A Conversation With Tyler 'Sully' Sullivan of Ecom Growers & BombTech Golf
Email is a conversational channel. Dumb statement of the obvious? This conversation with Tyler “Sully” Sullivan, founder of BombTech Golf, might make you think about that in a different way. BombTech is a direct-to-consumer maker of golf clubs.
Sully started the company in his basement (literally), and cultivated it as e-commerce evolved by (as he says) listening to the customers — primarily through email. This conversation was recorded a few months after Sully’s sale and final exit from BombTech. His focus these days is helping other e-commerce companies achieve similar growth with the help of the Ecom Growers agency.
What makes this conversation particularly valuable to marketers is the live example of fundamental value of really talking with customers. Email was/is perhaps the best digital channel for that, but the principle is what counts. Sully recounts how customer feedback was the key input in the hot-foot dance of selling a manufactured hard good; guess wrong about what the market actually wants, and you may have a container load of duds and debt. They’ll tell you what they want — the job is to listen.
This is a super-engaging and inspiring conversation for marketers and entrepreneurs alike. Pull the pin and check it out!
EcomGrowers.com
TRANSCRIPT
A Conversation With Tyler 'Sully' Sullivan of BombTech Golf
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[00:00:00]
Matthew Dunn: Good morning, this is Dr. Matthew Dunn, host of The Future of E Mail. Uh, my guest today is a gent I have been hoping to talk to for a long time. I'm gonna, I'm gonna fanboy on him. Tyler Sully Sullivan, best known probably as founder of BombTechGolf. Sully, welcome.
Tyler Sullivan Glad to be
Matthew Dunn: here. It's uh, it's kind of cool.
So here I'm gonna, I'm gonna fanboy and embarrass you right out of the gate. For those of you listening, I am holding up a bomb tech driver on somehow over a year ago, early on for the future of email, there was like, I got shot at getting this guy named Sully Sullivan as a guest on, on the podcast. And I went, Bombsheck Golf, not heard of them.
Clickety clickety click. Holy crap. Cow. That looks great. My [00:01:00] entire bag. He's your stuff now, man. Thank you. That's awesome. It's really cool. You know, my buddies are like, those clubs are really great. I'm like, yeah, they're absolutely really great. I actually busted my Bomb Tech 2 driver. Which, yeah, yeah.
Popped the head, like, wide open at the driving range. I'm like, eh. She served me well.
Tyler Sullivan What's that? Did you email the team?
Matthew Dunn: I, I did, but you know, it'd been over a year and I had, I had worked the bejeepers out of, out of the, out of her, so I thought, eh, uh, you know, fair is fair. I probably did something really dumb when I swung it, but we're going to talk about email.
But I just had to put that in there because the context, the context in terms of what you've done, I mean, you, you built, founded, sold Bombtec Golf, and now you're heavily in call, involved in e comm growers, uh, essentially an agency, right?
Tyler Sullivan Yep. So we work, it was, it was very organic. So I started bomb tech 2012.
I mean, I feel like the [00:02:00] oldest guy in econ now it's like everyone I've talked to is younger than me, but, but at the time I was, you know, it was not what it is now, 2012. There wasn't really Shopify. It wasn't really a thing. Yeah. Email was a lot more complicated. I think we're on MailChimp or constant contact.
And you know, I started that just cause I love golf and I was competing in the home run derby of golf for a long drive and. It was a crazy journey of just like purely curiosity of like, how do you make a club? Can I design one that's better? And I worked with my local college where I barely graduated and worked with, you know, engineering students.
And it just, it was a pure, no expectations. I love this. That's what I do every day. And I happen to make a really good product and luckily had good timing. Cause 2012, 13, Facebook ads were barely starting. And we could put in a dollar and get six back. And because we were like one of the [00:03:00] few small, really only small brand trying to compete and with really good products at a good price, it just kind of, kind of all happened.
And I say that as I was working 20 hours a day, seven days a week with a newborn. So, I mean, there was a lot of hard times and not to go too deep in the story, but I think the real reason I made it successful is it was November. This has got to be. Well, 13 years now of when I got fired from my day job. So I was, um, bomb tech was a side hustle.
It was going decent, but it wasn't, you know, it wasn't a full time income. Yeah. And, uh, there's a lot of cashflow when you're manufacturing our products, which I didn't really understand. And my wife just became pregnant and my boss brings me into his office. He's like. We need to talk. I'm like, what do you want to talk about?
He's like, uh, today's your last day and your last paychecks last week. And I'm like, [00:04:00] wow, what did I do? Or what didn't I do? And I was in sales and, uh, I go sit, I go, what's my job? He goes to sell. I go, what are sales? He goes, they're up a hundred percent or whatever. And I go, well, you're going to pay me my.
