How do you turn a subscription box into an 8 figure e-commerce empire? In this episode of Millionaire University, host Brien Gearin sits down with John Roman, CEO of BattlBox, a thriving e-commerce subscription service delivering handpicked outdoor, survival, and EDC gear to enthusiasts worldwide. John shares the incredible evolution of BattlBox, the challenges of scaling, and how content and community have been their secret weapons in generating $20M+ annually. Plus, he sheds light on their Netflix show experience, the importance of building authentic customer relationships, and his unique perspective on the current state of e-commerce. If you’re curious about how to build a sustainable e-commerce brand and foster an engaged community, then you won't want to miss this value-packed interview!
What we discuss with John:
- John Roman’s journey to CEO
- Growing BattlBox to $20M+
- Recovering from a Facebook ban
- Power of content and community
- Behind the scenes of Netflix show
- B2B vs. B2C sales insights
- Leveraging customer feedback
- Building loyalty through engagement
- Selling and buying back BattlBox
- E-commerce tips for success today
Transcript from video:
0:00 welcome to the millionaire University podcast I'm your host Brian Gearin with you today and on this edition of the MU
0:05 pod I'm joined by John Roman he's the CEO of BattlBox an e-commerce subscription service for handpicked
0:11 outdoor survival EDC and other awesome gear doing $20 million plus per year
0:18 John is also the host of the awesome podcast which I recently learned is spelled as o m I'll let you divulge what
0:25 that means here in a minute and you also share your industry insights on his blog online so.com John I could keep going on
0:32 this intro but I'd rather have you give us the full story here so I better just shut up and welcome you to the show man
0:37 hey man thanks for having me excited to be here yeah this is going to be fun this is GNA be great today we're going to be talking a lot about your specialty
0:44 obviously e-commerce uh we have a lot of listeners out there who are curious about e-commerce and starting an
0:50 e-commerce business or growing an existing e-commerce brand there's a lot to unpack there but before we hop into
0:57 that I'd really love to start with your origin story how did you end up at BattlBox what were you doing before
1:02 then and how have you been able to grow this thing to 20 million and I know there's a little cool tidbit in there
1:07 where you sold the business and then bought it back so I want to hear all about it yeah it's it's it's a lot yeah
1:13 origin story is interesting so this is technically career number three for me
1:18 so Career One um to the joy of my parents after finishing uh University I
1:26 decided I was going to be a professional poker player oh okay there's a left turn yeah definitely not the turn everybody
1:32 thought I was going to make so I actually did that for four and a half years tldr I wasn't good enough call it
1:38 a B+ player couldn't figure out how to get to BNA and you know looking at people that were you know 10 years older
1:45 than than I was at that age in these playing poker wasn't a good look just
1:52 was not looked like they picked up some other bad habits along the way and uh
1:57 you know I couldn't I couldn't make it to the the big leags so I had had to call it after four and a half years made
2:03 great money um just it wasn't enough to do what I wanted to accomplish so chapter 2 is B2B sales so
2:12 started at the bottom got an entry level uh B2B sales job and uh I was really
2:19 good at it and um fast forward you know by the end of it I'm I'm building sales
2:24 teams for organizations um I was with a publicly traded company uh
2:30 with about 700 sales reps and I was running the the number when I was a rep
2:36 I was in the top five every year and then when I was running teams I was running the number one um sales team for
2:43 for a stint um so after that I started Building Sales teams for other companies um you know focusing really on the
2:50 mid-level Enterprise level C Fortune 2000 companies targeting them and um
2:56 along the way I started investing companies and in early
3:04 2025 I invested in about a half a dozen companies and um BattlBox was one of
3:11 them and what what year was it this was early 2015 2015 I think I said 2025 but
3:18 yeah it threw me off a sec but I was curious yeah so close to 10 years ago
3:23 okay um all of the other ones are no longer around investment turned to zero BattlBox was was the good one so I um
3:31 have a Christmas party every year and um you know all of the my network comes
3:37 right so from my high school friends to my college friends to my work friends to the neighbors like it's literally the
3:43 hodgepodge of everybody that in all my little circles and uh my ex- business partner
3:50 had come comes had come to it every year he didn't come to it once after we became business partners which is
3:55 interesting but um could have been that could be a sign
4:00 but uh you know he had a traditional um downtime in the year in December and he
4:07 was thinking of ideas and um expressed a desire to want to do something with me
4:13 in our little circle at the time I was probably um one of the more successful
4:18 people and um so we we chatted came up with some ideas and um I put the ball in
4:25 his court which is something I I I do in most situations I find a way to put the
4:31 ball in someone else's Court to kind of little predating test to see how it goes
4:36 um another tell son never followed up but um fast forward two months later and
4:43 um BattlBox is is launching in February 2015 I catch wind of it um I call him up
4:50 I say hey um this is like we're talking it launched three days prior there no momentum it's it's it's a it's a startup
4:57 and I love re recurring Revenue right so my background at this point my career
5:02 number two is is B2B sales and that entire industry is based on reoccurring
5:08 monthly or annually reoccurring Revenue right it's it's a great model really easy to forecast um compared to onetime
5:15 sales and um because of that I was super interested so went back and forth for a
5:20 few days I made an investment um offered myself an a limited capacity you know a
5:25 couple hours a week um Max and um you know before February ended I was I was
5:32 one of the four partners and uh yeah fast forward you know within a very
5:39 short period of time I was burning from both ends and uh not sustainable to be
5:45 working 120 130 hours a week um I had to make a choice right I had I had two
5:52 full-time jobs at that point so I made the choice to to about a little bit after a year in early 2016 to join
5:58 BattlBox full time wow okay very cool so a little little bit of everything
