Ugmonk: The Real Reason Simpler Products Sell Better | Jeff Sheldon Ep. 12

22:07Chris Cruz:enough to to be dangerous enough yeah enough to be dangerous but I have like a concept I think it's I think my sweet spot is more of like I have a concept of what I want to exist and why it should exist and what it should look like and then getting that out and like kind of seeing the need in my life and other people's lives trying to create that fill that void but then also bring it to a physical form where i can hold the thing which is really rewarding and you mentioned you're a small business so let's let's well like i said we'll go up and down and all around around ugmonk You actually now have a physical location in Pennsylvania that, and this physical location serves both as a warehouse.

22:48Chris Cruz:Like, tell me about this physical location that you, you guys got, like, what's that process? I saw something about you gutting it, redoing it. And it looks incredible. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's our design studio slash warehouse shipping, fulfillment, customer service, product photography, everything. Everything. Yeah. And, and we, and that kind of happened when we launched this product analog, the analog cards that you're referring to in 2020, again, had a Kickstarter that went almost to half a million dollars. We had 6 ,000, over 6 ,000 backers or total shipments that we had to get out. Couldn't do that out of my parents' basement anymore.

23:26And it like demanded that we have a physical space. Um, and instead of outsourcing that shipping to just a third party, because we had a lot of issues with that. And maybe I'm just a control freak, but we wanted to do it ourselves. And I had this vision for like creating a place where I could design, have the products come in, my team is assembling, shipping, we're doing everything from all under one roof. And the building that we're in now, not the background you see here, but it's an old paper mill building from like the early 17, 1800s, that was going through a renovation. We were looking for space.

24:01This was during the pandemic it was a really weird time um and then yeah we like we renovated the whole inside and made it like our design studio slash uh warehouse and it looks like something you would see in san francisco as a craft coffee shop yeah that's kind of the goal i mean the goal is when people walk in they're like i kind of feel like i'm in copenhagen i'm like exactly then i guess we're

24:21Chris Cruz:doing something right yeah i won i did this right i can't live in copenhagen right now So I will at least make my space look like it. Exactly. So, all right, I'm going to, I want to double tap into the Kickstarter stuff. So you have done two successful, like more than two, but like you've had these massive Kickstarters, like half a million dollar Kickstarters is really impressive. What is the key to get people like, what is, if you're like, Hey, I'm going to talk to you guys about that science in your brain on how you did that twice. how would you talk how would you reverse engineer that well i tell people to for 17 years to start building an email list over the next 17 years let's go let's go that's so good yeah i mean for real though like the thing is it's not about kickstarter it's not about the platform it's it's a great way to get your get your idea out there but the only reason that i had success the success that I did or the primary reason is because I built a thousand true fan audience.

25:25The idea of like a thousand true fans, if you ever read the Kevin Kelly article, Seth Gooden talks a lot about it, but like, yes, I had, I had slowly, but surely this is it.

25:36Chris Cruz:This is it. This is it to dive into this. Yes. Geek out with me on this. I love this so much. I think this is what people miss, especially today. They're starting a company. They have an idea. It might be a great idea. They put it out there and they're like, no one's liking my, my Instagram real. And it's like, well, you don't have an audience. So like these products, when I launched this, I had, let's see, 10, almost 10 years of building this t-shirt side of Ugmonk of customer after customer after customer. So when I launched the new thing, like in, I think it was in with like hour, a couple hours, we reached our funding goal.

26:07And I think we broke six figures in, in one day, but that was because like all of these people I'd already built trust with because I'd been designing and shipping and doing customer service and fixing anything, you know, on the backend, building relationships with people for almost a decade. And then I launched something to them. And then it's like, so it's the, you know, the 10 year, the 17 year overnight success. Um, but that's the part that people don't want to put in the work to just like build these relationships with their customers and not just look at, why do you think they not want to do it?

26:36Chris Cruz:Why do you think they don't want to do it? Like there's some attentions you have is, and is this saying we'll stop there. Why do you think people don't pay attention to that detail of customer service because in the holistic brand experience that is an element it's like it's one of those things that frustrates me so quickly is when like for example if i go into a retail experience and the person has no judgment calls but for me it is a frustrating experience when they have like the airpods in and it's customer facing and i'm like are you are you listening to me like what's what's i don't even know if you're here.

