
Speaker 3: to do in the age of online fraudsters. I mean,

1011
00:52:17,840 --> 00:52:20,080
Speaker 3: these you know, these cats are the ones that will

1012
00:52:20,320 --> 00:52:21,759
Speaker 3: you know, they probably when they were kids, they were

1013
00:52:21,760 --> 00:52:23,120
Speaker 3: the ones that cut in the front of the line,

1014
00:52:23,200 --> 00:52:25,759
Speaker 3: right and then all throughout their life they are these

1015
00:52:25,800 --> 00:52:28,879
Speaker 3: these people that are just trying to figure out how

1016
00:52:28,920 --> 00:52:30,720
Speaker 3: to cheat their way to the front of the line.

1017
00:52:30,920 --> 00:52:36,319
Speaker 3: And the online marketplace is a great haven for fraudsters,

1018
00:52:37,200 --> 00:52:40,200
Speaker 3: and so it's tough, you know, And I empathize as

1019
00:52:40,200 --> 00:52:43,640
Speaker 3: crazy as Amazon makes me. Sometimes I also empathize with

1020
00:52:43,760 --> 00:52:46,759
Speaker 3: the you know, the magnitude of what they're trying to

1021
00:52:46,800 --> 00:52:47,279
Speaker 3: grapple with.

1022
00:52:47,560 --> 00:52:49,759
Speaker 1: And now a year later to your ex sales are

1023
00:52:49,800 --> 00:52:52,720
Speaker 1: I think I read up one hundred percent year over year.

1024
00:52:52,640 --> 00:52:55,040
Speaker 3: In the online channels. It's more than that. Yeah, So

1025
00:52:55,080 --> 00:52:59,160
Speaker 3: it tells you. It tells you how big a piece

1026
00:52:59,200 --> 00:53:00,800
Speaker 3: of flesh those as we're taking.

1027
00:53:01,160 --> 00:53:03,360
Speaker 1: I've got to ask you, you know, you were thirty

1028
00:53:03,480 --> 00:53:06,720
Speaker 1: six in business school, and I feel like, having turned

1029
00:53:06,719 --> 00:53:10,680
Speaker 1: thirty recently myself, I feel like there's so much stress

1030
00:53:10,840 --> 00:53:13,640
Speaker 1: to like, know what you're going to do, what your

1031
00:53:13,680 --> 00:53:16,680
Speaker 1: life's purpose is thirty Like, what do you have figured out?

1032
00:53:16,840 --> 00:53:20,080
Speaker 2: Were you really scared at thirty six in business school?

1033
00:53:20,239 --> 00:53:23,080
Speaker 2: Not being one hundred percent about the direction you were

1034
00:53:23,080 --> 00:53:23,480
Speaker 2: going to go?

1035
00:53:24,080 --> 00:53:26,440
Speaker 3: The hurdle that I faced, right and when in business

1036
00:53:26,480 --> 00:53:30,560
Speaker 3: school was a little different. I came from a pretty

1037
00:53:31,000 --> 00:53:35,480
Speaker 3: self congratulatory place. I was a squadron commander, a special

1038
00:53:35,520 --> 00:53:39,080
Speaker 3: missions unit, you know, like leading the big squadron of

1039
00:53:39,120 --> 00:53:41,239
Speaker 3: the most elite commandos that ever walked the face of

1040
00:53:41,239 --> 00:53:44,759
Speaker 3: the earth. And I went from that to literally the

1041
00:53:45,080 --> 00:53:48,560
Speaker 3: bottom of the curve in the first god, I don't

1042
00:53:48,600 --> 00:53:52,520
Speaker 3: know thirty exams that I took at Stanford. I mean,

1043
00:53:52,520 --> 00:53:55,279
Speaker 3: I wasn't near the bottom like I was it and

1044
00:53:55,880 --> 00:54:01,239
Speaker 3: that's a really hard adjustment for somebody to walk off of, essentially,

1045
00:54:01,360 --> 00:54:05,360
Speaker 3: you know, an elite pro sports team right in the

