The Life Story of John Roman - CEO @ BattlBox

John is an experienced executive and board member with a demonstrated history of working in both the consumer goods and technology industries. He is a strong sales and marketing professional, skilled in D2C (Direct to Consumer) and B2B (Business to Business) strategies.

John Roman is currently serving as Chief Executive Officer at BattlBox.

Listen to his amazing life story!

Transcript from video:

0:00 yeah I think that's the biggest mistake and and and best advice is just go just
0:05 go stop planning stop talking about it just do it today just do
0:14 it welcome to a new episode at the Defdevice Podcast my name is Dano Falk and
0:20 today I have a special guest his name is John Roman welcome John Dano thanks so
0:26 thanks so much for having me excited to be here yeah yeah I think we are located on the opposite sides of the planet as
0:34 as often with 12 hours I think 12 hours yeah exactly yeah so yeah yeah I tend to
0:42 be 12 hours ahead of the Americans which I yeah it's kind of funny but uh but
0:48 yeah it's it's evening here it's kind of midday in where you are it's which is
0:54 Atlanta right I'm not mistaken yeah yeah Atlanta it's uh yeah it's 8 am here yes
1:00 yes I found you looking for successful entrepreneurs and Business Leaders and
1:06 uh you most obviously are one of those guys so I saw the you know what what
1:12 you're doing with Battlbox and it I think it's quite fascinating so tell us what's happening with Battlbox and and
1:19 and what what is this business doing sure so so Battlbox we started in 2015
1:24 so it's been um a actually last week was nine years which is crazy that it's been
1:32 going on that long um so we started out um you in a little bit different than we
1:39 are now but still similar so ultimately we're an outdoor and adventure brand so
1:44 anything involving the outdoors so thinking camping hiking survival
1:51 literally anything under the sun when it comes to when it comes to outside um or
1:56 or Preparation so the the the main part of the business um and it was the only part
2:02 of the business when we started was a subscription box so monthly um mystery
2:08 style drop style subscription box um four different tiers the basic which uh
2:16 um is the the the lowest cost one which is 35 a month plus shipping plus sales
2:23 tax all the way up to the Pro Plus which is the 170 a month plus shipping plus
2:28 sales tax um and it's also you know our Theory when we started was that most
2:35 people were going to be in the basic box um and then we'd have a a small Handful in the in the higher tier boxes but our
2:42 most popular box is actually the Pro Plus the one 70 plus shipping sales ta
2:47 we have 50 50% of our of our base of our members are actually in that tier and um
2:54 yeah so we should come up with a pro Plus+ hey how about the pro Plus+ we we Tred we tried we'll probably try again
3:03 but um it is the sweet spot so cool so yeah so started
3:09 2015 um quickly into our journey we we really put a uh a high level of
3:16 importance in content and and and building community and and ultimately
3:22 that's our secret sauce that's that's how we separate ourselves from from from
3:27 everyone else so the content piece um led us probably to
3:33 the high point of 2020 when uh we had a Netflix TV show um called survival so
3:39 it's available in all regions um you can just open up Netflix and search Battlbox and her show comes up um very
3:46 unusual for a brand to have have a show oh yeah oh yeah because it acts as a as
3:51 a commercial um so yeah um a lot of
3:57 crazy things happen through the years in 2021 after the show we we had our exit
4:04 we sold the business um and uh then
4:10 oddly in uh 2024 this or 2023 last year
4:15 in April we actually bought the business back not I never heard this dude
4:22 seriously you bought it back yeah it's not that was not part of the plan the plan we had our exit yay you know we'll
4:28 get we give them a couple years because we were contractually obligated to do so for additional money and um we saw an
4:37 opportunity and uh nothing against the company that bought us but they were a
4:42 publicly traded company and the markets they were a spack um and you know
4:49 everybody saw what happened to the the the markets with spacks they lost a lot of their market cap to no fault of their
4:56 own and it it just created an opportunity um a little Arbitrage if you
5:02 will um so if I may ask did you buy it back for a smaller amount than you sold
5:08 it for correct it was it was quite quite an Arbitrage um so we were able to um to
5:18 to buy it back um using using debt um a
5:23 new debt facility so we got to keep the money from the first transaction and then a uh buy not only do we buy it back
5:31 for less but we obviously you know got to use someone else's money to buy it back for
5:37 Less so yeah it was not not part of the plan but you know when an opp presents
5:42 itself to be fair um we had some pretty big ideas of what we want to do with
5:50 Battlbox to take it to the next step how do we get it from an eight figureure company to a nine figure company and
5:56 it's going to be a journey and if we you know if you're able to do that we
