Mike Ettenberg never intended to choose between his two passions. Growing up in California, he found himself equally drawn to the thrill of entrepreneurship and the heroism of firefighting. Like many of us who've felt that pull in different directions, Mike initially thought he had to pick one path.
What emerged instead was Frontline Optics – a sunglasses company born from the frustration of repeatedly destroying $200 Oakleys in the back of fire engines. With remarkable candor, Mike shares how he launched his business with just $5,000 from forced overtime shifts while still working full-time as a firefighter. That initial investment covered 300 pairs of sunglasses, a basic website, trademark filing, and minimal marketing – a humble beginning for what would become a thriving business.
The real breakthrough came unexpectedly. After months of amateur marketing efforts, Mike created a video showing sunglasses falling in slow motion with fire equipment in the background. That single ad transformed his business from $30K to $170K in annual revenue. "I became a student of advertising at that point," Mike explains, highlighting how success often comes from identifying exactly what resonates with your specific audience.
What makes Frontline Optics unique isn't just their focus on durability for first responders – it's their commitment to values that mirror the brotherhood and sisterhood of emergency services. Their "no questions asked" replacement policy acknowledges the reality of gear destruction on the job. Their team structure provides customer service even during night shifts. And their charitable giving supports organizations like First Responders Children's Foundation.
For those dreaming of starting something, Mike's advice cuts through the noise: "If you go to bed at night thinking about doing something, and when you're running on a treadmill aimlessly you're thinking about doing something, and you're surfing podcasts and you're thinking about doing something – it means that it's in you. So just go do it."
Ready to support a first responder-owned business or find sunglasses that can actually survive your shift? Follow @frontlineoptics on Instagram or visit frontline-optics.com to see their full line of durable, ANSI-rated eyewear designed specifically for the demands of emergency services.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
All right, everybody, we are back with First
Responder Financial Freedom, andour guest today is Mike
Ettenberg.
Mike is the founder ofFrontline Optics and we're going
to go over his story both onthe job and off the job, and
hopefully this provides value toyou.
Real quick, aaron is not heretoday because he just had his
second child, so we are wishinghim congratulations as well and
(00:22):
we can get started.
So, uh, first off, like mikesaid earlier, thank you for
hopping on the show if you wantto give us a real quick
background and we can just gofrom there yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Um mike ettenberg.
I'm from california, was bornand raised in santa barbara,
found my way to san diego forcollege and never found a good
reason to leave, so um been hereever since.
Um had about uh 10 years infire and EMS before leaving to
focus on Frontline Opticsfull-time, which is a sunglasses
brand that we make sunglassesspecifically for first
(00:52):
responders.
And yeah, got a wife, threekids, a dog and a cat.
Don't really like the cat, butthat's me.
Speaker 3 (01:02):
Can't blame you, man, I'm a dog guy myself.
So how I guess?
You said you were on the jobabout 10 years and I guess, did
you always have thatentrepreneurial mindset, or were
you doing this frontline opticsor some variation of before you
got on the job, or is thatsomething that kind of began
while you were already?
Speaker 2 (01:23):
Yeah, um, entrepreneurship was always a
thing, I guess, for me.
So, um, growing up as a kid,the two people who I guess I
idolized the most, um, otherthan my dad, were my, my uncle
and my cousin, both very, verysuccessful in business.
And, um, you know, I just gotto see the lifestyle and the you
know the that they had, and sobusiness was always something
(01:44):
that interested me.
Now, in addition to that, Ialways also loved the fire
service, and there was somethingabout flashing lights and a
fire engine going down thestreet that just like,
captivated me, like most kids.
But I took it to an extra level.
You know, I went to Radio Shack, got myself a little scanner
radio, I had a Thomas book mapguide and I would hear the tones
(02:04):
go off and I could recognizethe tone for the area of the
city that I lived in, would flipto the Mac page and I'd see,
like, can I jump on my bike andget there?
Can I catch a glimpse?
And I would literally go andchase it right Just to see if I
could see it.
So it was always this balancingact of, like, fire service
entrepreneurship, fire serviceservice entrepreneurship.
Didn't really know how to doboth or how to decide.
(02:27):
So college comes around, um, asthe first thing I do is take an
emt class.
And I will tell you right now,as an 18 year old kid I was not
ready, um, professionally to be,you know, responsible for
anyone else else's.
Now I've met some 18 year oldkids who are great so, but I was
(02:48):
not one of them and theinstructor saw that right away
and they're just kind of likewhat are you doing here?
Um, career day comes around.
Members of Santa Barbara Countyfire department were there and
I like walk up to the table witha beard kind of like Mike's, uh
, except it didn't look quite asnice and you know, my hair was
all over the place and flipflops.
I'm like, hey, I want to be afirefighter.
(03:10):
And they pretty much laughedand they told me, they told me
to grow up nicely.
But we don't want kids in thefire service, we want adults
here.
So why don't you go and dosomething else?
Get some life experience, andonce you have that, if this is
still something you'repassionate about, come back and
find us and we'll point you inthe right direction then.
So I'm like, all right, myother passion has been business.
(03:31):
So I started to take businessclasses and I found myself,
going down that path, started abusiness in college.
It was called Pacific Beach BusCo.
And for anyone who's ever beento San Diego there's this area
called Pacific Beach, and thiswas before the days of Lyft and
Uber.
So you know, your choice was a$60, $70 cab ride to and from
(03:54):
Pacific Beach from San DiegoState, or driving drunk,
essentially.
So we filled that void with abus.
It was a 40 passenger bus for15 bucks round trip.
You could jump on our bus andit'll take you to Pacific Beach
and back.
On Thursday, friday and Saturdaynights Didn't make a ton of
money but, um, you know, we hada lot of fun while it lasted.
But you know thatentrepreneurial drive was still
(04:15):
kind of going at that point.
One night it was like twoo'clock in the morning I was on
my way to go clean up the busand I saw someone crashed their
car on the 15 freeway and theylike flipped it into the ice
plant.
So I pulled over and I likehelped try and get them out of
the car and then an emergencyscene developed around me and it
was like that light bulb momentagain where I was like this is
it?
So stopped everything, businesswent back, had to take an EMT
(04:40):
class again, and that was likethe start of my trajectory into
fire and emergency services.
So a little of both.
Speaker 3 (04:49):
Awesome.
I can only imagine all the DOTregulations that you may or may
not have been following withthat kind of bus and the amount
of stories you could tell only abunch of drunk people on
Thursday, friday nights, youknow.
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
It was, it was interesting, but you know you
can't ever let the red tape stopyou, you nights.
You know, yeah, yeah, it was,uh, it was interesting, but you
know you can't ever let the redtape stop you.
You'll, you know, you'll hityou'll hit red lights and then
you just got to figure out yourway around them.
Speaker 3 (05:12):
And that's business, man Just pivot or push, pick,
you know so.
So all right.
So presumably you then get inthe get on the job after taking
the EMT class, I presume stillin the Southern California area.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
Yeah, San Diego.
Speaker 3 (05:29):
San.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
Diego.
So I worked city of San Diegoum rural metro at the time then
became AMR.
It's now Falk um, so it's kindof gone through the transition.
But private ambulance became aparamedic and then I got hired
by the Julian Cuyamaca FireProtection District up where, if
anyone's ever had a Julian pieright, that was our first in so
(05:51):
worked there for about a year.
It was a mix of volunteer andpaid department, so I had one of
those paid spots and then afterabout a year I got the call
from the city of Coronado withan offer and I went there and
that's where I, I guess,finished off my career early.
Speaker 3 (06:13):
Awesome.
So I guess you're on the job,you're in California.
I feel like, okay, sunglasses,standard issue, right.
But like how did you decide tosay you know what I'm?
I'm going to make my sidehustle sunglasses like.
Speaker 2 (06:28):
So follow your passion.
I guess you could say I lovesunglasses.
I think one of the reasons whyI like them so much is because
for my adult life I was alwaysin a uniform and the uniforms
picked out for you.
So you don't really have anystyle Right.
You might have like fiveoptions of boots that the
department approved, maybe oneor two hats that the uniform
committee was okay with, butotherwise, like everything was
(06:50):
picked out for you.
The only thing you could reallypick was your sunglasses, and so
so I became like an advocateand I was always wearing them
and you know I had the differentcolors and whatever day of the
week I was style I was feeling,you know I had those on and um
nature in the back of a rigwhere everything's made out of
metal and you know if you get,if you get a call to a fire and
(07:13):
you're, you're close, right, yougot to get ready fast things
are getting chucked right acrossthe yeah iPhones get like
falling between the seats andyou lose your keys and you know
sunglasses naturally likeconstantly boom, boom, boom,
break and scratch them, losethem, um, and that was kind of
the driver.
I was like sick of spending 200bucks on every pair of Oakleys
(07:33):
and so I figured there had to bea better way.
I started looking to make itmyself and that was kind of the
birth of the idea of FrontlineOptics.
Speaker 3 (07:41):
Awesome.
So I guess, where do you evenstart?
Obviously, like you go, I wouldjust be Googling like how to
make my own sunglasses, Like canyou?
Just kind of can you just likewalk us through, and obviously
you don't have to share industrytrade secrets or whatever.
But like what?
What was some of the problemsor hurdles you ran into from
(08:03):
like oh, this is a really coolidea, to like actually
manufacturing, distributing, etcetera.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
Yeah, it's finding a good manufacturer, right.
So the first thing I did was Iwent on this website called
Alibaba and it's like um, youcan find anything like literally
anything on there.
It's just a bunch ofmanufacturers in in not just
China, but all over, um, likeAsia, you know.
And so, um, I went on there,started looking for different
(08:32):
stuff and I would find thesepeople.
I would talk to them aboutquality.
They would make all thesepromises and then they'd ship
you your stuff and it was likeit was junk, right, all of it
was.
Everything that came over wasjust junk, junk, junk.
And I was like, all right, backup, this is not the way right,
going to go and utilize Googlethe way it was.
(08:52):
And I didn't look at aparticular country, I was just
like, okay, sunglassesmanufacturers, and just started
going down the list and furtherand further down.
And the further down I got, themore likely they were to work
with me because they weresmaller, um, and so they're
willing to work with smallerbrands and the intricacies that
come along with it.
So eventually, after six plusmonths of talking to
(09:14):
manufacturers, I found one thatunderstood what I was trying to
do, was willing to utilize kindof the design ideas, the quality
aspects and they became mygo-to manufacturer.
We've been working with themever since.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
And that's a good thing to talk about too, right,
because if you think about a lotof this stuff that we hear is
people are worried aboutstarting anything because
there's already competitors thatare in the market, that they're
so big, how am I, as a littleguy, going to survive?
And then I'm thinking too likein Southern California, oakley's
headquartered here, you haveother brands and then you built
this thriving business.
(09:50):
Were you ever worried aboutstuff like that?
Or were you like more missionoriented to where you knew what
gap you were trying trying tofill and you were so focused on
that that nothing else reallymattered?
It's not like you were tryingto be an Oakley, right, you're
trying to do you, and you knowthat.
Hey, I'm going to serve thissegment and I understand this
segment very well.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
That's exactly it.
Um, I don't worry about thenoise, it doesn't matter what
industry you try and go into,there's going to be competitors,
um, it's.
You know, business is cutthroatand may the best man or woman
win, right?
So, um, I focused on, like,niching down and the fire
service first responders.
That was world that.
(10:30):
And sure, oakley markets tothis group.
Right, there's other brandsthat market to this group, but
they market to it amongst, likea branch of everything else that
they do.
It's not just solely focused onus.
And so I wanted to create, like,a small American brand focused
on the first responders here inthe United States, and, being a
(10:51):
first responder at the time Iwas still active um, I felt like
I was credible to be able totalk about the things that we
deal with and create a productand solution, um, that would
kind of serve, serve ourindustry.
Uh, you can't get cut out bythe noise, right?
Like sure it is, but if I hadlet that stop me, like we
(11:14):
wouldn't have built this.
It's obvious that even in asaturated space, there's still
room for niching down andinnovating within it, and that's
that's exactly what we did.
So, for anyone thinking of doingthe same, like, don't get
caught up.
I mean, sunglass is probablyone of the most competitive
industries you can get inbecause they're a relatively
inexpensive product, so youdon't need a lot to get started.
(11:34):
I would say, just don't put allyour eggs in one basket, right
Like.
This started as a side hustlefor me with a.
I had a few forced overtimeshifts, so I had some extra cash
, and so I used that forcedovertime to launch this business
, and I ran that business whileI was continuing to work up
until the point that it gottraction and grew to the point
(11:56):
that it could uh, you knowreplace my income nice and then
I saw you, so you started.
Speaker 1 (12:01):
So this was in 2021, right when this all happened,
correct?
And then I know on your story,if you want to go into more
detail, I feel like you started.
Your original, excuse me, orderwas order was around 300, 300
pairs of glasses.
Is that correct?
Speaker 2 (12:14):
Yep, yep, 300 glasses we launched, figured like cool,
I'm going to put these on theinternet and everyone's going to
buy them.
And that's not how it works.
So it was very, very slow atfirst.
I had no idea how to do digitalmarketing.
I had no idea anything really.
You know, I was snappingpictures of the glasses on
(12:35):
random anything I could findthat was like, oh cool, here's
an FTC, I'm gonna like put thesunglasses right there and take
a picture with my iPhone, put iton the internet.