6:04 from professional poker player to Corporate America to eom entrepreneur
6:09 yeah you had all the bullet points there yeah but then you know fast forward you know we continue to see nice growth we
6:16 have a very interesting approach so when I came on full-time in 2016 one of the
6:23 there were two things that I had to figure out immediately one one of the four Partners was not bringing any value
6:29 I had to I had to buy him out get get rid of him um the second uh thing I had
6:35 to figure out was um we had this amazing um partner um I don't want to call him
6:42 an influencer but a YouTuber that um was bringing a lot of value to the the brand
6:49 so we had to figure out and come to a deal how do we bring him on full-time make him part of the team um and that
6:56 was Brandon Curran who's the face of our brand so he he joined us shortly after I
7:01 did in a full-time capacity and as soon as that happened um we really doubled down on the focus of content and
7:08 everything was content all of our decisions were how does this affect content and that was kind of part of our secret sauce and uh you know it got us
7:16 our TV show on Netflix which um happened during the pandemic so it's just pandemic was
7:22 already great for e-commerce Brands and then we had the Netflix show on top of that and that got to the point um where
7:29 there's there's three of us partners at that point and um the original um the
7:34 guy that I had spoken about earlier he wanted to be done he was out wanted to retire um well it doesn't make sense for
7:42 me and the other guy to pay on on a on a 6X even evaluation that's just doesn't
7:49 doesn't make sense there's no path there especially if we think we're possibly at our top to to pay that um so we had to
7:55 find find a buyer um so spoke to a lot of private quity companies a lot of potential buyers had some better deals
8:02 on the table but ultimately you found this company out of Canada publicly traded aemerge that kind of spoke our
8:09 language um and the the offer was very fair it was it was 6X eida um and uh you
8:16 know since we couldn't buy him out we said well let's find someone that can that kind of shares our vision and um
8:23 that's what we did so we got acquired in 2021 and um to no fault of their own but
8:31 they were probably traded via spack and anybody listening if you if you followed the story of all SPS um in the market in
8:40 2021 and 2022 it was a bloodbath right Financial is not changing at all just
8:47 the market was not had very little respect for SPS for no you know not
8:53 necessarily legitimate reason that was Financial based or Business Health based so it lost you know call it 90% of it
9:00 possibly probably more of its market cap and with that um came challenges and it
9:06 created an opportunity where it was mutually beneficial they needed some cash um and we had the opportunity to to
9:15 get our business back at a um extreme discount compared to what we had paid
9:20 originally so wow never the intent to buy it back it was just um it was an
9:26 Arbitrage opportunity yeah it was a deal that was happen to be too good to pass up right and was that sale so correct me
9:34 if I'm wrong it sounds like that sale was kind of forced by one of the partners wanting out yet the business
9:39 couldn't afford to buy him out right so you you acquired a company came and acquired his shares or they ended up
9:45 buying out the entire company outright they bought everybody wow okay so at that point you guys are kind of like all right
9:52 hands day yeah there was um you know it was the deal and it's publicly traded so
9:58 the deal the deal out there um was 60% upfront in cash and
10:04 um we had negotiated the stock price stock out of The Upfront which we had fomo on it on why we did it but it ended
10:11 up panning out well and then 40% was tied towards earn outs that would that
10:17 would occur over the next three years if we stayed on so there was still a carrot to get us to you know want to get a a a
10:23 nice nice additional seven figure Payday for sticking around it's just you know
10:30 we quickly realized that the likelihood of that was not possible yeah okay wow
10:36 so that's a cool little story you you you you buy it back for essentially almost Pennies on the dollar right
10:42 you're back in control of battle box so I want to take it back kind of the beginning real quick one of the things
10:47 you you know coming from a different line of work for you was hopping into e-commerce was it like a brand new
10:54 experience for you did you have some experience in there or was it just like okay I'm hopping in the battle box I
10:59 gotta go figure out Ecom yeah the ladder so zero zero experience but the reality
11:05 is you know a lot a lot of the B2B sales I mean you're still selling right
11:12 there's still marketing it's still a lot of the same principles just instead of selling to another business you're
11:17 selling to the the consumer um and and arguably I think selling to a consumer
11:24 is substantially easy easier than selling to a business right cycle is traditionally not as long
11:32 you're not having to navigate prospecting is in the same manner right you can just spin up ads um it's it's
11:39 just a if you can excel in in B2B sales
11:44 figuring out and molding that back in direct to Consumer I is a lot easier than anybody talks about right well it
11:51 all comes back to especially for beta see it's identify who will buy your stuff yeah and then go get in front of
11:58 those people with your stuff that they already want and tell them about it when you break it
12:04 down like that it's definitely not rocket science right exactly there's a I know a lot of people in business and
12:10 many times myself included have over complicated the marketing aspect of it um and it's just it's it's kind of crazy
12:17 but um so I want to talk while we're talking marketing let's kind of keep rolling with that ball because you mentioned at the onset here that
12:24 everything for you guys revolved around content um so let me preface that what
12:29 exactly do you guys sell um I know it's it's handpicked outdoor survival EDC gear how does it work what I guess let's
12:36 start there it's a subscription service what do people get how's it work sure so um so yeah so it's outdoor gear so
12:42 everything from you know hiking to Camping to survival esque um you know in
12:48 case of emergency stuff and um yeah our Flagship product is is the membership is
12:53 the subscription so you know last year or this year 90% of our revenue is from
12:59 the subscription service so we have uh four tiers we have the basic the advanc the pro and the Pro Plus uh the basics
13:06 35 a month plus sales tax plus shipping wild we charge shipping these are big