27:08Chris Cruz:And so it's like, I had my blood drawn the other day and the person had AirPods in and I'm like, wait a second. Do you even know that the names match right now? Like what's happening? And so there's this, this drop of customer service and customer experience that you're seeing in so many places. And they're wondering, why are we not gaining this loyalty? But they're, they're missing this customer experience. How have you, how do you look at customer experience and customer service that gets you to kind of dive in like that? How do you see it? it's always been a long game for me. Like the idea of building a company to sell is like very foreign to me.

27:41I didn't come from tech background. I'm not trying to raise money to throw gasoline on the fire. I think there's a lot of valid reasons to build a company that way. But I started this because I wanted to make things like I wanted to make the things that I want to exist. And I wanted people to thoroughly and genuinely enjoy the things that I'm making. So when somebody says hey i got my shirt the sleeves a little the hem's a little messed up we wouldn't be like here's our restocking you know robot response we'd be like i got you we're sending you another one keep that one you know wear it when you're mowing the lawn whatever we're we just treated people like humans yeah i love it treating them like humans yeah that is it treating your customers like humans

28:19Chris Cruz:versus that a data point treating them like a um it's it's so amazing we had uh another guest on the show, Tyler Axtell from Bradley mountain on here the other day. And one of the reasons he switched from purely being e-commerce to having retail was because he wanted his, he wanted to know his customers differently than he could if it was purely e-commerce. But you're saying even in the e-commerce space, you're going, I want to make sure that I go out of my way to know you and treat you like a human versus simply being a data point that made a purchase on my website. Yeah. Yeah. It's amazing. Yeah.

28:52It's crazy because like, do you think about like that has to be a new concept which has been around for hundreds of thousands of years humans interacting with other humans right like treating people exchanging goods treating them a certain way uh looking them in the eye and like digital the way that e-commerce and the whole digital landscape has changed that has made us feel like i can leave a comment you know anonymously on a youtube thing no one's gonna know right every single person other than the ai bots are actual people talking to people. So every conversation, every email, I still write our emails that go out like, it's me, if you reply back, it's me.

29:28And it's not scalable. But everyone got obsessed with like, how do I scale outsource replace myself, multiple locations, multiple distribution, like Amazon will take care of it. And I'm like, how do we do the opposite of whatever that is, because I want people to actually build a relationship to build a relationship with them. and it's just paid off. We're not a massive, massive brand, but I can sustain a small business here in the suburbs of Philadelphia, provide for my family and have a couple of good employees and we're building something for a long time.

30:01Chris Cruz:Okay, that is so beautiful and I love it so much. I have to ask you this question because of my own wonderings. How do you hold yourself back from comparison, from thinking we could be bigger What if we did like, like, how do you keep yourself on that path when everything around you is going to fight you to go the other direction? Like you're saying, like everybody's going to Amazon. How do, but we're going to go the opposite route. Like how, how do you, how do you fight off that urge to just dive into that? Like machine like that. It's been hard. I mean, especially with social media, cause you see like success story after success story, you've got shark tank, you've got all these things that make it look like.

30:44it's just easier than it is and i know from from doing this every day that it's not that easy like physical products are hard it's just there's there's no way around it um it's a lot of manual labor it's a lot of shipping and customer service and and problems with manufacturers um so i think social media has made it has made that hard because i'm watching other people be like you know they're drop shipping white labeling product they're scaling with they don't even

31:10Chris Cruz:touch it they've never even held their own product in their hands exactly it's getting drop shipped from somebody else designed somewhere else, created somewhere else, but it's their brand, but they've never even touched it. Yeah. And it seems like everyone makes it easy. You've got all these e-commerce gurus telling the course to somebody that's like, it can be very almost like overwhelming and paralyzing. And I think to a lot of people, they're getting a glimpse of like, I think I want to start an e-commerce brand. And I'm like, okay, do you have a product idea? They're like, I don't know what I'd sell, but I love the idea of e-commerce.