6:01 obviously want it for ourselves um we want to reap reap the benefits of that so it may even more
6:07 sense to get it back yeah for an Arbitrage yeah that makes sense and I
6:15 mean with a super Niche business like yours I would imagine that your passion
6:21 your ideas your background you mean all the things that you brought into this business it's going to be difficult to
6:28 replicate for a new owner right I mean if they just run it like you know like like a normal you
6:35 know without having the passion to grow it and without having all this back I mean to sell stuff for outdoors
6:42 experience survival I mean I think it requires a bit of involvement a bit of
6:47 experience a bit of passion to be in that space and to understand your audience right so um yeah but I just I
6:56 still I still think um I still think it can be replicated um I I still think um
7:03 you know like it's it's not like it's just me doing it or it's just me and a business partner doing it like we have a
7:09 we have a very strong team um and you know the the the the team can carry on
7:17 so I I think yeah I I I think it not necessarily replicatable but
7:23 transferable um I yeah even even though it's niche I I definitely think um
7:30 if you maintain leader leadership in the team you're fine yeah yeah well yeah I
7:36 mean this whole business transaction like selling your business I mean buying it back is is a definitely new new one
7:42 for me but I'm familiar with the selling your business part yeah it's definitely like a very exciting and also a bit
7:50 scary Journey which I experience myself and suddenly someone just you know you
7:56 know all these people who are potential buyers they can just look into your business to
8:02 like a scary extent where they you know and it it could be a competitor who
8:08 could just pretend to be a buyer and they could just basically you know check whatever you're doing um so yeah it it
8:15 was a scary Journey I'm not sure how it was for you but uh it's it's a scary journey and there's poking and prodding
8:22 and yeah yeah having to explain and then that leaves a rabbit hole going
8:28 down the onion back yeah it's uh yeah for us um we had a we had the letter of
8:37 intent signed in April of 2021 we didn't close until October um it it was a very
8:44 long time or it it seemed like an eternity um due diligence and Audits and
8:52 um yeah not not fun definitely yeah exciting
9:00 stressful but yeah when when the payday comes it's yeah all of the all of the
9:06 emotions roll it's a emotional roller coaster yeah it is exactly yeah I mean
9:11 to me to to have this experience as an entrepreneur is kind of the Cherry in the top I mean I think if you haven't
9:17 experienced this then kind of you're missing out I think as an entrepreneur because it's so yeah it's really intense
9:23 you know to to let go there's a lot of learnings too yeah so many takeaways
9:31 yeah and it's also it can be painful to let go because I mean you've been you know You' have spent so much time to
9:37 build this thing and and to grow this thing it becomes like you know it becomes like a a life purpose kind of
9:44 thing yeah and then to just give it away to someone else it's can be also like a
9:49 yeah painful OT the emotional emot yeah yeah yeah exactly yeah it might cause
9:55 you just buy it back afterwards or something crazy like that right yeah but but you got your kid back so
10:01 yeah you're a lucky one yeah lcky um but there's there's a lot of that right now I've um I've spoken to I'd say in the
10:10 past three months maybe half a dozen maybe maybe more like six seven eight
10:15 people that uh have all in the last two and a half year window have sold their
10:21 business and then bought it back at a discount no just because of the economic
10:26 global economic uncertainty um okay and funkiness they're they all of a
10:32 sudden this opportunity is a thing now yeah maybe that's a maybe that's a new
10:39 way to go to sell and buy back it's a timing thing right
10:45 like trly soon the all the the global markets will be better within a couple
10:50 years there won't be that opportunity anymore now yeah now as you mentioned it actually the guy who bought my business
10:57 also offered to sell it back to me because he kind of couldn't make it work
11:02 really yeah yeah but but yeah I mean I I was not really interested but uh but
11:08 yeah now as you mentioned it is actually a thing yeah it's so it's it's not that
11:14 unusual you know to have this situation going fantastic well as you know on this
11:20 podcast it's all about the life journey of entrepreneurs and Business Leaders so I would like to meet like 10y year old
11:27 John or nine or 11 whatever you see fit you know just just uh let's let's hang
11:33 out with the you know with the with the little boy John for a while and see what uh what where he was what was happening
11:40 in his life and then how he became the John you are today yeah so so 10-year-old John it's so the year's uh
11:48 1992 um computers are starting to become a thing uh so in
11:55 92 uh my family moved so we lived in Northern Virginia uh for the F first 10
