Latest / Big Talk About Small Business / Ep. 23 - The Makings of an Entrepreneur: A Deep Dive with Colton Knittig

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Ep. 23 - The Makings of an Entrepreneur: A Deep Dive with Colton Knittig · Big Talk About Small Business

0:05
Eric Howerton: So good morning Planet Earth.
0:06
Eric Howerton: This is Eric Howerton with another episode of Big Talk About Small Business.
0:11
Eric Howerton: I am here 100% alone today as a I'm supposed to be a co-host.
0:17
Eric Howerton: Today I am the host.
0:19
Eric Howerton: Our main host and great entrepreneur, mark Zweig, is somewhere outside in this world creating a business of some sort.
0:29
Eric Howerton: I'm sure right now he is doing that business, and so he's left me here all alone, and he said that I could do a podcast on my own out of him, and so one of the top folks that I wanted to reach out to was Colton Kinetic, which is you got one heck of a challenging last name to pronounce.
0:54
Eric Howerton: Right, very German, very German spelling last name.
0:59
Eric Howerton: It's actually spelled like you said it earlier.
1:02
Colton Knittig: It's like knitting without the second in so IG.
1:05
Colton Knittig: Yeah, it's just.
1:06
Eric Howerton: IG.
1:06
Eric Howerton: Yeah, it's confusing, but you know meeting good journalism fashion.
1:10
Eric Howerton: I wanted to make sure how to pronounce your last name before I said it on live on the podcast.
1:16
Eric Howerton: I appreciate that.
1:17
Eric Howerton: Yeah, you're welcome.
1:18
Eric Howerton: So Colton is an entrepreneur, has been for quite some time.
1:23
Eric Howerton: We'll hear a lot about his story.
1:24
Eric Howerton: It's really actually cool.
1:26
Eric Howerton: But, Colton, welcome to the show.
1:28
Eric Howerton: And how did we first meet?
1:32
Colton Knittig: We met at like a consultation.
1:33
Colton Knittig: It was like a leadership meetup kind of thing.
1:37
Eric Howerton: It was like a lunch or something.
1:39
Eric Howerton: A lot of us were in there and there were some really really smart folks in that room.
1:43
Eric Howerton: Yeah for sure, Pretty cool, A lot of cool businesses.
1:46
Eric Howerton: But that's when I first got introduced to you, and then you and I had a few meetings in between there and really hit it off.
1:53
Eric Howerton: I mean, I think that you know typical thing right?
1:55
Eric Howerton: Entrepreneurs like to talk to other entrepreneurs.
1:57
Colton Knittig: Yeah, for sure.
1:59
Eric Howerton: Absolutely, because it's pretty lonely road.
2:01
Colton Knittig: Exactly.
2:01
Colton Knittig: Yeah, it sounds kind of egotistical to say lonely at the top, but I guess you know it's a unique like path, right, and so we kind of, you know, gravitate toward each other sometimes, yeah, sharing like the wins and the losses and talk about what's going on.
2:18
Eric Howerton: You know, what's crazy is like you say that, but I mean like if you're an entrepreneur and say, hey, I'm going to start my own idea of my own business, I mean you're immediately at the top.
2:26
Eric Howerton: I mean it's not like, like you said, it's not a glorious statement, but like you can be all by your.
2:31
Eric Howerton: You can be your own employee, right, and be at the top and be lonely, right.
2:36
Eric Howerton: Yeah, it's actually really lonely at that point, right?
2:40
Colton Knittig: Yeah, before you build out a team and bring people on to work with you and stuff, yeah, yeah, you know, I tell people like people ask for my title and I think titles are kind of silly, especially when you're at my stage, but the title is president.
2:53
Colton Knittig: But I also like janitor, you know mailroom guy, accounting, you know, so wear all the hats, so that's kind of.
3:01
Colton Knittig: That's kind of how it starts out.
3:03
Eric Howerton: You know, what's cool about this podcast too is that I mean, like whether you're just starting a business.
3:08
Eric Howerton: You know, I think I bet about a lot of our listeners are actually a lot of folks that are working for bigger companies, that are have a dream, you know, like you and I have had Right Start your own business, and that's always a pretty big decision, I think, for a lot of folks, some for others, you know more for some others than others.
3:24
Eric Howerton: But but these conversations, just to know and hear folks like ourselves that we all, everybody that's been in here that's been an entrepreneur, you know, has all kind of had the same common thread Like we.
3:36
Eric Howerton: You know it's like you know it is where it is.
3:39
Colton Knittig: Right.
3:40
Eric Howerton: I mean in these conversations always take a life of their own, just like what I'm doing at this exact very moment.
3:46
Colton Knittig: Right right.
3:46
Eric Howerton: Hey man.
3:47
Eric Howerton: So tell us a little bit about you how you got started, what your companies are, sure, and then what kind of triggered your your desire to to start it up?
3:57
Colton Knittig: Yeah, so kind of the you know the full back story.
4:01
Colton Knittig: I started my first business when I was 10.
4:04
Colton Knittig: And for some reason back then I always thought that you know, for kids of that age, if you want to make money, girls do babysitting and boys molons.
4:14
Colton Knittig: Yeah, and of course it's not true, because I didn't know what I was doing.
4:18
Eric Howerton: That's just what you saw.
4:19
Colton Knittig: Yeah for sure.
4:20
Colton Knittig: And so I started a little lawn care business with a friend of mine.
4:23
Colton Knittig: Cool Grew that pretty substantially while I was in high school.
4:27
Colton Knittig: So what are you like?
4:29
Colton Knittig: A sophomore junior At the time?
4:32
Colton Knittig: Well, I was like 10 or 11 when I first got started.
4:34
Eric Howerton: Oh, okay.
4:35
Eric Howerton: So before high school you started this lawn care, and then it grew in as you continued with high school, right, right, yeah, I grew into like pretty, pretty legitimate business.
4:43
Colton Knittig: Bought my partner out when I was 16 or 17.
4:47
Eric Howerton: So you did your first acquisition, I guess of other or your first buyout.
4:54
Colton Knittig: It was more of just kind of a splitting of the business, right.
4:56
Colton Knittig: We just we kept it simple.
4:57
Colton Knittig: We were like all right, you take these accounts, I'll take these accounts and we'll go our separate way, cool, so.
5:02
Colton Knittig: But yeah, so I did that for like three more years, came up here from I was from Portsmouth, like came up here to go to school.
5:09
Colton Knittig: So sophomore year of college I was kind of managing it from a distance.
5:14
Colton Knittig: I had a guy in Portsmouth doing the actual work and it just got too much, so I ended up selling.
5:21
Eric Howerton: So hold on, I'm gonna make sure I'm understanding.
5:23
Eric Howerton: Sure, like so, you continued on with your portion of the lawn care business from high school and you moved up to Northwest Arkansas to go to college, right Right, but you kept your lawn care business of Portsmouth operating, right Right.
5:37
Eric Howerton: Wow, that's really cool, I mean.
5:39
Eric Howerton: I just think.
5:40
Eric Howerton: I mean I wanted to put a pin in that because it's actually pretty unique.
5:43
Eric Howerton: Like so, you were basically operating a company, only the company that was being raised on its own without your presence, while you were in school.
5:53
Colton Knittig: Yeah, I was doing kind of the operation side of the business and I had some people in Portsmouth doing like the running around, you know, doing the labor part.
6:02
Colton Knittig: Was it profitable?
6:03
Colton Knittig: Yeah, it was.
6:04
Colton Knittig: That's great For sure.
6:05
Colton Knittig: I mean it wasn't huge.
6:07
Colton Knittig: But I mean I think you know the best year I know maybe cleared like 60K but at 16, that's like might as well be a million bucks, right.
6:14
Colton Knittig: So that was yeah.
6:15
Colton Knittig: So yeah, like you know, ran that for a couple of years when I came up to U of A yeah and it kind of got a little unwieldy so I sold it at that point.
6:26
Eric Howerton: What do you mean, like what was going on there and there.
6:29
Colton Knittig: I just, you know, managing, you know, employees who are younger than me, so they're all high school age and it was kind of a lot to handle.
6:37
Colton Knittig: I wanted to focus on going to school and also, you know, just having fun while I was in college and not, you know, going back and forth to Fort Smith every you know four days.
6:48
Colton Knittig: Business, business yeah, yeah so this is always problems, right Right, there's always something, yeah.
6:53
Colton Knittig: So yes, I, you know, a lot of people told me it was kind of blue sky, there was really nothing there to sell, so but I threw a flyer out there, listed it, you know, in the newspaper.
7:02
Colton Knittig: This was, you know, a long time ago and I got it, got a couple inquiries and ended up selling it for a pretty good, pretty good amount.
7:08
Colton Knittig: So, yeah, so I've loaded that, focused on school for a few years and just, you know, kind of hung out so and that makes me I mean I'm really envious of that.
7:17
Eric Howerton: I wish I would have had that business sense, I mean back at that age.
7:22
Eric Howerton: That's just really cool.
7:23
Eric Howerton: Like I didn't dawn on me until I was in like my early 20s about a business, and even then I haven't, you know, I wouldn't say that I was like a business person, like that, like you were operating, running, I mean that's really cool.
7:35
Colton Knittig: Yeah, thanks, You're welcome man.
7:36
Colton Knittig: Yeah, so that was kind of the first foray into business.
7:41
Colton Knittig: That's really cool.
7:42
Eric Howerton: Yeah, thank you.
7:42
Eric Howerton: So you exited out in your first business.
7:44
Eric Howerton: What over are you when that happened?
7:46
Eric Howerton: 19.
7:46
Eric Howerton: Dude, that's freaking awesome.
7:48
Colton Knittig: Yeah, so, and you know I, you know, looking back, I probably should have bought, like you know, bitcoin and real estate, but you know I was a college kid just focused on, like you know, you just burned through it in college.
7:59
Colton Knittig: I've always been super frugal, so I didn't like have to get a job, you know, like a lot of my friends did, but I just, you know, I made it last.
8:09
Eric Howerton: So you just you kind of just took those earnings and you just kind of just rolled it out.
8:14
Eric Howerton: That was your college.