1046
00:54:05,400 --> 00:54:09,200
Speaker 3: game of warfare, and then just find yourself just struggling

1047
00:54:09,239 --> 00:54:11,759
Speaker 3: because you don't have the skills. And it was it

1048
00:54:11,800 --> 00:54:14,359
Speaker 3: was actually a great experience for me in retrospect because

1049
00:54:14,360 --> 00:54:15,759
Speaker 3: it was the first time in my life that I

1050
00:54:15,800 --> 00:54:19,080
Speaker 3: ever actually came to the realization that, you know, I

1051
00:54:19,200 --> 00:54:21,680
Speaker 3: used to think I had this kind of Darwinian approach

1052
00:54:21,719 --> 00:54:23,960
Speaker 3: that like, the guy's not successful, it's because he's not trying,

1053
00:54:24,440 --> 00:54:26,360
Speaker 3: and then I found myself in this place where I

1054
00:54:26,440 --> 00:54:27,840
Speaker 3: just didn't have the skills. It would have been like

1055
00:54:27,920 --> 00:54:31,480
Speaker 3: dropping into a fifth year Mandarin class having never taken

1056
00:54:31,840 --> 00:54:35,879
Speaker 3: Chinese before. Right, no matter how hard you work, sometimes

1057
00:54:36,360 --> 00:54:39,560
Speaker 3: it's it's just a it's just a tough slog. And

1058
00:54:39,680 --> 00:54:41,839
Speaker 3: I think that was really valuable for me because it

1059
00:54:41,880 --> 00:54:46,200
Speaker 3: was a sort of a dose of humility that maybe

1060
00:54:46,239 --> 00:54:49,200
Speaker 3: I lacked. But I was never really afraid of where

1061
00:54:49,239 --> 00:54:52,640
Speaker 3: I was going because I knew that I was a

1062
00:54:52,680 --> 00:54:56,000
Speaker 3: pretty capable character and that if I had a high

1063
00:54:56,040 --> 00:54:59,160
Speaker 3: pain threshold and thick skin, and if I just sort of,

1064
00:54:59,360 --> 00:55:01,799
Speaker 3: you know, kept my head down, my feet moving, I

1065
00:55:01,800 --> 00:55:03,160
Speaker 3: would get where I wanted to go.

1066
00:55:03,360 --> 00:55:05,879
Speaker 1: I read a quote yesterday a friend of mine had

1067
00:55:05,880 --> 00:55:07,799
Speaker 1: put up, and it said, if you fall on your face,

1068
00:55:07,840 --> 00:55:09,320
Speaker 1: at least you're still moving forward.

1069
00:55:09,400 --> 00:55:12,040
Speaker 3: Fall forward, always fall forward.

1070
00:55:11,800 --> 00:55:12,760
Speaker 2: Always fall forward.

1071
00:55:12,960 --> 00:55:16,680
Speaker 1: You said before that you're company one hundred employees three

1072
00:55:16,760 --> 00:55:22,320
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty, not technical employees, but w nine employees. Yeah, contract,

1073
00:55:22,400 --> 00:55:25,680
Speaker 1: contract employees. Thank you educators. You know that's a lot

1074
00:55:25,719 --> 00:55:29,400
Speaker 1: of people to lead. So what would you say are

1075
00:55:29,520 --> 00:55:32,760
Speaker 1: some of the best qualities that make you a good leader?

1076
00:55:34,160 --> 00:55:35,640
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, I guess you'd have to ask my

1077
00:55:35,680 --> 00:55:37,960
Speaker 3: team how good a leader I am. But the the

1078
00:55:38,480 --> 00:55:41,160
Speaker 3: you know, the good news is I have a lot

1079
00:55:41,200 --> 00:55:42,640
Speaker 3: of folks on the team that have been with me

1080
00:55:42,680 --> 00:55:45,120
Speaker 3: for a long time. And you don't usually get that

1081
00:55:45,160 --> 00:55:47,040
Speaker 3: if you're not doing at least a few things right.

