This is the full transcript for Episode #259 of the Wild Business Growth Podcast featuring Justin Baer – Prolific Tailor, Founder of Collars & Co. You can listen to the interview and learn more here. Please note: this transcript is not 100% accurate.
Justin Baer 0:00
Now you don’t have to invent something you have to market something inventively.
Max Branstetter 0:21
He, welcome back to the wild Business Growth podcast. This is your place to hear from a new entrepreneur every single Wednesday morning was turning wild ideas into wild growth. I’m your host Max Branstetter founder and Podcast Producer Max podcasting. And you can email me at Max Max podcasting.com To save time with your high quality podcast. This is episode 250 New AV and today’s guest is Justin bear. Justin is the founder and CEO of colors and CO which really rolls off the tongue colors and CO is the original dress collar polo and they are designed to be worn under a sweater or a suit. In this episode, we talk the incredible and incredibly insightful colors and CO story which includes tips on growing through tick tock growing through email, even a little shark tank in there as well. And some super helpful tips and stories about entrepreneurship and the family and parenting when it comes to entrepreneurship. It is JB Smoove. Enjoy the sheer.
alrady we are here with Justin bear like the animal so you don’t forget it. Justin, the dude behind the collars and CO and many, many, many other businesses that we’ll touch on as well as serial entrepreneur. Super awesome, dude. Justin, thank you so much. Thank you so much for joining in how you doing today?
Justin Baer 1:57
I’m doing great, Max. Thanks so much for having me. Appreciate it, of course,
Max Branstetter 2:00
of course and appreciate what you do for the world of callers in CO so sorry, I can’t I can’t turn off the dead jokes. But here we are. But whether you know it or not, you have a very, very special history with this podcast because our first ever guests in episode one back in August 2018 was Justin Bauer. So literally, same exact name as you but with the you in there. So very, very similar. He was a serial entrepreneur as well. But I think it’s so funny after you know 200 And plus episodes, we’ve gone from Justin Bower to Justin Bower minus the you so thank you for for having that name.
Justin Baer 2:37
You got and a BA are different. Sounds like Dan will just build a little differently.
Max Branstetter 2:43
Yeah, exactly. Totally, totally different just spelled similar to that. But besides the point. So anyway, we’d love to start with cereal entrepreneurship so and not the cereal. So though I do love cinnamon toast crunch, but of all the businesses that you’ve started, you know, since college, what besides college and CO is the one that jumps out to you is the one that like still to this day you’re most excited about and love the idea the most.
Justin Baer 3:06
I’ve had a lot of ideas, some of them just didn’t make it right, you know, probably 4050 business ideas that I’ve kind of tried and tested and it just didn’t make it off the ground. So you’re kind of only seeing, you know, maybe the four or five in my LinkedIn bio that actually made it in there all have their excitement to it. I had an idea in college, called The Cure card. And it was a consumer loyalty discount card. For retailers. This was back in the day, you know, when everyone had like a little scanning code on their keychain, one for CVS and one for Rite Aid and one for you know, you’re near Duane Reade and everybody had these like consumer loyalty cards. And I had the idea like, hey, what if I create one loyalty card have non competing businesses on there? So like one dry cleaner, one grocery store, one, you know, men’s apparel store one’s women’s, and we share the customer data and tracking data across all of them. But we put like a cause related tie on to it. So it was kind of like remember the entertainment book Max. I mean, if they still have that
Max Branstetter 4:09
it sounds familiar. But I know as you’re describing this, it’s almost like is it kind of like a card form of Groupon?
Justin Baer 4:15
Yeah, it was similar to that. It kind of had elements of that. It’s kind of like taking the entertainment book, which was like a huge book of discounts back in the day. We’re talking. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I know what you’re talking about. Yeah. And kind of bringing it down to like your best stores anyway, I had this idea and I called around to nonprofits and Evelyn monitors Breast Cancer Research Foundation said yeah, this is a cool idea. You know, we have connections to some retailers are like great and just hustled it. The way the card work was you bought it for $25 50% went to Evelyn large Breast Cancer Research Foundation, and then every time you use it, you got like a little bit of a discount. And that foundation also got a discount from the retailer. It’s like a thank you for you going to use that store instead of a competing store. Long story short, I raised over two and a half million dollars for Breast Cancer Research Foundation. You know, I was 22 at the time that, you know, that’s was kind of the first kind of unique hit. It wasn’t like the most lucrative business for me. But it did a ton for charity. And it kind of set me on my way, you know, kind of in marketing and business.
Max Branstetter 5:22
Oh, that’s so awesome that you did that. And then and I had such a, so much money raised. I mean, how do you even go about raising that much money for a cause?