8:15
Eric Howerton: I mean like you could focus on studies, focus on hanging out or whatever Right, enjoy life from that, exit Right.
8:22
Eric Howerton: And so how long?
8:23
Eric Howerton: I mean that like kind of last you three years, four years?
8:27
Colton Knittig: Yeah, like three, four years, so you know it wasn't.
8:29
Colton Knittig: It wasn't a huge amount of money, but at the time, like I didn't have a lot of overhead, right, so I was living in the dorms.
8:36
Colton Knittig: Actually, I was living in a fraternity house at the time and what fraternity Pike?
8:41
Colton Knittig: Okay, I'm a senior cop from back in the day.
8:43
Colton Knittig: Okay, right on, yeah, we've been fighting each other Probably.
8:46
Colton Knittig: Yeah.
8:46
Colton Knittig: Yeah, if I was a little older, we would be in the streets.
8:50
Eric Howerton: Yeah, that's right.
8:51
Eric Howerton: Yeah, Wait, what does that mean?
8:52
Eric Howerton: I mean maybe I'm younger than you.
8:54
Eric Howerton: No, it may be.
8:55
Eric Howerton: Yeah, I'm 23.
8:57
Colton Knittig: Oh, okay, yeah, you look great.
8:58
Colton Knittig: Thanks, man.
9:01
Eric Howerton: That's fair.
9:01
Eric Howerton: Yeah, that's fair.
9:02
Eric Howerton: So after that you wrote out through college and then you graduated Right.
9:08
Eric Howerton: And then what goes on next?
9:10
Colton Knittig: Like what's the next?
9:11
Colton Knittig: Yeah, so I went to work for a Walmart vendor.
9:13
Colton Knittig: Okay.
9:13
Colton Knittig: And it was.
9:16
Eric Howerton: So did you in school, did you, I guess, you studied?
9:18
Eric Howerton: What did you study?
9:20
Colton Knittig: I studied finance and just because I thought it was interesting you know, I knew I wanted to end up working for myself eventually, but I just focused on something.
9:29
Eric Howerton: I thought would you know, keep my attention and being I think you're at the U of A in Northwest Arkansas, I mean being you only work for a vendor or a supplier, a Walmart supplier, right, right, mm-hmm.
9:39
Eric Howerton: Seems like a pretty good career path, right.
9:42
Eric Howerton: And so you got an opportunity there.
9:44
Eric Howerton: That was your first full-time employment after college.
9:47
Colton Knittig: Right, first full-time job, and it was what were you doing there?
9:50
Colton Knittig: I was kind of working with the sales team, okay, so, but I was doing a little bit of everything.
9:54
Colton Knittig: So it was really cool.
9:56
Colton Knittig: Like on the first day my boss told me he's like can you go to any meeting that I'm in?
10:00
Colton Knittig: Like I might tell you to go stand in the corner and keep your mouth shut, but you're welcome to come to any meeting that you want.
10:05
Colton Knittig: Yeah.
10:06
Colton Knittig: And I just took that as an opportunity to learn.
10:07
Colton Knittig: Great and, just you know, soaked it up, Wasn't you know?
10:10
Colton Knittig: It's a huge paycheck, but again, I didn't have a lot of overhead.
10:14
Colton Knittig: I took that as an opportunity just to kind of like hunker down and learn what, how long did you do that?
10:19
Colton Knittig: Almost two years.
10:19
Colton Knittig: So I was there for like 22 months and one day my boss pulled me aside and he's like, hey, you aren't really loving it here.
10:29
Colton Knittig: And I was like, yeah, you know, you're right.
10:31
Colton Knittig: So we kind of parted ways and messed around with a few different ideas, went back and talked to the guy that was running the China team at that business and we started our own thing.
10:44
Colton Knittig: So we toyed around with a few different ideas.
10:47
Colton Knittig: He's a lighting guy, he's a product engineer and an LED expert.
10:52
Colton Knittig: And one night I was grilling for some friends in Fayetteville and their porch light was out.
10:59
Colton Knittig: So I was flipping burgers and I would have to pick up the burger, take it inside, look at it, see if it was done, go back out, throw it on the grill or, you know, put it inside.
11:07
Colton Knittig: And I had kind of the classic Eureka moment Like why can't we just put a flashlight directly on the grill tools?
11:13
Colton Knittig: And the grill light was kind of born from there.
11:18
Eric Howerton: So yeah, that's cool.
11:19
Eric Howerton: So when you had that epiphany, as you're grilling the hamburger and the dart, how long did it take you from when you had that epiphany?
11:27
Eric Howerton: So did you immediately reach out to this guy and you're like, hey, man, because we're already trying to work on some?
11:33
Eric Howerton: I did, we were, we were already working together, for the partnership was kind of already formed Right.
11:36
Eric Howerton: Did you have like an LLC and all that, all that formalities?
11:40
Colton Knittig: I don't think we did.
11:41
Colton Knittig: At that point we were just like, hey, let's, you know, we, let's do something together.
11:44
Colton Knittig: Yeah, we wanted to kind of, you know, flex our creative muscle a little bit, get out of the box and, you know, make something of our own, right?
11:52
Colton Knittig: Yeah, and he was kind of in the same boat.
11:54
Colton Knittig: He's, you know, 10 years older than me, but the same kind of thing.
11:57
Colton Knittig: He'd always been working for somebody else and yeah, so we just, you know, we had a few different ideas and we said, all right, this is one that we can like pursue.
12:05
Colton Knittig: Made, our first prototype, went to a show in Kansas City.
12:10
Colton Knittig: It was our spatula and it was a barbecue competition.
12:15
Colton Knittig: We walked around like two o'clock in the afternoon.
12:17
Colton Knittig: Everyone's like all right, another spatula or whatever, came back at nine when it was dark and we had like a crowd around us Really Looking at it.
12:23
Colton Knittig: Yeah, because people immediately thought it was something cool and unique.
12:26
Eric Howerton: So so when, like how long was it from when you had the idea to when you went to that barbecue competition?
12:33
Colton Knittig: Pretty quick.
12:33
Colton Knittig: We made a prototype in like 45 days.
12:36
Colton Knittig: Wow, yeah, because that's what he does and he's in China and just whipped it out real quick.
12:40
Colton Knittig: Okay, so he lives in China.
12:42
Colton Knittig: Okay, yeah, yeah.
12:42
Colton Knittig: He's an expat, but he's at the time he had been there for over 10 years.
12:47
Colton Knittig: Wow, yeah, so you know, moved over there to learn Chinese and just felt like a lot of Americans fell into a lot of different opportunities in really and state yeah.
12:59
Eric Howerton: So for him, that's a really cool, cool mixture of partnership there, right, and the fact that you're able to go to market so quick.
13:05
Eric Howerton: So there's, there's a couple of things that I so let's show the audience a little bit about.
13:10
Eric Howerton: Yeah, products here.
13:11
Eric Howerton: So you got these laid out on tape.
13:12
Eric Howerton: I'm hoping I'm sure they should be able to see you like this, but Right.
13:16
Colton Knittig: So these, you put them down and they open up.
13:18
Colton Knittig: Okay.
13:19
Colton Knittig: You squeeze them and they open up.
13:21
Colton Knittig: It's called a gravity lock.
13:22
Colton Knittig: Oh.
13:22
Colton Knittig: And you put them up and they lock again.
13:25
Colton Knittig: Really, yeah, so that's pretty cool.
13:28
Eric Howerton: I haven't seen that.
13:28
Colton Knittig: Yeah, yeah, that's, it's one of our patented features.
13:31
Eric Howerton: Yeah, this is your patent.
13:33
Colton Knittig: Yeah, so it was one of the.
13:36
Eric Howerton: I got a patent.
13:37
Eric Howerton: That is really cool, right.
13:39
Colton Knittig: The idea is, when you're cooking you don't want to put your beer down, right To close your tongs up, so you just, you know, all one handed and, yeah, the flashlight, obviously all the tools, so the built in light pops out.
13:53
Eric Howerton: So, yeah.
13:53
Eric Howerton: And then he, so the light just turns on.
13:57
Eric Howerton: Yes.
13:58
Colton Knittig: Click on the little red button there Click on, there you go.
14:01
Eric Howerton: So you're there you go.
14:02
Eric Howerton: You're able to see your stuff, right yeah.
14:06
Eric Howerton: And they do that all in one fell swoop.
14:08
Eric Howerton: I can turn the light on as a pick it up and then close it up.
14:12
Eric Howerton: I mean, it's all Second nature now, that's really cool.
14:16
Eric Howerton: So why do you allow the user to take the light out, like what's the point?
14:21
Colton Knittig: If they want to dishwasher it.
14:22
Colton Knittig: Yeah, the lights are water water resistant, but not necessarily dishwasher proof.
14:26
Colton Knittig: So right, you can just pop them out.
14:28
Colton Knittig: That's cool.
14:30
Eric Howerton: And so you got.
14:30
Eric Howerton: You got the tongs.
14:31
Eric Howerton: Can't remember if I was using this, I'm sure I'd be really used Right.
14:35
Eric Howerton: And then you got the spatula Right.
14:37
Colton Knittig: These are our first two items and our first year we only had the spatula, then we kind of expanded from there.
14:43
Eric Howerton: Yeah, I, think when did you come out with the tongs?
14:47
Colton Knittig: It was like 2016.
14:49
Eric Howerton: Oh, okay, so when?
14:49
Colton Knittig: I met you, you already had both of these, right, Right.
14:51
Colton Knittig: So now we have like a full assortment.
14:53
Colton Knittig: We have brushes and forks and real mess.
14:57
Eric Howerton: Yeah, everything has the lights built in Folks can go to grilllightgrilllightcom, grilllightcom, and it is G-R-I-L-L-I-G-H-Tcom.
15:09
Eric Howerton: Right, got it.
15:11
Eric Howerton: So we're missing one L, but it'll look weird if there's three Ls there.
15:14
Eric Howerton: Exactly, yeah, okay.
15:15
Colton Knittig: So, yeah, the idea was we put a whole like 30 minutes of thought behind the name, but we wanted something that people would read the name and know what it is, you know.