31:40I'm like, What do you like about it? And it didn't come from a pure, I wanted to make bags because I love this bag. I wanted this bag to exist. And there's a lot of really, really great marketing people out there and people that are way better at marketing than I am. And I've scaled brands and they're always posting their Shopify screenshots of how much they're doing. And it's like, some of that does wear on you though. You're like, the imposter syndrome of like, I've been doing this a long time. I'm nowhere near those numbers. Like I'm not even close. but the flip side is like I get to go into work on Monday and do what I want to do you know run the business that I want to exist in the way that I want to it to exist and not have to to prove anything you know I don't I don't have a bunch of cars in my garage that I can show off on Instagram

32:25Chris Cruz:you don't have the fake rented Lambos in your in your driveway yeah I don't have that for the for the screenshot or for the post but yeah I think I think entrepreneurship and specifically online in the last five to 10 years has has changed dramatically and people are only seeing that and they see the youtubers that have you know 2.4 million subscribers and it's like it's easy to want what they have but nobody wants to put in the 17 years of work to get to where a lot of them you know mr beast wasn't mr beast in the beginning like the guy is like he is just obsessive about you know building his brand and his channel so yeah yeah it's it's hard it's really good insight Right.

33:05Chris Cruz:Really good. And so, and it is hard. It is hard because you regularly see where other people are. The measuring stick is always out and it's, it's, it's constantly kind of reflecting back at you. You have to kind of have the resilience to stick to what you know is true for your brand and where you want to go as a brand. So you have your newsletter, but you've, I mean, you've built out this email database of people who are fans of yours. They're not just customers. You've done some kind of storytelling you've done there's a way that you view your newsletter that isn't like i got your email yay for me i've captured it you i've got you in my system now and now i can spam you i can create all this email my goal is to just get your email you have an actual newsletter that's got it's called five things i'm digging into or something like that and but there's a way you've done storytelling around that that makes it valuable to be a part of your newsletter versus we got your email get ready yeah yeah i mean so everybody should look up the book called permission marketing by seth godin yes this is pre yeah this is probably it's probably i don't know 15 years old and that was the first time i didn't come from a marketing background either so i didn't know much about it but when i when i read his book and understood the concept of permission marketing instead of interrupting people and trying to just get in their in their feed um Um, these are people that signed up because they, you have their permission to talk to them and you now have the ability to email them and, and reach them.

34:34Um, and sure, like there's a mix now we have to find new people and we have, we, we run ads on social and we're trying to find new audiences, but there's a way to gain someone's permission that now makes them want to receive more, more information about what you're doing, as opposed to, you know, the pharmaceutical ads on TV when you're like, this is not relevant. I don't want to see this. Like this doesn't make any sense.

34:54Chris Cruz:Yeah. So you, so what made you do the five things I'm digging? Like, what was, what was the reason you made your newsletter like that? It was, I mean, it was on a whim. So I was between product. Yeah. It was between product releases. Like I, I used to just email when I had new shirts, it was like new shirts come in. Here's a teaser. You guys get first dibs before I even like, you know, post sometimes before I post the link. Um, and then I didn't have anything going for a while. And I was like, I'm just going to send like an email about five things I'm digging right now. Like just not nothing related to products that we make or affiliate links or anything.

35:29I'm just be like, here's a, here's a house. That's amazing. Here's an album I'm listening to. And here's, you know, sourdough pizza topping. Like, um, and I just sent it out on a whim. Cause I was like, I think it'd be cool, um, to not have to talk about myself the whole time. And then that has snowballed and I've been doing it for years and years now, every single month. I don't think I've missed a month in many years. And it's really fun because I love sharing those things and curating those things and sharing them with people. And it's almost the first thing out of people's mouth whenever I meet them.

36:02They're like, I followed you. I feel like I know you. I followed your five things list for like three years. And it's my favorite email I get every month. And I'm like, that's pretty crazy to think that people are actually on the receiving end of that and following for all these years.

36:15Chris Cruz:It's special. It's special, man. You've done something really special that the people resonate with you on a deep level. now i want to ask you a question that is i want you to think for a second here i want you to tell me the the product you're most proud of and a product you were like this one frustrated me and disappointed me like because ugman now has a variety of products you've got journals you've got leather goods you've got productivity tools you've got there's hats and mugs and i also look at your website sometimes because i know that you will be the one person that will curate japanese items that have really, really intentional craftsmanship behind them, whether it's a pen, a letter opener, there's so much there.

36:58Chris Cruz:Which product do you love? I know this is like picking out, again, which kid do you love? But which product do you love? And go, this one is for me. It may not even be your top seller, but you love it. And a product you're like, this one was a disappointment. Just didn't do what I wanted it to do. Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to say, so the analog system. So I've got, I've got actually an old prototype here on my desk. Let's see if I can hold this up if people are watching. Oh, love it. Yeah. So this, this product, I think really embodies everything that I'm trying to do with Ugmonk. It's really simple.