Commissions, a one month severance, or you can physically try to remove me. So they, so they ended up paying me, um, all that extra money. Cause I was like, but it was shocking. Um, and that was the kick in the ass I needed to take it from a side hustle and the pressure of a newborn to kind of make it happen.
And I mean, a lot has happened in 12 years, but ended up exiting in 2022. And to backtrack a little bit, not to go too crazy, but. I had started an agency with my first employee and one of the engineers that engineered our golf club in 2016, which is e com growers. And that's like what I'm working on now, post exit, post employment, where we just help other e com brands exactly like my own brand [00:05:00] do what we did, which was email, and I call it more of a conversational, authentic email style.
Which is kind of, that's how I always looked at it. Like you're a customer and we always tried to like, just have real conversations one to one. As if you're the only customer and ask your real feedback and like, we would ask like, Hey, if I have a 64 degree wedge and a chipper coming out, I would think in my mind, 64 is going to do better.
But I tell you what, I was always wrong. So I would ask my email list and say, Hey guys, what do you, which one should we launch? Yeah. Just reply back A for the 64, B for the chipper. Yeah. Be like 97 percent would vote for the club. I didn't think that would do well. Right. Right. But that would help us figure out what to launch.
Yeah. So we did these micro feedbacks and then we do like a launch of only 500 units. Yeah. If we sold through those within a day, said, all right, that's going to work. Let's order 20, 000. So just like, and [00:06:00] that was how email became a big thing for us. And when we did a launch, it was just, you know, we, every launch was over six figures, um, because of email and we had real conversations with them, not just blasting bullshit newsletters that are just overly designed as a lot of plain text and it was all, it was all authentic or organic.
It wasn't like anything. We weren't trying to market it, we were just doing it because it was what we thought we'd want to learn from our customers.
Matthew Dunn: I knew this would be a masterclass because they've been on, on the BombTech list for a couple of years, but let's unpack a couple of things that you just said.
Yeah, a lot there. Right? Right, a lot there. No, it's wonderful. I, I, I would say it, and I would have said this at a distance on a guess, and I'm delighted to be right, that what you said about sentence number two in there was, was really critical of the whole thing. You clearly love this.
Tyler Sullivan 100%. It comes through.
Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, I mean bomb tech was A labor of love. I didn't even think I'd sell one club. Right, right. [00:07:00] So it was just like, I was just doing it no matter what happened. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Work hard enough, things sometimes work out, you know? Well,
Matthew Dunn: working hard is certainly a big piece of the formula, but there are people who work hard who don't care about what they do, and they're not going to last to 12 years.
Second one, you had two newborns on your hands. That's a mighty big, right? That's a mighty big thing to juggle. Fun. I wanted to say this explicitly because not everybody who's listening or watching may, you know, may be a golfer, may be on the BomTech list, may have, you know, bought the clubs or something like that.
But having watched the cadence from BomTech over a couple of years, like probably two years at this point, I've actually referenced, I've referenced the company and the email strategy of multiple times in past conversations on this podcast because of what you just said. But it's like, it's a conversation about a topic that we [00:08:00] both care about, which is a great game, golf.
And it never comes off as bullshit, never comes off as salesy. It's very good sales cadence. I would click on a link and, and, you know, go look at the, the set of wedges and like, probably done really in, you know, what, next day. Hey. You still thinking about those wedges? Because they're blah blah, they're great.
Like, that was deft, that was really deft. Dang it. Uh, okay, yes. But, but the root, like the shared root of it, which maybe, maybe isn't as accessible to all businesses, but the shared root of it is You know, I'm investing in trying to get better at this lifelong game. And clearly every, you and everybody at the company, same Jones, right?
Same Jones, which is cool. And the Jones that's in the clubs, like the work that goes into the design, you're an engineer, correct?
Tyler Sullivan Originally I was a business manager. So I use the, uh, UVM engineering program, which I never applied to. It's a [00:09:00] capstone project where you get to work with a group of students and the faculty, uh, for a year.
And that was the. That's how we got into it with the dual cavity driver and the wind tunnel studies, essentially. Yeah. So they did wind tunnel tests and, you know, we worked with the manufacturer and that was how we were able to come out with a product. And from there, it was a lot of iterating off customer feedback, which was pretty cool.
So we'd like make version one. And because we were a hundred percent direct, we got real feedback. Yes. So we'd get all these reviews. Like, I think we have, I mean, I sold it now, but 21, 000 reviews or something. Yeah. So when you get that many reviews, you can see a pattern, right? So like, let's say version two of the driver, 80 percent said the shaft was a little whippy, so we would tighten it up by five CPMs, like the measurement of torque.
And then, you know, let's say they said, I'm hitting a little fade. Okay, we'll, we'll close it down a half degree more. So we was like, Micro improvements offer direct customer. Yeah, that was like the easiest way to have a [00:10:00] non engineer be in a very engineered product environment and actually make products for you guys and actually have a better outcome.