15:28
Colton Knittig: So it's a grill tool with a light.
15:31
Eric Howerton: Yeah, so there it is.
15:31
Eric Howerton: Folks Like so if you're going, so, if you're going in store, so these where they sold at.
15:36
Colton Knittig: We're in Ace Hardware, a lot of mom and pop stores.
15:40
Colton Knittig: We're in BJs right now.
15:42
Colton Knittig: Okay, so we're in wholesale and a lot of independent stores all over the place.
15:47
Colton Knittig: So, are you on Walmart?
15:49
Colton Knittig: Not right now.
15:49
Colton Knittig: They'll run Walmartcom.
15:51
Eric Howerton: Yeah, walmartcom.
15:52
Eric Howerton: Okay, yeah, have you tried to get Walmart stores yet?
15:55
Eric Howerton: We've talked to them Okay.
15:56
Eric Howerton: Got you.
15:56
Eric Howerton: Yeah, I don't mean to pry on your business, but I would just think that this would be like, I mean just from my perspective.
16:01
Eric Howerton: I mean it seemed like that folks would really like these things.
16:04
Eric Howerton: Right, man, this is really cool yeah.
16:09
Colton Knittig: So we're in about 2000 stores, about 1800 to 2000 stores all around the country, Some in Canada.
16:15
Colton Knittig: We're doing some international stuff now.
16:17
Eric Howerton: How's it?
16:18
Eric Howerton: I mean, I guess, how are things going?
16:21
Eric Howerton: How is it moving off the shelves and stuff like that?
16:23
Eric Howerton: Good.
16:24
Colton Knittig: Good, yeah, I mean it's you know we're growing every year.
16:26
Colton Knittig: Yeah, and yeah it's you know you got a lot of prospects for next year on the table too.
16:32
Eric Howerton: So and you just went through some, because I think when we you and I were talking about the last time we spoke, you were going to go through some packaging changes, weren't you Right?
16:41
Eric Howerton: And so did you do that.
16:42
Eric Howerton: This is the result of that.
16:43
Colton Knittig: Yeah, so the yeah, this is new packaging.
16:46
Colton Knittig: This is actually not the current iteration of the new packaging, so this is new since we talked, but we have another version that's out now.
16:54
Colton Knittig: Oh, just just like about a month old.
16:55
Colton Knittig: Oh, really.
16:57
Eric Howerton: So you're always updating your packaging, right, yeah, yeah.
17:00
Eric Howerton: What's the point of that?
17:00
Eric Howerton: Just because you just go ahead?
17:02
Colton Knittig: Well, yeah, it's just got to you know when it's on the shelf.
17:05
Colton Knittig: You got like two, three seconds to tell the story.
17:07
Colton Knittig: Yeah, and if, if the packaging doesn't tell the story very clearly, then you lose the customer.
17:13
Colton Knittig: They just see it as like an expensive drill tool.
17:15
Colton Knittig: Obviously, we don't have the name recognition of some of the big guys out there, so we've got to kind of get creative with with how we, how we present it.
17:22
Colton Knittig: Yeah, I met these guys years ago that had they did a lot of like flashlights and like outdoor equipment and stuff and they would take like a $3 flashlight and put it in like a $6 box and then they would retail it for a hundred bucks and it was it's kind of the Apple model of like the packaging, the packaging perceived value of the product.
17:44
Eric Howerton: Yeah.
17:44
Eric Howerton: So you want to have something really nice to kind of show that it's a nice product, yeah, so yeah, so let's, since our show's like really geared towards entrepreneurs, small business owners, right, Like, let's, let's dive into that Cause I think we could probably scroll off into a shopper marketing, right, right and just product marketing.
18:02
Eric Howerton: But I would think that the listeners, you know, everybody has an idea of kind of like what you did right.
18:09
Eric Howerton: You had an epiphany.
18:09
Eric Howerton: I mean there's a lot of folks that have those epiphany right, but there's probably not as many folks that actually see that to fruition.
18:17
Eric Howerton: So at what point when, after you had your epiphany like, and you and you went back to your partner like, hey man, here's my idea, he's like, yeah, sounds good, Let me do some drawings Right, and that all is exciting and doesn't cost much except your time.
18:31
Eric Howerton: But then you start getting into the realness of it right.
18:34
Eric Howerton: Because you had to.
18:35
Eric Howerton: Did you guys go out and raise capital before you made your first prototype?
18:39
Eric Howerton: I mean, or did you make a prototype and then go raise capital?
18:42
Eric Howerton: How does it work?
18:43
Colton Knittig: We just kind of self-funded it from from the beginning.
18:46
Colton Knittig: So we made the prototype which you know, prototypes free and expensive to make.
18:52
Colton Knittig: A single prototype Got a good response to that Kansas City show that I mentioned.
18:57
Eric Howerton: So at that Kansas City show were you just walking around through prototype.
19:01
Colton Knittig: Just walking around the prototype, showing it to people, just to get a vibe for what people thought, if people thought it was cool as we thought it was.
19:07
Eric Howerton: Yeah.
19:08
Eric Howerton: So I think that it's really important, right, because that stuff that you made right there you went out, got a prototype fairly inexpensive, right.
19:16
Eric Howerton: And well, first of all you have the idea, but then you have a partner and you have a team of folks here that that can execute a prototype.
19:25
Eric Howerton: So your partner was an experienced engineer, right, and knew how the hell to do this.
19:31
Eric Howerton: So then you don't have cost was working with an engineer in completely unfamiliar territory.
19:37
Eric Howerton: You have somebody that is invested with you as a partner, that actually knows how it is, it is excited to do that.
19:44
Eric Howerton: So I think that's really important.
19:45
Eric Howerton: But then you get your prototype and then you guys immediately go to a show that where you were going to have your target audience and use this product and I love what you were telling me about earlier.
19:59
Eric Howerton: You're there walking around the show.
20:00
Eric Howerton: Nobody's giving it much attention.
20:02
Eric Howerton: It looks like another spatula.
20:03
Eric Howerton: This is what you took the spatula part.
20:05
Eric Howerton: But then you come back in the evening time and these people are out there cooking, right.
20:10
Colton Knittig: Yeah, it's a barbecue competition.
20:11
Colton Knittig: Yeah, it's not a retail show, right Like there's.
20:14
Colton Knittig: General public is there, but they're not there to buy products.
20:17
Eric Howerton: But it's your audience.
20:18
Eric Howerton: It's just the exact usual yeah.
20:21
Colton Knittig: It's a barbecue competition where these guys are cooking for like 18, 20, 24 hours at a time.
20:25
Colton Knittig: And yeah, we just went back at night time and these guys are whipping up stuff on the grill and we just showed it to them.
20:32
Colton Knittig: They all thought it was super good.
20:33
Eric Howerton: So you're like, hey, man, why don't you try using this puppy?
20:35
Eric Howerton: Yeah, See, like that, right, and they use it and their instant reaction right then gave you feedback as an entrepreneur to have confidence.
20:44
Eric Howerton: Exactly what deal was it to go to that show I?
20:47
Colton Knittig: don't remember, it was a while ago, but I think it made my mind because my partner came over from China to come with me and so he was here.
20:55
Colton Knittig: We were just talking, talking shop, and you know, we made plans to go to that show together.
20:58
Eric Howerton: So and then, whose idea was it to go back?
21:01
Eric Howerton: So y'all went during the day trying to show it to people they're not whatever, right.
21:07
Eric Howerton: And did y'all leave?
21:08
Eric Howerton: Yep, you left, right.
21:10
Eric Howerton: What triggered y'all to?
21:12
Eric Howerton: Did you just say, hey, let's leave the day, let's leave it during the day and let's come back later?
21:15
Eric Howerton: Or did you leave disappointed?
21:18
Colton Knittig: I think at the time I still believed in it Right.
21:21
Colton Knittig: So at the time and again, this was a long time ago but the feedback we got was like you know, we don't, like we don't need another spatula, it's another.
21:28
Colton Knittig: Whatever, you know, I got a spatula right here.
21:30
Eric Howerton: Get out of here.
21:30
Eric Howerton: Yeah, yeah.
21:33
Colton Knittig: So we, you know it came back at nighttime and these guys had, like you know, the head lamps on and they're, like you know, trying to see what they're doing.
21:38
Colton Knittig: And you know, I just handed it to a couple of guys and they thought it was, they thought it was great.
21:41
Colton Knittig: So that's really cool yeah.
21:45
Eric Howerton: I'll just, man, I'll tell you man, I mean, like I love that's what on I've I've got to me that's what entrepreneurism is all about is getting that feedback from the audience and seeing people engage with something that you believe can solve a market need.
21:59
Eric Howerton: And then, but just those little moments, you know, are so special.
22:03
Eric Howerton: That's why I just keep asking questions about it, because that's me, it's just like we're all the all the rubber meets the road.
22:08
Eric Howerton: So you, you got you some feedback and I mean, basically you're having your own in-person focus group study without having a focus group study.
22:16
Eric Howerton: So did you need like from from there?
22:19
Eric Howerton: Then did you go out and make your investment, did you get confidence from that?
22:22
Eric Howerton: And you're like, okay, this is worth a thousand product run.
22:24
Eric Howerton: How that?
22:25
Colton Knittig: Yeah, yeah, so we, we, you know, at that point we're like all right, you know, we're not the only ones that thinks this is a good idea.
22:31
Colton Knittig: I think we made like 2,500 units to start, which is, you know, not a, not a very big run, and went to a show in New York and it's like the New York, new York gift show, new York now Okay.
22:44
Eric Howerton: Trade show.
22:46
Colton Knittig: So this is a wholesale trade show where we're meeting people from the press and, you know, shop owners to sell the product.
22:53
Colton Knittig: What shop owners like, like like mom and pop shops and like there was a there was a jewelry store that I remember that they wanted they had like a little men's section for Father's Day and so they bought you know a couple of dozen for like every single store that they had and you know, it kind of took off from there.
23:11
Eric Howerton: So had you been to anything like that before?
23:13
Colton Knittig: No, no, that was totally new partner.
23:16
Eric Howerton: It was so cool, isn't it Right, yeah?