13:12 things though it's not like yeah it's too much of a of a of a of a of a cost
13:18 to to ignore um and then up to the Pro Plus which is 170 a month plus uh sales
13:24 tax plus shipping ends up being depending on your state roughly $200 All In
13:29 um and the uh the Pro Plus is actually the most popular one so 50% of our
13:35 members are actually in the the the 170 a month option wow and they back on top
13:41 of each other so if you get the Pro Plus you get everything from the basic the advanced the pro and then the Pro Plus
13:48 item how does this work on a continual basis I guess in my mind being uh
13:54 unaffiliated with it you get a box full of specific gear and equipment
13:59 do you just keep acre it every month like do do they go out and use it and it it's it's consumable so they need more
14:05 of it what all I guess how's that work so it's um it's a great question and the reality is not all not all purchasers
14:12 are the same so you you you have a few different buckets right you have the the consumer that is actually gonna take all
14:19 this stuff out and go to go out in the bush or go camping with their with their family or go camping themselves or maybe
14:26 they're going to go hiking they're gonna they're going to use some of it right um then there's the the flip side there's
14:32 there's a lot of consumers that um it's it's preparation right it's preparedness
14:38 um do I need to use all this stuff no do I need to have this stuff in in case of
14:44 emergency um almost think of it as an insurance policy right I hope I never need all this stuff um but it's nice to
14:52 have right the the reality is there's still going to be stuff that's applicable to Everyday Life life right
14:59 you had a you get a a power bank you can use that today right or you might have one and you put it away and I hope I
15:05 don't need another one but there it is so it's the full full Gambit but it also leads us to um the number one reason why
15:13 people end up leaving right um they run out of space they they they they're they're
15:19 getting into an argument with their significant other on why the closet in the hallway is filled with battle box
15:26 boxes I mean it's it's it's our biggest biggest problem interesting okay so let's let's
15:34 dive into the marking side of it how how did you guys especially when you were starting out how did you get in front of
15:39 people it sounds like you you connected with a YouTube influencer who's now the face of your brand definitely an awesome
15:44 organic way to do that but how did you grow from kind of square one all the way up to where you guys are now and I'd
15:50 love to talk about the different things that you guys do to promote the brand and to build sales sure um so so jumping
15:57 off the initially um while we did we definitely had this
16:02 YouTube approach where from the beginning we were sending out uh in in the beginning times 20 25 boxes a month
16:10 to YouTubers to to review the the content and make a video um obviously
16:15 that served a a a a great purpose but the majority call it 95% of our traffic
16:21 came from Facebook ads the first several months um almost the First full year was
16:28 We were 100 100% dependent on Facebook um to a fault it caused it caused issues
16:33 um but yeah it wasn't so um we were
16:38 seeing this hockey hockey stick growth and Facebook was our only Channel and uh
16:44 Labor Day weekend going into going into the weekend and we had this sale plan
16:50 this these creatives these ads promotion it was going to be our best weekend we had ever had even if we didn't execute
16:56 it perfectly it was going to be our B biggest weekend ever and uh Friday at 70000 p.m. eastern time
17:02 um all of our ads shut down our ad account was um
17:08 canceled like kicked off you're no longer allowed to advertise on Facebook and um you know Monday through Friday
17:17 it's arguably a very large challenge to speak to someone actually at Facebook so
17:24 you can imagine the weekend isn't doesn't it doesn't get easier um but it was our only Channel and we didn't know
17:30 any better it was naivity and we went from On Top of the World to within a
17:37 minute we had zero traffic all of our traffic was gone because we were dependent on this single
17:44 platform um which you know we quickly learned that that's not smart um yeah
17:50 but we didn't we didn't know what we didn't know and we we had seen you know ridiculous
17:55 success just with a single platform I think 20 15 our first not even our first
18:01 full year but our first year of 10 months of selling we did 4 and a half million and it was it was Facebook
18:08 Facebook ad yeah um yeah so it's interesting that Facebook is as someone
18:15 who I started my agency based on running Facebook ads for local businesses I know all about and still running Facebook ads
18:22 today where just random suspensions just accounts being removed off the face of
18:27 the Earth for no good reason typically in just some silly error that Facebook will never admit to you on but then it
18:33 takes three months to get it back there's literally no humans to talk to half the time and the ones who are there
18:39 no offense Facebook but their 22-year-old shotgun hires out of college who don't know any more than the advertiser calling in with the problem
18:46 like it's just the way it is and it's awful and that's when yeah if you don't have your your business base spread out
18:51 a little bit for how you bring in customers uh that can be problematic as you learned the hard way super scary
18:57 yeah absolutely okay so you kind of learned that lesson there so I guess let's take it from there and talk about you had that that
19:04 breakdown with Facebook hopefully they got you back on board and it sounds like it was after the the busy weekend but um
19:09 what was your guys strategic plan moving forward um after starting to build on on YouTube having tons of success on
19:16 Facebook then what yeah so you know so we get knocked off Facebook that weekend
19:22 and that was the kind of the aha moment okay this this isn't a good idea to be solely
19:27 dependent have all of our in one basket so immediately we said okay well what other platforms are there um and you
19:33 know we it's complete naivity we we don't we don't come from um Ecom so we don't know anything and um we're just
19:40 talking to people and trying to get um trying to sponge and learn so we immediately launched on Google search um
19:46 which made sense people were searching for this stuff let's keep with an ad and then immediately from there we just we
19:54 said okay well let's just try everything um so literally you know at the time
20:00 Twitter before it was X um Pinterest um Instagram literally anything we think