12:02 years of my life and then in ' 92 we moved down to moved down to the suburbs of Georgia so my dad took a a a job and
12:11 one of the the offices facilities was here in uh in in the suburbs of Atlanta
12:17 so we moved down here um so so trying to think 10-year-old John um kind of the
12:24 the the little memories I I still have um
12:29 one of one of the interesting ones was when I came down here um in school up in
12:36 Northern Virginia I wasn't considered um I was in normal classes um and when I came down here and
12:45 I don't think I necessarily got retested I think it was just my test scores that were in my you know file my my permanent
12:53 record if you will um all of a sudden I was all in in gifted programs um which
13:00 was which was interesting because I wasn't I wasn't in special smart person classes um in Virginia but when I came
13:07 down here all of a sudden I was uh I was which which is is interesting um but
13:16 yeah so that's a that's a memory um I'm I'm trying to like place are there any
13:21 entrepreneurial little tidbits or or things along um but I had you had to think this
13:27 is a I had a strange journey to get here this is technically my third career um
13:37 there you go you know and doing vastly vastly different things I uh but to your
13:43 point in our conversation earlier there's definitely things from the previous that built built me to where I
13:51 am today so you know the first bit of
13:57 entrepreneurial piece was um so you know I was at the end of
14:03 elementary school when I came down here pretty uneventful um rest of that Middle
14:09 School in high school I did start getting into computers so they they
14:14 interested me I had interest in them and um obviously the internet is becoming a
14:21 thing at that point so my first taste of
14:27 um entrepreneurial n was I had a friend so so internet back
14:34 then for us you could get on a America online that was our big thing and um I
14:42 had a friend that was building programs in Visual Basic 3 and
14:49 um also in in in at this point in the 9s if you got an email from someone it was
14:56 real if you if you had mail it was from someone you knew because how why else
15:02 would you get email so this Visual Basic program we had it built they built it
15:09 where it would um pull the people in the AOL chat rooms um it would pull them into the app
15:19 and then it would send them an email and the email was um spam didn't exist back
15:26 then right it an unsolicited email and it would have an affiliate Link in there
15:34 um so driving driving traffic to these um websites that we decided to work with
15:39 and we would be paid um typically on unique visitors unique clicks um unique
15:46 being defined simply as an IP address wow and affiliate marketing existed back
15:51 then I mean we're talking what like the late 90s or what yeah yeah yeah so uh
15:58 yeah 90 trying to place this so yeah like
16:03 90s let's see I went started High School yeah so like 98
16:09 99 um wow so that quickly became
16:14 um you know I want to even it's not a side all so I'm just a kid um but I I
16:20 knew that I didn't know it was scaling but I I knew that okay well I have one
16:27 computer doing if I can then take some of the money I'm making and buy a second computer then a
16:33 third computer and next next thing I knew I had six computers my room and I'd go to school
16:42 in the morning and right before I left for school I'd set them all up I'd run the Visual Basic program and hit go and
16:48 uh you know I'd come home after at the end of the day from school and three of
16:53 them would have gotten some kind of air and weren't working anymore but three were still going um and I I continued to
17:00 do that um and it was uh you know at the at the time as a as a
17:07 kid um it was an ungodly amount of money um oh I think a few months I made
17:15 $40,000 what um yeah and I'm just this kid and uh yeah it it it was very short
17:23 lived though um a few months in I want to say maybe five months
17:29 um AOL figured out this is a problem they put on the uh on the front page
17:35 when you logged in that they had uh impounded confiscated or the police did
17:41 a Lamborghini from a spammer and that spamming was going to be a a they were
17:48 viewing it as illegal and as soon as all that happened I was like okay I don't
17:53 need to do this anymore like it was wild wild west and it was okay until until it
17:58 wasn't and when it wasn't okay then I I didn't want to be involved in it so that
18:04 was a very shortlived um thing very beneficial huh
18:10 very very beneficial um uh spent half the money like a like a
18:16 kid would um not intelligently I uh so I bought a car and
18:23 then I bought an expensive um audio stereo system for the
18:28 car because all right why not um and then yeah and then save the the rest of
18:36 the money and then uneventful went went off to University
18:42 um spent all the money I had saved the rest of it the other half was all gone
18:47 just just being being a kid um but I went through it quickly and I think
18:53 that um starts a a better understanding
18:58 of money to me at that point and the value of the of a dollar
19:04 because I I made it very easily but then spending it all you know