23:18
Colton Knittig: for sure.
23:18
Colton Knittig: It was so much fun it was in New York City.
23:20
Colton Knittig: Did you fly out there yeah?
23:22
Colton Knittig: We flew out and, like the, our booth was was embarrassing.
23:26
Colton Knittig: It was like a 10 by 10 booth.
23:27
Colton Knittig: It was a five by 10.
23:28
Colton Knittig: Oh, that's cool, and cause we came in so late, they had already sold the whole area and they're like well, we got this little spot next to a column that we'll like squeeze you in and I, you know, I got pictures of us at that booth and just looks horrible, but you should have brought that.
23:41
Colton Knittig: Yeah, I know right, it was, it was.
23:44
Colton Knittig: I don't know if I want the world to see it, but it was.
23:46
Eric Howerton: It was all greasy from sweating about it.
23:48
Colton Knittig: Yeah, yeah.
23:50
Eric Howerton: I mean, cause those were like.
23:51
Eric Howerton: You know, that's pretty big moment for you guys, right, you know?
23:53
Eric Howerton: I mean, you got a lot of ace and you got all these expectations.
23:55
Eric Howerton: You don't know what's going to happen, but you're so optimistic that somebody's going to come and say I'll take 50,000 of these, right, you know so, yeah, so how did that go, though?
24:03
Eric Howerton: I?
24:04
Colton Knittig: mean it was, it was great.
24:05
Colton Knittig: And then there was that jewelry shop owner that I mentioned.
24:08
Colton Knittig: She it was our biggest order is, like you know, like $1,400 bucks or something like that.
24:13
Eric Howerton: So how many products did you get?
24:14
Colton Knittig: That was like 120 units 120 pieces.
24:17
Eric Howerton: She met you all in the spot, checked out your product and said hey, I'm going to order 120 of these roughly.
24:22
Colton Knittig: Right, yeah, and we were, she did.
24:25
Colton Knittig: Yeah, she made the order at the show.
24:28
Eric Howerton: So we were.
24:28
Eric Howerton: I'm sorry, man.
24:29
Eric Howerton: No, no, you're good, you're good.
24:30
Eric Howerton: Is that kind of what the that shows all about?
24:33
Eric Howerton: Cause I know some shows aren't there for business.
24:35
Colton Knittig: Yeah.
24:35
Colton Knittig: So some, I mean it's, it's both right.
24:37
Colton Knittig: So there's there's some what we call like big box buyers or some bigger retailers that they don't make buying decisions on the spot and those kinds of shows, but they'll check it out, you know, exchange information and you just kind of follow up, but the mom pops, they, they buy on the spot.
24:51
Eric Howerton: They're there to make decisions.
24:52
Eric Howerton: You know it's, it's.
24:54
Eric Howerton: I think it's so important, right, because, like, if you, you know, if you look back now, I mean it makes a lot of sense for a small new business, new product, to go to some of these markets and these shows and these events where you meet these Other audience pieces that can actually make freaking decisions right on the spot.
25:17
Eric Howerton: Because, like, to your point, you, bigger you get, the bigger order you get the more crap that comes with it.
25:22
Eric Howerton: Right, I mean it's great to have that big check, but it's just like anything in life.
25:27
Eric Howerton: You know, the bigger your check or more freedom you have, the more accountability.
25:30
Eric Howerton: You know, yeah, I'm legal and all these things, yeah, but for sure I like that idea, I like that statement about a mom-pop business.
25:38
Eric Howerton: I'm the owner, I sign the checks, I can make this order right, right.
25:43
Colton Knittig: Yeah, and that was that was kind of our focus from day one, as these mom and pops because they're you know, they want a little bit higher-end product they don't want something that's available at every single big box retailer.
25:52
Colton Knittig: And we're you know, we're a higher-end product, we're not the cheapest and gril tools on the market.
25:56
Colton Knittig: We don't want to be either, and that's exactly what they're looking for.
26:00
Colton Knittig: So that was that's.
26:01
Colton Knittig: You know that mom and pop has kind of been our bread and butter.
26:04
Colton Knittig: Really.
26:05
Colton Knittig: Yeah, so we we sold a few, a few majors.
26:07
Colton Knittig: Like I mentioned VJ's.
26:08
Colton Knittig: We did a deal with Lowe's last year.
26:10
Colton Knittig: It was pretty huge, but the mom and pops are always great.
26:14
Eric Howerton: That's really cool.
26:15
Eric Howerton: So now you, so you left, you leave that show Fairly successful event because you said you did.
26:21
Eric Howerton: You made 2,500 product order Before the show, right?
26:25
Eric Howerton: And then I know that one lady bought 120 of those, right.
26:28
Eric Howerton: I mean, how successful was that first event on that inventory that you had?
26:33
Eric Howerton: Well, I think.
26:34
Colton Knittig: I think we sold mainly staff or inventory.
26:36
Colton Knittig: It's great in one day and a show it was a three-day show, okay, but the thing about those shows is especially nowadays, it's it's more about like who you meet and the contacts you make.
26:47
Colton Knittig: So I met the editors of Oprah magazine, okay, and we got into Oprah we're like four months old and we got featured in like Oprah's summer gift.
26:56
Colton Knittig: That's fantastic and it just kind of took off from there.
26:59
Eric Howerton: That's so yeah, so now you have the PR right.
27:01
Eric Howerton: That's great.
27:03
Eric Howerton: So it takes off from there.
27:04
Eric Howerton: And then you start getting inbound inquiries and orders, right, and so is that kind of the trajectory of the business.
27:09
Eric Howerton: I mean you just kind of like, right, we'll start talking and no one.
27:11
Eric Howerton: You're getting calls and you're fulfilling orders, and then Are you in kind of so, did you amplify that with anything?
27:17
Eric Howerton: I mean, were you doing any of the marketing and the other?
27:19
Colton Knittig: shows or anything.
27:19
Colton Knittig: We.
27:20
Colton Knittig: We did a few other shows but didn't really do a ton of kind of outbound marketing at the time.
27:24
Colton Knittig: It just kind of kind of grassroots, you know, meeting people.
27:27
Colton Knittig: We'd get inquiries from the press.
27:29
Colton Knittig: That we got.
27:29
Colton Knittig: I think that year we also got into like good housekeeping, yeah, so a few other, and they just kind of took off.
27:36
Colton Knittig: So that's awesome man.
27:37
Eric Howerton: Yeah, and that was how many years ago.
27:40
Colton Knittig: That's like 10 years ago.
27:41
Colton Knittig: It'll be 10 years next month, yep, that's awesome.
27:44
Colton Knittig: So, but yeah, we, we we grew quite a bit that year and One of our biggest customers was Sky Mall magazine.
27:53
Colton Knittig: If you remember, back in the day, we were the number one product in Sky Mall that year and Then in December they went out of business and yeah, yeah, so I got it.
28:05
Colton Knittig: I got it like a bankruptcy notice and they owed me like a 40 grand, which was at the time was that was Like 20% of our first year revenue.
28:15
Colton Knittig: Yeah, yeah, it's a lot and we did get it all taken care of.
28:18
Colton Knittig: We, you know, we, we got most of it, but that was a.
28:22
Colton Knittig: That was a good kind of like trial by fire in our first our first year.
28:25
Eric Howerton: little eye-opening, it's like, okay, this is why people have contracts.
28:29
Eric Howerton: Yeah, yeah exactly yeah, so that's awesome and so, and so from there you just kind of kept building up on your, your mom pop right business thing.
28:42
Eric Howerton: What about, like your own website, your own storefront?
28:44
Colton Knittig: So we did.
28:45
Colton Knittig: We did a website.
28:46
Colton Knittig: You know that, to be honest, that our website, like direct consumer sales, has never really been a strong suit.
28:51
Colton Knittig: Okay, I, I tend to focus more on like the wholesale side of the business and that's that's probably something that we've, you know, could have done better at over the years.
29:00
Colton Knittig: But you know it's, it's, for me at least, it's a lot easier to kind of get those, you know, build those small number relationships with these key buyers and they keep coming back for more.
29:11
Eric Howerton: Yeah, yeah, yeah, there's a lot of folks that I mean they go that way.
29:14
Eric Howerton: I mean, you know, it's just interesting, like I think that even you know, we've been seeing more folks started up on the digital first their own storefront, full control, right.
29:24
Eric Howerton: I mean a lot of that's happening, but I think that that's only in the last, really honestly, five to ten years, right, that you've seen a lot of those people taking that route, and so when you started, it was kind of a little bit before, like wholesale definitely was.
29:40
Colton Knittig: You know, the majority of everything that's going on right, right, we get a lot of I mean that, the, the direct sales through a website.
29:46
Colton Knittig: I mean a lot of that came from the PR, right.
29:48
Colton Knittig: So, unlike the on the Oprah feature, they, you know, put our, put our website, you know, right there in the magazine.
29:56
Colton Knittig: I don't think they even have a print magazine anymore, but back then it was, you know, yeah, a lot of time ago, but we got a ton of traffic off of that Cool in for a while there was.
30:05
Colton Knittig: We would occasionally get like a huge spike in traffic and I would Like, all right, what's what's going on today?
30:10
Colton Knittig: And I would have to figure out who put us on a gift guide or a list or whatever.
30:14
Eric Howerton: Really.
30:14
Colton Knittig: Yeah, so we just kind of organically stumbled into a lot of that stuff.
30:17
Colton Knittig: I wish I could take credit for it.
30:19
Eric Howerton: But you know well, I mean you know, a lot of times, you know, I mean it's Not all luck, but there is definitely some luck involved, I believe, in business and being at the right place at the right time, and that's kind of lucky in a way.
30:32
Eric Howerton: I mean you can't, I mean there's definitely probably no plans of the way that you all approached that.
30:39
Eric Howerton: You mean you just took the obvious steps and just so happened.
30:43
Eric Howerton: I mean, and you went to this trade show right, with no intention that, and you had no idea that Oprah Magazine was gonna be there, right, and you make those contacts and next thing you know that just it happens.
30:54
Eric Howerton: Yeah, I think it okay.