Justin Baer 5:32
The idea was just really successful. They sold it in stores, we got, I think it was maybe 2000 doors across the country, you could buy this in, you could buy this card, and we tried to stack it with really cool discounts from Neat national retailers. And it just worked. And it was right, when kind of cause related marketing was, was hot. And you had the, you know, race for the cures, were really kind of getting going at at that time. So just the timing was right, just kind of worked.
Max Branstetter 6:03
And then somewhere along the line, you got into a column like text messaging, kind of communication businesses, like what what got you intrigued by that part of the world
Justin Baer 6:13
after the care card, ended up selling that business? I had this idea. I was just living in New York and in a work and at the time, my friends and I were going to these like young professional charity events. It was like a fun usually it’s like an open bars like $20 it supports an organization. So it’s like minded, we’ll go hang out at an open bar at a charity then at some like regular bar. And I was like, you know, how come there’s no like master calendar of events, nonprofit events, that you can kind of look up and say what’s happening this weekend? What’s happening next weekend, and what if you’re really into racing and you like five K’s and you want to race in charitable five K’s around the country, there really wasn’t anything out there. So I created what was called Charity happenings.org. And it was a master calendar of nonprofit events happening around the country. And you could literally filter it just like I’m saying, you could say I want to go to anything that’s related to breast cancer, or I want to go to any 10k runs in my area, and it would bring up everything that was there. So it was obviously it’s kind of was tough to monetize that calendar. We had kind of newsletters that would go out. We sell advertising into it a little bit for different events that wanted promotion. But what we also was having is like at the time of Eventbrite, Eventbrite was kind of just starting up or it was gone pretty good at that time, but but not to where it is now. And people wanted to do ticketing online. And a lot of these events didn’t have the ability to kind of run ticketing. So I’m like, you know, why don’t we create like an Eventbrite. But just for nonprofits, I already have all these nonprofits right posting on my calendar. So as they’re posting like, Hey, do you need ticketing? So we started picking up some ticketing business, which is actually a really tough businesses. It’s tough to kind of, there’s a lot of like, handholding upfront to design these pages. But it was going, okay, wasn’t making enough for me to leave my job at the time was kind of doing it part time was like a side hustle. And then what happened was Eventbrite, and this is like in 2008, I guess it was right when the iPad two came out, Eventbrite launched iPad, check in at events, Max, you know, like, when you go to event now it’s all like done with on people’s phones or an iPad? Yeah. Not really done. In the old days, you had like, printed out Excel files, and you’d have like lines that you know, like Aidas, K and K to l and so on for your different last name. You go and they’d scratch your name out. So people are like, well, I want I’ve had check in at our events. I’m using your ticketing system. I was like, well, we don’t really have it, but we can build it. The thing was, instead of me building it just for our ticketing platform, which is what Eventbrite did, right, Eventbrite had ticket list, checking where you scanned it, right? You scan a little QR code and a Letterman, it only worked for Eventbrite events. What I thought about was, I’m going to do it for anybody with any Excel file. It’s not going to be connected to my chair to happenings, ticketing platform, it would work. But I was like, you know, I think there’s like a little niche out there and ended up being a big niche of people that were running events that were literally using spreadsheets and would love to just have kind of iPad ticketless check in kind of a fun story. It kind of goes back to good lesson of, you know, making good contacts and, and connections. It was taking me like 10 months to build this thing. It’s building it in India. I had a friend that was an event planner, call me out of the blue. And he said, I have this client that needs iPad checking. Do you know anybody that does it? And I was like, well, actually, I’m kind of like building and I was kind of dragging my feet on that. Like, when do you need it? He’s like, we didn’t like six weeks. I was like, I think I could probably get that done. And he said, I asked him well, who’s the client? And he said, it’s Google, and it’s for their holiday party. I was like, we’ll have it done. Right away. Oh, So they’re like, worked through the nights for the next six weeks, they wanted 10 iPads connected, I only owned one iPad two, that was it. And they’re like, We want all 10 working, we want to go to send out emails, okay. And then at the night of the event, they had, like 10 volunteers, you can imagine, you know, the wireless is like crazy shaky, it’s outdoors. And I remember talking to volunteers, I’m like, Look, people are going to come with their tickets, hold the ticket behind the scanner, and just be like, Thank you for coming. Just like they won’t know they have a ticket. They’re probably okay. It ended up actually actually working most of the time. And it was a it was a good hit. And I had a video guy come and shoot like a commercial. And, you know, from that the next day, the Guggenheim museum called and said I was at the school holiday party and use my paycheck. And can we do that for us. And that kind of just started us on our way with what was now called Check In Easy, which is a check in app for events of all kinds anybody with a spreadsheet, and then ended up selling that company to certain software, which is kind of like Eventbrite, but for enterprise. So if you think like Oracle, like they’re not gonna use Eventbrite to run all their, you know, 1000 meetings across the world, they need conflict in enterprise software, that’s this company certain software, but Check In Easy.