Eventually I realized that youhave to.
You have to hook people right.
You got to grab their attentionand so my focus started to move
towards marketing.
First video that we did, thatactually took, was a video of
(12:56):
the sunglasses falling in slowmotion out of the truck and I
had my turnout gear like stagedthere and there was like the
front wheel of the rigs.
It was like it was obvious itwas inside a fire station and I
just voiced over it stop beatingup your expensive sunglasses on
the job.
Cool music goes and all thesephotos now of first responders
wearing it and our company justlike blew up.
(13:17):
From that.
One ad went from, you know,doing 30K a year to 170K in the
next year, really all off of onead.
And then, with that and theincome that came in, I was like,
okay, how do I recreate this?
What was it about this thatworked?
And I became a student ofadvertising at that point and,
um, that was really the, theticket.
Speaker 3 (13:39):
So let me rewind just a hair.
So you said your first um orderwas about 300 pair sets I don't
know what the proper term isfor all these sunglasses, but
300 sets, pairs and you said youdid it with basically some OT
shifts and I think that speaksto a lot of the folks that
probably listen.
And frankly, that's in essencehow I got started in my quote
(14:08):
side business is saved up someovertime and working part time
on a private ambulance well, notprivate, you know EMS service
and then that's how I parlayedit into my first real estate
deal.
The first 300 you boughtroughly like what kind of dollar
amount are we talking there?
Like I have no idea whatwholesale sunglass pricing is
and I imagine it's all over theplace.
(14:29):
But could you just give like aballpark, like what it costs
mentioned, it's all over theplace.
Speaker 2 (14:32):
But could you just give like a ballpark, like what
it cost five grand to getstarted.
So five grand got me 300 pair.
It got a shopify website built,um, it got a trademark filed
and it uh, left me a little bitof money left over for marketing
and you were the one that didall that set up the shopify, you
know, ordered the product,distributed the product market
of the.
Speaker 3 (14:52):
You were basically doing everything, correct.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
Yeah, or finding the people through you know
inexpensive options like Fiverr.
So, people on Fiverr that'llbuild your website for you.
You tell them what you'retrying to do and they'll do it.
There's companies that'll fileyour trademark for you.
So you give them, you know, yougive them this stuff and
they'll do it.
And I would encourage that, forfor some of that stuff, like if
your Shopify store doesn't lookprofessional, people will
(15:18):
immediately turn away and belike I'm not, you know, giving
them my credit card information.
So you have to have somelegitimacy built in Um, and so
you want to make sure that youyou do it right.
Especially, like pay a littlebit more for that Shopify.
Don't get the cheapest guy togo out there.
He's going to do it for youknow, 10 bucks.
Right, spend a little bit ofmoney because, again, that's
(15:39):
that's your storefront, right?
That's what a customer seeswhen they click on an ad or go
to your website and it's thefirst impression.
Speaker 3 (15:46):
Yeah, and the older I get, the more I just totally
believe that, uh, you know,cheaper is not always least
expensive, you know, like thatkind of stuff you might save a
couple bucks up front but it'sgoing to cost you in the long
run, you know.
Um, so did you try and pre-sellany of these sunglasses before
you placed the order?
Like, uh, we had we've had somefolks on that, you know, I've
(16:09):
done this with, like job coatsand different products, where
they basically tried to pre-sell, like a firefighter escape
system ahead of time to helpbasically pay for the first
order, so to speak, or did youjust buy them?
Speaker 2 (16:23):
all and open a prayer .
Yeah, just stupid, right?
I didn't even know thatpre-sale existed, right?
Like I was just cool, here's my300 pairs of sunglasses.
Like how do I listen?
Speaker 3 (16:32):
Right, that's what everybody's getting for
Christmas, kids yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:35):
Yeah, exactly so, um, no, I mean, I had no idea.
I didn't know what I was doing.
Um, you can't let that hold youback, Cause you're gonna.
You're gonna learn as you goand you got to understand right,
like when a toddler's learninghow to walk they fall constantly
Right and they're getting likethey're skinning their knees and
they're hitting their head andthey're crying.
But what does a toddler do?
(16:56):
They get back up and they do itagain right and they learn from
it and they keep going.
So when you start a business,you got to think of yourself as
like a toddler.
Like you're gonna fall on yourface, you're gonna skin your
knees.
It's going to happen.
You're not just gonna likemagically create the best thing
in the world and everything'sgoing to be, you know, sunshine.
Speaker 3 (17:16):
And I just had this conversation earlier with.
I was on the phone call with aprevious guest we've had on the
show, travis Oglesby, and wewere joking about a you know a
deal and, like you know, naively, when you first start out, you
just think everything's going togo perfectly as planned.
I don't care whether it's a$200,000 deal or $2 million deal
(17:36):
, things are going to happen.
It just, it's just the way itgoes.
Whether you're startingsunglasses or you're selling
loans or flipping a house, ithappens.
But, like you said at thebeginning, like you've always
been an entrepreneur and youknow, I still have to remind
myself of these types of thingsat times, because it's easy when
you're the one in the weedslike, oh man, this sucks, it
sucks.
But I have a quote literallyright above my laptop that I
(18:00):
constantly just kind of rereadand it's a Henry David Thoreau
quote.
It says just go confidently inthe direction of your dreams.
So if you just kind ofrecalibrate like, hey, this
sucks's, I can figure this out,type thing.
So, um, what are probably thebiggest issues you ran into with
that first batch?
And I keep going back to thefirst batch because I feel like
(18:20):
that's the next step for a lotof folks listening and you know
they may not be able to wraptheir head around.
You know pixeling and metatagging and social media and all
this stuff that might just gettoo too crazy, too quick.
So, like the first, nextproblem what was that?
Speaker 2 (18:37):
Quality improvement.
You know we started out as acheap, a cheap option, right?
The original products that wehad were 42 bucks um, plus a no
questions asked replacement fee,you know.
So like our program.
So like, literally, two pairsof sunglasses for for 50 bucks
Um, pretty inexpensive.
Speaker 3 (18:59):
What percentage of your sales took, I would say,
advantage of that offer.
Speaker 2 (19:06):
Uh, initially it was like 15 to 20% and now it's you
know it's more it's.
It's known's known.
You know that.
That's that's who we are.
So some people use it how it'sdesigned.
Other people are just like cool, like it's.
Like I'm kind of getting boredof these and I want a different
color.
But, like, whatever right it's,it's a no questions asked
replacement, so we won't askquestions when you want to
(19:27):
utilize it, you know we'll justshame you.
Yeah, I'm just one, right, you,you get one per pair.
So and we build it in.
But again, you know, theproduct itself was, was
inexpensive, and so we had tofind ways to improve it.
So it was, you know,improvement to the lenses,
improvement to the hinges,improvement to the plastics that
were used, but none of thatstuff was anything that I, that
(19:48):
I knew about at the time.
I just would look at what I hadand I would look at Oakley and
I'd be like, well, what, how arethese different?
What's different?
And again, having the rightmanufacturer, they can start
pointing you in that directionand oh, this is made from this
type of plastic, or they usethis type of hinge, or we could
make this type of modificationand you should look into this
type of lens.
So it just kind of started toevolve.
(20:10):
And as it evolves the productgets more expensive.
But that was always what wewanted to be was like a premium
quality product, not at thatpremium price point, which is
where we found ourselves rightaround that $80 price range with
a replacement.
Speaker 3 (20:26):
So are these ANSI rated lenses on the job.
Okay, so they basically meetmost, you know, OSHA and uniform
spec requirements.
Speaker 2 (20:34):
Our pomona line is the only one.
But our pomona line, which isthe, you know, by far the best
seller, is our nzz87 option.
Um, their safety stamped on thelens and on the frame.
So you know, if you do havethat safety officer come by and
want to check your stuff, you've, you've got the stamp on there
to to show them.
But, um, the others are alittle bit more delicate.
(20:56):
I guess you could say they'restill bomb proof, but you know
they're made out of aluminum,which aluminum obviously isn't
going to hold up, the same as,like a durable plastic, to any
kind of impact.
It'll bend.
But uh it, you know, it alldepends on on what you're
looking for in terms of theproduct and real quick.
Speaker 1 (21:13):
I was just thinking about a couple of things.
Number one is if we all kneweverything that was entailed in
our business now when we firststarted, probably wouldn't do it
.
Everybody like for me it's like, oh, I'm going to flip real
estate and make millions ofdollars or I'm going to sell
sunglasses, and it's like Ithink that exuberance gets us
through to the point and westart problem solving like we do
when we're first responders,and it just you.
(21:34):
You work your way through.
And I was also kind of curioustoo, if you view um, so I know
your policy is well known.
It's on your website, it's onyour social.
Do you kind of build that in?
It's almost like a marketingcost.
Right, because we'readvertising.
Because if you tell a phone,tell a friend, tell a
firefighter, I mean the word'sgetting out.
So up there I go.
Hey, this company frontline.
You know you can get yourparents.
(21:54):
What happens to them on the job?
They're going to replace themfor free.
All my strike team stuff.
I would always like go into mystrike team bag at the start of
the season and sure enough,there's like last year's
sunglasses that are just likebecause they've been sitting in
the gear locker the whole timeyeah, yep, yeah, we do.
Speaker 2 (22:11):
we build um into the price so that you know, we know
it's coming.
There's still a service fee, soit's a $12 service fee and that
kind of helps cover thefulfillment costs and the
shipping costs.
Uh, doesn't cover everything,so we do lose a little bit of
cash every time we ship one ofthose out.
But again we we kind ofcollected on the front side and
the um.
The bet that we've made is thatthe experience will be positive
(22:34):
and people will tell theirfriends and the organic word of
mouth will grow and we'llcontinue to um kind of expand.
Speaker 3 (22:42):
So have you started to off uh, offload some of these
responsibilities.
Are you still stuffing boxes inyour garage type thing that you
graduated, right, yeah?
Speaker 2 (22:52):
yeah, no.
So we, we partner with a 3plhere in san diego, um 3pl
third-party logistics.
They do all of our shippingfulfillment for us.
So, um, you know, we give themall the stuff, we tell them
exactly how it's supposed tolook.
You're gonna pack the box likethis, and then they do it for us
perfectly every time, get itshipped out right away, same day
.
So if you order before 1 pmpacific time, your order will
(23:16):
ship on the same day.
Otherwise, the next businessday other than saturday and
sunday and, like you know,holidays, like memorial days
coming up won't be open then.
Speaker 3 (23:24):
But, um, any normal business day when the bank is
open, right, we're open okay,what I guess at this stage of
the the business is your mainday to day.
Like, are you just trying topush sales, or um?
Speaker 2 (23:42):
marketing.
Yeah, a lot of marketing.
Um, meta ads is an animal everchanging.
It's always changing.
As soon as you figure somethingout, they tweak an algorithm
and they won't tell you whenthey do it.
The only way you know is thingsstart to decline and you're
like your head spend stays thesame, but your results go down.
Speaker 3 (24:01):
Oh shit, they changed something.
Yeah, exactly Like we're in itright now.
Speaker 2 (24:04):
Right, like you know, prior to this call I was
digging in deep to that.
After this call I'm going to bedigging back into it looking at
all the data.
But yeah, that's the majorityof what I do there.
I come on podcasts like this,try and just increase some
awareness of the brand and thenkind of focus on business
development new styles, newdesigns, a lot of logistics
(24:26):
stuff.
That's kind of what myday-to-day.
It can ebb and flow, but it's amix between content marketing
and growth.
Speaker 1 (24:40):
So for that I I love this stuff too.
That's actually kind of where Igravitate a lot.
I like figuring all this stuffout.
I noticed that you have some ofthe fire department coffee guys
on your site.
Yeah, um, is that I mean it'scool?
Either way, I mean it's coolbecause a they're both first
responder businesses and I'massuming you guys are
cross-marketing to each other'sbrands because you guys both
serve the same demographic.
Is that a new thing?
(25:01):
Have you always done stuff likethat?
Speaker 2 (25:05):
Yeah, it is a paid relationship, as with anything,
but it's a mutual one, becausethey won't support a product
that doesn't stand behind.
You know them and their brandand vice versa, um, but yeah, so
it is a pay to play, but it's.
I mean, they're a strategicpartner for us, um, and it makes
, it makes a lot of sense.
(25:26):
Early on, it validated us aswell, because, if you know,
you've never heard of us, buteveryone knows, you know jason
and fenton, right.
So, like if those twoknuckleheads have our sunglasses
on and are talking about it, itinstantly validatesates the
brand as being like, oh, likeI'd seen those ads.
Now these guys are talkingabout it.
Let's go check it out.
And it kind of helped to movepeople to that.
(25:50):
Okay, I'll give you a try.
And then again, once you try us, you know you'll see it, you'll
get the glasses, you'll realizethat it's not like a gas
station quality, like knockoffpair of shades, like you're
getting.
Speaker 3 (26:06):
You're getting good stuff, um but yeah, that
relationship's been awesome, funguys.
We will uh need to connect youwith the brotherhood buff guys.
Okay, the energy drink, the jobcoat there's several, you know.
Maybe not all of them have thefootprint that those guys do,
but, um, brother and boss got apretty big reach and you guys
might be able to do somethingcool.
So, I'll make.
I'll make that introduction foryou.
Um, I forgot I was going to sayoh.