1082
00:55:47,800 --> 00:55:50,240
Speaker 3: And I hear over and over and over again across

1083
00:55:50,320 --> 00:55:53,600
Speaker 3: the industry, like, man, I love working with your people,

1084
00:55:53,960 --> 00:55:56,879
Speaker 3: And that's really the best compliment you could ever give

1085
00:55:56,920 --> 00:55:59,640
Speaker 3: to a to a leader. I think I believe that

1086
00:55:59,680 --> 00:56:02,280
Speaker 3: the two most important things in a in a teammate

1087
00:56:02,760 --> 00:56:07,560
Speaker 3: in any venture or integrity and accountability, because those two traits,

1088
00:56:09,400 --> 00:56:14,200
Speaker 3: you know, are priceless, and if you don't have them both,

1089
00:56:14,880 --> 00:56:17,560
Speaker 3: you're going to be fundamentally limited in how much you

1090
00:56:17,600 --> 00:56:19,880
Speaker 3: can contribute to a team. You know. Obviously, the integrity

1091
00:56:19,880 --> 00:56:22,400
Speaker 3: piece is I don't I'm not. I'm not one of

1092
00:56:22,400 --> 00:56:25,920
Speaker 3: those guys that thinks integrity is binary. You have it

1093
00:56:26,040 --> 00:56:28,120
Speaker 3: or you don't. I think if you're a if you're

1094
00:56:28,160 --> 00:56:32,040
Speaker 3: a person that cares about doing the right thing, and

1095
00:56:32,080 --> 00:56:34,839
Speaker 3: that you know when you make a mistake, which, by

1096
00:56:34,880 --> 00:56:37,160
Speaker 3: the way, we all make, and we make them of

1097
00:56:37,200 --> 00:56:40,040
Speaker 3: all different kinds. Sometimes it's you know, a mistake in

1098
00:56:40,680 --> 00:56:43,960
Speaker 3: judgment or or a technical mistake. Sometimes it's a mistake

1099
00:56:43,960 --> 00:56:46,440
Speaker 3: in character. That's we're for humans, that's what we do.

1100
00:56:46,480 --> 00:56:50,080
Speaker 3: We screw things up and you know. But but the

1101
00:56:50,080 --> 00:56:53,759
Speaker 3: integrity that I'm looking for is that inner voice that

1102
00:56:53,800 --> 00:56:55,880
Speaker 3: when you make one of these mistakes or you you

1103
00:56:56,160 --> 00:56:59,160
Speaker 3: you underperform what you know your capability is, you're ready

1104
00:56:59,160 --> 00:57:02,960
Speaker 3: to like your leg off to get a chance to

1105
00:57:02,960 --> 00:57:05,600
Speaker 3: do better next time. Because if somebody has that, well,

1106
00:57:05,600 --> 00:57:07,920
Speaker 3: then you can build on that. Right and then accountability

1107
00:57:07,960 --> 00:57:12,520
Speaker 3: is the other one. Without accountability, an organization is sunk

1108
00:57:12,920 --> 00:57:16,720
Speaker 3: because you know, everybody wants to throw their hand up

1109
00:57:16,760 --> 00:57:18,160
Speaker 3: and say, yeah, I was in charge of that when

1110
00:57:18,200 --> 00:57:21,880
Speaker 3: something goes well. I want the guy or the gal

1111
00:57:21,960 --> 00:57:24,920
Speaker 3: that when things go to hell in a handbasket will

1112
00:57:24,920 --> 00:57:27,240
Speaker 3: step up and be like, yep, that was on me,

1113
00:57:27,960 --> 00:57:30,320
Speaker 3: and here's what I was thinking. It didn't work out

1114
00:57:30,480 --> 00:57:32,720
Speaker 3: that way, and I'm going to do better next time.