Max Branstetter 11:22
So you clearly have an affinity for starting companies that start with the letter C. So let’s get to another one. So let’s get to the collar and CO story. So awesome. Like your, your newest baby of a business and very, very clever idea. Just throw another C word in there. Where did this idea for getting into the collar slash collars slash t shirt space come from the first place.
Justin Baer 11:48
Um, you know, I lived in New York for 12 years, and kind of wearing a dress shirt under a sweater is kind of like the Midtown uniform. In a way. It seems like everybody in an office wears that look. and I were to almost every day, and I just hated wearing a long sleeve dress shirt under sweater. I just found it always just uncomfortable. I was like hot. If you ever like pulled a sweater over a long sleeve dress shirt thing always gets like bunched up around the elbow. And this is just like a looming kind of issue or problem I had and I never really did anything with it for like five years, you know, I had another business and and then COVID hit. And there’s a lot of time sitting around and thinking I’m like, You know what, I was really itching about this idea. Let me see if I can somehow solve this problem, and came up with what’s now called a dress collared Polo. So just stretchy, comfortable golf shirt, except the top has like a really firm collar like super firm. So it really looks like a dress shirt underneath a sweater. It’s like a dress shirt. And it’s like more of an elevated Polo. And I made you know, it took me probably about six months to kind of come up with a prototype that we liked. And it was tough to find factories. But I did and I think I ran a bunch of like three to 400 units all white one color style. And then we got the box, you know, just delivered. I didn’t really have anything. I built a Shopify site. All the pictures were me on there, you know, just like modeling it. My seven year old daughter, like stood up on a chair and took pictures of me. Then she was like, Dad, why don’t you do like tick tock video. I was like, what? I never did tic tac before. She’s like, Yeah, you know, she’s held the phone up and like in my closet like guys don’t do it weren’t dress shirts, you know that. You got to check out these dress color polos. And we posted it was like a Sunday afternoon. And then when we sat down in or watch TV with my wife, you know, like eight o’clock, the thing just phones started beeping with orders from Shopify, it was crazy. And I was like, Oh my God, you know, maybe we have something here. Fast forward. We have over 100 styles, we have a whole sweater line. We were on Shark Tank. It’s been a crazy ride. We’re on our third warehouse. It just been. It’s just been nuts. But fun and fun for like an entrepreneur like me who’s constantly like thinking of, you know, new ideas, where it’s like, every new pattern is like a new business. You know, it’s everything’s like a new trial. So it kind of hits the hits the dopamine, if you know what I mean.
Max Branstetter 14:14
Yeah, definitely. Well, nuts and fun. That sounds like a good time. We’d like nuts and fun. But that’s so funny that it was an idea from your seven year old daughter that like, you know, got you to just put this out into the world and got some traction behind it. I imagine she now has, you know, 51% of the company kind of controlling interest, right?
Justin Baer 14:35
Does that keep marketing up?
Max Branstetter 14:38
Perfect. But what was it I mean, you know, we’ve heard a, there’s a wide variety of like world of possibilities and like tick tock is is just crazy. What’s going on there. It’s a whole you know, wild west still but what is it that you think made that tick tock go off for and actually, you know, get caught in the algorithm for you.
Justin Baer 14:59
You know, It’s tough to know exactly. There’s some luck involved. I think the video was like raw. And that’s what we’re seeing also, when our ads work better is a little bit more organic, not commercialized. And you know, at the time, I guess I don’t know two years ago and and tick tock is moving so fast. I don’t know. It’s just like, some dude in his closet saying, Guys, this is gonna like, one clothing items gonna change your life. I don’t know, I don’t I didn’t do anything, right. Like, I didn’t put hashtags. I didn’t know anything. I just like, put the video out there. And it worked. And subsequently, obviously, we do a ton of TiC TOCs now, and sometimes the videos I think are going to do the best to the worst. And sometimes the ones that I think I do the worst do the best. So it’s tough. I don’t think anyone’s really like figured it out.
Max Branstetter 15:48
I think your daughter figured out though.