30:55
Eric Howerton: So would you agree that if you're in business, you got to show the hell up?
31:02
Colton Knittig: Oh, yeah for sure.
31:02
Colton Knittig: Okay, it's.
31:03
Colton Knittig: Yeah, I mean all those lucky breaks and stuff, like they don't just fall on your lap.
31:07
Colton Knittig: You got to be at the right place at the right time, like you said.
31:09
Colton Knittig: Like what's the saying?
31:11
Colton Knittig: That's like Like preparation, like preparation is the key to you know all that luck, like yeah, I mean that you know it's.
31:19
Colton Knittig: It's funny, like over the years you know they'll be.
31:22
Colton Knittig: You know ups and downs, right so.
31:24
Colton Knittig: But anytime something, something like negative happens, like a few days or a few weeks later, like something great would happen, we'd be back up on top, right.
31:32
Colton Knittig: So, um, that that kind of stuff is all about just just being there and being prepared, yeah.
31:38
Eric Howerton: No, yeah, I mean not.
31:39
Eric Howerton: Like, can you imagine if you guys had to Made the investment, taking the risk to go to the show?
31:45
Eric Howerton: I mean because when you went to that show you had just got 2500 inventory and now you have this expense of New York City which, right, you got flights of hotels, time.
31:54
Eric Howerton: You know, I mean there's a lot behind that.
31:57
Eric Howerton: Yeah, that you mean you're putting and you said yourself funded, right, um, and so I mean there's a lot behind that, so you have to invest in it.
32:06
Eric Howerton: That's another.
32:07
Eric Howerton: You know, one of the big parts of the definition of entrepreneur is that you have a significant financial risk right Associated with what you're doing.
32:15
Colton Knittig: Yeah, I mean, at the time I was Like 23.
32:18
Colton Knittig: Yeah so I figured, you know, if I crash and burn, like I'll just get a job, sure, you know.
32:23
Colton Knittig: So, um, we didn't.
32:25
Colton Knittig: I didn't want to like stick my neck out too far, but I always thought, you know, I'm young, I don't have a lot overhead.
32:30
Colton Knittig: Back to, like I said before, like it it's, you know, not really a lot of risk if you can, if you uh, you know, can just go back and do something else.
32:40
Eric Howerton: Yes, yeah, that's also a good point.
32:43
Eric Howerton: I mean, like, and I think too, like, when you are that young, you don't have much to lose, right, right, so your risk profile is actually not too great, right.
32:52
Eric Howerton: But I also think that if you are that young could just sort of that you know around that age too.
32:56
Eric Howerton: My first business it kind of puts you into this, like, even if he, like my first business, was not successful right in my magazine.
33:04
Eric Howerton: But what it did teach me was is that, oh, I actually can Do this, yeah, and I enjoyed it and I got so much value out of it, like I mean, the way I've always kind of looked at it.
33:18
Eric Howerton: Colin, I don't know if you agree with this, but like the education I'm a kid in two years of being an entrepreneur and losing 60,000 bucks or even 200,000 dollars, right, it's way worth more than a college education, yeah, in the other way for sure.
33:34
Colton Knittig: I think that.
33:35
Colton Knittig: Um, yeah, you know no offense.
33:38
Colton Knittig: Yeah, no offense, but, um, I still think, staying in touch with my old boss from that Walmart vendor and, um, he, he told me recently that you know he's like you.
33:48
Colton Knittig: You got an education that's more valuable than, like you know, a Wharton MBA.
33:53
Colton Knittig: Yeah, through like the school of hard knocks.
33:56
Colton Knittig: Yeah, just doing it over the years, figuring out what's works, what doesn't work.
33:59
Colton Knittig: Um, and there's so much that you learn by Uh, doing that.
34:04
Colton Knittig: You can't learn by reading a book.
34:06
Eric Howerton: You know, I think it's also because, like when you get like real pressure on you, like when you made your first, like you could study in school all day long about you know accounting methods of Monumentary and pro forma and the forecasting about all these, if then scenarios, right, but until you actually send that check and now you got 2,500 of these damn things right in your garage yeah and you're looking at like okay, and then you know if you sold a hundred of these for the next you know, you know 25 months you'll break, you know whatever.
34:38
Eric Howerton: I mean right, pretty low.
34:39
Eric Howerton: But but when you have these things sitting in boxes in your face and you have to get rid of this inventory, I mean there's something real about that shit.
34:48
Eric Howerton: Yeah, there's not anything that a book or spreadsheet or right vessler can tell you.
34:52
Eric Howerton: Whatever, you basically have to make the moves.
34:55
Eric Howerton: I honestly think and you kind of said something about earlier it's about getting the hell up in the morning and getting at it right and doing whatever it takes.
35:05
Eric Howerton: And you mentioned earlier, when you worked with that supplier, that one more supplier like he said come to me, me and you want and I sometimes greatly appreciate about what you said Because I see it not happening right so much all the time.
35:19
Eric Howerton: Yeah, I don't want to get on too big a soapbox about it but it's like For a any young person that is going into the workforce to not soak up Like a sponge the opportunity to be around folks that are having more experience, like that is All your wealth is sitting right there with somebody that that you can shadow right, and if you're diligent, I mean you're taking freaking notes and then you're applying it.
35:47
Eric Howerton: You get up earlier, you, you dress the part, you show the hill up.
35:51
Eric Howerton: I mean that that's the difference between you as an entrepreneur in that setting right versus putting most of folks do yeah.
36:00
Eric Howerton: So tell me, what was that draw that you had back then?
36:03
Eric Howerton: Like, what were you hungry for?
36:05
Colton Knittig: um, well, you know, I was really lucky in having that business that I started really young and sold, and that kind of opened my eyes to the fact that, like others, there's another way.
36:16
Colton Knittig: That's not go to work, get a paycheck, you know, just put in the you know 40 hours a week and then call it good, um.
36:24
Colton Knittig: So I kind of knew going into that that I wanted to end up at some point working for myself doing my own thing.
36:29
Colton Knittig: And you know, I just treated it like a, like an opportunity to learn.
36:34
Colton Knittig: No, it was.
36:35
Colton Knittig: It was I had other other job offers that were more money, um, but it was a pretty flat organization.
36:42
Colton Knittig: Like I said, the the president said I can come any meeting I want, um, and small enough that I could kind of understand it.
36:50
Colton Knittig: Um, okay, and um, yeah, just just, you know, went to, went to, you know, kind of had the end in mind, right, so I got to figure out what works, what doesn't work, what are you like, what do I not like?
37:02
Eric Howerton: So you almost walked into the job like Seen it as a learning opportunity versus it yeah it was.
37:07
Colton Knittig: There was two more years of college that I was getting paid to go to, you know.
37:11
Colton Knittig: So it was.
37:12
Colton Knittig: It was an extra, extra, you know, two more years of education that I didn't have to pay for.
37:15
Colton Knittig: I think so many people like they don't.
37:19
Eric Howerton: You know, and that's honestly kind of.
37:20
Eric Howerton: I mean, that's just a different way to look at it.
37:22
Eric Howerton: Like you, you actually would.
37:23
Eric Howerton: I also barking.
37:24
Eric Howerton: I talk about the salat and the show Is how is how, as entrepreneurs, like a lot of people would call us very, you know, risk-inverse, or we don't think about risk or whatever I mean, in actuality, we all we do.
37:35
Eric Howerton: We just think about it differently, because when you're saying that You're actually Lowering your risk because you're going and getting that job and getting paid Right while you're learning, versus paying somebody to go learn right, right, yeah, and and then you, you get in and with that, not even, not even that, but then you have the quality and attribute to, even though you're getting paid to learn, versus paying to learn, mm-hmm, you're walking in the door still wanting to learn, yeah, whereas the worst thing in the world is to pay somebody to learn and then not want to learn Right.
38:10
Eric Howerton: And that's where you get the like in a lot of folks don't do well in the college setting.
38:15
Eric Howerton: Mm-hmm, like we've got.
38:16
Eric Howerton: We've built this freaking Mentality in society that everyone should go to college.
38:23
Eric Howerton: Right, that's just the way to do it.
38:25
Eric Howerton: Yeah, you know, colleges love that because, yes, for sure, for good business reasons, right, but I mean, the reality is, is that if you're going to go and pay someone to learn and then you don't go learn, right, you don't want to, like you shouldn't be there, you're sucking, you're, you're sucking up air, mm-hmm, you know, and you're wasting a lot of money, right, but that's become a lot of things.
38:45
Eric Howerton: But the fact that you got paid to learn and then you still wanted to learn demonstrates in you A different top of person that you are on this earth.
38:56
Colton Knittig: Well, I mean, like I said, I feel lucky that I had that business, that I started early on and I just simply started it because I didn't know any better and when my friends were going to scoop ice cream for eight bucks an hour, I could go out in Milan's for eight hours and make 600 bucks on a Saturday and I could run my own schedule and figure out that there was another way.
39:24
Colton Knittig: Right, that wasn't that you get out of high school, you go to college.
39:28
Colton Knittig: You get out of college, you get a job, you work for 35 years, you get your gold Rolex and then you die sometime after that.
39:33
Colton Knittig: That's not really alive.
39:36
Eric Howerton: So I thought so why don't you want that?
39:38
Eric Howerton: That's the question, why.
39:40
Colton Knittig: It just doesn't seem interesting to me.
39:41
Colton Knittig: It's like so what is interesting to you?
39:43
Colton Knittig: Something new every day, something exciting, like sometimes it's good, sometimes it's bad, but it's always different.
39:49
Colton Knittig: And you're not going in looking at a spreadsheet for eight hours a day, and it just didn't seem interesting to me.
39:57
Eric Howerton: So it's real.
39:58
Eric Howerton: Live like you do this full time, right.
40:00
Eric Howerton: What's your title with the company?
40:02
Eric Howerton: Your CEO?
40:02
Eric Howerton: Yeah, president, president, okay, yeah, and so what your full time in this have been for how long?
40:08
Eric Howerton: About 10 years, about 10 years.
40:10
Eric Howerton: So how long was it when you had your inventory, or 2500 inventory, until you were full time, or were you always full time?