(26:29):
All right, so I won't mentionthe name of the sunglasses I
currently have, but, uh, I guess.
See what time it is, See ifmine will ship today, I'll order
them.
But I have glass lenses.
Does that differ from plastic?
So, like, my sunglasses haveglass and I noticed you know
that obviously they're heavier.
But like, have you playedaround with any of that lens
(26:50):
quality or type?
Speaker 2 (26:52):
Glass is for sure the most clear kind of lens that
you can get um, most clear kindof lens that you can get um.
But they also are prone to likescratching and then, from like
a shatter perspective, rightlike if yeah just your eyeballs
by something hard enough.
You've got glass, like you know,half an inch from your eyeballs
(27:12):
.
So, um, I know, like maui's arelike real big on, like the
glass lens and they're known for, you know, the optical clarity.
But we have to find thatbalance between durability and
because we're again, we'remaking job glasses right, we're
making something that's strongenough to be used on the job.
With enough fashion statement Iguess you could say that you'd
(27:34):
be comfortable wearing them onthe beach or at the pool as well
.
So that we look atpolycarbonate.
You can't get an ANSI-ratedglass lens.
It won't pass.
You have to use specific typesof materials.
So from that ANSI perspective,we use a polycarbonate lens.
We use a greenish base colorfor the lens.
(27:54):
So it actually gives you likesome companies will try and coin
it as like hd vision, right,but it enhances the environment
around you, versus like a brownlens that kind of dulls the
colors.
So, um, so it's a pleasantviewing experience.
And then for ournon-anti-erated, we go with the
nylon lens, which again has alot of durability.
(28:15):
Um, it's almost at that samecaliber of clarity of glass, but
a little more durability, alittle more scratch resistance.
And then it's not glass because, even though they're not rated,
they are going to be worn onthe job.
Speaker 3 (28:30):
Sure, I was just kind of curious there on that one,
so I was going to say, oh, arethey polarized?
They are Okay.
Speaker 2 (28:38):
Yeah, so yeah, they're all polarized, uv 400
rated, so you are getting thatprotection.
We do have non-polarizedoptions in prescription
available, so if you wanted togo, you know, if you really
needed a non-polarized lens, youcan always get everyone.
Everyone.
(28:59):
Even if you don't want to admitit, everyone could get a
prescription right.
Nobody's eyes are perfect theycan all.
Speaker 3 (29:02):
You can use your hsa account for these?
Speaker 2 (29:05):
uh it, you can do a reimbursement.
So we can't, we can't take anhsa card, um, but you can submit
for reimbursement after thefact, which a lot of people do,
sure do.
Speaker 1 (29:22):
Sure, you're on me, so you started off obviously on
your own now.
So, now that you've progressedin business like what, what kind
of team does it look like asfar as what does it take to run
the day to day?
Speaker 2 (29:29):
Yeah.
So you can get virtualemployees, which anyone who's
starting out.
You can find them anywhere.
They're here in the States.
It's also very popular to getthem in Latin America and the
Philippines.
So, depending on what it isthat you're doing, if you're
just starting out you're notmaking very much money right,
(29:50):
Like when we were doing 30K ayear.
I got a VA in the Philippinesto help me with following up on
emails and things like that,just because I was still working
and I would get caught up onruns and I didn't want my
customers to have to wait threedays to hear from me because I
got busy.
So you know, it made sense.
But right now we have a team oftwo customer service reps and
(30:11):
then, like a jack of all trades,administrative assistant for me
.
Then I handle the marketing andwe have a 3PL doing all of our
shipping and fulfillment andfrom that, you know, we could
easily get ourselves sevenfigures and beyond.
Just that small team that'sawesome.
Speaker 1 (30:28):
That's efficient too, yeah.
Speaker 3 (30:31):
That is very I was trying to count sets basically
14 members, right Including you,and then an outsource basically
logistics, just distributionfacility.
Yeah, that's pretty slick.
Members, right Including you,and then an outsource basically
logistics distribution facility.
That's pretty slick, though,man.
Speaker 2 (30:44):
Yeah, we could get away with three, but I wanted to
have some like after hourscustomer support so that people
didn't have to wait after fiveo'clock, cause a ton of us like
right, Like working night shiftor working all day, right,
you're still on there askingquestions.
So the fact that we can answersomeone's question at 10 o'clock
at night, I think it's helpful.
Speaker 3 (31:02):
Well, and it never hurts to have, like, I'm a big
proponent of efficiency.
But like, some redundancy isgreat, especially if you ever
have turnover, and I don't carewhether that's stateside, near,
shore, offshore, it doesn'tmatter.
The staffing model, like havinga little overlap, is always, in
my opinion, great.
Yeah, but yeah, I've been therebefore there.
Speaker 2 (31:25):
So definitely, everyone on our team is trained
in customer service.
So you know, even if I had to,you know I can still jump in
there and every once in a whileI do, I'll see some, some ticket
will come in.
I'm like, oh right, like maybethey mentioned a department that
I want to chat with somebodybecause I've got a friend there.
Whatever, every once in a whileI jump in.
I try and leave it to peoplewho do it better than me.
Speaker 3 (31:45):
I was going to say two questions you have.
First off, it looks like youreally lean heavily into
customer reviews to help makethe sale for you, which I'm a
big proponent of.
I do have some issues with thereview review platform, cause
it's like it's so easy forsomebody to leave an unfounded
review and even if you respondprofessionally, it's still like
tarnishes it like the starrating.
(32:07):
Yeah, I got Airbnb did that tome and I just recently had that
with one of my storagebusinesses.
It's annoying, but it is whatit is.
And regardless of the factslike they can sit in that, sit
there and leave you a one-starreview and just like then you're
trying to play catch up, yeah.
Second part of the question isI guess my question is with the
(32:31):
reviews, like you, how are yousoliciting those?
Is that something like whereyou're automatically sequencing
to follow up?
Follow up like please leave areview, please leave a review,
type thing?
Speaker 2 (32:40):
Yeah it's, it's automated.
So, um, it's like about threeweeks after they receive the
product, they'll get an emailand it's essentially like hey,
how are you liking your newshades?
With the link to click on andplug in your you know your star
rating.
Leave the review and for themost part, you know everything's
(33:04):
positive.
Every once in a while you doget a negative, but the
negatives almost help youbecause people will go to look
for it and so if you explainwhat you did right, like oh,
like they didn't fit my faceright, like once you have a fat
head, yeah and then it's likehey, like sorry about that.
We do offer, you know, freereturns and free exchanges, so
make sure you know to reach outto our customer support.
So we do offer, you know, freereturns and free exchanges, so
make sure you know to reach outto our customer support so we
can get you in something else,right?
Or like oh never, they neverarrived, right?
(33:24):
It's like, oh, thanks forletting us know.
We've got a new one that'salready on the way.
Like, so we can, we can dothings with that that show that
the brand will take care of you,even in that worst case
scenario that we're not going tolike leave you high and dry.
But you know, the majority ofour ratings are five stars, with
a handful of four stars thatcome in here and there.
(33:45):
It's from people who refuse togive a five star rating, you
know.
Speaker 3 (33:48):
But Grant Cardone and I.
There's a lot of things I likeand a lot of things of his I
don't like.
But he did have a comment orstatement once about a customer
complaint is like youropportunity to like either make
the situation worse or get acustomer for life by like how
you handled it.
And if it is a legit complaint,like hey man, these things suck
(34:10):
, like something happened,quality assurance, whatever it
is and you're like hey man, thatyou're right, that that is
unacceptable and that does notmeet our standards.
Tell you what you got a pair onthe way and a second set for
your wife on me.
You know, like that man, that'san opportunity to sit there and
say, like you're right, like itwas legit.
And now that customer isprobably going to go tell 10
(34:30):
other people because of how itwas handled.
Because I think and myselfincluded you're expected to like
, you expect, when you have somesort of issue like that, for it
to not be like a good outcome.
Speaker 1 (34:42):
Like you, just kind of go into it.
Speaker 3 (34:43):
Maybe I'm just a jagged Like you go into it,
you're just like, oh God, thisis going to suck, you know.
But then, like when they makeit right, you know it's like
you're at the restaurant andthey mess up your meal.
But then they're like, hey, youknow what, like that appetizer
was on me, let me get you around of drinks.
Type thing.
You know, it's like all right,it still sucks, but it like
smooths it over and you're morethan likely going to come back
again, type thing For sure.
Speaker 2 (35:04):
So yeah, uncle Grant's a smart man, so yeah.
Speaker 3 (35:12):
I always say he's got a jet, I got a pickup truck.
Speaker 2 (35:15):
So I mean we, we live and breathe by.
By that.
I mean it's in our core values.
Essentially, customers alwaysright.
Even if they're wrong, they'reright and we're going to bend
over backwards to help them.
Transparency is another one.
So if we do screw up, likewe've had, it's like anything.
If you manufacture something,you're going to get a batch.
That's not good, right.
If the batch ends up having anissue, we're honest with them
(35:38):
and we tell them hey, like, weidentified an issue with this
batch, here's what we're goingto do about it.
Right, it's, it was free.
You're going to get another oneon us when the next batch
arrives.
It's below our standards?
Right, we meet these standards.
We stand behind our product andwe're going to get you taken
care of and it it's the only way.
As far as I'm concerned, it'sthe only way to do business
(36:00):
longterm and long run.
Cause, again, you get a badexperience and then it's met
with a bad customer serviceexperience.
They'll never buy from youagain and they'll tell everyone
in their circle not to do it aswell.
Yeah, outside, like you said,it's true, and especially those
people who leave like a one starreview, they'll be extremely
loud, either for you or againstyou.
Speaker 3 (36:27):
And it's up to you, based off of how you respond to
them, which outcome you're goingto get.
Yeah, and so I kind of tooksomething like that, because I
get a lot of phone calls and Ihave a call center for our
storage facility, but Iinstituted something where it's
called 50 to Fix it and I kindof stole it from, like you know,
the Ritz, carlton, dan Martell,all these different people I
listened to, and it's like if,if the problem is going to cost
$50 or less to fix it and makethe customer happy, and it's
(36:49):
like a legitimate issue Ifthey're just calling to complain
because they want a discount,well, that's not really the
intent of the policy.
But if there was an issue, theygot there, the light bulb was
burned out, this, that or theother thing.
Hey man, tell you what?
I'm sorry for the inconvenience.
What I'm going to do is I'mgoing to put a $25 credit on
your account for next month andwe, you know, just basically, we
(37:10):
give the autonomy to thecustomer service rep, or in this
case, my operations manager, tokind of just fix it without
having it all come back to me.
Or, in your case, you know, canI replace these?
I'm sure you have a policywhere it's like if this, then
that type thing, and that's beensuper helpful, because then
people are like oh, thank you,you know, and it's like it's
(37:32):
turned some of those what couldbe the like three or three and a
half star interaction into afive star interaction with those
folks.
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (37:40):
Yeah, and people like to buy from people, you know.
Speaker 3 (37:42):
So if you show your your human, you know, like this
shit happens, dude, Like youknow, like even if, even when
you try and you're on point,like stuff happens, you know
yeah.
Speaker 1 (37:54):
Well, that's like everybody's always happy when
you're winning Right, and thenwhen you're losing, you know the
real things start to come out,and you mentioned a couple of
things, and Mike mentioned ittoo.
So, like you mentioned corevalues, which not many people
who are starting the businessreally focus on.
So my question is have youfocused either time and or money
into business coaching,anything like that?
(38:14):
Do you like to read a lot?
Where are you going to getanswers outside of what your
current?
Speaker 2 (38:21):
experience is yeah, there's a.
There's a ton of good resourcesfor free.
A lot of great podcasts as youmentioned Dan Martell, I'm a big
fan of, like Andy Frisella,Harmozy yeah, so like these guys
are, you know they're they'replayers in the space that have
so much more knowledge than atleast that we have now.
(38:42):
I guess we can all aspire to beon that level and it is
possible, but they can helppoint you in the right direction
just listening to you.
Like Andy Frisella has a Q&Ashow once a week where people
call in with their questions,and I find so much value in
listening to his responses onhow he would handle different
things.
Um, and that's kind of where wecame up with with our core
(39:05):
values was based off of thingshe said there.
And so now when we interviewsomebody, our interview
questions are based off of thecore values.
When we have like a conflictthat happens and we have to talk
about something, the, we pointto our core values of the
company as we describe like aconflict that happens and we
have to talk about something,the, we point to our core values
of the company as we describelike what went wrong and why we
need to fix it, and usually thatencompasses two, two core
(39:28):
values, right?
So, um, yeah, those are superimportant, and then we list them
on the top of, like all of ourSOPs and everything.
So anytime you're going toresearch um, research anything
related to the companyinternally, you're going to get
our core values, followed by ourmission statement, followed by,
like, the table of contents ofwhat you're trying to find, just
to like hammer the point home.
Speaker 3 (39:49):
Yeah, you're building a business like, not a side
hustle at this point, you knowCorrect 100% and that's what I
was thinking when you weresaying that.
Speaker 1 (39:55):
I'm like this sounds a lot like Andy and Ed, because
Andy and Ed are huge on corevalues and everything's built
around it and I thought it wasinteresting.
On this week's episode, I'm notsure if you guys going to be
disappointed.
And he's like I'm walkingaround here and you can see
everything that Andy preaches atthe first form offices.