20:08 can work let's let's try it and and we we we took that approach not everything worked but um during that um time we're
20:17 also leaning in and spending a lot of time and effort on on actual content and
20:24 putting content out on our YouTube channel and all channels um but but YouTube was was definitely the focus and
20:31 we started seeing this organic lift um from that where the more quality content
20:38 we had out there the acquisition costs would just come down um on the advertising side with this you know
20:44 Blended holistic approach and um we said okay well you know when we when we
20:50 started with the content it was just Brandon Brandon was the camera guy Brandon was the face of it Brandon would
20:56 then throw it on his computer and edit it and then Brandon would post it um and we said okay well how do we scale this
21:02 so we started scaling the content over time and to the point of today where um
21:08 Brandon is in front of the camera um but we have three full-time video editors
21:14 that then chop everything up and edit it in long form short form and uh and then
21:19 you know we have a social media um coordinator that's in charge of scheduling it all so we've just we've
21:25 slowly grown grown that side um to to continue to bring the larger amounts of
21:31 organic traffic in yeah that I mean the the content game I think it's was it
21:37 Black Rifle coffee the Evan hayfer guy like he did when he started that business was Ian probably still is just
21:42 tons content like actual good content funny content engaging content and not
21:48 just like blathering you know please buy my stuff content so how did you guys or did you kind of rely on um on your
21:55 YouTube guide to just kind of guide the direction of you know what are we filming today what how are we blending
22:01 in our brand with this are we being funny are we being cheeky are we being serious are we using you know fear for
22:07 survival and stuff like that how did you guys start making those types of decisions so so was actually it number
22:14 one it has to be genuine right so that's that's rule number one and those are the those are the guard rails it has to be
22:19 genuine no matter what um but we honestly just looked the data right we found which videos performed better
22:26 which types performed better and um and we're still testing every every day every week we're we're testing because
22:33 consumer you know response and behavior is always slightly changing and moving in other directions so we're always
22:39 testing we don't always assume that we have you know the the right recipe in 2016 is not the same recipe as it was
22:47 today and it's not the same recipe as it's going to be next year so we're constantly tweaking and and and changing
22:53 the recipe but it's it's it's listening to the audience right what is the audience engaging with the most
22:59 um and you know going to the platform that they're going to be at which has
23:04 changed over time it's it's trial and error right if we if we try multiple
23:10 videos of a certain aspect and approach and they don't perform well then we're not going to continue to lean in there
23:17 right so everything from comical to educational um to product testing to um
23:24 to Industry education and not even specific like scenario based education we we do it all right we're
23:31 bringing all kinds of content um to to the consumers to the audience so have
23:38 you guys at at this point in time now that you're you're in a 20 million plus AR business um what does your marketing
23:46 model look like now in terms of are you guys invested have you found a certain amount of platforms that you invad in
23:51 with you invest in with ad dollars are you guys just leaning heavily into YouTube or is it I imagine it's all
23:58 singing pretty well in harmony right now if you're doing this well so what's it all look like today yeah so we um you
24:04 know I could I could have people argue that it's too much and I could have a lot of people argue that it's not enough
24:09 but we still spend about 12% of our budget so 12% of our of our revenue is spent on on marketing um with the vast
24:18 majority of it around eight to n% on on actual platform advertising so you know
24:24 the makeups changed and it it it fluctuates through the year you know in earlier in the year Tik Tok was where we
24:31 were spending the most money on advertising and you know
24:37 unfortunately all roads every year tend to always lead back to meta where it's
24:42 just it's the best return on your ad dollars um and and it's still it's the
24:48 case as of right now met is still our it's it's our number one um place where
24:53 we spend but we do spend on multiple platforms um platforms com and go on
24:59 their their success there was a a stint where snap Snapchat was performing
25:04 really well for us advertising wise and you know we were leaning in there and then it it stopped working and went away
25:11 TikTok right now we're not advertising a lot on at all the the advertising elgo just isn't isn't treating us um how we
25:18 needed to treat to scale so it's a it's just a constant game of of what's working and testing new and
25:25 unfortunately meta just consistently winning yeah it's kind of you know Facebook meta
25:31 has just kind of always been the big dog as the conversions platform it's and that's true across Ecom is true across
25:37 uh service businesses leg gen type of stuff um it's still the platform where
25:42 like if we're working with a client at the agency and their local service business and they're saying what can I
25:47 what social media do I need to be on to get these types of lead conversion I said it's Facebook hands down it's meta
25:54 it's Facebook and Instagram and honestly it's Facebook over Instagram like very few
25:59 at least in my line of work where Instagram's going to win out it's just you're right it's Facebook they just
26:04 they they've built something they built something really good yep they sure did so do you use internal do you have like
26:11 an internal marketing team or do you Outsource you know as a as an as a business um in your type of uh sphere
26:19 does it make more sense to have internal or do you guys Outsource and let experts do their thing there or how's that how's
26:24 that work for you so our team is our team is mainly inter um that with the exception there's a
26:31 couple things that we do Outsource so the actual ad buying we we use a we use
26:37 an agency for it we we've looked um and and had the discussion multiple times do
26:42 we bring it in house um but it it's still it still makes sense to keep it
26:47 keep it um keep it external especially if you can negotiate a good deal and find a good partner a good agency that