1115
00:57:32,920 --> 00:57:35,000
Speaker 3: Because if you have that kind of accountability, you can

1116
00:57:35,040 --> 00:57:39,000
Speaker 3: find out why something didn't work, you can learn from it,

1117
00:57:39,160 --> 00:57:42,840
Speaker 3: cross populate that across your entire organization, and the whole

1118
00:57:42,920 --> 00:57:48,120
Speaker 3: organization is lifted up a level because of that error. Right,

1119
00:57:48,400 --> 00:57:50,560
Speaker 3: And so those are those are a couple of the

1120
00:57:50,600 --> 00:57:53,960
Speaker 3: traits that you know, we try to emphasize and build

1121
00:57:53,960 --> 00:57:54,640
Speaker 3: our team around.

1122
00:57:54,840 --> 00:57:56,960
Speaker 1: I really loved when we were talking on the phone

1123
00:57:57,280 --> 00:57:59,160
Speaker 1: before you came in here today, you told me that

1124
00:57:59,200 --> 00:58:01,240
Speaker 1: your company and the middle of the day always as

1125
00:58:01,280 --> 00:58:02,680
Speaker 1: an opportunity to work out.

1126
00:58:03,280 --> 00:58:05,800
Speaker 3: Yeah. I think that's awesome. Yeah, we have a we

1127
00:58:05,800 --> 00:58:08,000
Speaker 3: have a staff class at one at one pm, I mean,

1128
00:58:08,040 --> 00:58:10,720
Speaker 3: and and so everybody t Rex can walk into any

1129
00:58:10,720 --> 00:58:12,960
Speaker 3: of that. We run about sixty classes a week in

1130
00:58:13,000 --> 00:58:15,400
Speaker 3: our training center, which is downstairs, and that's you know,

1131
00:58:15,440 --> 00:58:15,760
Speaker 3: that's a.

1132
00:58:16,440 --> 00:58:19,200
Speaker 2: Boutique and this Issco San Francisco.

1133
00:58:18,840 --> 00:58:21,840
Speaker 3: Batique functional training studio that's open to the public, but

1134
00:58:21,920 --> 00:58:24,680
Speaker 3: all the all the teammates can go down in any

1135
00:58:24,720 --> 00:58:26,840
Speaker 3: of the classes when they're space right. And then we

1136
00:58:26,920 --> 00:58:30,480
Speaker 3: have one class every day at one o'clock, which is

1137
00:58:30,800 --> 00:58:34,240
Speaker 3: the staff class and uh and and it's it's you know,

1138
00:58:34,280 --> 00:58:36,640
Speaker 3: I think we let some of our some of our

1139
00:58:36,680 --> 00:58:39,560
Speaker 3: die hard regulars come in with us, but other than that,

1140
00:58:39,600 --> 00:58:42,560
Speaker 3: it's it's the team, only the team. And that's where

1141
00:58:42,560 --> 00:58:45,360
Speaker 3: we test out all our new concepts and the you know,

1142
00:58:45,440 --> 00:58:48,480
Speaker 3: the any program that you would see at your gym

1143
00:58:49,000 --> 00:58:52,360
Speaker 3: has already been vetted, you know. And we are our

1144
00:58:52,400 --> 00:58:55,439
Speaker 3: own guinea pigs. And it's awesome because we get down

1145
00:58:55,440 --> 00:58:58,080
Speaker 3: there and we get after it and and everybody, everybody

1146
00:58:58,080 --> 00:59:00,240
Speaker 3: has a good time and there's lots of joking and

1147
00:59:00,720 --> 00:59:05,840
Speaker 3: you know, a gentle teasing of each other, and it's awesome.

1148
00:59:06,080 --> 00:59:08,960
Speaker 1: You look back, I'm a guy that's in business school

1149
00:59:09,200 --> 00:59:11,560
Speaker 1: and he's not so sure how this is all going

1150
00:59:11,640 --> 00:59:14,360
Speaker 1: to pan out. What's one piece of advice that you

1151
00:59:14,440 --> 00:59:16,760
Speaker 1: offer to him? And then what's a piece of advice

1152
00:59:16,880 --> 00:59:20,000
Speaker 1: you offer to the guy that's handling all of those counterfeitters.