Justin Baer 15:50
Yeah, exactly. Tasker. But it’s interesting, like the big accounts I look at, you know, not every one of those videos do well. And you just have to, like, keep doing them. But for a new entrepreneur, tic TOCs are a great place to kind of test your idea that and see if people are interested in it. It’s more of a discovery app, you know, kind of better than Instagram, right Instagrams more of a place where you can follow your favorite you know, celebrities and basketball players to see what they’re up to. Whereas Tik Tok people are interested in just learning about new stuff, seeing cool new things and funny videos, helpful videos. So it’s a great place for entrepreneurs to kind of test their idea.
Max Branstetter 16:34
Yeah, like, I haven’t heard it described that way. But yeah, it discovery is like a great way to describe Tiktok. I think the fact that it’s just so fast moving, really lends itself to new ideas and products, and sometimes just terribly corny, stupid videos, but it can really pay off if you do it right. Or just like, take a gamble with it. So for these, you mentioned, you did kind of like the initial run the dress color Polo. Now you have 100 Different styles, which I’m sure you just did overnight. Yeah, no problem. But like what what was involved in that process of figuring out, you know, adding different styles to the line and continuing to expand your footprint there.
Justin Baer 17:12
The nice thing about an apparel business or where we are kind of this men’s apparel is we’ve got our main hero product, this dress collar polo, but then it lends itself nicely to extensions, and kind of non core category items. So we first started with changing the color styles. So we started with this, like main English spread collar. And then we’re like, well, maybe people want the button down version, if you’re familiar with like an Oxford style collar, like button down. So we did that. And then we made a cutaway collar and then a semi spread collar. And with each new release, we kept getting momentum, and people buying it and kind of coming back to buy it and try them out. And then obviously different colors. And then I’m like, Oh, can we figure out a way to do a print on them. And then just started kind of coming up with like the top. men’s dress shirt, prints, you know, the Navy gingham and kind of your Bengal stripe and you know, pink gingham and purple and plaid. So it just kind of kept rolling. And we just with each new style, we would really sad to say keep a tight eye on it and see how it’s doing. And if people reacted, well, you know, we’d roll it another one, and just basically just continue to do this. And I think the idea of rolling out new stuff helps with our emails as well. So like 40% of our revenue comes from our emails. And, you know, you want to keep that newness. continuously give people a reason to open the email itself. Every email is like, Oh, here’s, you know, don’t forget to check out our dress shirts, or it looks stylish and feel comfortable. You know, there’s something nice about, hey, this is launching and it’s limited time. And there’s a limited amount of them. It keeps people clicking and opening and keeps our stuff fresh.
Max Branstetter 18:59
Whenever someone mentions, going plaid, I think of Spaceballs and when they’ve gone plaid. So you’ve officially entered Spaceballs territory with your business, I’m sure that was the intention. You know, testing out colors and colors I think is Words To Live By. But that email piece that’s incredible 40% of revenue through email, I mean, you hear each and every year it seems like you know, we just talked about tick tock it’s like the more social media platforms there are, the more random real estate there are like more, there is more and more people in thought leaders in this space are like you got to build an email list and like email prowess, because like that’s truly your people and you’re in charge of that. So how did you get your emails to the point that it’s literally such a, you know, over over a third of your revenue?
Justin Baer 19:46
Well, you know, when you come to a website, obviously now pretty much every apparel site, you have the little pop up says hey, get 15% on your first order. So that definitely helps. You know, keeping your emails interesting so people aren’t unsubscribing but You know, it’s all related, if you just say, Oh, I just want to build my email, well, you can’t do that unless you’re getting top of funnel traffic. So you’ve got to build this funnel of top of funnel traffic, you warm it, they come to your site, maybe they put their email in, and don’t buy, and then you send them three or four emails, and then eventually they do. They are all interconnected, and all really important. So I think that’s really the key, it’s like, you know, you gotta come up with your funnel that works. And you got to figure out a way to get cold traffic to your site at a decent rate, and then being able to retarget them for a decent array and then capture their emails and some businesses that worked and some, it just doesn’t, you know, I’ve been a part of plenty business where the just the model doesn’t work. And you’d have to say, Oh, well, this isn’t working, I’m gonna move on to the next thing. And then sometimes it does work and, and then numbers work out. So it’s all really important.
Max Branstetter 20:53
What have you learned so far from the email standpoint? Like, are there certain approaches or designs in the actual email blast you do that tend to work better from a sales standpoint?
Justin Baer 21:03
We’re constantly testing, you know, two years, and we’re still I wouldn’t say there’s, you know, we’re doing three emails a week, we usually try and switch up our we’re still kind of testing when’s the best time to do our launches? You know, is it Sunday is Monday, Tuesday. It’s still, you know, work in progress on trying to test and see figure out what’s working, what works best. I think, in general, for your emails to work, well, they have to be interesting, right? You’re you’re taking up mindshare, they’ve got to look cool. They’ve got to maybe say something interesting, catch your attention, to have the newness I think is important. But you know, make them fun, make them something people want to read.