40:18
Colton Knittig: That was always full time, okay so yeah.
40:22
Colton Knittig: So I didn't pay myself first.
40:23
Colton Knittig: I had again.
40:27
Colton Knittig: I was lucky to have kind of low overhead and not a lot of expenses.
40:31
Eric Howerton: Didn't have seven kids, yeah exactly Two or six wives, right, right, good gotcha.
40:38
Colton Knittig: Yeah.
40:38
Colton Knittig: So I did this for a couple years and then my partner was like, hey, we got to start paying you.
40:42
Colton Knittig: He's like I don't care if it's with debt or whatever, we need to pay you something.
40:46
Colton Knittig: Yeah.
40:46
Colton Knittig: So I started drawing a small salary from it and we grew pretty.
40:51
Colton Knittig: We almost doubled, like 50% growth every year for several years after that.
40:56
Eric Howerton: So great, that's great.
40:58
Eric Howerton: And so now I mean, obviously, how many folks do you all have on the team full time?
41:03
Colton Knittig: We just have four.
41:04
Colton Knittig: So we keep pretty lean.
41:05
Colton Knittig: But in our third year I think it was our third year we, self-funded, outgrew, our cash, ran out of inventory for like five months, had nothing to sell, oh gosh.
41:17
Colton Knittig: And at that point I was like all right, we got to do something else.
41:20
Colton Knittig: So I was talking to a family friend about kind of the struggles of that point and it was a good problem to have right.
41:29
Colton Knittig: We weren't struggling because we didn't have any customer, we had too many.
41:33
Colton Knittig: So he said one day he's like why don't we talk about me coming on board?
41:42
Colton Knittig: And so he bought a chunk of the business.
41:44
Colton Knittig: At the time he had recently sold his business.
41:48
Colton Knittig: He had a consulting business he sold to.
41:49
Colton Knittig: Deloitte Was looking for the next thing.
41:51
Colton Knittig: So he bought a piece of the company, came in and kind of what I'd like to say like added some gray hair to the business, like some experience, and helped us kind of scale past that and put in some good like operational standpoint to help us keep growing.
42:07
Eric Howerton: Yeah, that's awesome.
42:08
Eric Howerton: And so you had.
42:09
Eric Howerton: Basically, you ran into a situation.
42:12
Eric Howerton: You didn't have startup capital that you required, right, you had growth capital that you required.
42:17
Eric Howerton: Right and that's a whole different ball game, right, I mean, because I mean then you have financials, that he's, that anyone's able to look back and see that there's an opportunity that actually saves you.
42:27
Eric Howerton: Equity, which is the most like Mark likes to say is the most expensive form of capital, right.
42:33
Eric Howerton: Right, when you sell equity because it could, it could cost you a fortune down the road, right, but you had a history.
42:39
Eric Howerton: That's really cool.
42:40
Eric Howerton: So I mean like that, but do you think you could have prevented that?
42:43
Colton Knittig: Top three.
42:44
Eric Howerton: I mean, had you planned better in the beginning?
42:46
Colton Knittig: or Probably.
42:46
Colton Knittig: I mean we were doing.
42:48
Colton Knittig: We didn't have even really a lot of bank financing, so we probably could have, you know, worked on that a little bit more.
42:55
Colton Knittig: And just credit Line of credit, yeah, I should try it, but at the same time, like it wasn't just money, it was experience and he brought he brought both.
43:03
Eric Howerton: No sure, sure, and I'm just, I'm just kind of thinking like just if I guess financially when you hit that, that cash flow circumstance, so kind of paint that out, like if you had you know 500 units that you have out in the market selling your right and on those sales to happen to get capital to buy another 500 units to put in the market and you just got kind of you sold out of everything and you couldn't replenish the supply.
43:30
Eric Howerton: That you're Right, oceler, that your partners needed, right, and you're sitting there going sorry, any cash to pay for my right, right.
43:39
Colton Knittig: Yeah, and it was.
43:41
Colton Knittig: You know that that inventory takes, you know, 75, 90 days to get here.
43:44
Colton Knittig: So we were trying to do just in time inventory because we were short on cash and you know that was.
43:51
Colton Knittig: That was fine as long as your growth is steady.
43:53
Colton Knittig: But we would have these huge spikes or I would get a call from some, some department store that wanted you know 1500 units or something, and that would just clear us out.
44:01
Colton Knittig: And you know you can't when your, when your growth is kind of lumpy like that, you can't, it's hard to forecast.
44:07
Colton Knittig: So I was just, you know, as the chief sales guy.
44:11
Colton Knittig: It was like taking orders left and right, you know, with reckless abandon, and then, and then next thing, I know we don't have any, don't have any stock.
44:18
Eric Howerton: I would have done the same, exact same day.
44:20
Colton Knittig: Yeah.
44:20
Eric Howerton: Yeah, it's throughout the day of mortar.
44:21
Eric Howerton: Right.
44:22
Colton Knittig: Yeah.
44:22
Eric Howerton: For sure, yeah, no, for sure, I mean.
44:23
Eric Howerton: So the new partner I mean really came in and kind of help level that out, and that's that's the right time, though, right, and I think that you know to any listener out there that's one that has a product idea, which is why I'm glad you're on the show.
44:37
Eric Howerton: I think you might be one of the only product entrepreneurs I mean just off of my head, but I mean like that has a tangible product.
44:46
Eric Howerton: There's just a lot of people that have these ideas, you know, and right, and you can certainly start up something on your own, self-funded Right, and there is a right time to bring in a partner, you know, an additional partner and capital, and it sounds like you made some really good moves on that regard.
45:03
Colton Knittig: Well, yeah, we, you know, I just remember we had, we had a guy that we had tapped for to raise, raise capital early on, like before we hit that point, and it was.
45:15
Colton Knittig: It was kind of a loan shark deal.
45:16
Colton Knittig: It was like you know, we'll give, I'll give you.
45:18
Colton Knittig: You know, I forgot like 200 grand, you know for 30%, and then you pay me or it was equity, and then you know you'll pay me that 200 grand back at 8% interest and then I'll keep my 30%, you know.
45:32
Colton Knittig: So it was Like a convertible note or something, yeah, yeah.
45:34
Colton Knittig: So you know, we were like, nah, like we'll, we'll figure it out on our own, you know, and got, you know, we got past that to a point where we had a business right, we had proven demand.
45:44
Colton Knittig: Like I said, the problem was not that we didn't have customers, it was that we had too many.
45:49
Colton Knittig: So at that point it's a lot easier to go out and raise, raise, raise money.
45:53
Eric Howerton: So, dude, there's such a story here like in it's in.
45:55
Eric Howerton: It's like when is the right time to raise capital?
45:58
Eric Howerton: Like in the market.
45:59
Eric Howerton: I talked about this.
45:59
Eric Howerton: A lot of the problem isn't, you know about like going out and pitching and raising capital for business.
46:05
Eric Howerton: Like probably might have an impression with some folks that that's what we talk about.
46:11
Eric Howerton: It's not about the seas being bad or private equity, it's about the timing.
46:16
Eric Howerton: Yeah, like there's a stigma of understanding that, in order to start a business, what you do is number one, you build a PowerPoint and you build spreadsheets and you spend months doing that and then you go out and raise capital and then you start your business.
46:30
Eric Howerton: Like that stigma.
46:32
Colton Knittig: Well, I've heard you guys talk about like the glorification of entrepreneurship and it's you got something to say about that, Well no, yeah, it's like it's, it's people, it's exciting, it's sexy, you know, to start a business and everything but yeah first sexy Right, yeah, for sure, yeah, yeah.
46:50
Colton Knittig: Find us on Sports Illustrated.
46:51
Eric Howerton: That's right.
46:55
Colton Knittig: And you know, and people get this idea like, oh, I got an idea, Now I need money to do it.
46:58
Colton Knittig: Like you can, you know you do need some, some money to get started.
47:02
Colton Knittig: Sure, but we started very lean.
47:04
Colton Knittig: You know we spent like three grand on tooling for our first product and you know, probably 15,000 on the first production order.
47:11
Colton Knittig: And you can, you can make it happen, you know, before you get to that point where you're raising capital and it's so much cheaper to do it later on like you said.
47:21
Eric Howerton: Yeah, your equity, you know you can't really talk about it Like the investment that you're making.
47:26
Eric Howerton: So the $15,000 it takes to get your first run, right, someone or some way has to.
47:32
Eric Howerton: There has to be some sort of investment of cash to make that happen.
47:36
Eric Howerton: Is it coming out of your pocket?
47:37
Eric Howerton: But anybody that invests in it has equity.
47:41
Eric Howerton: Right, I mean it's kind of you know.
47:42
Eric Howerton: Whether somebody else would buy it is a different story.
47:44
Eric Howerton: But Right, so the more that you can fund it, self-fund, it is actually the more that you're investing in your own equity and you're making your shares more valuable down the road.
47:56
Eric Howerton: Right, you know, and I mean, but of course, the rest of that is that you slip up along the way and you take, you make all your shares go worth nothing or even negative, right, yeah, so I mean it's, you know, I think that that timing is so important, you know, and, just like you said, I mean it's, it's good to know, it's good for people to know that you can do that.
48:18
Eric Howerton: But actually I mean you're, you and I both did Mark, did you know, and and I think that there's greater reward because you do learn about the business, you know, and like a lot of times, investors are I don't care Like there's no way that they can understand what your business is like.
48:37
Eric Howerton: They might have done they might have done a grill light spatula 10 years before you did.
48:42
Eric Howerton: Now they're this expert in grill light specialist, but unless they're in the market right here from customers and the audience and watching that stuff, they don't know more than you do, necessarily, right, right, you know.
48:52
Colton Knittig: Yeah, for sure.
48:53
Colton Knittig: Yeah, and you need to be.
48:54
Colton Knittig: You know, if you're raising capital, you need to be raising, you need to be coming at it from a point of strength where you're the expert in the, in the market, in the product, and you know there's, there's.
49:05
Colton Knittig: You know, like we, we got lucky where we raised capital from a guy that also brought a lot of operational know-how.