26:53 you that behaves like a partner and and not just an agency um right and then we
27:00 continue to have our affiliate Channel outsourced to an agency as well um and
27:05 and that's still still make sense it's um everything else is internal so we
27:10 have we have the video editors we have um our you know social media coordinator
27:16 we have Brandon we have Austin who's head of content he's director of content and he's also a creator for one of um
27:23 our additional sister Brands and then we have uh Walter who runs marketing
27:29 completely and then on his team um he's got a couple guys Cameron who's a who's
27:35 marketing coordinator it's a it's a the marketing side as I'm as I'm running through it's probably eight people
27:41 internally and then agen very cool well what role does uh email marketing play
27:47 in your business it's it's big so so email and SMS are um you know it's it's
27:54 it's our data right and it's there's there's there's value in that in that first party data and
28:01 um it's it's huge um we were we were looking at it actually earlier this morning um because finding finding where
28:10 the truth is is is always a challenge you're looking at um the email provider
28:16 and they're touting this huge number that that's responsible but then you look at Google analytics G4 and it's
28:22 telling a completely different tell and then we go into you know North beam which is our attribution software it is
28:28 giving a different story um but all stories regardless tell the same which
28:35 is email and SMS is very very big for us yeah yeah absolutely I think in in
28:40 e-commerce email and SMS is it's got to be part of the life blood you know if if
28:45 you don't have email and SS at a minimum email SMS is a great cherry on top but at a minimum with email there's so much
28:52 money that can be left on the table through all the different sequences that you can run to bring people back to make sure purchases
28:58 like it's insane and you can you can automate so much of it exactly it's like
29:04 it's money Mak machine on automated like it's just it's unbelievable so I yeah I
29:09 was curious about that because I know how big a role that can play across your industry um so and speaking of role
29:16 playing in what's uh in the success of your business what about Community have you
29:22 guys built a community of your buyers um I know different brands do this in
29:27 different ways but I'm curious if you guys have focused on or built some sort of community amongst your subscription
29:34 holders your members if you will um to kind of continue to build that brand and um do that through your own people yeah
29:41 so um I was talking about content earlier um normally when I'm talking in
29:46 in gen generalities it's it's two things it's content and community so Community
29:51 is a a big piece um and it's part of our it's part of our secret sauce so when we started off the Jump we had at um
29:59 BattlBox forum.com and it was uh it was a Reddit style uh we used something
30:05 called proboards where you could like white label it and it was ours bulletin board esque um and we had that for a
30:11 couple of years and then all roads leave to meta um a couple of years ago we
30:18 decided to convert it into a private group on on Facebook so it's um
30:25 originally the first version when it was the Forum anybody could join um so you had customers and you had non-customers
30:32 um all all in the mix when it got to a certain size and we converted it to
30:38 Facebook we made the decision that it was part of the added value of being a member being a a subscriber you got
30:46 access to the community um so we paywalled it um we moved it over to Facebook and not everyone uses it um I
30:52 think we have um active members in in the Facebook group right now want to say
30:58 it's around 11,000 um so it's it's a it's a big chunk of of of our uh of our base but
31:05 it's not it's not everybody and and the community is is it's the lifeblood it's
31:12 it accomplishes so many things one um from as a consumer you know there's on
31:19 any given day there's four or five battlebox employees in the group interacting engaging with consumers and
31:27 you know it's it's such an added value and benefit as a consumer to be able to jump in and tag
31:33 the company that you're buying from that you're doing business with and get a get a response immediate
31:39 it's I'm shocked that it doesn't exist more than it does and it does to a certain extent you can jump on X and
31:45 blow up Delta blow up is probably not the right word say something negative about Delta
31:51 and they're gonna immediately jump on um and a lot of brands are like that like that but to have the Comm aspect and
31:59 actually just have a a conversation is a value um asking your customers and being
32:05 able to talk to them in real time and get feedback like it we we're constantly
32:10 improving because we've created this culture with our community where like they're going to call us out um and it's
32:17 not not in a negative way in a constructive way like hey put this in the Box hey do you know this would be a
32:22 lot better if it was X or Y and you know that's a big piece and then take that
32:28 even further you know every month you know uh the Pro Plus battle box
32:34 typically has six to seven items in there um and it's the I just said earlier they stack so it's everything
32:40 from the other tiers too um every single month at least one item in the box is
32:46 actually sourced from the Facebook Community the members only group where they've submitted ideas and products
32:52 that they should put in a box so it's like it's this true community of like full circle like they're not only
32:59 raising their hand and saying hey have you looked at putting this in the box but then they get to see in a you know
33:04 six months down the road where it actually shows up in the box and we call we call them out and say thanks you know
33:10 Charlie for for suggesting this item so it's it's really it's it's cool what
33:16 we've created and and what you can accomplish with a community yeah I think that's such a huge thing that's really
33:22 cool to hear how you guys utilize it because Community is such a big thing that I I agree with you not
33:28 not nearly the majority of Brands utilize Community very few do but the ones who are so successful do it and do
33:35 it really well because as a consumer nothing's cooler than being able to go to my buddies and be like hey you should
33:41 try whatever this product is because it's awesome and I know this because I
33:46 use it but also like I feel like I'm part of this brand I'm not just a buyer of this brand I'm part of it because