Max Branstetter 21:49
It’s very interesting that you say that. Now I just can’t resist. But yeah, it’s so true. I mean, I, you know, at the time of this recording, like, this year launched podcasting to the max newsletters, like longtime coming, like, first time of the newsletter, and it’s like, it’s really tough to be as like, tight and concise as possible, while still being, you know, intriguing to the reader. Because this is, I mean, you see this all the time, but like, everybody’s email inbox is so crowded, like, you really need to have that interesting and tree value, you know, fascinating aspect to your emails for somebody to want even click it, but to to actually, like, read it and see what you have there. So seems like you’re in a good space with the testing and learning from the email standpoint. I mean, that’s just a massive, massive chunk of revenue there.
Justin Baer 22:37
Yeah, I mean, so far, so good. And look, one is the campaign’s that you send. And then the other is your drip campaigns for abandoned cart. And you know, that’s included in that number too. So, somebody comes to the site, to put something in their cart, you want to have a drip campaign out to them, say, Hey, you forgot something in your cart, and get them to buy that way,
Max Branstetter 22:58
let’s drip our way back to the actual callers. So did you know what these different types of callers were like, when you started designing them?
Justin Baer 23:07
A little bit, I had an idea. It wasn’t like I was incredibly into custom shirt making by any means. But I always kind of enjoyed, you know, clothes and, and keeping up with styles and you know, always interested in looking at new stores and just living in New York and seeing something new come in and seeing how they merchandised and I didn’t know you know that much about you know, the intricacies of men’s custom clothing, but knew enough to know what I thought was missing out there. For guys that were professionals looking for something comfortable, you know, but stylish coming out of this kind of COVID work from home environment where you need something to be able to work at home and then work at the office too. And just felt like I had a good tap on on what guys were looking for, you know, to still look sharp, but not wear a t shirt, but feel like they’re wearing a t shirt.
Max Branstetter 24:06
You knew enough to be dangerous. The feeling is there but I’m someone who like full disclosure. I mean I know nothing about clothes and my wife my wife Dana teases me but like it actually might brother during his best man speech at our wedding was like roasting me and my fashion sense like I just never put much too much thought to it but um, Dana has slowly and surely over time, you know for each birthday and Hanukkah and everything just gotten me to wear more fashionable clothing and look like a real you know, civilized person. So I appreciate appreciate the attention to it. But but you’re you’re coming in like you, you know, you had a fashion sense that you knew enough to be dangerous in this space. But how did you educate yourself to like truly learn enough to you know, believe in grow a company that is you know, in this space?
Justin Baer 24:57
It’s a great question. I actually given them around a pot. Guess I listened to every podcast I could about with the founders of untuckit, which I thought was a very similar business to art.
Max Branstetter 25:07
Oh, I love that. It’s one of the brands that is, you know, Dana approved by the way so, so big fan of them got it got a lot of this stuff over the holidays.
Justin Baer 25:16
Anytime like the founder, Chris was on a podcast that listened and tried to find every article and like, how they started, what they did with their marketing was like, and it was a little different than they grew up with different time, but kind of similar to us, where we kind of had some of that like a hero product, something different in the, in the men’s apparel space, and how they grew it. So I did that. I read books, you know, by like Ralph Lauren, and anything I could get my hands on. And we’ll get one right now, in my office from Tommy Hilfiger. I just tried to consume as much as I could, as much information as I could about Shopify, about apparel, and just really watching other brands, seeing what they’re doing. And what can we take? What’s the best thing I can take out of this brand’s marketing, and then I’d go to another round what you know, what’s interesting that they’re doing and kind of putting it all together and creating this lifestyle, vibe that we have at colors and CO for our customers.
Max Branstetter 26:12
So what’s the best thing that a fellow entrepreneur can take from what you’ve done with the colors and CO story?
Justin Baer 26:18
Come up with something a little bit unique? You know, it’s so difficult now to just come up with a commodity item. And now you don’t have to invent something necessarily, you have to market something inventively. Right, so that could be the differentiator, obviously, is how your marketing could be the same product, that how you’re doing is different. If you think about, what’s the name of that water company? It’s like killer water, death water,
Unknown Speaker 26:44
that’s the name of it. Oh, liquid death.