So I think that's huge.
And, yeah, Hermosi is legit aswell.
So, okay, well, a lot of ourpeople that are listening are
(40:32):
looking for something to startand, like you said, your initial
startup cost was 5,000 and youjust went out and did it.
Speaker 2 (40:51):
But if they're looking to do anything, let's
say consumer related as aproduct, what kind?
Speaker 1 (40:54):
of advice, I guess, now that you've been in business
, for going on five years.
Speaker 2 (40:56):
Where would you have them start?
Just start.
It's easy to say, but juststart.
Ready to fire in?
Babe?
Yeah, exactly, exactly so.
Um, you can very quickly getcaught up in the like I'm not
ready, I need to consume more, Ineed to think more, I need just
just get started.
Uh, a couple of things I wouldmention is um, first off, try
and fix, pick something thatdoesn't have a massive capital
investment to get started,because you don't know what
(41:19):
you're doing.
You're going to learn throughthe process.
Not every business that you gothrough is successful right at
the beginning, but you'll learnsomething from it which you can
then take into the next one andthe next one.
Hopefully, the first one youpick works right, but I started
a bus company, right.
That obviously was not going toget me where I wanted to be
(41:40):
long term, but the lessons Ilearned from that and even in
like guerrilla marketing and allthat kind of stuff, helped to
kind of build up what I'velearned now.
So get started.
Get started with somethingthat's relatively affordable and
don't quit your day job.
Affordable, and don't quit yourday job, it's going to be the
(42:02):
big one.
So I had the luxury of buildingFrontline Optics for two years
before I ever took a penny outof it.
That allowed every dollar thatcame into the company to get
reinvested back in.
And if I was trying to paymyself a salary, who knows if we
ever would have actually gottenoff the ground.
But I didn't need to because Iwas still working for the fire
department and I still had mypaycheck coming in on that side
and it allowed me to focus thishobby and build the hobby into
(42:25):
something where it actuallycreated an income stream for me.
That then made it make sense tomove over to it full time.
So as it starts to pick uptraction, try and minimize your
costs in your life.
So don't buy the expensive car,keep your old one right Like,
(42:45):
just find ways to downsize.
And as that revenue starts toget to a point in your business
where it can meet your currentdeclined lifestyle, that's when
you now are at the crossroadswhere you get to decide is this
a side hustle that I do, or isthis going to be?
You know my full-time thing andthen just commit.
Speaker 3 (43:06):
Yeah, I think that's the biggest thing is commitment.
Everybody and you know I'mguilty of this Like we're in
such a world now, like I canorder it today, have it tomorrow
, type thing, or you, you watchthese reels or whatever it may
be like.
And the one thing that I,looking back, I'm super glad I
did is whenever I got started inreal estate is I made myself
(43:28):
like personally commit to myself, like I'm going to give it five
years because and I've heardHermosi explain it Like if you
zoom out over a big enough timehorizon, like a lot of these
problems get small and like asit relates to real estate, if
you zoom out over a big enoughtime horizon, like a lot of
these problems get small andlike as it relates to real
estate, if you look at like justa little snapshot of a rental
property, like a month or two,you can have like the worst two
months ever.
(43:48):
And then you zoom out likeanother 24, 36 months and it's
like those two months are just ablip on the radar and
everything else kind of leveledout.
But if you just only focus onthat little bit of time, man,
it's tough.
So committing is super huge andsometimes you just need to do
it long enough for the plan toplay out where it's like see it
didn't work.
(44:09):
Yeah, no, kidding, cause you ownthat house for four and a half
months.
Yeah, You're right, you're notwealthy yet.
Yeah, you know, wait 14 moreyears or something.
So yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2 (44:19):
And it gets hard, like they always say.
It's like, right, when you'reabout to hit your breakthrough,
like so much stuff is going tohappen during that period of
time that makes you doubt it.
Right, that's the moment.
Right, that's the peak of atleast the first mountain.
Right, that's your peak andyou're going to break through
and get to the other side.
And it's like a whole new worldonce you get there and I've
(44:40):
seen it now a couple of timesyou know we're still small, but
I've seen it a couple of timesnow where you feel like
everything's stacked against you, the deck's stacked against you
.
But that's just thatopportunity to like build up,
you know, and like push throughand get some resilience behind
you and know that, like, onceyou get to that one, you're like
(45:04):
, oh, like, next time I hitthese hurdles it's because I'm
about to break through toanother level.
And each time you do that, therewards just stack on top of
each other with each one.
Speaker 3 (45:08):
So yeah, it's like and and the stuff that you
consider a problem now, likefour years ago, would have just
been disastrous.
Now it's like, dude, that'stuesday before lunch disastrous.
Now.
It's like, dude, that's Tuesdaybefore lunch.
Now, you know, it's like itjust becomes a.
And the one thing that's helpedme with that is and we talked
about it last night at a group Iwas in where it's like you get
(45:29):
involved with these othercircles or guys that are in
business and whether they have afirst responder background or
not, just a lot of these thingscan be solved with like bounce
an idea off Tyler, or a coupleof phone calls and if I don't
know, I bet, within one degreeof separation within your
network, like hey, man, I don'tknow how to do this, Tyler's
like oh, I got a guy like youknow, like I'm, you know it's
(45:50):
just like one phone call or twophone calls in 15 minutes.
Next thing you know you havelike 70% of the information you
need to solve said issue.
Where it seemed like sounbearable is just, I don't know
.
That's something.
As I've kind of like gonethrough this, it's helped me a
lot.
It's like I don't know anythingabout X.
Well, let me see, I bet thatguy has an idea, or that guy,
(46:13):
and next thing you know you'reworking through the problem one
bite at a time.
So your network is your networth, right?
Oh yeah, I mean that getsthrown around a lot, but it's so
frigging true.
Speaker 2 (46:23):
Yeah, right, oh yeah, I mean it.
That gets thrown around a lot,but it's so freaking, true.
Yeah, like the other one I'veheard is like um, you're the
average of the five people youspend the most time with, so
100% looking out a bunch ofdegenerates, right yeah generate
too.
Um, but each person at a higherlevel at that table, um, they
start to pull you up to you knowto median, so um, keep that in
mind too.
When you have people thatyou're hanging out with, um are
(46:44):
they people that are going tobuild you know to median, so um,
keep that in mind too.
When you have people thatyou're hanging out with, um are
they people that are going tobuild you up in any aspect of
your life, whether it's personal, professional.
Um, just have people that areare going to push you forward,
not kind of hold you back orkeep you stagnant.
Speaker 1 (46:58):
Uh, real quick too, as we're getting close.
Um, I do want to mention.
Which I love is you are a nicheproduct for somebody, for first
responders, but you guys alsodonate to first responder
charities.
From what I see and correct meif I'm wrong it's first
responders children's foundation, the burn Institute,
firefighter aid and then nextround.
Speaker 2 (47:20):
I think next round is that um charlie brown and and
those guys okay yeah, so, yeah,we um, we want to give back to
the community.
Our primary is the firstresponders children's foundation
, so a portion of every salefrom our online sales
immediately gets donated to thefirst responders children's
foundation.
Those other organizations umare like event based or
(47:42):
situational based, or we'll, um,we'll donate to an event or do
some aspect outside of like oursales.
I guess you could say it's justsomething extra, but you know
we, we have a mission behind us.
It's, you know, we're creatinga brand that's for us and for
our community.
But you can't be for us and forour community if you're not
going to support, you know, ourbrothers and sisters when
(48:03):
they're in their difficult needor their families are in their
difficult need, and it's part ofour nature, you know, to it's
part of that brother andsisterhood is to to to help be
there for people.
So we wanted to make sure thebrand you know stood on that
value, and so we, you know, givea significant chunk of change
each year to to these differentorganizations.
Speaker 3 (48:26):
Yeah, that that's awesome and uh, yeah, I'll
definitely have to put you intouch with the end.
They had buffed energy but, dueto a copyright issue, has a
different name now.
But they take a portion of eachsale and donate it to a
firefighter based charity.
I don't want to misquote thename of it, but it's, uh,
basically the same for, like thewidow or the children, rather.
So, okay, but it's basicallythe same for like the widowed or
the children, rather.
(48:46):
But yeah, that's awesome and youknow it.
Just, it's like capitalism, butcompassionate, you know, and
it's like you can, you can havelike this new mission and we
didn't even get into that and Iknow we're coming up on time but
, like, I would be curious tosee if you had like any sort of
identity issue as youtransitioned out of the fire
service day to day world intoyou know business.
(49:07):
I mean, I know it's always likea tug of war of you know you
liked both, but I think that'sstill an interesting topic and
like one that I didn't know ifyou had any any thoughts on know
if you had any any thoughts on.
Speaker 2 (49:26):
Yeah, I mean, it's um for sure, there's some
struggles that come with it, uh,especially when I'm driving
down the road and I see like agood header and I'd like you get
that, like, oh man, that wouldbe fun, right, but um, you know,
all in all, I uh I still get tobe involved in the community
just because the brand isfocused on the community.
Um, so like, I get to hang outwith you, fellas, today, right,
so like I do get to be withlike-minded people, and now I
(49:49):
get to be with like-mindedpeople in our space as well as
in the entrepreneurship space,which is even more cool because
we've got more to talk aboutthat.
You know a standardconversation around the kitchen
table.
You know only half of what Ilike to talk about I could talk
about with that group, becausethe other half didn't understand
it.
Speaker 3 (50:06):
Well, you're in good company.
Yeah, hence the Genesis forthis group.
Speaker 2 (50:11):
Yeah, no, I love it.
I love it and your communityhere's.
You know these are my people,so I'm happy to be here today.
And then, additionally, I teach.
So I teach EMT and paramedic atone of the local community
colleges here, which keeps meinvolved as well, kind of
bringing up the next generationof people to do the job that I
(50:32):
still love and passionate about.
So I get to pass the torch andshare my experience and kind of
mold the next group and makesure that we push the bar up and
not down.
Speaker 3 (50:45):
Yeah, that's awesome.
I meant to ask do you doaffiliate marketing, or is
everything you said paidpartnership with Fire Department
Coffee, but like no, we're theaffiliate.
Speaker 2 (50:54):
Yeah, we have an affiliate program brand
ambassadors so we've gotdifferent ways to kind of get
involved to help spread the wordand spread the mission.
Speaker 3 (51:03):
Okay, I'll put you in touch with another guy.
I know that has a pretty decentfollowing, but probably would
be worthwhile to reach out tothen for you two to talk.
Yeah, man, so got just a fewminutes left.
I know you got a lot to do.
You guys are out on that Westcoast time.
It's almost the end of the dayfor me, but is there anything
else you wanted to just mentionthat we didn't get to?
(51:25):
There's a ton of other stuff Icould bring up, but I know we
don't have that kind of timetoday.
Anything else?
Speaker 2 (51:32):
No not really.
I mean, just follow yourpassion, follow your gut.
If you want to get intosomething else, just do it.
Like cut out the noise.
The noise will always hold youback.
If you go to bed at night andyou're thinking about doing
something.
And when you're running on atreadmill aimlessly you're
(51:53):
thinking about doing somethingand you're surfing podcasts and
you're thinking about doingsomething, it means that it's in
you.
So just go do it.
Don't hold back and justunderstand that as you do it
you'll learn Right, the firstproduct that I came out with.
I'm not proud of Right, butlike it got me where I am today
and I'm like damn proud of whatI've made now.
So you know it's, it's all partof the journey, it's part of
(52:16):
the process and you're onlygoing to learn if you take that
first step forward.
So if you feel that drive, justembrace it and go nice, what?
Speaker 3 (52:30):
what version of those glasses are you on since the
very first one?
Like, how many iterations haveyou had to make?
Five, so it's like version five.
So basically once a year, right, pretty?
Speaker 2 (52:37):
much pretty much we'll make some like minor
changes here and there.
I guess version four is what'sout right now.
Um, version five is theprototype is still being built
out, but, um, we're actuallygoing to be coming out with uh,
anzi z87 plus rated ipro, whichum actually have the sample like
right here.
(52:58):
That got tested and just likecompletely destroyed.
But we had to redo the way thehinges are.
Um, you can see like the littlebattle marks on these things.
They're like scuffed up, prettygood, um, but they've got
snap-on side shields that'll goon the side and it'll pass all
of the OSHA ratings.
So now you can throw this thingon and you know, take out the
(53:20):
saw and you're covered by OSHAstandard issue birth control
glasses.
Yep, there you go so, yeah,we're gonna actually try and go
after some of the ppe companiesonce that's in there and see if
we can get these things speckedinto some uniform policies
seriously, just get them intologistics, and then you're
getting orders for a thousand ofthem at a time.
Speaker 3 (53:38):
You know, right, right, they're probably gonna
pay 80 bucks though, but allright, so so, mike, this massive
audience we have, this group,we're going to distribute this
to, probably in about a week,where, if they want to know more
, if they want to order yourproduct, where should they be
following you?
Where should they be going tocheck these puppies out?
Speaker 2 (53:59):
Yeah, so if you just want to see what we're up to,
check us out on instagram.
Um, it's our most commonplatform.
I guess you can say uh, it'sjust at frontline optics,
otherwise our website,frontline-opticscom.
You can check everything outthere as well.
Get on our email list.
Our email list.
We share everything when newreleases come out.