49:10
Colton Knittig: Yeah, but yeah, the whole idea of, like people going out to just raise money from some, you know, like nameless VC, that all they want is, you know, a two or three X return in the next three years, like that's, that's not really the kind of partner that you want.
49:27
Colton Knittig: Yeah, because they're, you know their, their motivations are different than yours.
49:31
Eric Howerton: Unless you're the entrepreneur that knows how to play that game.
49:33
Eric Howerton: And that's what you know.
49:34
Eric Howerton: You're written into.
49:35
Eric Howerton: Yeah.
49:35
Eric Howerton: Yeah, for sure, because there's money to be made in that.
49:37
Eric Howerton: Mm-hmm.
49:38
Eric Howerton: You know what I mean.
49:39
Eric Howerton: Tell me what's next.
49:44
Eric Howerton: What are you trying to accomplish?
49:46
Eric Howerton: What's the next big jump?
49:49
Colton Knittig: So about a year ago we started working with a company that they basically take products like Grealite and they do national TV campaigns, national ad campaigns, and so we've kind of licensed the brand to them, the brand and IP.
50:08
Colton Knittig: So we're kind of turning Grealite into a product development house.
50:11
Colton Knittig: So we're working on kind of churning out the next products and they're taking over kind of the sales and marketing side of it, doing TV, doing social media ads, that kind of stuff and kind of trying to George Formanify the Grealite.
50:26
Eric Howerton: So will it be in the same brand, or are they going?
50:30
Eric Howerton: To really the same brand.
50:31
Colton Knittig: So basically these guys have built a machine to market products directly to consumers and they're always looking for new cool stuff, because their job is what they're good at is like sales and marketing and they've got to kind of feed that beast with new cool products.
50:49
Colton Knittig: So we're working with them to kind of flip it around and continue like the big box and the retail growth but also do a lot of direct consumer sales.
51:00
Colton Knittig: That's interesting.
51:02
Eric Howerton: When does it start?
51:02
Colton Knittig: up.
51:03
Colton Knittig: We've started it recently, like a few months ago.
51:05
Colton Knittig: How's that going?
51:06
Eric Howerton: Yeah, it's going great.
51:07
Eric Howerton: So that allows you guys, your team of four, like the direct employees, to really focus on supply chain.
51:15
Colton Knittig: Right, yeah, we and like what's next right.
51:17
Eric Howerton: So yeah, just product innovation.
51:19
Eric Howerton: You still own the brand.
51:21
Colton Knittig: Right, we do.
51:21
Colton Knittig: Yeah.
51:22
Eric Howerton: So they're just making some off the sale.
51:26
Colton Knittig: Yeah, so yeah, we own the brand, we own the company, but they're kind of partnering with us to grow it much larger.
51:35
Eric Howerton: Do they make a percentage off every single sale that comes through?
51:39
Eric Howerton: Right?
51:39
Eric Howerton: Okay so it doesn't matter if it, because I mean, like, I can see the point of that, because, like, if they're doing TV or whatever, somebody might see this product and then they go buy it somewhere else down the road at a different time.
51:53
Eric Howerton: And if I was doing the sales market I'd be like man, I'm impacting that, yeah Right, exactly Because of the investment I made.
52:00
Colton Knittig: So that's interesting, yeah, so they're kind of doing what we couldn't do.
52:03
Colton Knittig: We have an investor, but still completely bootstrapped.
52:07
Colton Knittig: They'll go into a big box retailer and say like hey, not only is this a really cool product, but we're going to spend $10 million in the next six months on last to get on every single TV in the country.
52:17
Colton Knittig: How many containers do you want?
52:20
Colton Knittig: So that's kind of the sales pitch.
52:22
Colton Knittig: So that makes a little sense.
52:24
Eric Howerton: Yeah, yeah, and I think that it happens quite a bit in this industry, doesn't it?
52:30
Colton Knittig: Right, yeah, for sure, there's a lot of people out there that kind of join forces and They'll help a lot of those like around this area.
52:37
Eric Howerton: I think so, yeah, like sales, it's a sales and marketing firm, right Exactly.
52:41
Eric Howerton: I know some of them do like more of like consultation and they get, but I know that some of them work on commission and have, like you know, and some of them actually invest in it Right To do that.
52:54
Eric Howerton: That's really cool, man.
52:56
Eric Howerton: Well, best of luck on that, man.
52:58
Eric Howerton: Yeah, that's pretty interesting.
52:59
Colton Knittig: Thank you.
53:00
Colton Knittig: Yeah.
53:00
Eric Howerton: So does that help you with your next stage, on how you want your career to go?
53:04
Colton Knittig: I think so.
53:05
Colton Knittig: Yeah, so I mean it did.
53:06
Colton Knittig: You know I love the sales side of it and I'm still kind of working with them on that.
53:10
Colton Knittig: But I can you know we've grown quite a bit over the years and we've had to kind of plow our profits back into just like maintaining inventory, yeah.
53:20
Colton Knittig: And now we get a chance to kind of take a breath and work on product innovation and some cool, exciting new stuff that's coming, yeah, yeah.
53:29
Eric Howerton: I wish you the best on that.
53:30
Eric Howerton: What's your, what's your?
53:31
Eric Howerton: They got to amplify your digital experience too with that.
53:34
Eric Howerton: Yeah, yeah, Absolutely.
53:35
Eric Howerton: So we say direct consumer.
53:37
Eric Howerton: I mean it's like there's like the website properties, probably posted on different web web stores and whatnot.
53:46
Colton Knittig: Right.
53:46
Eric Howerton: Making that more perfect, right, because we had talked when we talked about last time, I mean with white.
53:51
Eric Howerton: You know the flywheel white spider business that had right that you know about data content and all that kind of stuff.
53:58
Colton Knittig: It's just brutal man.
54:00
Eric Howerton: Yeah, for sure it's always changing too Dude it's so brutal Like in, yeah, and so having as a partner that's kind of handling that Right Now if they do a good job.
54:09
Eric Howerton: That's the other part of the story, right, exactly.
54:11
Colton Knittig: Yeah, so we we wetted them pretty hard, you know, and we did several different interviews with them to kind of talk about what, what their vision was and that kind of stuff.
54:19
Colton Knittig: So yeah, but yeah, I mean it gives it gives us an opportunity to focus on, you know, some more fun stuff.
54:26
Eric Howerton: Yeah, you got any.
54:28
Eric Howerton: Any hints as to what's coming next that you can share or you can keep it close?
54:33
Colton Knittig: to that.
54:33
Colton Knittig: So we've we've got to.
54:34
Colton Knittig: I can drop a few, a few spoilers.
54:36
Colton Knittig: We're we're doing a bit of a redesign on these tools to make them a little bit more streamlined, because this is these are designs that have.
54:43
Colton Knittig: You know, I love them, but they've been around for a while, so we're going to kind of update that a little bit and we're working on a wire free cleaning brush.
54:51
Colton Knittig: It's like a grill cleaner.
54:52
Colton Knittig: There's probably the top requests that I get Quite, wire free, what is it?
54:56
Colton Knittig: So there's, like the wire bristles on the grill, cleaner brushes and those bristles can like fall off and get in your grill.
55:02
Eric Howerton: They can.
55:02
Eric Howerton: Actually they can get burned off too.
55:04
Eric Howerton: Yeah, Exactly, I mean that's happened to me for or melted or whatever, yeah.
55:08
Colton Knittig: So we're working on one that's it's got the light, it's got like all the the patented features of the of these tools, but it also has a brush on it too, so Interesting.
55:17
Eric Howerton: Yeah, but what would you tell?
55:20
Eric Howerton: What advice would you give a young or doesn't matter, just a new entrepreneur that's starting something out on the product side of things and kind of the space you live, like?
55:34
Eric Howerton: What would it be to revise?
55:36
Colton Knittig: I think back to what you were saying about take every opportunity to learn.
55:41
Colton Knittig: You know like there's that old trope of like sometimes you win and sometimes you learn.
55:46
Colton Knittig: Yeah, like every opportunity is either opportunities to grow the business or learn how to learn how to grow the business Right, so that is like grit, you know like sometimes it's just you have to stick with it.
55:59
Colton Knittig: Yeah, and I talked about kind of the roller coaster of entrepreneurship and like when, when stuff gets hard, like just stick with it, keep pushing through and have that, you know, trust and belief in yourself that you'll get, get to the next stage.
56:13
Colton Knittig: Yeah, um, and somehow you always, you always, you know end up, you know getting there.
56:18
Eric Howerton: So Well, what about like in your industry too, though?
56:21
Eric Howerton: Like, I mean, like, what are some of the hard knocks to avoid?
56:24
Eric Howerton: Like, if I was saying, hey man, I got an idea of you know something that's similar to your product.
56:32
Eric Howerton: I mean, and I'm not, I'm about to go off on and do it Like right, Like what's the big watch out from a, from a wholesaling supplier based?
56:43
Colton Knittig: So I've heard I've heard horror stories of I was lucky, right.
56:48
Colton Knittig: So my partner's in China?
56:49
Colton Knittig: Yeah.
56:50
Colton Knittig: He's there doing this, the manufacturing, and like watching that and stuff.
56:53
Colton Knittig: I've heard horror stories of people getting like we call like a golden sample, like a perfectly, perfectly great sample, Everything's beautiful, works, perfect.
57:00
Colton Knittig: They order like 10,000 pieces of it and then it shows up and they're all messed up and then you can't get anybody on the phone and you know, like what do?
57:08
Colton Knittig: You got to go fly over to China and like find somebody Like that's, that's, that happens all the time.
57:12
Colton Knittig: So yeah, so you got to keep an eye on your suppliers and you know, make sure quality stays up and and just be careful with that.
57:21
Eric Howerton: I guess you're able to do that Like just because, like I mean, would he go meet face to face and validate and verify these?
57:28
Colton Knittig: Yeah, yeah, just, and then watch stuff as it comes off the line, you know, and you inspect it as it comes off the line, and then again when it goes in the container, and really, yeah, so just got to right, yeah, so you got to, you know, because the last thing you want is a container full of product that you can't sell.
57:45
Eric Howerton: So it's terrible.