19:12 irresponsibly and then understanding as I you know got part-time jobs and um you
19:18 know in University I was um I I was a valet a Bellman a bartender all at a a
19:25 hotel and uh having a work harder for um
19:31 money and that whole experience together kind of like made me have a more a better
19:36 appreciation for for for a dollar um yeah yeah fast forward um get done with
19:44 University and uh to my parents super excitedness um I decid I want to play
19:52 poker um professionally
19:57 career so that and that I'm sure they were very happy to hear that super happy
20:02 um send me off to University for four years so I can then decide I want
20:08 to um so that was Career One um you
20:13 actually did that I did four and a half years wow so yeah it was it was it was
20:20 my job I went got to see some cool places went to London for the World
20:26 Series of Poker Europe went to uh melbour in Australia for the aie millions obviously Las
20:33 Vegas um fun Journey but I was uh I was a a
20:39 B+ B player which um you know that's
20:45 great for some professions and careers um but as a B+
20:51 player um I wasn't going to make enough money to be able to diversify and create
20:57 something and and have multiple income streams POS inome it wasn't going to
21:03 work and I couldn't figure out how to go from a b to an a player and that was the problem I would look at I'd go to one of
21:09 these one of these tournaments and I'd look at people that are maybe our age now and that that are that that were B
21:17 players too and I didn't I didn't want to become them so that how exactly do you do you
21:25 differentiate A and B players is that like a like just an earning thing or like how many win yeah I I mean at the
21:33 end of the day would it would come down to to how much money you're making um but it but it's but that would be a
21:40 direct correlation to skill set um the the people on TV that were winning the
21:46 tournaments were a most most were A+ players some were lucky but um yeah it's
21:52 a a skill thing honestly and skill obviously correlates to to income I
21:57 would I would equate it to a a a you looking at a a sports sports player same
22:05 right and even in business business players right like you have a team and you have your a you have your a plus
22:10 players and then you have your B players and have a player but you don't want to keep them for very
22:17 long yeah so so same same thing um so that was the end four and a half
22:25 years um and I decided to uh to jump
22:30 into Corporate America for career number two so at 26 years old I got an
22:38 entrylevel um sales job so 22 year old 21 year old straight out of out of
22:45 University would be getting the same job I was but my four and a half years poker
22:50 experience horate well into the business world of of experience right like yeah
22:57 um so I started started with an entry-level sales job um and that became the next
23:04 seven and a half years of my life wow so um I was a little bit older um I had my
23:12 past learnings of you know making a a a relative for the the time a large amount
23:19 of money very quickly blowing it as a child then having to try to earn money
23:25 again um as school and knowing that it was a little bit more difficult than the
23:32 ease that it was with with the email and then four and a half years of Poker
23:38 where um it's an interesting thing because money your bank role is is how
23:44 you make more money but then you have to take out of that to live life and pay bills and expenses and
23:51 responsibilities um but you want to take as little as possible because the bigger your bank roll is the more money you can
23:57 make so I I think I got a the the the the poker career almost gave me a a
24:04 master's or a doctorate in in in money managing and knowing how um because I
24:11 made mistakes I made tons of mistakes but those mistakes I could learn from um
24:17 so I was instantly successful in sales um the the vast difference between
24:24 sales and poker was poker I could do I could work for 13 hours in a day and you
24:32 know poker's 70% skill but it's 30% luck so you could do everything textbook how
24:38 you're supposed to to win and still lose a third uh you know a third of the time
24:44 um and 13-hour day and I could have lost $10,000 now fast forward career 2 sales
24:52 I put in a 13-hour day worst case scenario I'm at zero I didn't lose
24:58 yeah and I think that was a a vastly different thing and um because of that I
25:05 knew that the harder I worked and I could also work smarter than than everyone else and and put in the The
25:12 Grind that it was pretty easy um so it
25:17 it quickly went from me carrying a bag being a a individual contributor um
25:23 within I think eight months I was uh something called a team lead where like I was on a team almost like a a middle
25:30 manager if you will um and I I still was responsible for a number but I had a
25:35 team of two or three and uh within I think two years I was a sales
25:40 manager um within a year and a half two years after that I was a sales director
25:47 um and and by the end of it multiple teams um I would uh I spent the seven