33:52 when I'm in this group in this community the company actually listens to me you know I they ask for recommendations and
33:58 they reply back right it's not just going into a you know a reply none email box and into the abyss right um and that
34:05 builds something inside each and each individual that's like they feel like they have a belonging and you're you're
34:11 part of something larger than just a physical transaction right and I think
34:16 that's inherent in just about every human being is wanting to be a part of something and for many of us wanting to be a part of something larger that we
34:23 otherwise wouldn't have that ability to do um and obviously it seems like it definitely affects the bottom line for
34:29 the for the better and builds the lifetime value which I know is the lifeblood of a subscription service
34:35 because if you know if you turn somebody every three months what type of Subscription Service are you right but
34:41 if you're keeping people for a year two years five years six years 10 years and you're just stacking people on top yeah
34:47 that's a great business model I I agree yeah the community aspect is is huge huge huge for us yeah that's fantastic
34:54 so and I guess that's probably part of some of the folks on your staff their job at least part of their job is to just be present in that Community right
35:00 yeah 100% so it's so it's interesting we have um the the our approach so you know
35:08 there's four or five of us every day that um out of maybe maybe 15 12 to 15
35:15 that just it's part of their their daily Cadence that they go in and they interact like it's just just part of
35:20 part of what you do right it's it's part of this culture of of community um but
35:25 then we we we took interesting approach you'll like this so we um through time um right now there's
35:34 six moderators so if you're a moderator you were a battlebox customer paying
35:40 customer and you're one of the most active engaged in in the the group and
35:46 you know you when you're there and you're seeing the same people always helping other people answering questions
35:52 basically BattlBox experts so at that point we offer you to be a moderate Ator
35:58 and your box is now free you don't pay for your box anymore and in turn you just keep doing what you're doing just
36:05 being a a huge pillar of the community and and keep uh rocking it and and
36:11 you're a moderator then we connect you with battle box slack and we're giving you insights and it's um it's just cool
36:18 to watch watch that uh that graduation from from paying customer to then
36:24 moderator and then there's there's wild stories Loop who he runs our entire um
36:30 uh customer service department he started off as a moderator so he started
36:35 off as a customer uh started then then transition and became a moderator and he's a by by
36:42 profession he was a nurse um so wildly different than running CS helping
36:48 people's lives running running BattlBox CS but he was um paying customer shter than is a
36:56 moderator and then and we had uh we needed some part-time CS help when we
37:02 were filming the Netflix show and he came on at that point in a part-time capacity and then that grew we had the
37:09 conversation like I'm kind of want to do this full-time and he jumped in and um
37:14 was a full-time CS member and then we made some some structural changes with
37:19 the when the show was happening fully and he ended up running the department um wow he came as a customer which is
37:26 such a wild uh you know transition but that only occurs when you have a
37:32 community like that where possible provides opportunity where it otherwise wouldn't have been yeah and do you guys
37:39 can you or have you branched into like actual meetups or live events for community members yeah so so so we have
37:45 so they've we we've had a couple events through the years um where you know
37:50 we're we're in Las Vegas for Shot Show and we're going to say have a beer with battle box and we'll drop it in there
37:57 and any body in the Las Vegas area can come and hang out um but we've we've taken it kind of a step further again
38:04 because of content and community so we've done two of these events now um
38:10 the first one was uh it was we call our boxes missions so every month we send
38:16 out Mission 114 or 115 and that means it's been that many months since we've been in business so for the 100th
38:24 Mission we uh we put golden tickets in in um in five of the boxes that we
38:30 shipped out if you got a Golden Ticket yeah 100% and uh if you got a golden ticket was it was Willie wony we flew
38:37 you to Texas um San Antonio hung out with you for the night in the morning
38:43 everybody jumped on a big um coach bus went about two hours into rural Texas we
38:49 put um these five customers in um in uh World War II tanks and they fired at a
38:56 Target down range if they hit that Target we're going to give $100,000 um nobody hit um which
39:03 stunk but it was kind of the Learning lesson and then we just did the second event which is going to be the event
39:10 we're going to keep doing now um as we move forward called battle games so we took um we sent out 50 golden tickets
39:18 this time and um if you got the golden ticket had a QR code on the back and you submit a video on why you wanted to
39:24 participate in the battle games and uh 10 contestants and uh five rounds
39:31 survival as outdoor um survival skill challenge where people are eliminated
39:36 each round and the winner we we gave $25,000 to um so we just got done with
39:42 that earlier this year it's we put three episodes um for it and we put it we
39:48 dropped it on YouTube because no Netflix didn't want it so yeah well so i' I've
39:53 breeed past this a couple times now you mentioned your Show on Netflix um I I definitely don't want to gloss over that
39:59 um what was that about how did that come about I mean it can't be easy to get a a show on Netflix no it was uh yeah when
40:07 you when you peel the onion back on it it was um it was a lot of rejection before getting it so we had um a
40:15 Production Studio reach out to us in I might get the year wrong CU it I in
40:22 2017 so they had seen our content we had been pushing Brandon had been fulltime for over a year at this point pushing
40:29 capitulation of great content yeah and he's and they're like hey we have some money from the History Channel to shoot
40:36 a Sizzle reel which um I didn't know what that was but apparently old old
40:42 Hollywood lingo you get money for a Sizzle reel you shoot that you then get
40:49 you know the the studio to say oh this is good we're going to pay for a pilot
40:54 and then you get money for a pilot sometimes you get money for a whole season but you always get money for at