Um, we've got some aviatorsthat are going to be coming out
(54:22):
here.
This is the one and onlyexample of those guys right
there.
These are actually going to bereleasing in just a couple
months.
If you like aviators and youwant to be in the know, make
sure you're on that email list.
Speaker 3 (54:33):
Nice.
Speaker 1 (54:36):
Thank you, this has been awesome.
Like Mike said, I'm sure we'reprobably going to ask you to
come back on, because there's abunch of stuff I think we can go
deeper into if you're willing.
Speaker 2 (54:45):
Always willing.
Just let me know, I'm happy tojump on anytime, okay All right
guys.
Speaker 3 (54:50):
Well, I won't steal Andy's line about sharing the
show.
But if you get value out ofthis.
Go ahead and support theseother first responder businesses
.
So check out Mike and thefellas over at frontline optics
and get yourself a pair.
All right, Don't be a hoe.
Share the show.
All right, everybody, we are back with First
Responder Financial Freedom, andour guest today is Mike
Ettenberg.
Mike is the founder ofFrontline Optics and we're going
to go over his story both onthe job and off the job, and
hopefully this provides value toyou.
Real quick, aaron is not heretoday because he just had his
second child, so we are wishinghim congratulations as well and
(00:22):
we can get started.
So, uh, first off, like mikesaid earlier, thank you for
hopping on the show if you wantto give us a real quick
background and we can just gofrom there yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Um mike ettenberg.
I'm from california, was bornand raised in santa barbara,
found my way to san diego forcollege and never found a good
reason to leave, so um been hereever since.
Um had about uh 10 years infire and EMS before leaving to
focus on Frontline Opticsfull-time, which is a sunglasses
brand that we make sunglassesspecifically for first
(00:52):
responders.
And yeah, got a wife, threekids, a dog and a cat.
Don't really like the cat, butthat's me.
Speaker 3 (01:02):
Can't blame you, man, I'm a dog guy myself.
So how I guess?
You said you were on the jobabout 10 years and I guess, did
you always have thatentrepreneurial mindset, or were
you doing this frontline opticsor some variation of before you
got on the job, or is thatsomething that kind of began
while you were already?
Speaker 2 (01:23):
Yeah, um, entrepreneurship was always a
thing, I guess, for me.
So, um, growing up as a kid,the two people who I guess I
idolized the most, um, otherthan my dad, were my, my uncle
and my cousin, both very, verysuccessful in business.
And, um, you know, I just gotto see the lifestyle and the you
know the that they had, and sobusiness was always something
(01:44):
that interested me.
Now, in addition to that, Ialways also loved the fire
service, and there was somethingabout flashing lights and a
fire engine going down thestreet that just like,
captivated me, like most kids.
But I took it to an extra level.
You know, I went to Radio Shack, got myself a little scanner
radio, I had a Thomas book mapguide and I would hear the tones
(02:04):
go off and I could recognizethe tone for the area of the
city that I lived in, would flipto the Mac page and I'd see,
like, can I jump on my bike andget there?
Can I catch a glimpse?
And I would literally go andchase it right Just to see if I
could see it.
So it was always this balancingact of, like, fire service
entrepreneurship, fire serviceservice entrepreneurship.
Didn't really know how to doboth or how to decide.
(02:27):
So college comes around, um, asthe first thing I do is take an
emt class.
And I will tell you right now,as an 18 year old kid I was not
ready, um, professionally to be,you know, responsible for
anyone else else's.
Now I've met some 18 year oldkids who are great so, but I was
(02:48):
not one of them and theinstructor saw that right away
and they're just kind of likewhat are you doing here?
Um, career day comes around.
Members of Santa Barbara Countyfire department were there and
I like walk up to the table witha beard kind of like Mike's, uh
, except it didn't look quite asnice and you know, my hair was
all over the place and flipflops.
I'm like, hey, I want to be afirefighter.
(03:10):
And they pretty much laughedand they told me, they told me
to grow up nicely.
But we don't want kids in thefire service, we want adults
here.
So why don't you go and dosomething else?
Get some life experience, andonce you have that, if this is
still something you'repassionate about, come back and
find us and we'll point you inthe right direction then.
So I'm like, all right, myother passion has been business.
(03:31):
So I started to take businessclasses and I found myself,
going down that path, started abusiness in college.
It was called Pacific Beach BusCo.
And for anyone who's ever beento San Diego there's this area
called Pacific Beach, and thiswas before the days of Lyft and
Uber.
So you know, your choice was a$60, $70 cab ride to and from
(03:54):
Pacific Beach from San DiegoState, or driving drunk,
essentially.
So we filled that void with abus.
It was a 40 passenger bus for15 bucks round trip.
You could jump on our bus andit'll take you to Pacific Beach
and back.
On Thursday, friday and Saturdaynights Didn't make a ton of
money but, um, you know, we hada lot of fun while it lasted.
But you know thatentrepreneurial drive was still
(04:15):
kind of going at that point.
One night it was like twoo'clock in the morning I was on
my way to go clean up the busand I saw someone crashed their
car on the 15 freeway and theylike flipped it into the ice
plant.
So I pulled over and I likehelped try and get them out of
the car and then an emergencyscene developed around me and it
was like that light bulb momentagain where I was like this is
it?
So stopped everything, businesswent back, had to take an EMT
(04:40):
class again, and that was likethe start of my trajectory into
fire and emergency services.
So a little of both.
Speaker 3 (04:49):
Awesome.
I can only imagine all the DOTregulations that you may or may
not have been following withthat kind of bus and the amount
of stories you could tell only abunch of drunk people on
Thursday, friday nights, youknow.
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
It was, it was interesting, but you know you
can't ever let the red tape stopyou, you nights.
You know, yeah, yeah, it was,uh, it was interesting, but you
know you can't ever let the redtape stop you.
You'll, you know, you'll hityou'll hit red lights and then
you just got to figure out yourway around them.
Speaker 3 (05:12):
And that's business, man Just pivot or push, pick,
you know so.
So all right.
So presumably you then get inthe get on the job after taking
the EMT class, I presume stillin the Southern California area.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
Yeah, San Diego.
Speaker 3 (05:29):
San.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
Diego.
So I worked city of San Diegoum rural metro at the time then
became AMR.
It's now Falk um, so it's kindof gone through the transition.
But private ambulance became aparamedic and then I got hired
by the Julian Cuyamaca FireProtection District up where, if
anyone's ever had a Julian pieright, that was our first in so
(05:51):
worked there for about a year.
It was a mix of volunteer andpaid department, so I had one of
those paid spots and then afterabout a year I got the call
from the city of Coronado withan offer and I went there and
that's where I, I guess,finished off my career early.
Speaker 3 (06:13):
Awesome.
So I guess you're on the job,you're in California.
I feel like, okay, sunglasses,standard issue, right.
But like how did you decide tosay you know what I'm?
I'm going to make my sidehustle sunglasses like.
Speaker 2 (06:28):
So follow your passion.
I guess you could say I lovesunglasses.
I think one of the reasons whyI like them so much is because
for my adult life I was alwaysin a uniform and the uniforms
picked out for you.
So you don't really have anystyle Right.
You might have like fiveoptions of boots that the
department approved, maybe oneor two hats that the uniform
committee was okay with, butotherwise, like everything was
(06:50):
picked out for you.
The only thing you could reallypick was your sunglasses, and so
so I became like an advocateand I was always wearing them
and you know I had the differentcolors and whatever day of the
week I was style I was feeling,you know I had those on and um
nature in the back of a rigwhere everything's made out of
metal and you know if you get,if you get a call to a fire and
(07:13):
you're, you're close, right, yougot to get ready fast things
are getting chucked right acrossthe yeah iPhones get like
falling between the seats andyou lose your keys and you know
sunglasses naturally likeconstantly boom, boom, boom,
break and scratch them, losethem, um, and that was kind of
the driver.
I was like sick of spending 200bucks on every pair of Oakleys
(07:33):
and so I figured there had to bea better way.
I started looking to make itmyself and that was kind of the
birth of the idea of FrontlineOptics.
Speaker 3 (07:41):
Awesome.
So I guess, where do you evenstart?
Obviously, like you go, I wouldjust be Googling like how to
make my own sunglasses, Like canyou?
Just kind of can you just likewalk us through, and obviously
you don't have to share industrytrade secrets or whatever.
But like what?
What was some of the problemsor hurdles you ran into from
(08:03):
like oh, this is a really coolidea, to like actually
manufacturing, distributing, etcetera.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
Yeah, it's finding a good manufacturer, right.
So the first thing I did was Iwent on this website called
Alibaba and it's like um, youcan find anything like literally
anything on there.
It's just a bunch ofmanufacturers in in not just
China, but all over, um, likeAsia, you know.
And so, um, I went on there,started looking for different
(08:32):
stuff and I would find thesepeople.
I would talk to them aboutquality.
They would make all thesepromises and then they'd ship
you your stuff and it was likeit was junk, right, all of it
was.
Everything that came over wasjust junk, junk, junk.
And I was like, all right, backup, this is not the way right,
going to go and utilize Googlethe way it was.
(08:52):
And I didn't look at aparticular country, I was just
like, okay, sunglassesmanufacturers, and just started
going down the list and furtherand further down.
And the further down I got, themore likely they were to work
with me because they weresmaller, um, and so they're
willing to work with smallerbrands and the intricacies that
come along with it.
So eventually, after six plusmonths of talking to
(09:14):
manufacturers, I found one thatunderstood what I was trying to
do, was willing to utilize kindof the design ideas, the quality
aspects and they became mygo-to manufacturer.
We've been working with themever since.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
And that's a good thing to talk about too, right,
because if you think about a lotof this stuff that we hear is
people are worried aboutstarting anything because
there's already competitors thatare in the market, that they're
so big, how am I, as a littleguy, going to survive?
And then I'm thinking too likein Southern California, oakley's
headquartered here, you haveother brands and then you built
this thriving business.
(09:50):
Were you ever worried aboutstuff like that?
Or were you like more missionoriented to where you knew what
gap you were trying trying tofill and you were so focused on
that that nothing else reallymattered?
It's not like you were tryingto be an Oakley, right, you're
trying to do you, and you knowthat.
Hey, I'm going to serve thissegment and I understand this
segment very well.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
That's exactly it.
Um, I don't worry about thenoise, it doesn't matter what
industry you try and go into,there's going to be competitors,
um, it's.
You know, business is cutthroatand may the best man or woman
win, right?
So, um, I focused on, like,niching down and the fire
service first responders.
That was world that.
(10:30):
And sure, oakley markets tothis group.
Right, there's other brandsthat market to this group, but
they market to it amongst, likea branch of everything else that
they do.
It's not just solely focused onus.
And so I wanted to create, like,a small American brand focused
on the first responders here inthe United States, and, being a
(10:51):
first responder at the time Iwas still active um, I felt like
I was credible to be able totalk about the things that we
deal with and create a productand solution, um, that would
kind of serve, serve ourindustry.
Uh, you can't get cut out bythe noise, right?
Like sure it is, but if I hadlet that stop me, like we
(11:14):
wouldn't have built this.
It's obvious that even in asaturated space, there's still
room for niching down andinnovating within it, and that's
that's exactly what we did.
So, for anyone thinking of doingthe same, like, don't get
caught up.
I mean, sunglass is probablyone of the most competitive
industries you can get inbecause they're a relatively
inexpensive product, so youdon't need a lot to get started.
(11:34):
I would say, just don't put allyour eggs in one basket, right
Like.
This started as a side hustlefor me with a.
I had a few forced overtimeshifts, so I had some extra cash
, and so I used that forcedovertime to launch this business
, and I ran that business whileI was continuing to work up
until the point that it gottraction and grew to the point
(11:56):
that it could uh, you knowreplace my income nice and then
I saw you, so you started.
Speaker 1 (12:01):
So this was in 2021, right when this all happened,
correct?
And then I know on your story,if you want to go into more
detail, I feel like you started.
Your original, excuse me, orderwas order was around 300, 300
pairs of glasses.
Is that correct?
Speaker 2 (12:14):
Yep, yep, 300 glasses we launched, figured like cool,
I'm going to put these on theinternet and everyone's going to
buy them.
And that's not how it works.
So it was very, very slow atfirst.
I had no idea how to do digitalmarketing.
I had no idea anything really.
You know, I was snappingpictures of the glasses on
(12:35):
random anything I could findthat was like, oh cool, here's
an FTC, I'm gonna like put thesunglasses right there and take
a picture with my iPhone, put iton the internet.
Eventually I realized that youhave to.
You have to hook people right.
You got to grab their attentionand so my focus started to move
towards marketing.
First video that we did, thatactually took, was a video of
(12:56):
the sunglasses falling in slowmotion out of the truck and I
had my turnout gear like stagedthere and there was like the
front wheel of the rigs.
It was like it was obvious itwas inside a fire station and I
just voiced over it stop beatingup your expensive sunglasses on
the job.
Cool music goes and all thesephotos now of first responders
wearing it and our company justlike blew up.
(13:17):
From that.
One ad went from, you know,doing 30K a year to 170K in the
next year, really all off of onead.
And then, with that and theincome that came in, I was like,
okay, how do I recreate this?
What was it about this thatworked?
And I became a student ofadvertising at that point and,
um, that was really the, theticket.
Speaker 3 (13:39):
So let me rewind just a hair.