25:54 and a half years at three different companies by the end of it I was being brought in to build a Enterprise sales
26:02 team from scratch so it was it was a quick progression um in in the so you were you
26:09 were an a player in the sales world I would right with certainty I was and not
26:15 even just an a I was an A+ um oh I think one of the organizations I was at had
26:22 700 sales reps and the entire time I was carrying a bag on my own I was if not
26:29 the number one I was always two or three or four out of the 700 it was oh it was
26:36 night and night and day different from poker where I couldn't figure out how to be at the top um I qu I I knew with
26:43 sales how to be at the top um was it a specific industry you were working with
26:49 I mean what what what were you selling yeah so it was it was B2B um so
26:55 telecommunication and and software a surface service unified
27:00 Communications um I was just really good at at talking to decision makers whether
27:08 they were the business owners or the SE um and just humanizing and getting
27:15 them to like me and explaining the product and not being overly aggressive
27:21 with the sales tactics just really listening and understanding um what
27:28 filling the needs and and working back based on their time
27:33 frame the technology at the end of the day was the of what I was selling and
27:41 so huge learnings there um one you know
27:47 in in that seven and a half years I met with at some in in some level whether
27:53 from start to finish or coming in as a manager and meeting with you know one of the rep's prospects hundreds if not
28:00 thousands of businesses and meeting with the SE Suite
28:06 or the owners um and understanding what they were doing and and and privy in a lot of
28:13 situations of understanding what the revenue was and interm budget and I
28:19 quickly was like man I want to I want to be involved in something like this like I'm looking at
28:26 the amount of um Revenue I'm bringing in for these organizations and don't get me
28:32 wrong they all took care of me they all paid me very very well um but relative to how much money I was
28:39 making them it was not the same there were there were definitely some zeros
28:47 missing you know that led me um to to
28:53 the last year and a half of that seven and a half year stint I started
28:59 investing in companies um I've I've always been big on network and these
29:05 were these were opportunities that were in my existing Network so these weren't
29:10 you know this wasn't like San Francisco startup this was people that were that I
29:16 knew friends of friends or maybe at a networking event and I was just started
29:22 investing in in companies and in a in a short
29:28 few month stint I invested in six companies and and Battlbox was one of
29:34 them um so Battlbox that's how it came about yeah so so Battlbox was uh um
29:45 launched in the beginning of the first week of February
29:51 2015 right before Valentine's Day um I heard about it a week after
29:58 launch and had a deal done was an equity owner um by the by the third week of
30:06 February so you must have known the owner very well so yeah so the the there
30:13 were three principles um I became the fourth um I went to I went to University
30:20 with um with the three principles ah there you know arguably
30:26 I'm looking at um the network the circle of everybody that knew each other at
30:33 University and um yeah I was I was on the the higher end of the successful um
30:41 people and and we had chatted So Daniel was the the um friend of mine that came
30:47 up with the idea um we had he I have a Christmas party every year he had come to it um the two months
30:55 before uh before Battlbox and he wanted to do something new we we
31:00 chatted about it um you know he wanted some ideas he wanted to know if I wanted to do something with him and then I
31:06 didn't hear from him again um and then two months later I hear about Battlbox
31:12 I pick up the phone I'm like hey D I want to be involved um it's I'm I'm coming
31:18 from uh you know B2B SAS where reoccurring revenue is is the model and
31:26 um this is reoccurring Revenue but direct to Consumer and there's lots more
31:33 consumers and businesses out there I quickly my mind was racing and
31:39 um you know initially it was uh board seat limited advisement I'm GNA give
31:47 five hours you know a month um you know I I'll help where I can like let me know
31:53 where there's where you know you think I could help the business and and that quickly turned in five hours a month
32:01 turned into you know five hours a week turned into five hours a day um and you
32:09 know next thing I know I'm I'm figuring out market sales and marketing and
32:14 technology and experience and um you know I have I
32:21 still have a nineo five so I'm I'm working a full day I'm coming home and
32:27 then I'm working another full day on Battlbox so I'm not getting any sleep
32:32 um and fast forward to about uh to till April of
32:39 2016 and at that point I'm I'm working two full-time jobs I've got to make a decision um I
32:47 have some significant equity in Battlbox and then I have some some Phantom