1153
00:59:20,440 --> 00:59:22,800
Speaker 3: I guess if I was giving advice to somebody at

1154
00:59:22,800 --> 00:59:26,800
Speaker 3: business school who was going to go start a company,

1155
00:59:26,800 --> 00:59:28,800
Speaker 3: and this would apply to I think to people who

1156
00:59:28,800 --> 00:59:31,240
Speaker 3: are outside business school too. There are some of these

1157
00:59:31,320 --> 00:59:36,520
Speaker 3: tried and true adages that you may not fully appreciate

1158
00:59:36,600 --> 00:59:39,080
Speaker 3: at the time, but they're tried and true for a reason.

1159
00:59:39,240 --> 00:59:39,520
Speaker 1: You know.

1160
00:59:39,800 --> 00:59:41,959
Speaker 3: One of them is this idea that cash is king,

1161
00:59:42,880 --> 00:59:45,640
Speaker 3: and the reason that you everybody's heard it, but it

1162
00:59:45,680 --> 00:59:49,360
Speaker 3: doesn't always you don't always understand it. And you know, really,

1163
00:59:49,440 --> 00:59:51,640
Speaker 3: the way I interpret that is when you start something,

1164
00:59:52,120 --> 00:59:58,200
Speaker 3: it's better to start slower and to invest behind things

1165
00:59:58,200 --> 01:00:01,120
Speaker 3: that are working. The bigest mistake that I see a

1166
01:00:01,160 --> 01:00:04,360
Speaker 3: lot of entrepreneurs make, and I made this, is you know,

1167
01:00:04,720 --> 01:00:06,840
Speaker 3: you've got big ideas and big visions, and so you're

1168
01:00:07,280 --> 01:00:10,240
Speaker 3: what I call casting, you know, like fishing. You're casting

1169
01:00:10,280 --> 01:00:14,880
Speaker 3: out a front of yourself with borrowed money, and you're

1170
01:00:14,960 --> 01:00:18,720
Speaker 3: betting that those ideas are going to be reeled in,

1171
01:00:19,320 --> 01:00:21,520
Speaker 3: you know, to a great profit. Well, a lot of

1172
01:00:21,560 --> 01:00:24,000
Speaker 3: times that doesn't happen, and if you're not very careful,

1173
01:00:24,680 --> 01:00:28,200
Speaker 3: you can get ahead of yourself and end up creatoring

1174
01:00:28,200 --> 01:00:30,400
Speaker 3: what could have been a really great business because you

1175
01:00:30,480 --> 01:00:34,160
Speaker 3: got too aggressive with your big ideas. So I really

1176
01:00:34,240 --> 01:00:37,240
Speaker 3: am a believer at this point in my career in

1177
01:00:37,800 --> 01:00:42,400
Speaker 3: you know, do your homework, make the minimum viable product

1178
01:00:42,480 --> 01:00:45,400
Speaker 3: to test whether it's a service or an actual product,

1179
01:00:45,800 --> 01:00:47,800
Speaker 3: and invest as little as you can and till you

1180
01:00:47,800 --> 01:00:50,400
Speaker 3: know something's working, and then once it's working, then you

1181
01:00:50,440 --> 01:00:53,040
Speaker 3: invest behind that, right, And that's that's a piece of

1182
01:00:53,080 --> 01:00:57,400
Speaker 3: advice that you know, I wish I had understood better

1183
01:00:57,560 --> 01:01:00,800
Speaker 3: and taken more to heart early in my career. And

1184
01:01:00,840 --> 01:01:03,200
Speaker 3: then another piece is just like, hey, if you're going

1185
01:01:03,240 --> 01:01:05,400
Speaker 3: to be somebody who's out there trying to create something

1186
01:01:05,440 --> 01:01:08,000
Speaker 3: new and cool and great, you got to go into

1187
01:01:08,000 --> 01:01:10,640
Speaker 3: that with both eyes open and realize like it is

1188
01:01:10,720 --> 01:01:14,840
Speaker 3: going to be a slog and there's gonna be moments

1189
01:01:14,840 --> 01:01:20,040
Speaker 3: when you absolutely doubt yourself or a decision that you've made,

1190
01:01:20,600 --> 01:01:23,240
Speaker 3: or a new teammate that you brought on, and that's

1191
01:01:23,280 --> 01:01:25,760
Speaker 3: all natural, right, It's all part of the process, and

1192
01:01:25,840 --> 01:01:29,040
Speaker 3: you just have to kind of keep your feet moving, right.