40:59 least a pilot and then you show that and then you get kind of a a green light yes R we're going to give you money for the
41:05 whole season so History Channel had given them money to make a Sizzle reel
41:11 which we did we gave it to them um and you know we're waiting then for a green light on to shoot a pilot uh six seven
41:18 months go by no answer finally they say no you know we're good thank you so
41:25 we're you know sad at this point we for the better part of a year now had been
41:30 hoping this was we were going to get a show on the History Channel and um didn't work out Production Studio then
41:36 pitched to Discovery and uh Discovery uh rinse and repeat same thing it's like
41:43 six seven months and um they finally finally said no you know we're not
41:49 interested so we're like okay so at this point it's uh early
41:54 2019 and um January 2019 and you know at
42:00 this point it's been almost two years uh or has been two years and we're kind of
42:05 like okay this isn't going to happen they're like we have a meeting we have two meetings set one is with Walmart's
42:13 uh streaming service called Voodoo which I'm not sure if it's around anymore but it was I don't even know yeah they
42:18 Walmart had a streaming service um I forgot about that yeah and uh they were meeting with with Walmart and then
42:24 immediately after that they were meeting with Netflix um so we're like okay there's hope uh Walmart doesn't um say
42:32 yes or no it kind of goes in that same Purgatory that the others had done but Netflix basically on the spot says yeah
42:40 yeah we're in um we don't we don't do pilots we'll do we'll do a full season
42:45 and we want the right of refusal on the next seven seasons um wow and we're like
42:51 okay so um you know within a couple weeks we get a 70 page um legal contract from
43:00 Netflix we're like wow this is a lot so we find an entertainment lawyer and we
43:05 have them Redline it all and you know that was very expensive and we send it
43:12 back to Netflix after a week with all of our redlines and five minutes later Netflix replies and says you know we
43:19 apologize for any confusion and misset expectations like this is the agreement
43:24 like there's no redlining like sign it or don't we're like oh we
43:31 we didn't know that we thought we were supposed to redline it um and there was a lot of Redline because it was very
43:37 one-sided um like oh okay um so we signed it um and uh you know Off to the
43:45 Races in in so 2019 around July we film we started filming and we filmed through
43:53 the whole year in January um the crew came back to film just some pieces to uh
44:01 make sure continuity was there between the episodes just like some additional shooting and then um they gave it to
44:07 Netflix and Netflix didn't um say anything to us for months and uh ghosted
44:14 us and then in April they said hey uh we're g to go live with this um the July
44:20 4th weekend and it's going to be called this you can't talk about it until 3 weeks prior and then this is the allowed
44:29 um marketing and creatives you can you can share at that point wow wait what was the show about
44:36 um so it was literally a commercial for battle box um I figured yeah so um every
44:42 episode the entire concept of the show is we're testing gear to determine if it meets
44:50 our standard to then go into a battle box wow so literally like a a a full
44:56 season commercial for us um which is which is wild that that wasn't agreed
45:02 upon um but people liked it right like it was definitely it was it had the
45:07 reality TV flare to right like we're not putting flamethrowers in battle boxes
45:12 for multiple reasons but um you know we were testing flamethrowers so it was def
45:18 legal legal says we can't do that I so if you watch the trailer um if you watch
45:25 the trailer for the show that's one of the things like legal says you know we gotta tell you like not to do this um
45:31 it's funny you said that but yeah wink wink just do it yeah was it was literally us testing gear to determine
45:38 the Box okay so what what what effect on sales did that have um so it was
45:43 interesting so we go prior to the show we were getting about 125,000 unique
45:50 visitors a month on our site so a decent amount um in July 2020 we had 1.2
45:56 million unique so wow more than more than a million people came um came to our site now they
46:03 didn't behave like a higher intent buyer that saw ad or had been following us for
46:09 months um you know they weren't necessarily all about the subscription at the same conversion rates that normal
46:16 traffic paid traffic was but you put a million people on our site even with a
46:22 50% of the usual conversion rate it's still substantial so so it gave us um
46:28 yeah it gave us a nice a nice additional uplift and it's this is July 2020 so we're already we're in full lockdown at
46:35 that point right right it's pandemic pandemic hype um so people were already being like oh wow I can get stuff sent
46:42 directly to me um since I can't leave my house so it was just it was just part of that continued momentum that we were
46:48 seeing right well and it kind of helps that a lot of your gear is survival gear for a time when people thought the world
46:54 was going to implode so that was probably a good time to get hooked on some survival gear yeah was perfect timing wow okay so that's that's pretty
47:02 cool was it just one season on Netflix yeah just one season we um we're in this weird Purgatory state
47:08 so Netflix has this Northstar for their it was a Netflix original series um so
47:14 for their original series they have this North Star it's called completion rate and um completion rat is defined as um
47:24 when you start a a Netflix original series season do you watch 90% of it or
47:30 greater if you watch 90% of it or greater it's considered completion um
47:35 well we have eight episodes in our season one so you're in order to hit 90% you you
47:43 have to watch the whole thing right you're not going to start that eighth episode and not finish it um so if you
47:49 have greater than 25% completion rate so every so you know one out of every four
47:54 that start episode one watches the entire thing um if you have 25% or
48:01 greater completion rate with a Netflix original series you are automatically green lit for another SE another season
48:08 and they'll keep going right this is amazing content if you have less than 20% completion rate you are not getting
48:16 another season you are done you are cancelled this was a mistake yeah don't call us back if yeah yeah don't call us
48:23 um if you're between between the 20 and the 25 um you're in like a a Netflix
48:31 Purgatory where they're not going to cancel you they're also not going to Green lit the next season and you're