32:52 equity in the the the company I'm working for where get paid if we get bought but other than that I don't um so
33:01 I made the I made the jump and came in came in full time and wow and that started the Battlbox
33:07 Journey so it's a it's a long journey oh yeah but and a very
33:12 interesting one I mean I never heard a story like this one where I mean to be a
33:18 sales professional especially be like an a player in the sales game I think it's
33:24 it's such a huge as you can bring to the table in any kind of business so to be I
33:32 mean people say sales above all else so yeah yeah so that's what every business
33:38 needs in the first place right I mean we think we do this we do that we you know I thought I was doing marketing but I
33:45 had to find out the hard way that I was actually selling marketing was my job not doing marketing right yeah so but so
33:53 so yeah so so I think you you brought a very huge asset to the the table for for Battlbox and I can imagine that it is
34:01 still fun to work in this business because it is so unique and you know has
34:07 I bet a lot of you know moving Parts where you you know where you enjoy being
34:12 part of it and growing it right yeah it's so it's it's so enjoyable right it's um you know I get I wake up every
34:18 day and I'm I'm excited at not only what what I can do that day but also what I'm
34:24 going to learn because the the about um direct a
34:31 consumer um and and marketing is there's so it's always changing right it's
34:37 always technology and the methodology is progressing like
34:43 exponentially at times and keeping keeping up is is is is fun and trying to
34:50 be on the bleeding edge of of marketing Tech is is enjoyable and then there's
34:56 the other side of the business of you know procurement and supply chain operations which um luckily I you know
35:05 my my two business partners now one runs Ops one runs finance and procurement so
35:13 I get to do really what I love which is technology and the marketing and the
35:19 relationships um it's it's it's fun every day that's why I wanted it back I
35:26 mean M it's just enjoyable where do you see The Cutting
35:32 Edge in sales and marketing right now I mean you you are right there that's
35:37 that's your main business so where where do you see the biggest potential moving forward sure so so two different answers
35:45 one um and it's all with a huge as because I feel like um some of it might
35:52 get shut down right we're already seeing initially apple and then Google uh really halting with a lot of the privacy
35:59 laws of what you you can and cannot do and obviously the EU um has their whole
36:06 set of set of laws of what you can and cannot do um but but seeing where the
36:12 the marketing Tech was going um example being you know you Dan you go to the
36:19 Battlbox website and you're browsing around you don't even do anything but we've we've captured who your IP address
36:26 we know who you are we can reverse look up that to find out where you are and
36:32 what your address is and then we can send you a piece of direct mail um all
36:38 you did was visit the website um and oh I wa I'm waiting for that one are you
36:44 sending me a postcard or what it's a it's a but that's a standard based on behavior on the site
36:51 um technology like that so we do that if if you check certain amount of boxes
36:57 um Direct Mail like that or repr prospecting and limited to the US I'm
37:03 guessing correct all right um yeah so you w you won't get the direct mailer but um but yeah technology and and and
37:11 Ro understanding data and seeing where and and how advanced really data is
37:20 becoming I think is a really really really big piece um but then then on the
37:26 other side um I I where where I see direct to
37:31 Consumer going is interesting because um so direct consumer you know everything's
37:37 on the need want scale right from the bare necessities to the nice haves right
37:43 toilet paper water obviously need um and there's this the additional stuff you
37:49 can buy that is farther on the one scale but what we're seeing in just consumer
37:56 Behavior and this isn't new like this has been going on for a long time but it continues every year to Trend more and
38:02 more towards that and and that's simply consumers want
38:07 to um identify and have a connection with the brands that they spend their
38:13 disposable income on um they they want a a bond and a connection and you see that
38:22 um I hate using the example but it's an example everybody knows and it's Mr
38:27 Beast right so Mr Beast has all this content built this community and then he
38:33 decides he wants to sell chocolate and day one he's in every Walmart right um
38:41 like that doesn't happen anybody else you you don't just you don't just have a product and then land day one in every
38:47 Walmart the world that doesn't work that way but it did because he had formed a
38:53 community and people connected with him and wanted to buy his chocolate um so
38:59 it's a very unusual and it it's so not what I was doing in the in the B2B sales
39:05 world but just really understanding the customer journey and and making it um
39:13 it's a long one and I think that's where we're seeing this going is this um the