1193
01:01:29,040 --> 01:01:30,960
Speaker 3: I always tell people to focus on the next ten

1194
01:01:31,000 --> 01:01:33,080
Speaker 3: meters trail because that's what I learned, you know, as

1195
01:01:33,080 --> 01:01:35,880
Speaker 3: a CEL like on a big rock hump when you're

1196
01:01:35,920 --> 01:01:38,880
Speaker 3: just dying. If you start looking off in the distance

1197
01:01:38,920 --> 01:01:44,200
Speaker 3: at your end target, it just seems absolutely daunting, like

1198
01:01:44,240 --> 01:01:46,720
Speaker 3: I'll never get there, you know, with this one hundred

1199
01:01:46,760 --> 01:01:49,760
Speaker 3: and twenty pounds on my back and tripping and stumbling

1200
01:01:49,760 --> 01:01:52,480
Speaker 3: through the dark. And you know, you just got to

1201
01:01:52,480 --> 01:01:55,480
Speaker 3: focus on the next ten meters right, and get that

1202
01:01:55,520 --> 01:01:57,120
Speaker 3: ten meters behind you, and then you look up and

1203
01:01:57,160 --> 01:01:59,600
Speaker 3: take the next ten meters and if you keep going

1204
01:01:59,680 --> 01:02:02,680
Speaker 3: through life that way, right, you can always get ten

1205
01:02:02,720 --> 01:02:04,120
Speaker 3: meters down always.

1206
01:02:04,640 --> 01:02:07,720
Speaker 2: So what's next for GRX, what's coming up? What's good?

1207
01:02:09,400 --> 01:02:09,680
Speaker 1: Wow?

1208
01:02:10,200 --> 01:02:14,160
Speaker 3: The biggest challenge I have right now is deciding what

1209
01:02:14,320 --> 01:02:16,360
Speaker 3: things we're going to take on right because we have

1210
01:02:16,440 --> 01:02:19,640
Speaker 3: so many opportunities. I believe we you know, the mission

1211
01:02:19,680 --> 01:02:22,400
Speaker 3: from the beginning was to create the world's first great

1212
01:02:22,440 --> 01:02:26,320
Speaker 3: training brand, and there's never been one. Right. There's great

1213
01:02:26,360 --> 01:02:31,080
Speaker 3: big apparel in footwear, the sports apparel in footwear manufacturers,

1214
01:02:31,360 --> 01:02:36,320
Speaker 3: there's big pure equipment manufacturers, Life Fitness, pre Core technogym.

1215
01:02:36,880 --> 01:02:40,280
Speaker 3: But when you look in the middle between those two,

1216
01:02:41,480 --> 01:02:43,800
Speaker 3: you know polls and you look at the big blue ocean,

1217
01:02:44,360 --> 01:02:47,880
Speaker 3: where do people go to understand what they should be doing,

1218
01:02:48,080 --> 01:02:50,440
Speaker 3: what gear they should be using. We think there's an

1219
01:02:50,440 --> 01:02:54,520
Speaker 3: opportunity for TRX to become that brand, and so we're

1220
01:02:54,560 --> 01:02:59,120
Speaker 3: making some big investments in the digital technology space to

1221
01:02:59,240 --> 01:03:05,640
Speaker 3: really try to create a comprehensive landscape that's all connected

1222
01:03:06,480 --> 01:03:10,640
Speaker 3: between our consumer fitness side of our business, our commercial

1223
01:03:10,680 --> 01:03:13,880
Speaker 3: club side of our business, the athletic training pieces of

1224
01:03:13,880 --> 01:03:18,520
Speaker 3: our business, and connected all with technology, even as we

1225
01:03:18,600 --> 01:03:22,520
Speaker 3: continue to bring cool new products into the market. So,