So it was, it was kind of like, Oh, I kind of oversimplified things because we had the fortunate thing of having so many customers that would leave reviews and we were able to access them direct with email, which became that. direct feedback loop for, you know, a new product, a new product launch, a new design iteration.
So we was kind of didn't start out that way, but I think there's so much engineering and over design in every industry. It's like you got to get to market with something great and then let your customers help improve and almost build the company together. And that was my mindset with email was like, okay, I forget when it turned, but I was like, you know what?
It's not me. It's, it's, it's the list and customers. Let's just talk to them, you know, and like, we're not going to do everything they say. Yeah. But a [00:11:00] lot of the stuff we had in conversation was gold. And I think me doing customer service for the first two years and building every club myself, I would hand assemble every club in my basement.
I mean, this was newborn upstairs, 1100 square foot assembly shop where I'm chopping shafts, epoxy, not the healthiest time of my life. I had such an intimate, you know, knowledge of the customers. I talked to them for two years on the phone and email before I was willing to give it up and hand it off to my other employees.
And that was really, I know I'm derailing a little bit, but I only had two in house employees and they did customer service. So the only roles we had in house were the guys and they've been with me for a long time. That would answer the phone and do emails because that was how important customers were.
Whereas everyone else, the first thing they do is they outsource that. Right. And I'm like, we're going to spend more and only have that in house. So it was kind of, [00:12:00] and again, I didn't go with it of like, this will separate us. I was just like, this is what's right. So I think when you have, I don't know, this clarity of just do what the customer would want because I was the customer, everything came easy, you know, or not easy, but like, it wasn't a lot thought of.
Let's save a penny here and let's just do what the customer wants and it'll work out and the word of mouth is just was crazy, you know,
Matthew Dunn: yeah, no, I yeah, you yeah, you were your word of mouth, which you, you know, arguably earned. Um, there's a tech company, I guess you call the tech company out of Toronto called fresh books are pretty big now, uh, uh, web based invoicing system and I think it's going to accounting and stuff.
I've been a fresh books user for. Oh, 12 years at least. And I remember reading that as they started to grow, they kept this cadence where when you got hired for anything, VP of finance or whatever, the first thing you did was like 90 days on the phones, customer service. [00:13:00] Like, that's really smart , that's
Tyler Sullivan really really's simple, but it's a huge impact.
Yeah. That's, that's where you learn everything.
Matthew Dunn: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. It's a, it is, it is a huge impact. Um, would it be fair to call the model for, for BoTech, we'll come back to e-comm growers for BoTech. Uh, it, it, it, it's A-D-T-C-A direct to consumer. Play, you don't have pros, you don't have retail and shops, et cetera, et cetera.
You had this passionate audience that you could reach directly on, as you said, Facebook ads, website, and so on, and then turn it into a two way channel primarily
Tyler Sullivan with email, right? Yeah. A hundred percent DTC. I mean, the reality was is that retail didn't want us, you know, we, we didn't, it was twofold. It was like, number one, we want to sell directs.
Number two, to get the prices where you could have superior, we could have great performance. That was never an issue, but to get through, you know, it's a very difficult industry to get into. So our [00:14:00] prices had to be fantastic and we still had great margins, but it just, it was an almost, I wouldn't say an impulse buy, but it's priced competitively enough where, you know, you don't have to think about it too much and, uh, it made selling direct, just the formula works.
So it was just one of those things. And then emails, the list got bigger and bigger after a decade. That's really the asset, you know? So when I sold the company, you know, they're not just on our current, I mean, they did buy it based off EBITDA, but the email lists, you know, cause what happens if Facebook ads or Google ads becomes not the return ad spend goes to hell, you still have an email list.
That is helps prop those numbers up. And as you scale, that's really a lot of your profit comes from that. So it was just, again, it wasn't intentional. We're all going to go direct, but we want to sell a certain price and have so much value. That was the only way to do it. And go and retail for at least that company [00:15:00] just didn't make sense.
So it was good timing and just, it was cool.
Matthew Dunn: Yeah. Well, and, and. You described it, but I think it's worth recapping in terms of email. Like you, you, you, you caught the wave and I'm not going to get, I'm not going to say it was luck. Like you worked at it. You kind of caught the wave of the maturing of the, uh, infrastructure and systems that make DTC businesses possible, including the email systems.
If, if I'm not missing a bet, Shopify, Clavio on the backend
Tyler Sullivan now. So we switched over to those, but I mean, it was funny back then. I remember When we switched to Klaiva, remember why we did it? It was like 2015? Yeah. 2016? Yeah. And, it's because we could not, uh, segment out on whatever we were on now. I think we were, we've been like through five platforms.
Yes. But, so what I would write in the email was like, it was comical. So we'd do a sale for like the driver or whatever. I'd [00:16:00] say, what would I say? It says like, Sorry if you bought it the other day at full price, you can't use this coupon. Right. Right. Or something. It was like, too bad, and people were like...