37:35It's really clean, but it's actually changed my life and it's changed a lot of people's life. And it sounds like a little woo woo, like it's an index card. Come on, dude. like it's just writing your list down but like the the systematic approach of like this one minute a day i write down the things i need to do i prop that card up in front of me it has a nice place at the end of the day the card tucks in at the back here um there's a little lip that we we added this little detail so that the card can find its way in um yeah doing this backwards so that the card slides in nicely and the card is there ready for the next day and it's like it's a very, very simple product, but it's something I leave out.

38:15It's something that I interact with literally every single day. Um, when I'm sitting at my desk, I'm looking at it. I probably glance at it more than my phone because it's like, it's constantly just saying, Hey, do this, do this, do this, because it's like, um, well, I probably shouldn't say that. I look at my phone way too much, but I think we all do. Um, but I'm always looking at it. That's not even a question anymore for me. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, I don't think I would love to say that it, I look at it more than my phone, but I'm looking at it all the time. And it's actually the thing that is making me progress in getting products out there, moving the business forward, following up on things, doing the things I don't want to do that.

38:50I'm like, I have really need to make that call or I need to send in that form. It goes on that card and it's like, yeah, it's

38:56Chris Cruz:like an accountability partner. Yeah. It's like, come on, you got to do this. You said you're going to do this. Um, and Chuck, who's my operations manager and, and runs the, a lot of the logistical side of the company. We were talking about this the other day and he said, you know, it's like, it's like having an accountability partner to yourself, right? Like you get, I get to pick what goes on that card each day. No one else puts stuff on there for me. Like your emails, like everyone else's to-do list for you. That's like you committing to yourself to say, I want to do these three or five or 10 things today and then cross it off and do it.

39:29So it's more powerful than it just being a piece of paper or just the rounded corners or all these different things about the actual physical side of it. But I get stories from people all the time, you know, struggling with ADHD, their kid has autism, and he's using it, it's like, this is tactile, it feels like he's, you know, able to think better. CEOs and executives, teachers, like all these different people that have resonated with like this idea of a system and a nicely designed product that you want to leave out you want to look at. So yeah, I mean, I mean, I'm tooting my own horn in that sense, but I do feel like there's like, but I asked

40:04Chris Cruz:you to toot your horn because like, but one of the, I'll say one of the things I love about the analog system that, you know, I bought mine. This is not a paid ad. You did not send me an analog. I love it because it's what I need. Not, uh, there's not 10 other features that are unnecessary. Yeah. And that I'm going, I'm buying this, but I only really need half of this. when the reality is like sometimes the productivity tools you get um they were someone's ethereal idea on how people function product in a productive way but they weren't practical i'm like this these three questions i'm never going to answer these three questions you have on this journal of mine so it's like i would look at this journal i'd see three-fourths of it empty yeah you feel guilt you feel guilt in that process with yours it's like no this is what i put in front of me and it's clean and I'm going to go do it.

40:58Chris Cruz:It's easy. And there's not, there's not more fluff on it than it needs to be. Yeah. And, and one other note on that is like the, so Dieter Rams, for anyone that doesn't know, Dieter Rams is one of the most infamous, one of the most famous industrial designers that has touched hundreds and hundreds of products through Braun and, and a bunch of Bitso and a bunch of other companies. His motto or kind of his ethos is less but better. And the whole point of what, when he designed products, wasn't to make things that were like going to be showy and just sit on a shelf and people were going to look at ooh and ah, it was actually like to make them functional and to strip away everything that's unnecessary until you get down to just the bare bones product.

41:38And through that, you end up with this beautiful aesthetic, you know, his turntables, his alarm clocks, his shavers, and it's got this like little orange accent button, but it wasn't for just for play. It was like, this helps the user interact with the product and i'm like just super inspired by by his whole ethos and the idea of not just not just making art pieces and sculptures although i think there's a place for that for sure um that's just not what i'm specialized in is making objects that are like beautiful and less but better like make them as drip down as they can be and make them the most impactful

42:10Chris Cruz:product they can be which i i need to continue to practice that i'm a little bit more of the like okay this is good i'm like wait no it could be simpler it could be simpler yeah all right so tell me tell me which product you're like this one just didn't didn't land for for me um who that's a tough one too um the the thing that came to mind which is funny is actually the one that made half a million dollars on kickstarter um because well for one people also have a misperception that that half a million dollars doesn't go straight to your pocket uh between shipping manufacturing Kickstarter fees and everything.