Justin Baer 26:47
Yeah, liquid death, right. So it’s just water, but they’re marketing it differently. And I think it’s trying to think of something that way. And, and testing, it’s like testing, not getting too hung up. Like I was saying before, when I started, this is like, idea number 50. Shit, there were 45 That went really bad, you know, just bad ideas. I thought they were great. But you know, I take them to a point where I’m like, I’m not really getting the traction here. Or right, or when I left, the funnel is really working. So it’s like, you know, on to the next, you know, you’re gonna have a lot of great ideas in your life. And don’t get too hung up and don’t spend too much time on it. Because you only have so many years, you know, when you’re, you know, crushing it and you know, you’re able to work 16 hours a day, especially when you’re single, right, you got a ton of time to make something. And I wouldn’t get hung up on something unless you’re seeing results fairly quickly.
Max Branstetter 27:43
And it’s fairly quick to sign up for the podcasting to the max newsletter. That is where podcasting meets entrepreneurship. And terrible puns are really good puns. Depending on who you ask if they’re upon funny person, or not, in shadow alliteration there as well, you can sign up at Max podcasting.com/newsletter. And that comes to your inbox every Thursday, short and sweet from me. And I’m just such a sweet guy. Now, let’s get to those 51st dates or 51st ideas. So this is a perfect time to talk about these 50 ideas yet to get this happens a seemingly every interview Exactly. The next thing I want to ask you about the guests brings it up. So thank you, and thank you for providing the script for the interview. No, but let’s get to you more on the on the personal side and start with inspiration and creativity. So how you stay inspired how you stay creative and innovative. And, you know, you mentioned these 50 ideas. And obviously, you know only a small percentage of those can realistically come to life. But how do you come up with so many different potential product ideas in the first place?
Justin Baer 28:50
Yeah, I grew up always as a kid coming up with ideas ever since I’m a little kid five, six, coming up with board games ideas. And Matt had an idea for like a basketball hoop return thing. And I was lucky enough to have parents that were really encouraging of my entrepreneurship. I would hope most more most parents are but I’m sure some are like, you know, that’s a stupid idea. You’re not gonna do anything. My dad was a business guy. And he was like, Oh, that’s a cool idea. Again, he took me to the Patent and Trademark Office. And you know, we took a tour and really understood that and, you know, when I got a birthday gift, he’d say, Okay, well, do you want $100? Or do you want, you know, one share of toys or a stock? You know, and just kind of learning, learning about business constantly. And it’s always something I always wanted to do. Subsequently, both my parents passed away actually a while ago, so it’s a bummer. They’re not able to kind of see what we’re doing with with callers and CO but it’s kind of a neat story. I think about parenting in a way and if you have kids yet Next, but
Max Branstetter 30:00
not yet we’re we’re in that phase where we’re like, enjoying it before the, you know, the calm before the storm. But you know, we want to though at some point, yeah,
Justin Baer 30:10
good you should. So I had this idea I was probably about 13 monster.com was around, I was like, No, this monster comes getting a lot of a lot of play. I think they went public and I was like, I’m going to create monster.com I think for auto dealers. So and that’s like, okay, you know, go for it, create a media kit. So I called around I got like Monster icons media kid, I created my own media kit. And he says, Okay, well, here’s the Yellow Pages, go call down auto dealers in the area and see if they’ll take a meeting. So I literally just picked up the phone, you’re 13 years old. Hey, it’s Justin, I got this idea. You know, would you see me? And uh, most people didn’t even answer I left a message. And then one, auto dealer. Koons Ford said, yeah, come on it. So I got off the phone. I said that. Koons Ford on Richardson road wants to hear the idea is awesome. It’s a car. Well, you know, let’s go in and you may set an appointment when and talk to the Sales Director there, you know, sat in his office and told them that and I showed him my media kit and use obviously didn’t like buy right away. Because again, this is a cool idea. And here’s, here’s some ideas. And, and I walked out of there thinking, You know what, this is pretty cool. And I, I don’t say like, I did it. But you know, I like I this is this is this was a success. You know, I’m gonna continue working on this idea. So it turns out, and this was years and years later, my dad is the one that called coons Ford ahead of time. And he said, my dad, my son’s going to be calling, please, can you take the meeting, and, you know, just something like that, you know, can make a difference, it can change some kids, you know, trajectory in a way where they don’t feel defeated every single time. You know, they’re okay with getting 10 nose because there could be the Yes, around the corner. So it’s always say like, it’s Be careful what you say to your kids. And, you know, when you see that they’re excited about something, you know, it’s to pour fuel on it or to help it grow, I think. And that’s what it did for me. So I always felt like, I didn’t care what anybody thought, My friends were getting jobs and finance. I was like, This is what I’m going to do. I’m going to make it I’m going to come up with an idea, and I’m gonna make it happen. And I’m okay with getting nose. Yeah, I think there’s Yes, around the corner.