Give me the refund. So there was no way to segment out. You could never run a deal. Yeah. To anyone to, it made it almost impossible. And so when we could segment out, I was like, Oh my God, we could segment people that already bought and then show a discount to someone that hasn't bought. Yes. And that alone was a game changer.
And then, you know, it's matured and, you know, you got the flows and segmentation, all that stuff. When you have a hard good, you gotta understand. Guys may buy drivers once every three to five years. So it's, it's really tough to like, if you're a consumable and you send an email, it says, Hey, this driver's awesome.
Two 97, two days later, you're like, Hey, we have a labor day sale. It's one 97 when they only have that one purchase. It's a bigger deal versus a consumable. They're like, Hey, I'll just get another, whatever, another thing, golf [00:17:00] balls or makeup or whatever. So it's like the segmentation key when you're selling a hard good, that is not.
Consumable or plenishable is a much bigger thing. So that was super powerful. Yeah.
Matthew Dunn: Yeah. And, and, and if you haven't played with the, if you can play with the levers and knobs that Sully's talking about, the switch to Klaviyo was conceptual and fundamentally your e comm system. And customer history talking to your email system instead of them being separate buckets where you couldn't, as you said, go, wait a minute, this guy just bought this yesterday.
I do not want to tell him about the sale and and and and so on. Um, the other thing I particularly appreciate about what you guys did, and I'm guessing this is part of the philosophy. Was. Remember that email's a two way medium, not a broadcast medium.
Tyler Sullivan It's, it's funny. Yeah. So that's like, it's really interesting.
I think the unique advantage we [00:18:00] have at the agency is that Chris was my first employee at Bob Tech. And like, he also engineered one of the golf clubs. And so like he was, he was the, and still is the most unique. Hardworking person ever. And he was like 22 and he'd be messaging me at like two in the morning, leaving the bars.
He's like, did you see how many sales we have right now? I'm like, dude, go to sleep, go to sleep. He was just so, so passionate and hardcore about it. Yeah. And it was the best employee I could ever have, especially as my first one. Then in 2016, Clavio did a case study on bomb tech are crazy. We had like 48 percent of revenue from email.
They did a case study and then these people start the other DTC brands are reaching out to me. Like, Hey dude, that's awesome. Can you help me? I'm like, no. And then Chris was doing all my email and this has been, I don't know how many years he's been working. He's like, do you mind if I help them? I go, what do you mean?
He's like, well, you know, like on the side and I go, as long [00:19:00] as it doesn't affect your day job, go ahead. So he went out and closed three of these leads and we started talking and I'm like, well, what do you want to do? He's like, well. Be cool. If I could make this a big thing and, and whatever. And I said, well, let's make a business plan together of how you can exit bomb tech, start your own business and make more money than I could ever pay you.
And that's what we did. And he ended up, you know, I think we have peak, we had 40 something clients. We hover around 30, 35, and he really runs that company, but we're 50, 50 partners. And that's how. He went from my first employee and he's still super young, just had his first kid, but now he's been running his own company for the last six, seven years.
And it has been making, I don't know, five, 10 X, what I could ever pay him, doing his own thing. And I'm still a part of it. So it's kind of, it's all been hard work and then organic things of moments of traction where it's like, [00:20:00] okay, people are asking me for help. I don't want to help them. He wanted to help.
It just kind of happened. It wasn't like, Hey, let's go start an email agency because I've sent an email before it was like, people want help. We know how to do it. So that's how he operates is from an inside e commerce brand mentality, which is like very rare. Most agencies have never been in an agent, in an econ brand.
Themselves are actually part of a founding, founding the company. So it was just, that's why we're different over there, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Well,
Matthew Dunn: and he grew up in EECOM from what you just said, like literally,
Tyler Sullivan professionally. Literally. So he's, I, I can't believe he did not quit because, you know, I was a, uh, interesting boss, but he, he, he learned a lot and we worked side by side.
So he, good on him for not quitting. But, um, anyways.
Matthew Dunn: Yeah. Um, and the hard goods, you, you, [00:21:00] you touched on it, but the hard goods, not digital goods, uh, basis for, for that business, it's easy to get a real false economy spun up in things like SAS, because, you know, you're selling bits and bytes. It's an oddly fungible thing.
Like you can have margins of 98 percent when people will go, yeah, no problem. Where do I, you know, where do I pay? That's a very false economy in some ways. But when you're shipping clubs, a little different. Yeah. Do you, uh, switch gears for a sec, uh, you know, talking to the guy who's, who's dealing with the rigors of, Oh, I did it.
Now what, um, you still tinker with club design?