So you said your first um orderwas about 300 pair sets I don't
know what the proper term isfor all these sunglasses, but
300 sets, pairs and you said youdid it with basically some OT
shifts and I think that speaksto a lot of the folks that
probably listen.
And frankly, that's in essencehow I got started in my quote
(14:08):
side business is saved up someovertime and working part time
on a private ambulance well, notprivate, you know EMS service
and then that's how I parlayedit into my first real estate
deal.
The first 300 you boughtroughly like what kind of dollar
amount are we talking there?
Like I have no idea whatwholesale sunglass pricing is
and I imagine it's all over theplace.
(14:29):
But could you just give like aballpark, like what it costs
mentioned, it's all over theplace.
Speaker 2 (14:32):
But could you just give like a ballpark, like what
it cost five grand to getstarted.
So five grand got me 300 pair.
It got a shopify website built,um, it got a trademark filed
and it uh, left me a little bitof money left over for marketing
and you were the one that didall that set up the shopify, you
know, ordered the product,distributed the product market
of the.
Speaker 3 (14:52):
You were basically doing everything, correct.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
Yeah, or finding the people through you know
inexpensive options like Fiverr.
So, people on Fiverr that'llbuild your website for you.
You tell them what you'retrying to do and they'll do it.
There's companies that'll fileyour trademark for you.
So you give them, you know, yougive them this stuff and
they'll do it.
And I would encourage that, forfor some of that stuff, like if
your Shopify store doesn't lookprofessional, people will
(15:18):
immediately turn away and belike I'm not, you know, giving
them my credit card information.
So you have to have somelegitimacy built in Um, and so
you want to make sure that youyou do it right.
Especially, like pay a littlebit more for that Shopify.
Don't get the cheapest guy togo out there.
He's going to do it for youknow, 10 bucks.
Right, spend a little bit ofmoney because, again, that's
(15:39):
that's your storefront, right?
That's what a customer seeswhen they click on an ad or go
to your website and it's thefirst impression.
Speaker 3 (15:46):
Yeah, and the older I get, the more I just totally
believe that, uh, you know,cheaper is not always least
expensive, you know, like thatkind of stuff you might save a
couple bucks up front but it'sgoing to cost you in the long
run, you know.
Um, so did you try and pre-sellany of these sunglasses before
you placed the order?
Like, uh, we had we've had somefolks on that, you know, I've
(16:09):
done this with, like job coatsand different products, where
they basically tried to pre-sell, like a firefighter escape
system ahead of time to helpbasically pay for the first
order, so to speak, or did youjust buy them?
Speaker 2 (16:23):
all and open a prayer .
Yeah, just stupid, right?
I didn't even know thatpre-sale existed, right?
Like I was just cool, here's my300 pairs of sunglasses.
Like how do I listen?
Speaker 3 (16:32):
Right, that's what everybody's getting for
Christmas, kids yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:35):
Yeah, exactly so, um, no, I mean, I had no idea.
I didn't know what I was doing.
Um, you can't let that hold youback, Cause you're gonna.
You're gonna learn as you goand you got to understand right,
like when a toddler's learninghow to walk they fall constantly
Right and they're getting likethey're skinning their knees and
they're hitting their head andthey're crying.
But what does a toddler do?
(16:56):
They get back up and they do itagain right and they learn from
it and they keep going.
So when you start a business,you got to think of yourself as
like a toddler.
Like you're gonna fall on yourface, you're gonna skin your
knees.
It's going to happen.
You're not just gonna likemagically create the best thing
in the world and everything'sgoing to be, you know, sunshine.
Speaker 3 (17:16):
And I just had this conversation earlier with.
I was on the phone call with aprevious guest we've had on the
show, travis Oglesby, and wewere joking about a you know a
deal and, like you know, naively, when you first start out, you
just think everything's going togo perfectly as planned.
I don't care whether it's a$200,000 deal or $2 million deal
(17:36):
, things are going to happen.
It just, it's just the way itgoes.
Whether you're startingsunglasses or you're selling
loans or flipping a house, ithappens.
But, like you said at thebeginning, like you've always
been an entrepreneur and youknow, I still have to remind
myself of these types of thingsat times, because it's easy when
you're the one in the weedslike, oh man, this sucks, it
sucks.
But I have a quote literallyright above my laptop that I
(18:00):
constantly just kind of rereadand it's a Henry David Thoreau
quote.
It says just go confidently inthe direction of your dreams.
So if you just kind ofrecalibrate like, hey, this
sucks's, I can figure this out,type thing.
So, um, what are probably thebiggest issues you ran into with
that first batch?
And I keep going back to thefirst batch because I feel like
(18:20):
that's the next step for a lotof folks listening and you know
they may not be able to wraptheir head around.
You know pixeling and metatagging and social media and all
this stuff that might just gettoo too crazy, too quick.
So, like the first, nextproblem what was that?
Speaker 2 (18:37):
Quality improvement.
You know we started out as acheap, a cheap option, right?
The original products that wehad were 42 bucks um, plus a no
questions asked replacement fee,you know.
So like our program.
So like, literally, two pairsof sunglasses for for 50 bucks
Um, pretty inexpensive.
Speaker 3 (18:59):
What percentage of your sales took, I would say,
advantage of that offer.
Speaker 2 (19:06):
Uh, initially it was like 15 to 20% and now it's you
know it's more it's.
It's known's known.
You know that.
That's that's who we are.
So some people use it how it'sdesigned.
Other people are just like cool, like it's.
Like I'm kind of getting boredof these and I want a different
color.
But, like, whatever right it's,it's a no questions asked
replacement, so we won't askquestions when you want to
(19:27):
utilize it, you know we'll justshame you.
Yeah, I'm just one, right, you,you get one per pair.
So and we build it in.
But again, you know, theproduct itself was, was
inexpensive, and so we had tofind ways to improve it.
So it was, you know,improvement to the lenses,
improvement to the hinges,improvement to the plastics that
were used, but none of thatstuff was anything that I, that
(19:48):
I knew about at the time.
I just would look at what I hadand I would look at Oakley and
I'd be like, well, what, how arethese different?
What's different?
And again, having the rightmanufacturer, they can start
pointing you in that directionand oh, this is made from this
type of plastic, or they usethis type of hinge, or we could
make this type of modificationand you should look into this
type of lens.
So it just kind of started toevolve.
(20:10):
And as it evolves the productgets more expensive.
But that was always what wewanted to be was like a premium
quality product, not at thatpremium price point, which is
where we found ourselves rightaround that $80 price range with
a replacement.
Speaker 3 (20:26):
So are these ANSI rated lenses on the job.
Okay, so they basically meetmost, you know, OSHA and uniform
spec requirements.
Speaker 2 (20:34):
Our pomona line is the only one.
But our pomona line, which isthe, you know, by far the best
seller, is our nzz87 option.
Um, their safety stamped on thelens and on the frame.
So you know, if you do havethat safety officer come by and
want to check your stuff, you've, you've got the stamp on there
to to show them.
But, um, the others are alittle bit more delicate.
(20:56):
I guess you could say they'restill bomb proof, but you know
they're made out of aluminum,which aluminum obviously isn't
going to hold up, the same as,like a durable plastic, to any
kind of impact.
It'll bend.
But uh it, you know, it alldepends on on what you're
looking for in terms of theproduct and real quick.
Speaker 1 (21:13):
I was just thinking about a couple of things.
Number one is if we all kneweverything that was entailed in
our business now when we firststarted, probably wouldn't do it
.
Everybody like for me it's like, oh, I'm going to flip real
estate and make millions ofdollars or I'm going to sell
sunglasses, and it's like Ithink that exuberance gets us
through to the point and westart problem solving like we do
when we're first responders,and it just you.
(21:34):
You work your way through.
And I was also kind of curioustoo, if you view um, so I know
your policy is well known.
It's on your website, it's onyour social.
Do you kind of build that in?
It's almost like a marketingcost.
Right, because we'readvertising.
Because if you tell a phone,tell a friend, tell a
firefighter, I mean the word'sgetting out.
So up there I go.
Hey, this company frontline.
You know you can get yourparents.
(21:54):
What happens to them on the job?
They're going to replace themfor free.
All my strike team stuff.
I would always like go into mystrike team bag at the start of
the season and sure enough,there's like last year's
sunglasses that are just likebecause they've been sitting in
the gear locker the whole timeyeah, yep, yeah, we do.
Speaker 2 (22:11):
we build um into the price so that you know, we know
it's coming.
There's still a service fee, soit's a $12 service fee and that
kind of helps cover thefulfillment costs and the
shipping costs.
Uh, doesn't cover everything,so we do lose a little bit of
cash every time we ship one ofthose out.
But again we we kind ofcollected on the front side and
the um.
The bet that we've made is thatthe experience will be positive
(22:34):
and people will tell theirfriends and the organic word of
mouth will grow and we'llcontinue to um kind of expand.
Speaker 3 (22:42):
So have you started to off uh, offload some of these
responsibilities.
Are you still stuffing boxes inyour garage type thing that you
graduated, right, yeah?
Speaker 2 (22:52):
yeah, no.
So we, we partner with a 3plhere in san diego, um 3pl
third-party logistics.
They do all of our shippingfulfillment for us.
So, um, you know, we give themall the stuff, we tell them
exactly how it's supposed tolook.
You're gonna pack the box likethis, and then they do it for us
perfectly every time, get itshipped out right away, same day
.
So if you order before 1 pmpacific time, your order will
(23:16):
ship on the same day.
Otherwise, the next businessday other than saturday and
sunday and, like you know,holidays, like memorial days
coming up won't be open then.
Speaker 3 (23:24):
But, um, any normal business day when the bank is
open, right, we're open okay,what I guess at this stage of
the the business is your mainday to day.
Like, are you just trying topush sales, or um?
Speaker 2 (23:42):
marketing.
Yeah, a lot of marketing.
Um, meta ads is an animal everchanging.
It's always changing.
As soon as you figure somethingout, they tweak an algorithm
and they won't tell you whenthey do it.
The only way you know is thingsstart to decline and you're
like your head spend stays thesame, but your results go down.
Speaker 3 (24:01):
Oh shit, they changed something.
Yeah, exactly Like we're in itright now.
Speaker 2 (24:04):
Right, like you know, prior to this call I was
digging in deep to that.
After this call I'm going to bedigging back into it looking at
all the data.
But yeah, that's the majorityof what I do there.
I come on podcasts like this,try and just increase some
awareness of the brand and thenkind of focus on business
development new styles, newdesigns, a lot of logistics
(24:26):
stuff.
That's kind of what myday-to-day.
It can ebb and flow, but it's amix between content marketing
and growth.
Speaker 1 (24:40):
So for that I I love this stuff too.
That's actually kind of where Igravitate a lot.
I like figuring all this stuffout.
I noticed that you have some ofthe fire department coffee guys
on your site.
Yeah, um, is that I mean it'scool?
Either way, I mean it's coolbecause a they're both first
responder businesses and I'massuming you guys are
cross-marketing to each other'sbrands because you guys both
serve the same demographic.
Is that a new thing?
(25:01):
Have you always done stuff likethat?
Speaker 2 (25:05):
Yeah, it is a paid relationship, as with anything,
but it's a mutual one, becausethey won't support a product
that doesn't stand behind.
You know them and their brandand vice versa, um, but yeah, so
it is a pay to play, but it's.
I mean, they're a strategicpartner for us, um, and it makes
, it makes a lot of sense.
(25:26):
Early on, it validated us aswell, because, if you know,
you've never heard of us, buteveryone knows, you know jason
and fenton, right.
So, like if those twoknuckleheads have our sunglasses
on and are talking about it, itinstantly validatesates the
brand as being like, oh, likeI'd seen those ads.
Now these guys are talkingabout it.
Let's go check it out.
And it kind of helped to movepeople to that.
(25:50):
Okay, I'll give you a try.
And then again, once you try us, you know you'll see it, you'll
get the glasses, you'll realizethat it's not like a gas
station quality, like knockoffpair of shades, like you're
getting.
Speaker 3 (26:06):
You're getting good stuff, um but yeah, that
relationship's been awesome, funguys.
We will uh need to connect youwith the brotherhood buff guys.
Okay, the energy drink, the jobcoat there's several, you know.
Maybe not all of them have thefootprint that those guys do,
but, um, brother and boss got apretty big reach and you guys
might be able to do somethingcool.
So, I'll make.
I'll make that introduction foryou.
Um, I forgot I was going to sayoh.
(26:29):
All right, so I won't mentionthe name of the sunglasses I
currently have, but, uh, I guess.
See what time it is, See ifmine will ship today, I'll order
them.
But I have glass lenses.
Does that differ from plastic?
So, like, my sunglasses haveglass and I noticed you know
that obviously they're heavier.
But like, have you playedaround with any of that lens
(26:50):
quality or type?
Speaker 2 (26:52):
Glass is for sure the most clear kind of lens that
you can get um, most clear kindof lens that you can get um.
But they also are prone to likescratching and then, from like
a shatter perspective, rightlike if yeah just your eyeballs
by something hard enough.
You've got glass, like you know,half an inch from your eyeballs
(27:12):
.
So, um, I know, like maui's arelike real big on, like the
glass lens and they're known for, you know, the optical clarity.
But we have to find thatbalance between durability and
because we're again, we'remaking job glasses right, we're
making something that's strongenough to be used on the job.