Max Branstetter 32:32
I love that story, that I think there’s a there’s a mix, especially with, you know, kids as they’re developing, but also, you know, just anyone in like the entrepreneurship space of like, you need to have that confidence and like belief and passion behind your product. But at the same time, you also need to be totally aware and comfortable that this might fail and like be able to take failure and rejection. So I think what your dad did is super clever, because I’m sure it you know, it helps you lightyears in terms of like, you know, the confidence and the excitement and passion of like, oh, wow, you know, this is like what it’s like if stuff starts to pay off, or you get some positive news. But also, like he knew he knew how many times that you had been rejected, and you still you still were made aware of, you know, how a lot of times things do fail. So that’s an amazing mix there. You know, besides that little snippet, what would you say is the best lesson that you learned from your parents,
Justin Baer 33:31
I would say the best lesson and something I try to impart on my kids too, which is to be able to go up to people or it would come down as being able to make a cold call, right? At some point, you’ve got to be able to sell cold, get somebody on the phone, tell them what it is. And when I was growing up, and I wanted something, I was like, you know, Dad, can I get a fork? And we’d be little, I mean, I dropped my fork in and most parents would ask for the waiter Excuse me, sir. You know, can I before I’d be like, Okay, well go ask the waiter for a fork, you know, go to the host and walk over there by herself. Go ask for the crayons. And that’s like a silly idea. But it’s making them independent and making them confident that they can go and not just like ask for stuff but you know, get directions speaking to strangers, building rapport with people is just so important. And being able to just cold call call somebody out of the blue has been, you know, one of the one of the top skills or skills that I’m always still learning, but being able to do is hey, you got an idea. Okay, well call some auto dealers and see what they think. Whereas some people are like, Shit, I’m not I’m not making a cold call. Like unless it’s super warm. I’m not, you know, they just feel nervous about calling. That’s a really big one.
Max Branstetter 35:00
So let’s wrap up with some rapid fire q&a. Are you ready for it? Sure. Okay. I couldn’t tell if you were if you if you pause there or if it was like a delay in the connection, but Alright, let’s get wild. What is that board game idea you mentioned as a kid,
Justin Baer 35:20
it was a game and I had like cellophane on top. I don’t remember exactly. But I remember there was like cellophane and you could take the marker and kind of like, rub it off and continue to play it. And so I can remember about that, but
Max Branstetter 35:33
very cool. Mark Cuban. So I went to Indiana. So, you know, endless love for Mark Cuban, the entrepreneur, and he saw him speak before and like, yeah, obviously, he’s a legend. But how does he compare in person to, you know, kind of the perception of him, you know, as people that know him from TV and online.
Justin Baer 35:53
He’s been awesome, and so responsive, which is insane, because he gives out like his email address online. And I don’t know how he does it, but I send them an email, and three minutes later, I get a response back, and it could be like, 1230 in the morning. And yeah, you know, we’ve had conversations back and forth on email, you know, till like 130, about marketing strategy and general business ideas. And so he’s been incredibly responsive. The other shark that we have as Peter Jones, who’s in England, he’s on the British version of Shark Tank called Dragon’s Den. Yeah. Well, those guys have been great. We’re gonna be launching, callers and CO in Europe and in Asia soon, and he’s got a company that basically helps you do that. So far, the guys have been great. Our deal closed, and now couldn’t be happier, more excited with those guys.
Max Branstetter 36:47
Yeah, congrats on that. And I think it’s very unique for someone to be partnering with a shark and a dragon. So you’re swimming. You’re swimming with the sharks and breathing fire and everything in between, but on the Mark Cuban point. So that’s what I had heard about him is that he’s so accessible and responsive. And so I don’t know, I mean, this was months ago at this point, but I just shot in the dark, like, shot him an email and asked him to come on the podcast. And he, he politely declined and said, can’t do it. Can’t swing it. But he did get back to me within like, I don’t know, 10 or 12 minutes, and I was like, Holy shit, like Mark Cuban just emailed me back. Like, he, it’s a real deal. I don’t know how he does it either. But even though you know, he’s still a dream guest one day, but like, the fact that he got back at all, and it got packed so quickly. I think it means a lot. So
Justin Baer 37:35
I agree, man. No, he’s great. These days,
Max Branstetter 37:39
now that you’re busy with kids and a business and you know, sharks and dragons, what would you say? Is your favorite way to unplug and unwind?
Justin Baer 37:51
Let’s see. We’ve been playing pickleball lately. Just started that up.