Tyler Sullivan Uh, for what I'm doing now? No. So I have a non competing golf. So I, I'm, I'm out of golf. I just finished my transition period. So I was working as a, you know, I was still the. I don't know why I [00:22:00] wasn't a general manager of the company until August. So now I'm fully disconnected, which feels really weird because I mean, when I first started, I never thought I'd make a dollar and then to have something that was Decent amount of money and sell it that I love so much was really hard.
It was tough. It was very emotional. And I knew it was going to be, but it really, you know, they all say it's like, it's the toughest year ever after you sell a company and it really was. And I don't know, the money is, is great. And the one, the reason I sold it to young kids. And the cashflow from that business was, it was capital intensive, you know, cause we would do great, sell millions and millions of clubs, but then we had to go manufacture millions and millions.
Like, so I had to spend, so I, after a decade of that, I was like, you know what, I don't know if I want to live like this forever with a young family. Stressful too. And with COVID and golf. Just blew up. Yes. I was like, this is such a unique [00:23:00] time for golf and for e commerce. I don't know if we'll ever be able to get this valuation ever again.
This is just so the timing was perfect and the guys who bought it, I thought they were right fit and we were ready and I was dialed in and uh, it was great. Transaction went well. We closed really fast and I was so dialed in and I had delegated almost everything after having my second kid where I was working like four hours a month.
Which was not how it was before with my first kid. So it made it really transferable. So I could sell it and make a good transition, but now I'm still, so now I just ended my employment agreement in August and I'm searching for what to do. You know, I'm helping Chris with the agency, you know, so that's number one.
Focus, you know, I'm messing with some print on demand, apparel stuff for skiing. I have, I have a ski design behind me. Got 40 prototypes of skis that I made with UVM. So, you know, I don't know if I want to go back into an inventory based business, but [00:24:00] I'm a big skier, you know, and, um, but you know, I have an office.
I'm at, you know, I go every day and, uh, trying to bring value where I can to people in e comm. And right now, most of my efforts e comm G because, you know, I want Chris to win and, you know, maybe exit at some point, see what that's like, but we're not ready for that yet, but. It's a, it's a changing landscape for that, for sure, for DTC as well.
Yeah,
Matthew Dunn: I'm going to ask it on air, so that's really unfair, but it sounds like Chris would be a wonderfully interesting guest to talk with about email. Oh,
Tyler Sullivan yeah. Yeah. He has a whole different perspective. Hopefully he doesn't, uh, talk too poorly about me, but it's just like, it's like, I'm on the, I'm also on a third party, you know, uh, outside perspective.
Yeah. So a lot of our conversations are more like. He will tell me what's happening in the business. And he has a lot of limiting beliefs of what we can do. Cause he's in the woods. He can't see outside the forward. So I'll say. We're like, Hey, [00:25:00] we got to systematize so we can scale up. And he's like, can't be done.
Can't be done. And I'm like, okay. And then I'll just go through it. And then guess what? It can be done. So like we were really bloated, had too many people, none of systems. So my outside perspective, I try to keep it outside so I can come in and say, Hey, we got to systematize this and that. And it's like it is very yin and yang because i'm not in the day to day fulfillment Yeah, and then you know, I do a lot of podcasts to help them get leads.
So that's been kind of nice, you know It's uh, because I never had that at bomb tech and it's so easy to get stuck In the business and not realize what the big lovers are when you're doing every stuff every day Yeah for me at bomb tech It was my two kids that really got me out of it to actually see and scale and have better systems to go from 20 hours a day, assembling them myself to four hours a month, which would have never happened if I didn't have two kids that I had to, you know, play with and [00:26:00] hang out with.
And I'm fortunate that I have them and now they're sick of me and I'm coaching everything. And they're like, dude, give me some space, which is like, you can't coach every sport. I'm like, well, fine, but whatever. I'm still at practice every day. Um, Yeah. Yeah. Anyways,
Matthew Dunn: uh, but you're in
Tyler Sullivan Vermont, correct? In Vermont.
Yeah. So we're in hockey season right now with my oldest, youngest does gymnastics and dance and we got Cub Scouts and fall baseball and nine million things and I love them all. You know, I,
Matthew Dunn: uh, I worked in the ski business for about four years, uh, CIO, yeah, biggest ski company in the world at the time, actually.
Um, so I actually unexpectedly in life got, it's got an inside look at the resort business. Intruest, Wren, Whistler Blackcomb, Mammoth Copper, like, name it, name it, they had a piece of it. Um, [00:27:00] someone should DTC Disrupt Ski, which may be in the back of your head, as you did golf, because it's the same.
Tyler Sullivan There is, I actually ski with a friend who invented the first twin tip ski.
Yeah? And he has his own brand, J Skis. That he makes his own design. So I ski with him. I, I joke that I'm his, uh, volunteer tester. So he brings me new products. Yeah. Like skiing. He's like, Hey, try this new ski I designed. So it's like, it's a, it's a very interesting business. And, uh, he does a great job. He'd be a good guest.