With enough fashion statement Iguess you could say that you'd
(27:34):
be comfortable wearing them onthe beach or at the pool as well
.
So that we look atpolycarbonate.
You can't get an ANSI-ratedglass lens.
It won't pass.
You have to use specific typesof materials.
So from that ANSI perspective,we use a polycarbonate lens.
We use a greenish base colorfor the lens.
(27:54):
So it actually gives you likesome companies will try and coin
it as like hd vision, right,but it enhances the environment
around you, versus like a brownlens that kind of dulls the
colors.
So, um, so it's a pleasantviewing experience.
And then for ournon-anti-erated, we go with the
nylon lens, which again has alot of durability.
(28:15):
Um, it's almost at that samecaliber of clarity of glass, but
a little more durability, alittle more scratch resistance.
And then it's not glass because, even though they're not rated,
they are going to be worn onthe job.
Speaker 3 (28:30):
Sure, I was just kind of curious there on that one,
so I was going to say, oh, arethey polarized?
They are Okay.
Speaker 2 (28:38):
Yeah, so yeah, they're all polarized, uv 400
rated, so you are getting thatprotection.
We do have non-polarizedoptions in prescription
available, so if you wanted togo, you know, if you really
needed a non-polarized lens, youcan always get everyone.
Everyone.
(28:59):
Even if you don't want to admitit, everyone could get a
prescription right.
Nobody's eyes are perfect theycan all.
Speaker 3 (29:02):
You can use your hsa account for these?
Speaker 2 (29:05):
uh it, you can do a reimbursement.
So we can't, we can't take anhsa card, um, but you can submit
for reimbursement after thefact, which a lot of people do,
sure do.
Speaker 1 (29:22):
Sure, you're on me, so you started off obviously on
your own now.
So, now that you've progressedin business like what, what kind
of team does it look like asfar as what does it take to run
the day to day?
Speaker 2 (29:29):
Yeah.
So you can get virtualemployees, which anyone who's
starting out.
You can find them anywhere.
They're here in the States.
It's also very popular to getthem in Latin America and the
Philippines.
So, depending on what it isthat you're doing, if you're
just starting out you're notmaking very much money right,
(29:50):
Like when we were doing 30K ayear.
I got a VA in the Philippinesto help me with following up on
emails and things like that,just because I was still working
and I would get caught up onruns and I didn't want my
customers to have to wait threedays to hear from me because I
got busy.
So you know, it made sense.
But right now we have a team oftwo customer service reps and
(30:11):
then, like a jack of all trades,administrative assistant for me
.
Then I handle the marketing andwe have a 3PL doing all of our
shipping and fulfillment andfrom that, you know, we could
easily get ourselves sevenfigures and beyond.
Just that small team that'sawesome.
Speaker 1 (30:28):
That's efficient too, yeah.
Speaker 3 (30:31):
That is very I was trying to count sets basically
14 members, right Including you,and then an outsource basically
logistics, just distributionfacility.
Yeah, that's pretty slick.
Members, right Including you,and then an outsource basically
logistics distribution facility.
That's pretty slick, though,man.
Speaker 2 (30:44):
Yeah, we could get away with three, but I wanted to
have some like after hourscustomer support so that people
didn't have to wait after fiveo'clock, cause a ton of us like
right, Like working night shiftor working all day, right,
you're still on there askingquestions.
So the fact that we can answersomeone's question at 10 o'clock
at night, I think it's helpful.
Speaker 3 (31:02):
Well, and it never hurts to have, like, I'm a big
proponent of efficiency.
But like, some redundancy isgreat, especially if you ever
have turnover, and I don't carewhether that's stateside, near,
shore, offshore, it doesn'tmatter.
The staffing model, like havinga little overlap, is always, in
my opinion, great.
Yeah, but yeah, I've been therebefore there.
Speaker 2 (31:25):
So definitely, everyone on our team is trained
in customer service.
So you know, even if I had to,you know I can still jump in
there and every once in a whileI do, I'll see some, some ticket
will come in.
I'm like, oh right, like maybethey mentioned a department that
I want to chat with somebodybecause I've got a friend there.
Whatever, every once in a whileI jump in.
I try and leave it to peoplewho do it better than me.
Speaker 3 (31:45):
I was going to say two questions you have.
First off, it looks like youreally lean heavily into
customer reviews to help makethe sale for you, which I'm a
big proponent of.
I do have some issues with thereview review platform, cause
it's like it's so easy forsomebody to leave an unfounded
review and even if you respondprofessionally, it's still like
tarnishes it like the starrating.
(32:07):
Yeah, I got Airbnb did that tome and I just recently had that
with one of my storagebusinesses.
It's annoying, but it is whatit is.
And regardless of the factslike they can sit in that, sit
there and leave you a one-starreview and just like then you're
trying to play catch up, yeah.
Second part of the question isI guess my question is with the
(32:31):
reviews, like you, how are yousoliciting those?
Is that something like whereyou're automatically sequencing
to follow up?
Follow up like please leave areview, please leave a review,
type thing?
Speaker 2 (32:40):
Yeah it's, it's automated.
So, um, it's like about threeweeks after they receive the
product, they'll get an emailand it's essentially like hey,
how are you liking your newshades?
With the link to click on andplug in your you know your star
rating.
Leave the review and for themost part, you know everything's
(33:04):
positive.
Every once in a while you doget a negative, but the
negatives almost help youbecause people will go to look
for it and so if you explainwhat you did right, like oh,
like they didn't fit my faceright, like once you have a fat
head, yeah and then it's likehey, like sorry about that.
We do offer, you know, freereturns and free exchanges, so
make sure you know to reach outto our customer support.
So we do offer, you know, freereturns and free exchanges, so
make sure you know to reach outto our customer support so we
can get you in something else,right?
Or like oh never, they neverarrived, right?
(33:24):
It's like, oh, thanks forletting us know.
We've got a new one that'salready on the way.
Like, so we can, we can dothings with that that show that
the brand will take care of you,even in that worst case
scenario that we're not going tolike leave you high and dry.
But you know, the majority ofour ratings are five stars, with
a handful of four stars thatcome in here and there.
(33:45):
It's from people who refuse togive a five star rating, you
know.
Speaker 3 (33:48):
But Grant Cardone and I.
There's a lot of things I likeand a lot of things of his I
don't like.
But he did have a comment orstatement once about a customer
complaint is like youropportunity to like either make
the situation worse or get acustomer for life by like how
you handled it.
And if it is a legit complaint,like hey man, these things suck
(34:10):
, like something happened,quality assurance, whatever it
is and you're like hey man, thatyou're right, that that is
unacceptable and that does notmeet our standards.
Tell you what you got a pair onthe way and a second set for
your wife on me.
You know, like that man, that'san opportunity to sit there and
say, like you're right, like itwas legit.
And now that customer isprobably going to go tell 10
(34:30):
other people because of how itwas handled.
Because I think and myselfincluded you're expected to like
, you expect, when you have somesort of issue like that, for it
to not be like a good outcome.
Speaker 1 (34:42):
Like you, just kind of go into it.
Speaker 3 (34:43):
Maybe I'm just a jagged Like you go into it,
you're just like, oh God, thisis going to suck, you know.
But then, like when they makeit right, you know it's like
you're at the restaurant andthey mess up your meal.
But then they're like, hey, youknow what, like that appetizer
was on me, let me get you around of drinks.
Type thing.
You know, it's like all right,it still sucks, but it like
smooths it over and you're morethan likely going to come back
again, type thing For sure.
Speaker 2 (35:04):
So yeah, uncle Grant's a smart man, so yeah.
Speaker 3 (35:12):
I always say he's got a jet, I got a pickup truck.
Speaker 2 (35:15):
So I mean we, we live and breathe by.
By that.
I mean it's in our core values.
Essentially, customers alwaysright.
Even if they're wrong, they'reright and we're going to bend
over backwards to help them.
Transparency is another one.
So if we do screw up, likewe've had, it's like anything.
If you manufacture something,you're going to get a batch.
That's not good, right.
If the batch ends up having anissue, we're honest with them
(35:38):
and we tell them hey, like, weidentified an issue with this
batch, here's what we're goingto do about it.
Right, it's, it was free.
You're going to get another oneon us when the next batch
arrives.
It's below our standards?
Right, we meet these standards.
We stand behind our product andwe're going to get you taken
care of and it it's the only way.
As far as I'm concerned, it'sthe only way to do business
(36:00):
longterm and long run.
Cause, again, you get a badexperience and then it's met
with a bad customer serviceexperience.
They'll never buy from youagain and they'll tell everyone
in their circle not to do it aswell.
Yeah, outside, like you said,it's true, and especially those
people who leave like a one starreview, they'll be extremely
loud, either for you or againstyou.
Speaker 3 (36:27):
And it's up to you, based off of how you respond to
them, which outcome you're goingto get.
Yeah, and so I kind of tooksomething like that, because I
get a lot of phone calls and Ihave a call center for our
storage facility, but Iinstituted something where it's
called 50 to Fix it and I kindof stole it from, like you know,
the Ritz, carlton, dan Martell,all these different people I
listened to, and it's like if,if the problem is going to cost
$50 or less to fix it and makethe customer happy, and it's
(36:49):
like a legitimate issue Ifthey're just calling to complain
because they want a discount,well, that's not really the
intent of the policy.
But if there was an issue, theygot there, the light bulb was
burned out, this, that or theother thing.
Hey man, tell you what?
I'm sorry for the inconvenience.
What I'm going to do is I'mgoing to put a $25 credit on
your account for next month andwe, you know, just basically, we
(37:10):
give the autonomy to thecustomer service rep, or in this
case, my operations manager, tokind of just fix it without
having it all come back to me.
Or, in your case, you know, canI replace these?
I'm sure you have a policywhere it's like if this, then
that type thing, and that's beensuper helpful, because then
people are like oh, thank you,you know, and it's like it's
(37:32):
turned some of those what couldbe the like three or three and a
half star interaction into afive star interaction with those
folks.
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (37:40):
Yeah, and people like to buy from people, you know.
Speaker 3 (37:42):
So if you show your your human, you know, like this
shit happens, dude, Like youknow, like even if, even when
you try and you're on point,like stuff happens, you know
yeah.
Speaker 1 (37:54):
Well, that's like everybody's always happy when
you're winning Right, and thenwhen you're losing, you know the
real things start to come out,and you mentioned a couple of
things, and Mike mentioned ittoo.
So, like you mentioned corevalues, which not many people
who are starting the businessreally focus on.
So my question is have youfocused either time and or money
into business coaching,anything like that?
(38:14):
Do you like to read a lot?
Where are you going to getanswers outside of what your
current?
Speaker 2 (38:21):
experience is yeah, there's a.
There's a ton of good resourcesfor free.
A lot of great podcasts as youmentioned Dan Martell, I'm a big
fan of, like Andy Frisella,Harmozy yeah, so like these guys
are, you know they're they'replayers in the space that have
so much more knowledge than atleast that we have now.
(38:42):
I guess we can all aspire to beon that level and it is
possible, but they can helppoint you in the right direction
just listening to you.
Like Andy Frisella has a Q&Ashow once a week where people
call in with their questions,and I find so much value in
listening to his responses onhow he would handle different
things.
Um, and that's kind of where wecame up with with our core
(39:05):
values was based off of thingshe said there.
And so now when we interviewsomebody, our interview
questions are based off of thecore values.
When we have like a conflictthat happens and we have to talk
about something, the, we pointto our core values of the
company as we describe like aconflict that happens and we
have to talk about something,the, we point to our core values
of the company as we describelike what went wrong and why we
need to fix it, and usually thatencompasses two, two core
(39:28):
values, right?
So, um, yeah, those are superimportant, and then we list them
on the top of, like all of ourSOPs and everything.
So anytime you're going toresearch um, research anything
related to the companyinternally, you're going to get
our core values, followed by ourmission statement, followed by,
like, the table of contents ofwhat you're trying to find, just
to like hammer the point home.
Speaker 3 (39:49):
Yeah, you're building a business like, not a side
hustle at this point, you knowCorrect 100% and that's what I
was thinking when you weresaying that.
Speaker 1 (39:55):
I'm like this sounds a lot like Andy and Ed, because
Andy and Ed are huge on corevalues and everything's built
around it and I thought it wasinteresting.
On this week's episode, I'm notsure if you guys going to be
disappointed.
And he's like I'm walkingaround here and you can see
everything that Andy preaches atthe first form offices.
So I think that's huge.
And, yeah, Hermosi is legit aswell.
So, okay, well, a lot of ourpeople that are listening are
(40:32):
looking for something to startand, like you said, your initial
startup cost was 5,000 and youjust went out and did it.
Speaker 2 (40:51):
But if they're looking to do anything, let's
say consumer related as aproduct, what kind?
Speaker 1 (40:54):
of advice, I guess, now that you've been in business
, for going on five years.
Speaker 2 (40:56):
Where would you have them start?
Just start.
It's easy to say, but juststart.
Ready to fire in?
Babe?
Yeah, exactly, exactly so.
Um, you can very quickly getcaught up in the like I'm not
ready, I need to consume more, Ineed to think more, I need just
just get started.
Uh, a couple of things I wouldmention is um, first off, try
and fix, pick something thatdoesn't have a massive capital
investment to get started,because you don't know what
(41:19):
you're doing.