57:45
Eric Howerton: Yeah so that's so demoralizing too.
57:49
Eric Howerton: Man, I can't imagine like you've been waiting, I mean like there's all this anticipation.
57:54
Eric Howerton: I mean you've got so much on the line and you get this right.
57:57
Colton Knittig: Pre-sales you know all that.
57:58
Eric Howerton: And it's so freaking heavy.
58:00
Colton Knittig: Yeah.
58:00
Colton Knittig: I mean to return it would just be like nightmare.
58:05
Colton Knittig: Yeah, exactly, oh, that's terrible.
58:07
Colton Knittig: So that's that's probably the biggest you know.
58:10
Colton Knittig: Watch yourself, kind of warning, I guess, from doing a product business and just you know, kind of maintain that quality.
58:19
Eric Howerton: So Pult and human beings can really suck sometimes, yeah For sure, you know.
58:24
Eric Howerton: But I think that and you may or may not agree, but the longer I've gone in business, just like, just realize, like not everybody has really great intentions, you know, and it's unfortunate, but I think the the longer you go into it, like you, just you can kind of preemptively think about some of these situations that might come up, you know.
58:45
Eric Howerton: Then, on the flip side, though, you don't want to make things so legalistic and contractual that you can't even make a move, right, and do you?
58:52
Eric Howerton: Maybe you have this experience a little bit, but like I, kind of, like I I'm kind of weigh those things as I go along, like, if I got a new, you know, do I really need to get into some significant vendor contract for this amount of money?
59:06
Eric Howerton: What are kind of the damages, what's the threat that's out there?
59:09
Eric Howerton: You know, what are my liabilities?
59:11
Eric Howerton: Yeah, you know.
59:12
Eric Howerton: And a lot of the decisions I make on a regular basis, I've been finding myself noticing that I do that quite a bit Right.
59:18
Eric Howerton: I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't.
59:23
Eric Howerton: I don't want to start in my gut feeling like, well, I don't, I'm starting to feel a little bit vulnerable to this one specific thing.
59:29
Eric Howerton: Then I'll go take care of it at that time Right.
59:35
Colton Knittig: I don't know you experienced that at all as a entrepreneur.
59:37
Colton Knittig: Yeah, I mean super tight and perfect all the time.
59:39
Colton Knittig: Yeah, no, I, as you know, as I kind of grow as an entrepreneur, I kind of, I kind of lean on, you know, entrepreneurism, naturally, you know, optimistic.
59:49
Colton Knittig: So I always, I always think people have the best intentions, you know and, and that you know everything is, all you know, a sunshide of rainbows.
59:55
Colton Knittig: But, as you know, through the years I've kind of learned this not always the case.
59:59
Colton Knittig: So you got to, you got to, you know, cover your ass.
1:00:02
Eric Howerton: Yeah you do, yeah, you do.
1:00:04
Eric Howerton: And you also have to be interesting enough when you're working with suppliers and especially customers right In the public, and partners like you also have to be you know, be a good partner.
1:00:18
Eric Howerton: Yeah for sure, you know, and not I mean, because I cannot stand working with people that got to have everything signed.
1:00:24
Eric Howerton: Yeah.
1:00:24
Eric Howerton: And have these big extensive contracts Right, like, it's just like, like you slowed me down, like, and that becomes the bottleneck of freaking humanity and that's what brings the United States of America down.
1:00:35
Colton Knittig: Yeah, yeah exactly.
1:00:36
Eric Howerton: Yeah, for sure yeah, and so anything else you want to share before we bounce on this.
1:00:40
Colton Knittig: Well, I was just going to say on that, on that last point, like I had, I had someone reach out to me the other day and they were like you know, I have, I have a cool product idea.
1:00:47
Colton Knittig: I want to kind of, you know, manufacture it, bring it to market.
1:00:51
Colton Knittig: What are, you know what I need to do?
1:00:52
Colton Knittig: Like I don't you know, he was afraid to show it to anybody because he thought they would steal his idea.
1:00:57
Colton Knittig: And and I, you know, like patent law is is a whole can of worms.
1:01:01
Colton Knittig: But if you have, you have like a year to file a utility patent right After you kind of like, announce your product to the world.
1:01:10
Colton Knittig: So, yeah, there's people that want to have all these like NDAs and all these like leads before they will even show you their idea.
1:01:16
Colton Knittig: And I was, you know, I tried to put it as nicely as possible but, like, most people are too busy to steal your idea.
1:01:23
Colton Knittig: So, like, don't, don't worry about people stealing your idea.
1:01:26
Colton Knittig: You know, occasionally I guess you'll find someone that that wants to, but nine times out of 10, like you just got to talk to people about it, get feedback.
1:01:34
Colton Knittig: You know that's what we did at that show in Kansas City, like we took it and showed it to you know thousands of people before we had any sort of you know IP file.
1:01:44
Colton Knittig: But you know we had to get that feedback to kind of see if we were, you know, wasting our time and money.
1:01:49
Eric Howerton: So yeah, that's kind of.
1:01:51
Eric Howerton: That's a really good point.
1:01:52
Eric Howerton: I wouldn't, that's.
1:01:53
Eric Howerton: I appreciate you saying that, because that would be one of my first concerns and I've been there right Especially it's.
1:01:58
Eric Howerton: It's.
1:02:00
Eric Howerton: It's interesting Like you can relate to this.
1:02:03
Eric Howerton: Like you know, a couple of decades into our entrepreneur life at least I am and in the sense that where I remember in my early stages, like, like it was very I was so worried about somebody stealing stuff from me and even though I was concerned about it, it still happened, right Number one at certain times.
1:02:24
Eric Howerton: But what I learned over time was is that it's not a match about, like, who's got the great idea, it's about who's the fastest Yep, you know what I'm saying?
1:02:34
Colton Knittig: Yeah, the idea is like 5% of it and the rest of it is like the speed and hard work and yeah, so you know there's.
1:02:41
Colton Knittig: You know, over the years my friends used to come to me with their like wacky ideas for like products and stuff.
1:02:47
Colton Knittig: They've kind of like faded off, they've stopped, stopped doing that, but the ideas are great, but that's.
1:02:54
Colton Knittig: That's less than 10% of a business is the idea.
1:02:57
Eric Howerton: Yeah, you have to.
1:02:58
Eric Howerton: You have to be.
1:02:58
Eric Howerton: It's who?
1:03:00
Eric Howerton: Who's going to?
1:03:01
Eric Howerton: Like you said earlier, who's got the grit?
1:03:02
Eric Howerton: Yeah, I mean, are you going to?
1:03:04
Eric Howerton: If you have an idea, are you going to?
1:03:05
Eric Howerton: Are you going to get it, you know, and go to market and do all the thousands of things that are required to make that make this freaking special, to come to life and be in somebody's hand.
1:03:15
Eric Howerton: You know, getting their barbecue on.
1:03:17
Eric Howerton: Yeah, dude, I love the.
1:03:18
Eric Howerton: I love the patent right here, man.
1:03:20
Colton Knittig: Thanks man?
1:03:20
Eric Howerton: Yeah, for sure, that's awesome.
1:03:22
Eric Howerton: Yeah, boom, I don't.
1:03:26
Eric Howerton: I mean who came up with?
1:03:27
Colton Knittig: that Was that your engineer, that was my partner that did that yeah.
1:03:32
Eric Howerton: Cool man.
1:03:32
Eric Howerton: All right, colton man, really appreciate you joining with us today.
1:03:36
Colton Knittig: Yeah, for sure, thanks for having me.
1:03:37
Eric Howerton: Fantastic product.
1:03:38
Eric Howerton: It's a really cool story.
1:03:39
Eric Howerton: I mean, right here in Northwest Arkansas Yep, that's right, that's awesome.
1:03:44
Eric Howerton: Right here in the United States.
1:03:45
Eric Howerton: Man, keep it up and love to like as things progress with that, with that partner that you got now.
1:03:52
Eric Howerton: Yeah.
1:03:53
Eric Howerton: You got any big news, let us know.
1:03:54
Eric Howerton: And then you know we always like to end like, if you like Colton mentioned, by the way, that you you reached out to me because you've been listening to our podcast right.
1:04:02
Eric Howerton: Yeah.
1:04:03
Eric Howerton: So I appreciate you doing that For sure, and I think that you know, hopefully we can continue to build up our listener base Because I really think that it's, if nothing else, it's fun to have folks like you come in.
1:04:14
Eric Howerton: And so you did respond kind of the podcast, say hey, man, you know love what you got going on and it and it and it restruck our relationship and bring you in.
1:04:24
Eric Howerton: So I encourage any listeners out there if you have a business, you'll reach out.
1:04:28
Eric Howerton: If you have ideas or topics or questions that you have, you know, if you have questions for Colton, reach out and maybe we can have them back on the show and answer some of those things and and do a little bit more of a scripting thing rather than this organic whatever the hell's in my brain at this very moment question that I got.
1:04:45
Eric Howerton: But don't forget to like and subscribe and all that fun stuff.
1:04:50
Eric Howerton: Tell your friends and then and then, if you want to advertise Colton, you want to buy an ad on our podcast.
1:04:56
Eric Howerton: I'm just kidding, I'm not going to sell you, just like that.
1:04:59
Eric Howerton: But, if you wanted to advertise, because you know this is what keeps us going.
1:05:04
Eric Howerton: This was what helps us.
1:05:05
Eric Howerton: Help help you.
1:05:06
Eric Howerton: Yeah, there you go.
1:05:07
Eric Howerton: You got to keep the lights on so that lights on man we need some advertising For sure?
1:05:11
Eric Howerton: No, we're not about to run out of money.
1:05:13
Eric Howerton: So anyway, thanks, man.
1:05:15
Eric Howerton: Really appreciate it.
1:05:15
Eric Howerton: Fantastic product, love it, man.
1:05:17
Eric Howerton: Thank you.
1:05:18
Eric Howerton: Love to have you on.
1:05:18
Eric Howerton: I'm hearing more about the story.
1:05:19
Eric Howerton: Appreciate it.
1:05:20
Eric Howerton: Thanks, you got it man.
1:05:28
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1:05:31
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1:05:45
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