Um, he's in the thick of it right now, but it's very similar to golf. Yeah. You know, he's a hardcore ski. He was on the X games and all that stuff. But yeah, so we get to ski together and. Um, Skiing is a little different because there's a lot more micro brands, you know, there is a lot of these small guys that are, what's that?
Especially snowboards. snowboards too. Yeah. It's just, yeah, [00:28:00] it's kind of crazy. So he does well though. So I'm not happy for good.
Matthew Dunn: Yeah. Again, I mean, they're the, they're the brand you can rattle off and here we go. Rabbit hole and ski, right? You know, blah, Rossignol, dah, dah, dah, dah. And then there are niche brands.
I actually, I ski on a, I ski on a pair of, uh, Stokely's, which is a Swiss brand from, and my Stokely's are from the I want to say, awesome, you know, mid 2000s or something like that when they were still handmade, which they aren't anymore. And my sons stole my shorter Stokeleys, like somehow they ended up being, the boys are using, how did you get my Stokeleys, you stinkers?
Love it. But it, but it, you know, there are not maybe quite the same stars and television sort of, uh, aspect to that business that there is in golf, but the equipment's relatively expensive. It's darn well a hard good. You're not going to buy a new one every week, yada, Like
Tyler Sullivan there's, there's some structural season though.
That's, that's the big deal with skiing. It's like golf, you have. [00:29:00] We, summer was peak by far, but still off season, we still sold a lot of product. It's like very weather dependent. It's very short summer. You're dead spring. You're dead. Yeah. So, I mean, I'm not saying golf was better, but we didn't have those seasonality spikes as, as much as skiing.
But yeah, I thought about, that's why I started designing skis. I was like, man, this could offset golf a little bit when we go into off season, we can sell skis, but I'm not, I'm not going down that rabbit hole. I'm good. I'm good. I don't need to do that to myself. He
Matthew Dunn: says I'm not going to the rabbit hole with, you know, with ski designs right behind him.
That's uh, that's awesome. And you'd have to come up with a, you know, a killer slogan, pull the pin was good, but I don't think it fits. Stuff like that. Um, Matt, what you, did you have to learn the working with manufacturers stuff like on the
Tyler Sullivan fly? That was such a process for me. I remember I was at a wedding in Florida from one of my buddies from college, a frat brother of [00:30:00] mine and roommate.
And I was like, I gotta, I gotta go to Skype. It was like three in the morning and we'd been drinking all night. I gotta go talk to the manufacturer. It was like the first ever order. And so like, I probably spent, I don't know, 10, hours talking on Skype to our manufacturer. And, you know, I, I'd put the kids to bed, hang out with the wife and then I'd be on, you know, on my phone, just on chat at like 10, 30, 11, 30, 12 at night in bed, trying to get the details of like, Oh, I don't like that.
Let's try this. The shaft's too weak. The grip's not right. So, I mean, man, manufacturing is no joke. Yeah. Customs duties, shipping, especially with like COVID with the delays of that and forecast inventories. I don't think anyone does it perfect. Um, but I liked when we were leaner on inventory and we would sell out, you know, and that really helped from cashflow and it [00:31:00] helped.
It helped our email a lot because there was no fake scarcity. Right. It's like we just fell out of something. It was sold out. Customers would know. And so when we got something new in, we would say, Hey, it's coming. It's really coming now it's here. And guess what? We'd sell a ton of them because they know it would sell out.
And that was real. And then the year when we sold, I was like, we need, we can't sell out because we need peak season to have enough. So that was a big, in my mind, a little bit of risk for my capital. Uh, cause I went so big, uh, but it panned out perfectly. So, but that's, that's really the beast of any. Econ brands, cashflow, capital, um, and deal with manufacturers.
I was very fortunate to get an introduction to a great manufacturer out of the gate. Um, and it just all worked out, but I had to pay someone to introduce me and, you know, and we had a good design, but it's, it's not, and that was the thing with skis, I couldn't find a ski that was. A material that was [00:32:00] competitive enough with what was on the market that was light enough and stiff enough.
So I was like, you know what, they're good, but they're not great. And I'm not going to go to market unless it's truly great. So that was. At least my perspective on that, but manufacturing, it's a full time thing when you get started, especially because there's so much back and forth to get the product, at least for me to be good and to be ready for market.
So it's not, I wish I could say it's easy to do, but my story was not easy. Um, But it worked out. I, I,
Matthew Dunn: I think Elon Musk, you made the phrase when he was talking about early days of Tesla that making the machine that makes the machine is actually the hard part in manufacturing. Yeah.
Tyler Sullivan The factory is that level, but he's a, he's a whole nother beast.