Max Branstetter 37:54
Gotta get oh, friend. Love the pickle. Yeah, love pickleball
Justin Baer 37:57
golf. Awesome. Fun. I play golf. Like, my weekends, you’ll see you’ll get there. It’s like, kids stuff full time. And they don’t have a soccer game. You’re going to a birthday party. You know, I’m an Uber driver on on the weekend. Right? Yeah, I’m gonna get to unwind that much. But I was good at golf at one point. And I still love playing golf. And Pickleball has definitely been fun. doesn’t take as much time my wife’s happier about that. But yeah, it’s just kind of been around for the kids and hanging out with them
Max Branstetter 38:32
hanging out. And then the last day we got to Newark questions for you. First one, what do you miss most about living in NYC?
Justin Baer 38:41
The food for sure. We got the food’s terrible down here. I’m just outside of DC. And I was just up in New York this past weekend. And it’s just endless, great food in New York. And the energy right that energy and that kind of spirit, this entrepreneurial spirit there. It’s got an energy that no place in the world has. So I missed that.
Max Branstetter 39:01
You should be the DC food tourism spokesperson. I’m sure they would have been nice to give you big bucks for that review. And then last one that I mean, that was actually my last question is we’ll focus it on the Upper West Side. What is your absolute favorite restaurant in the Upper West Side?
Justin Baer 39:19
No car minds. That’s easy. Actually. Love our minds. Always. Carmine is on the Upper West is awesome. food’s great. Such a fun place. It’s like a family restaurant. They serve like massive portions. But it’s hard to serve great food in those portions. But it’s awesome. So I mean, there’s a lot of good restaurants out there. Shawn Lee is awesome. I mean, I was just up there recently Everything’s changed. It’s there’s so many empty space.
Max Branstetter 39:46
Right now. You never know what’s still in business. And
Justin Baer 39:49
but I think Carm i No comments is sure still in business. That’s an institution there. Shawn Lee. I’m sure there’s tons of great restaurants. But those are two easy winners for anybody up in New York. Uh
Max Branstetter 40:00
oh that’s that’s a staple. This was Oh god this was probably five or six years ago at this point but my buddies Spence Jason and I we did just like a quick guys little trip to Atlantic City and stayed at the Caesars there and they have a car mines there and they’re like massive you know, indoor mall area, whatever we set it’s like sitting outside of a restaurant except it’s indoors. So it’s like people are walking through the little cobblestone streets or whatever it is. The three of us between us we got like we shared like a massive like, I don’t know if Tomahawk or Porterhouse ribeye, like some huge steak, and it comes out in a giant platter and it was like surrounded by several sausages. So it’s just like an obscene mountain of meat that we still to this day or it’s like it’s one of the favorite meals of all time, but the looks we got from everybody walking by was like, the fuck are these? Like three guys that are just ordering food for like 40 People like this is insane, but it was it was
Justin Baer 40:58
at that restaurant? Yeah, yeah, definitely. It
Max Branstetter 41:00
was definitely a very unique experience. But yeah, love carbines but love collars and CO as well Justin, thank you so much. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast and sharing your story and everything from you know business tips to parenting life tips, pickleball tips, we’ll throw that in there as well but thanks for coming on. And where’s the best place for people to try out collars and CO as well as connect with you online?
Justin Baer 41:23
Yeah, definitely check out collars and koat.com We’ve got some awesome new categories coming out. We’ve actually got a full button down dress shirt like a performance gesture but the difference between ours and Lacey out there is that our collars are insanely firm. They all sit up they don’t like flop down. So check that out. And then you can always get some cool stuff on Instagram. Its colors and cool clothing that’s our handle and Tiktok colors and cool clothing and Max thank you so much for having me on I love what you’re doing the podcast our favorite see Mark I’ll push them to come on they’re
Max Branstetter 41:58
perfect. Yeah, twist is a twist his arm tell them a big IU basketball fan so that hopefully that wins to start over but but really really appreciate it and last thing FINAL THOUGHTS could be a quote kind of words to live by and a new adventure and whatever you want, just send us home here.
Justin Baer 42:15
Give it all you got. Nothing more than you can do than that. Give it everything you have.
Max Branstetter 42:23
Agreed. Thank you Justin for coming on the podcast sharing all your amazing tips and story and collars and CO and thank you well listeners for tuning in to another episode. If you want to hear more wild stories like this one, make sure to follow the wild Business Growth podcast on your favorite app and tell a friend about the podcast and try out colors and go with them. They look pretty, pretty good. You can also find us on good pods where they’re really good podcast, podcast people. And for any help with podcast production. You can learn more and Max podcasting.com and sign up for the podcasting to the max newsletter. That is at Max podcasting.com/newsletter. Until next time, let your business run wild bring on the bongos.