39:19 the the decision making on on on consumer purchases it's a longer it's a
39:25 longer Journey sometimes and consumers just really want to have that
39:30 connection y I fully agree I would call this brand building yeah yeah and I
39:36 think it's it's yeah people don't buy uh things from websites they buy things
39:42 from people I think because they trust people and not whatever uh stuff we put
39:48 in front of them but yeah to show face to create this connection yeah and and and to to be like tangible I think that
39:55 is I definitely agree this is the name of the game moving forward right and uh
40:00 trying to be the cheapest guy in the marketplace I think that's not gonna work no those days
40:08 are right fantastic oh man this was very insightful I'm speaking to a marketing
40:14 professional here and I'm learning a lot of things that's fantastic as a closing word what would you um what kind of
40:22 pieces of advice would you give someone today who is maybe employed and who want
40:28 to start his old business what do you think is the most important for them to know
40:33 um so you know starting the own business part I
40:39 took a very very conservative approach towards it right I waited until
40:45 Battlbox was of of of decent size where it could fully support me without me
40:52 changing my lifestyle before I came in fulltime which is is it's definitely conservative right you it's not the
40:59 traditional you know entrepreneurial Journey if you will strapping yeah it wasn't it wasn't me eating eating ramen
41:07 noodles um trying to make it work I kind of did it on the side
41:13 um I think doing it on the side is okay uh I think the biggest piece of advice
41:20 is is just go Um I think humans in General we we tend to
41:29 especially ones that would want to be entrepreneurs we tend to overanalyze and almost get paralysis uh of analysis like
41:37 where we spend seven months planning to do it just do it and and and you know
41:44 what ready ready aim fire just ready fire maybe aim a little bit but
41:53 afterwards you can re aim and you can refire like people spend seven eight
41:58 months before they launch like launch in a month and and just know you're not going to get it perfect and then you
42:05 could tweak it and you can listen to your your customers and and make it better um you know almost getting out
42:12 with that mvp um yeah it's I I think a lot of times people spend too
42:19 much time in the planning phase and not enough time in the executing phase um
42:24 just go it's not going to be perfect doesn't matter it it doesn't need to be perfect because the faster you get to
42:30 Market with it the faster you can you can test and see if there's validity and
42:35 if there's a product Market fit and you know you you can think you know but
42:42 until it's actually out there you you really don't know with 100% certainty
42:48 and um we at Battlbox we've made that mistakes before we've sometimes spent
42:54 too much time planning for a prod product or a new offering and we should have just gotten it at the MVP gone and
43:03 then tweaked it later and uh yeah I think that's the biggest mistake and and
43:09 and best advice is just go just go stop planning stop talking about it just do
43:14 it today just do it oh yeah this is the way just go and I
43:20 would I would like to add one thing though okay try to go with the flow yes I like I know like when when I
43:27 listen to your story I mean you didn't just you know come with some weird idea
43:33 and just you know drop from the sky and and and and and and then spend all your savings to make it work I mean you were
43:39 smart right you you saw things happening you you saw things develop and you were
43:45 networking with people so there was a community there was It was kind of natural right for you to flow into this
43:51 I mean you didn't have to kind of break or invent something so so you just were
43:57 connected to your environment and then these things somehow you know came about
44:03 so you were just smart and picking the right decision taking the right decision and and and go picking the right people
44:09 to work with and and and that's how your success came about so but yeah I fully
44:15 agree it's a procrastination can be a big show stopper and deal breaker and
44:21 thinking too much and trying to be perfect are definitely
44:26 qualities that are not helpful for an entrepreneur and and and and and all those aren't going with the flow go with
44:33 the flow like you're SP on it's just it's easier it's when you're going with stream
44:38 it everything yeah don't try to go go against it man right all right oh cool
44:45 man that was so much fun thank you so much John uh it was real pleasure to get to know you and to hear your story I
44:51 think we all learned a lot today and uh for people who would like to know more
44:57 about you or find out more about Battlbox of course we will leave some uh information links in the description
45:04 under the video um and yeah so for people who want to reach out to you I'm sure I can and uh I wish you all the
45:11 best with Battlbox and hope we can stay in touch I do too I really appreciate it had a good time thanks man
45:24 thanks