Yeah. He's,
Matthew Dunn: he's, he's, he's a, he's a whole nother beast. And, uh, I'm guessing he's on Skype at, you know, two in the morning still, but anyway. Um, [00:33:00] so Aside from continuing to work with Chris, any other stuff kind of catching the corner of your eye, like, wow, that's interesting? Like
Tyler Sullivan writing a book, maybe? I mean, I have tried a couple things.
So I did go down the AI rabbit hole a little bit with a blog where we started to do some AI stuff. Didn't do great. Um, I was going to do like a bowling company. But then didn't want to get a manufacturer's eyeball, you know, every Wednesday and, you know, so right now I'm messing around with something I thought I'd never do, which is print on demand, uh, with, you know, just designing apparel, um, you know, basic sweatshirts, hoodies, and just.
Seeing, cause that industry is really interesting to me. Cause the cashflow perspective is like, I can do it like a custom coffee mug with your name on it or whatever, but you get the order, then you, then you make it. So for me that, and I don't have to ship the product myself. [00:34:00] So it's like, how can I use some of what I've done over these years outside of helping with the agency?
Which is our biggest lever, you know, that, that's for me, my main focus. But it's very interesting that you can sell something and have positive cash flow without having to hold inventory. So I haven't proven it out yet, but it's called outside humor is what I just called it. And I started like an Etsy store, which is weird.
Um, and we'll see, I may, I may do a Shopify store of like the best sellers if I get best sellers and do Facebook ads, but I'm not sure yet, but at least I like the designing of the, of the products and stuff and. It's tough not to, it's tough to golf every day and ski every day. It sounds crazy to say. No, no, no, I, no, I, to say that, but yeah, it's, uh, you gotta do something, you know, you gotta work a little bit, um, or you'll go crazy.
Yeah.
Matthew Dunn: I, when I was at, I was at Microsoft in the nineties and saw people who were there at the right time, you know, stock options, et cetera, like punch out almost [00:35:00] verbatim. Yeah. I love to snowboard, but I'm the only guy snowboarding every day. And after a while I was like in the
Tyler Sullivan butt. I know all my friends are still working.
So I have a crew of guys at the golf course are 70. Yeah. They're all retired. Yeah. You know, and that's cool. And it was nice when everyone's working remote and like not working because I had a bunch of people to hang out with and a couple of my friends, this was, they ended up getting jobs, but they got laid off this summer and had a severance.
So we got to golf a ton together, which was cool. But now they're back to work. So I'm like, all right, so I go to the office, I try to put in the hours and you know, I think once, when you find something that. You're just doing anyways. And it's just like enjoyable. And that's how golf was for me. That's how, you know, you know, like, so it's like this thing where if you try to sell whatever's trending, this is my, always my example, it's like, I don't know anything about women's leggings.
Right. But women's leggings are hot thing. They're trending. You can't sell something that you just, that's trending. You know, you got to sell [00:36:00] something, you know, and are passionate about, and that will never feel like work. And that's how I was able to work 20 hours a day because although I was working, it wasn't.
Working, you know, it's hard to explain, but so that's what I'm looking for. And, you know, designing these silly t shirts and stuff. And what am I doing? I'm doing ski, ski apparel, and then some fishing stuff. Cause my son likes to fish, you know, it's just stuff we talked about do anyways. And I can talk to him like, Hey, let's design a shirt, but whatever, we're like, what do you want to do?
So him and I started designing our own lures. We have a little sketchbook and he draws his lures. And, you know, so stuff like that is. Where I'm trying to go, you know, wow.
Matthew Dunn: Fascinating. I want to track back to AI for a sec just to get your reaction to something. I read, uh, Mustafa Suleyman's book, um, The Coming Wave, which is about AI.
He's the DeepMind co founder. And he said, we need an update on, on, on, uh, the Turing test. The Turing test was if, if eventually you could be. typing back and forth and not realize there was a [00:37:00] computer on the other end that that's that would have passed the test. He said, I think the new Turing test needs to be give your AI a budget of 100, 000 done and say, go make a million.
And it made me think like with, with print on demand, right? Like there's going to be a point five years out, less than that, where I'm going to look at something on a screen and go, wow, gee, maybe I want or need that. It, the thing probably doesn't exist. It's probably going to be on demand if I order it, not even be a company behind it.
Right. And an AI generated.
Tyler Sullivan I have those thoughts too. And I'm like, this is too, too intense for me to even think about because I'm like, why do I even work? I don't know. So like, wow. I have messed with the AI with designs and stuff and like slogans and wording hasn't been even close to good at this point for me.
Um, and it's kind of like half of what I'm doing is a creative outlet. I enjoy doing it. So [00:38:00] if that, if that can really happen, then does money matter? You know, if you can just say, Hey, here, make the, you know, so I get too deep in this, like, well, then no one needs to work. And then I don't know. So it's like, cause I went down that AI rabbit hole and like, and I, and I tested it with my own personal blog and wrote a bunch of blogs and, you know, it was so much editing.