1226
01:03:22,800 --> 01:03:24,400
Speaker 3: you know, the next the next couple of years, the

1227
01:03:24,400 --> 01:03:27,480
Speaker 3: big app emphasis on us is really serving the consumer

1228
01:03:27,520 --> 01:03:30,320
Speaker 3: at home because we've been largely at B two B

1229
01:03:30,320 --> 01:03:33,360
Speaker 3: business for the first decade of the company's history. So

1230
01:03:33,920 --> 01:03:36,120
Speaker 3: you know, we're coming to you and your home and

1231
01:03:36,480 --> 01:03:39,640
Speaker 3: we're going to bring you, you know, the coolest tools

1232
01:03:39,680 --> 01:03:41,760
Speaker 3: that the top pros and the world use in the

1233
01:03:41,760 --> 01:03:43,720
Speaker 3: world of sport, and we're going to bring them to

1234
01:03:43,720 --> 01:03:44,240
Speaker 3: you in your home.

1235
01:03:44,480 --> 01:03:46,680
Speaker 2: Are you having just as much fun now as you

1236
01:03:46,720 --> 01:03:48,440
Speaker 2: were when it started?

1237
01:03:49,000 --> 01:03:52,160
Speaker 3: I do less of what I thought I would be doing,

1238
01:03:52,720 --> 01:03:54,480
Speaker 3: but yeah, you know I have, I have. I have

1239
01:03:54,520 --> 01:03:56,560
Speaker 3: a great time, and I think you got to enjoy

1240
01:03:56,560 --> 01:03:59,200
Speaker 3: the ride because you know, the journey you may or

1241
01:03:59,240 --> 01:04:01,200
Speaker 3: may not get to where you thought you know your

1242
01:04:01,320 --> 01:04:02,880
Speaker 3: your in state was going to be. But if you

1243
01:04:02,960 --> 01:04:05,760
Speaker 3: enjoy the journey, then you can't go too far wrong.

1244
01:04:06,120 --> 01:04:08,040
Speaker 2: Randy, thanks so much for coming in and sitting down

1245
01:04:08,080 --> 01:04:08,280
Speaker 2: with me.

1246
01:04:08,560 --> 01:04:10,080
Speaker 3: My pleasure. Thanks for having.

1247
01:04:10,400 --> 01:04:13,080
Speaker 1: Please take a moment to leave a quick review by

1248
01:04:13,080 --> 01:04:16,240
Speaker 1: clicking the link with the description to this episode. We

1249
01:04:16,280 --> 01:04:18,880
Speaker 1: all face multiple hurdles in life. I want to hear

1250
01:04:18,880 --> 01:04:21,640
Speaker 1: about yours. Reach out to me at Emily at Hurdle

1251
01:04:21,680 --> 01:04:25,080
Speaker 1: dot us, connect with the podcast on Instagram and Twitter

1252
01:04:25,160 --> 01:04:28,400
Speaker 1: at Hurdle Podcast. Randy, where do they find you? Where

1253
01:04:28,400 --> 01:04:29,440
Speaker 1: do they find TRX?

1254
01:04:29,520 --> 01:04:30,040
Speaker 2: Give them the.

1255
01:04:30,000 --> 01:04:33,880
Speaker 3: Deep I thought you might never ask, So go to

1256
01:04:34,120 --> 01:04:38,840
Speaker 3: TRX training dot com and you can check out everything

1257
01:04:38,880 --> 01:04:42,080
Speaker 3: we do from for the home, for the gym and

1258
01:04:42,560 --> 01:04:43,200
Speaker 3: for training the.

1259
01:04:43,120 --> 01:04:45,760
Speaker 2: Great outdoors Instagram too, to your X training to your

1260
01:04:45,880 --> 01:04:47,240
Speaker 2: X train beautiful.

1261
01:04:46,800 --> 01:04:51,160
Speaker 1: Thing Again, I am at Emily, a body, another hurdle conquered.

1262
01:04:51,520 --> 01:04:52,600
Speaker 2: Catch you guys next time.