You're going to learn throughthe process.
Not every business that you gothrough is successful right at
the beginning, but you'll learnsomething from it which you can
then take into the next one andthe next one.
Hopefully, the first one youpick works right, but I started
a bus company, right.
That obviously was not going toget me where I wanted to be
(41:40):
long term, but the lessons Ilearned from that and even in
like guerrilla marketing and allthat kind of stuff, helped to
kind of build up what I'velearned now.
So get started.
Get started with somethingthat's relatively affordable and
don't quit your day job.
Affordable, and don't quit yourday job, it's going to be the
(42:02):
big one.
So I had the luxury of buildingFrontline Optics for two years
before I ever took a penny outof it.
That allowed every dollar thatcame into the company to get
reinvested back in.
And if I was trying to paymyself a salary, who knows if we
ever would have actually gottenoff the ground.
But I didn't need to because Iwas still working for the fire
department and I still had mypaycheck coming in on that side
and it allowed me to focus thishobby and build the hobby into
(42:25):
something where it actuallycreated an income stream for me.
That then made it make sense tomove over to it full time.
So as it starts to pick uptraction, try and minimize your
costs in your life.
So don't buy the expensive car,keep your old one right Like,
(42:45):
just find ways to downsize.
And as that revenue starts toget to a point in your business
where it can meet your currentdeclined lifestyle, that's when
you now are at the crossroadswhere you get to decide is this
a side hustle that I do, or isthis going to be?
You know my full-time thing andthen just commit.
Speaker 3 (43:06):
Yeah, I think that's the biggest thing is commitment.
Everybody and you know I'mguilty of this Like we're in
such a world now, like I canorder it today, have it tomorrow
, type thing, or you, you watchthese reels or whatever it may
be like.
And the one thing that I,looking back, I'm super glad I
did is whenever I got started inreal estate is I made myself
(43:28):
like personally commit to myself, like I'm going to give it five
years because and I've heardHermosi explain it Like if you
zoom out over a big enough timehorizon, like a lot of these
problems get small and like asit relates to real estate, if
you zoom out over a big enoughtime horizon, like a lot of
these problems get small andlike as it relates to real
estate, if you look at like justa little snapshot of a rental
property, like a month or two,you can have like the worst two
months ever.
(43:48):
And then you zoom out likeanother 24, 36 months and it's
like those two months are just ablip on the radar and
everything else kind of leveledout.
But if you just only focus onthat little bit of time, man,
it's tough.
So committing is super huge andsometimes you just need to do
it long enough for the plan toplay out where it's like see it
didn't work.
(44:09):
Yeah, no, kidding, cause you ownthat house for four and a half
months.
Yeah, You're right, you're notwealthy yet.
Yeah, you know, wait 14 moreyears or something.
So yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2 (44:19):
And it gets hard, like they always say.
It's like, right, when you'reabout to hit your breakthrough,
like so much stuff is going tohappen during that period of
time that makes you doubt it.
Right, that's the moment.
Right, that's the peak of atleast the first mountain.
Right, that's your peak andyou're going to break through
and get to the other side.
And it's like a whole new worldonce you get there and I've
(44:40):
seen it now a couple of timesyou know we're still small, but
I've seen it a couple of timesnow where you feel like
everything's stacked against you, the deck's stacked against you
.
But that's just thatopportunity to like build up,
you know, and like push throughand get some resilience behind
you and know that, like, onceyou get to that one, you're like
(45:04):
, oh, like, next time I hitthese hurdles it's because I'm
about to break through toanother level.
And each time you do that, therewards just stack on top of
each other with each one.
Speaker 3 (45:08):
So yeah, it's like and and the stuff that you
consider a problem now, likefour years ago, would have just
been disastrous.
Now it's like, dude, that'stuesday before lunch disastrous.
Now.
It's like, dude, that's Tuesdaybefore lunch.
Now, you know, it's like itjust becomes a.
And the one thing that's helpedme with that is and we talked
about it last night at a group Iwas in where it's like you get
(45:29):
involved with these othercircles or guys that are in
business and whether they have afirst responder background or
not, just a lot of these thingscan be solved with like bounce
an idea off Tyler, or a coupleof phone calls and if I don't
know, I bet, within one degreeof separation within your
network, like hey, man, I don'tknow how to do this, Tyler's
like oh, I got a guy like youknow, like I'm, you know it's
(45:50):
just like one phone call or twophone calls in 15 minutes.
Next thing you know you havelike 70% of the information you
need to solve said issue.
Where it seemed like sounbearable is just, I don't know
.
That's something.
As I've kind of like gonethrough this, it's helped me a
lot.
It's like I don't know anythingabout X.
Well, let me see, I bet thatguy has an idea, or that guy,
(46:13):
and next thing you know you'reworking through the problem one
bite at a time.
So your network is your networth, right?
Oh yeah, I mean that getsthrown around a lot, but it's so
frigging true.
Speaker 2 (46:23):
Yeah, right, oh yeah, I mean it.
That gets thrown around a lot,but it's so freaking, true.
Yeah, like the other one I'veheard is like um, you're the
average of the five people youspend the most time with, so
100% looking out a bunch ofdegenerates, right yeah generate
too.
Um, but each person at a higherlevel at that table, um, they
start to pull you up to you knowto median, so um, keep that in
mind too.
When you have people thatyou're hanging out with, um are
(46:44):
they people that are going tobuild you know to median, so um,
keep that in mind too.
When you have people thatyou're hanging out with, um are
they people that are going tobuild you up in any aspect of
your life, whether it's personal, professional.
Um, just have people that areare going to push you forward,
not kind of hold you back orkeep you stagnant.
Speaker 1 (46:58):
Uh, real quick too, as we're getting close.
Um, I do want to mention.
Which I love is you are a nicheproduct for somebody, for first
responders, but you guys alsodonate to first responder
charities.
From what I see and correct meif I'm wrong it's first
responders children's foundation, the burn Institute,
firefighter aid and then nextround.
Speaker 2 (47:20):
I think next round is that um charlie brown and and
those guys okay yeah, so, yeah,we um, we want to give back to
the community.
Our primary is the firstresponders children's foundation
, so a portion of every salefrom our online sales
immediately gets donated to thefirst responders children's
foundation.
Those other organizations umare like event based or
(47:42):
situational based, or we'll, um,we'll donate to an event or do
some aspect outside of like oursales.
I guess you could say it's justsomething extra, but you know
we, we have a mission behind us.
It's, you know, we're creatinga brand that's for us and for
our community.
But you can't be for us and forour community if you're not
going to support, you know, ourbrothers and sisters when
(48:03):
they're in their difficult needor their families are in their
difficult need, and it's part ofour nature, you know, to it's
part of that brother andsisterhood is to to to help be
there for people.
So we wanted to make sure thebrand you know stood on that
value, and so we, you know, givea significant chunk of change
each year to to these differentorganizations.
Speaker 3 (48:26):
Yeah, that that's awesome and uh, yeah, I'll
definitely have to put you intouch with the end.
They had buffed energy but, dueto a copyright issue, has a
different name now.
But they take a portion of eachsale and donate it to a
firefighter based charity.
I don't want to misquote thename of it, but it's, uh,
basically the same for, like thewidow or the children, rather.
So, okay, but it's basicallythe same for like the widowed or
the children, rather.
(48:46):
But yeah, that's awesome and youknow it.
Just, it's like capitalism, butcompassionate, you know, and
it's like you can, you can havelike this new mission and we
didn't even get into that and Iknow we're coming up on time but
, like, I would be curious tosee if you had like any sort of
identity issue as youtransitioned out of the fire
service day to day world intoyou know business.
(49:07):
I mean, I know it's always likea tug of war of you know you
liked both, but I think that'sstill an interesting topic and
like one that I didn't know ifyou had any any thoughts on know
if you had any any thoughts on.
Speaker 2 (49:26):
Yeah, I mean, it's um for sure, there's some
struggles that come with it, uh,especially when I'm driving
down the road and I see like agood header and I'd like you get
that, like, oh man, that wouldbe fun, right, but um, you know,
all in all, I uh I still get tobe involved in the community
just because the brand isfocused on the community.
Um, so like, I get to hang outwith you, fellas, today, right,
so like I do get to be withlike-minded people, and now I
(49:49):
get to be with like-mindedpeople in our space as well as
in the entrepreneurship space,which is even more cool because
we've got more to talk aboutthat.
You know a standardconversation around the kitchen
table.
You know only half of what Ilike to talk about I could talk
about with that group, becausethe other half didn't understand
it.
Speaker 3 (50:06):
Well, you're in good company.
Yeah, hence the Genesis forthis group.
Speaker 2 (50:11):
Yeah, no, I love it.
I love it and your communityhere's.
You know these are my people,so I'm happy to be here today.
And then, additionally, I teach.
So I teach EMT and paramedic atone of the local community
colleges here, which keeps meinvolved as well, kind of
bringing up the next generationof people to do the job that I
(50:32):
still love and passionate about.
So I get to pass the torch andshare my experience and kind of
mold the next group and makesure that we push the bar up and
not down.
Speaker 3 (50:45):
Yeah, that's awesome.
I meant to ask do you doaffiliate marketing, or is
everything you said paidpartnership with Fire Department
Coffee, but like no, we're theaffiliate.
Speaker 2 (50:54):
Yeah, we have an affiliate program brand
ambassadors so we've gotdifferent ways to kind of get
involved to help spread the wordand spread the mission.
Speaker 3 (51:03):
Okay, I'll put you in touch with another guy.
I know that has a pretty decentfollowing, but probably would
be worthwhile to reach out tothen for you two to talk.
Yeah, man, so got just a fewminutes left.
I know you got a lot to do.
You guys are out on that Westcoast time.
It's almost the end of the dayfor me, but is there anything
else you wanted to just mentionthat we didn't get to?
(51:25):
There's a ton of other stuff Icould bring up, but I know we
don't have that kind of timetoday.
Anything else?
Speaker 2 (51:32):
No not really.
I mean, just follow yourpassion, follow your gut.
If you want to get intosomething else, just do it.
Like cut out the noise.
The noise will always hold youback.
If you go to bed at night andyou're thinking about doing
something.
And when you're running on atreadmill aimlessly you're
(51:53):
thinking about doing somethingand you're surfing podcasts and
you're thinking about doingsomething, it means that it's in
you.
So just go do it.
Don't hold back and justunderstand that as you do it
you'll learn Right, the firstproduct that I came out with.
I'm not proud of Right, butlike it got me where I am today
and I'm like damn proud of whatI've made now.
So you know it's, it's all partof the journey, it's part of
(52:16):
the process and you're onlygoing to learn if you take that
first step forward.
So if you feel that drive, justembrace it and go nice, what?
Speaker 3 (52:30):
what version of those glasses are you on since the
very first one?
Like, how many iterations haveyou had to make?
Five, so it's like version five.
So basically once a year, right, pretty?
Speaker 2 (52:37):
much pretty much we'll make some like minor
changes here and there.
I guess version four is what'sout right now.
Um, version five is theprototype is still being built
out, but, um, we're actuallygoing to be coming out with uh,
anzi z87 plus rated ipro, whichum actually have the sample like
right here.
(52:58):
That got tested and just likecompletely destroyed.
But we had to redo the way thehinges are.
Um, you can see like the littlebattle marks on these things.
They're like scuffed up, prettygood, um, but they've got
snap-on side shields that'll goon the side and it'll pass all
of the OSHA ratings.
So now you can throw this thingon and you know, take out the
(53:20):
saw and you're covered by OSHAstandard issue birth control
glasses.
Yep, there you go so, yeah,we're gonna actually try and go
after some of the ppe companiesonce that's in there and see if
we can get these things speckedinto some uniform policies
seriously, just get them intologistics, and then you're
getting orders for a thousand ofthem at a time.
Speaker 3 (53:38):
You know, right, right, they're probably gonna
pay 80 bucks though, but allright, so so, mike, this massive
audience we have, this group,we're going to distribute this
to, probably in about a week,where, if they want to know more
, if they want to order yourproduct, where should they be
following you?
Where should they be going tocheck these puppies out?
Speaker 2 (53:59):
Yeah, so if you just want to see what we're up to,
check us out on instagram.
Um, it's our most commonplatform.
I guess you can say uh, it'sjust at frontline optics,
otherwise our website,frontline-opticscom.
You can check everything outthere as well.
Get on our email list.
Our email list.
We share everything when newreleases come out.
Um, we've got some aviatorsthat are going to be coming out
(54:22):
here.
This is the one and onlyexample of those guys right
there.
These are actually going to bereleasing in just a couple
months.
If you like aviators and youwant to be in the know, make
sure you're on that email list.
Speaker 3 (54:33):
Nice.
Speaker 1 (54:36):
Thank you, this has been awesome.
Like Mike said, I'm sure we'reprobably going to ask you to
come back on, because there's abunch of stuff I think we can go
deeper into if you're willing.
Speaker 2 (54:45):
Always willing.
Just let me know, I'm happy tojump on anytime, okay All right
guys.
Speaker 3 (54:50):
Well, I won't steal Andy's line about sharing the
show.
But if you get value out ofthis.
Go ahead and support theseother first responder businesses
.
So check out Mike and thefellas over at frontline optics
and get yourself a pair.
All right, Don't be a hoe.
Share the show.
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