And I wasn't like my perspective and they didn't rank well. So I was like, you know what, I'm sure to kind of do what's fun. If it works out cool, if not, no big deal.
Matthew Dunn: I don't know that we'll ever lose our sense for authenticity.
Tyler Sullivan Um, yeah, I think that's what is missing. Cause you ask for certain prompts and it's like, yeah, give me an idea.
Did come up with one ski slogan camera or what it was. But it was like, close, but it still didn't make sense, you know, so it's, I don't know, we'll, we'll, we'll see. I'm sure a year from now we'll be like, dude, I can't believe you said that, that made, that's [00:39:00] all I can use or whatever. It
Matthew Dunn: is, it is, yeah, it is going to change fast and, and sidebar, but I, I, I, I, a lot of my time is actually, uh, writing code.
That's actually falls in the domain of things I enjoy. And having a, uh, intern slash, uh, teacher. At my fingertips, it's darn useful. I gotta say, I'm
Tyler Sullivan like, for sure. Yeah, stuff like that. That's
Matthew Dunn: awesome. Yeah, it's, it's awesome. But it, it's more helping me learn how to do something. Certainly not a substitute for doing the whole thing.
Cause I'd have to articulate the prompt coherently enough to say, write the whole thing for me, which means I'd understand the problem. So yeah, it is going to be, it is going to be a wild ride though. Um, wow. I knew this was going to be fun. I, I, I, I, I love that you've kept a loyal, you know, foot slash hand in, in the agency.
I, I think that's a real asset and bringing that outside [00:40:00] perspective to how that business works.
Tyler Sullivan It's hard for businesses. It's really interesting because you get to see what other brands are going through and, you know, I think that's the advantage of having, working with an agency like we're at BombTech.
We had all agencies. We had a paid agency. CRO agency, SEO, email, and they were, they were siloed as the experts in each, right? Yeah. But each one of those experts had like a small shop, sub 40 clients. But the reason I worked with agencies is number one, if I had someone in the house that was really good and they left.
I'm screwed. And, you know, it was more variable costs too. Like I'd pay them on performance and it would scale up if we're spending more, but it really, they are working across many accounts and have different insights. And if you're the only one inside the business, so it was actually more cost effective.
And it just, it just made sense. So it's, it's a really cool business and it's great from a cashflow standpoint. [00:41:00] It does, it is tougher to scale. It's hard to scale people. Yeah. So it's like. I love it for the cash flow, but we've had, you know, we've been trying to break through and scale up for a long time.
It's like We kind of, after almost seven years, like, Hey, this is the business. This is our sweet spot and life's good. And so just kind of make it better and, you know, work with great clients and stay in e comm. And it's a, it's a cool thing to do. Yeah.
Matthew Dunn: Wow. Yeah. You're also more subject to the vagaries of client demands in an agency business where you could ignore the, not ignore where you can sort of factor the statistical feedback from the golf customer base and say, Ooh, yeah, we're going to go with the chipper.
You didn't, you didn't have to go, okay, I'll make that just for you. And with a direct client business, when they have some quirky, crazy idea, and you're like,
Tyler Sullivan okay, that's why I'm not in the day to day fulfillment. You know, that's Chris's, you can go deep with him if you bring him on about managing [00:42:00] clients.
But he's just such a, he's perfect for that. Cause he's so chill, even keel. I'm like, dude, can you get mad at me about something? He never, in our entire relationship. ever got fired up. And I'm like, dude, you should hit me. Do something. It's just so mellow. Yeah. And that's why he's so good at what he does.
He's just like, something's on fire. Something happened. He's like, it's all good. I'm like, dude, teach me that. Cause I'm the, I'm so emotional. And that's how I break through walls with certain stuff. And he's just like, so chill. So we're very opposite works out well for us. That's
Matthew Dunn: awesome. That's awesome.
Well, let me get, let you get back to skis and contemplating the universe and whatnot. And, and I want to say, I really, really appreciate you. It took us a bunch of logistics to actually find a time to talk. Yeah.
Tyler Sullivan Yeah. It was fun. Glad we could do it.
Matthew Dunn: Um, Hey, last question, Sully, where, if someone's listening and they say, [00:43:00] Ooh, e comm growers, I want to talk to them.
Where do they find them?
Tyler Sullivan Yeah. So e comm growers. com also I'm on LinkedIn to, uh, Tyler Sully Sullivan. If they want to reach out to me or they can email me Sully S U L L Y at e comm growers. com that's, that's the best way to get ahold of me. I think that's, I'm down to like only a couple of emails now before I had like 50 email accounts, I'm getting used to having like.
one or two. So it's, it's a different world, but
Matthew Dunn: all right. Well, Tyler Sully Sullivan, it's been a blast. Thank you.
Tyler Sullivan Thank you. Appreciate it.