48:37 kind of like in this holding pattern where hey oh we need a survival show okay well let's open up what do we what
48:44 do we have here that we haven't broken up with we'll take we'll take one of those yeah and um we we had a 23%
48:50 completion like 23.2% completion rate so we're right in the slap middle of the
48:56 the comption Purgatory um okay so you know four years later they have never
49:01 told us that there's not going to be another season four years later they've also never told us that there's gonna be
49:07 another season right so it's um but they might call tomorrow and be like hey John
49:13 yeah they might they might call tomorrow we're not yeah we're not holding our breath though right okay dang well
49:20 that's very cool um all right well I didn't want to get that lost in the shuffle because I think that's a pretty unique thing to say for an e-commerce
49:26 brand that you Netflix series it was it was a game changer for us for sure tough to tough to replicate though yeah very cool well
49:33 I know we're getting up against time here I want to ask you kind of one last question here and just get your opinion
49:38 on the um the state of the e-commerce industry today um particularly as it
49:44 relates to those who might want to be starting um an e-commerce brand or a product or just starting a business in
49:51 eCommerce what's the industry look like what's the landscape look like and um is it still booming just as much as it has
49:58 been for years so so it's it's it's really challenging currently um you know
50:04 you're seeing uh consumer consumer spending is is down a little bit um it's
50:10 been down with uh for the you know the past year and a half um is it going to
50:17 and I'm speaking you know specifically just the United States the um because that is that is the you know the biggest
50:24 Market in in for Ecom um so it's interesting it's uh is
50:30 consumer Behavior consumer spending going to change next year um post
50:35 election TBD right some some are arguing that it's going to be that we're going to hit a great um a great boom in the
50:42 economy and then you know there's another side that says it's not going to be good it's it's the end of the world
50:48 so I guess we're going to find out in in in next year's episode of the reality show of
50:53 America um but you know I think think that's going to be a big indicator now I
50:59 will say that um even though it's challenging the great thing about about
51:04 e-commerce and direct to Consumer e-commerce is the barrier to entry is is not very high right you can you can spin
51:12 up you know go to like a Shopify of the world and and spin up a website and sell
51:17 a product pretty pretty easily right and then there's there's agencies and and
51:23 and people you can find that can help bridge the gap of of what you don't know so that barrier to entry is is pretty
51:30 low what I would say is where you're seeing the people with the most success
51:36 um and they haven't gotten they haven't when every when everything kind of course corrected after that boom in 2021
51:45 um the the brands that didn't drop as far as everybody else had that content
51:50 um and our community piece right you're seeing um you're seeing almost a reverse
51:57 model were the the the Mr Beasts of the world right the Kylie Jenner of the
52:02 world the um the ne boys of the world where they they had that content and they had that Community from the content
52:09 and then they launch a business on top of it and they're instantly successful right so I would say that if you can
52:15 figure out the content piece um or the community piece that's that's probably
52:21 the missing piece and it's the piece to probably get yourself into the best um
52:27 the best spot but then you look at you look at the those um creators that I
52:33 just mentioned they built that before they built the product um because the
52:38 reality is if you can build if you can build content in community the audience is going to tell
52:44 you what they want to buy yep um instead of instead of reverse engineering it like like we did like
52:51 everybody else does um if you can build an audience they'll tell you what to sell
52:57 yeah absolutely build an audience and let them identify their problems and you
53:02 go find the solution now you have built-in buyers if you start finding out
53:07 the correct solution and make different iterations and start selling it to these people then they start giving you proof
53:12 in the pudding that it works now you're on to something yeah yeah I love it
53:18 awesome well John this has been fantastic I really appreciate you joining me today uh hopefully we've
53:24 we've imparted some uh some serious knowled and wisdom on our listeners in regards to Ecom and obviously getting
53:30 the awesome story behind battlebox um I want to make sure that everybody um who tuned in can get a hold of you uh reach
53:37 out um be you know maybe join battlebox be a customer be a part of the community what's the best way to get in touch to
53:44 check you out and to check out BattlBox yeah so um so for the brand for for BattlBox um BattlBox.com there's no e
53:51 in there um you can also just throw BattlBox however you want to spell it into Google and our site's going to come
53:57 up so if you want to throw a E on there if you want to make it two words whatever you type in in a in a Google search it's going to come up um and then
54:04 as far as I'm cons reaching me LinkedIn is probably where I'm the most active um
54:11 and then you had mentioned earlier online queso is my blog it's um it's
54:16 e-commerce Centric it's there's something unique about it that I try to accomplish and I think
54:22 there's a lot of noise on X and LinkedIn with um I call I used to call them
54:27 Twitter Bros where it's just these this generation where they're just sharing the winds and a lot of the Winds aren't
54:33 even true and it just it's a very toxic um aspect of social media so what I I
54:40 like to really focus on is uh the losses
54:45 and the learnings the learnings that come from that right definitely share the wins too but I think it's important
54:50 to talk about the majority of time which is not winning and and those those takeaways in AA ments and and learnings
54:58 you take from them that make you stronger and better on the next iteration yeah I love it awesome and
55:03 that's b a t t l b o x all one word yes sir all right nailed it on the first try
55:09 good thing I was an English major all right well John this has been awesome man thank you again for your time and
55:15 wisdom I really appreciate it yeah this was great thanks Brian all right best of luck to you and BattlBox thank you you too