42:47Chris Cruz:We're not talking profit here. Yeah. It's like, it's fun to talk revenue and nobody wants to talk about profit. But the reason that came up was like, and it has so many like negative connotations in my mind, even though the product was really successful, people still have it on their desk. They still love it. I just learned a lot about like losing control and not having my hand in things and how I wanted to run the company. I think my eyes got big and i was like wow we could you know sell this to target we could go into the momo museum store we literally got a call from the shark tank producer and was like hey we're gonna bypass you for the first two rounds we saw your kickstarter and we didn't end up going forward with it thankfully because we had all these delays in manufacturing things but it was almost like it was the product that almost set me off course of what i wanted to be doing wow um and we had some problems with the the wood warping and the injection mold and it shouldn't we should have done things differently from like an actual physical design standpoint um i just had never designed a product like that i i didn't know about tolerances and things like that and it set me on this path of thinking like yeah kind of chasing the dream of like this could be huge and wow a lot of dollar signs that would be nice and went through the trenches of like digging out of that making sure all the customers were happy making sure the products that left our hands left still has my name on it and it's still it's ugmonk so i want to make sure it's good um and kind of course corrected because of that whole fiasco and pulled things back and now we're doing things more uh locally and in-house and intentionally so yeah that love that as a product it was great as a designer and the person behind the product i'm just like i cringe a little bit every time i think about it because it was it was two years really of of of trials going through to get get back to bounce back from that okay bro that's insightful that's really insightful all right a couple a couple more questions here um what one question i have for you as a person and a brand that has tons of different products yourself and some curated ones do you find that there's a balance you've wrestled with or how do how do you navigate too many products and feeling like i've got too much stuff on the shelves.

45:03Chris Cruz:I've got too much stuff to distract my customers. How do you feel like you're handling the right products and making sure that those products are the right ones and not getting lost in having too much or too little? How have you found that balance? I think it started with the idea that I could bring in complimentary products to what we sell. This was 2018, I believe, when we started doing this, bringing in other brands' products to complement what we do. Like I'm not going to the, and kind of my rule was I'm not going to, if I'm not going to design it or reinvent it, let's, let's choose the best one out there.

45:37So Hasami Porston makes these beautiful mugs. They've been making them for hundreds of years. These ceramic mugs and they were super clean. So we decided to bring those in. There's pen brands and, and you've got Lecterm and Lamy and all these other brands that I've been making pens and they're experts at making pens. I don't want to reinvent like an ink cartridge in a pen. Maybe someday we'll make our own version of it. But for like ease of use, if you're buying the analog system and you have this on your desk and you want a nice pen, we wanted to start carrying complimentary products that kind of enhance the experience of what we do and to introduce people just to like interesting brands that I came across and almost like five things I'm digging, but in store, like, I bet you guys haven't heard of these scissors, like these magnetic HMM scissors that balance on your desk and they have a little box cutter on them.

46:29And, um, but so we, we pushed pretty, not hard, but we went pretty wide in that lane for a while. And now we've kind of tailored it back and trying to be more focused on specifically like what enhances the analog productivity desk organization space. Um, is that the future for you?

46:47Chris Cruz:That's, that's my question yeah my last question for you is what's the future of ugmonk and what is the product or is there a product to product through whatever it is that you're going this is the future of the brand we're really building around this now yeah so that's kind of where where i'm at now is like is is tools that help people work better and work and live better um which is a broader description and it's always like you know it's always a working tagline but um specifically around physical analog lowercase a analog tools um that can enhance those things so it doesn't have to be like at your job but like if you can use the card system all right we just launched this new i've got this one in front of me too this is our new capture uh capture cards and card bar okay which is like this aluminum rail um it's got multiple slots the cards can go in front of each other and you can you can move around um this can be useful in so many different ways but i i want to like you can be a writer you can be an artist you can be you can have it in your wood shop you could put drawings up there but this idea of like creating these tools that help people improve their life through a small way um with tools that they interact with every day and okay so what you're what you're saying i love and i love how you're you're kind of doubling on kind of that way for your brand to show up with those kinds of products.

48:09Chris Cruz:Here's my actual last question now, because I'm like, this is where I'm intrigued like a learner now. And when you have these products that have these incredible use cases, these interesting features, the sliding rail on all of these things, how do you navigate only talking about features versus storytelling and being able to communicate a little bit deeper versus is like, here's the cool features, but where, how do you figure out that balance and communicate versus just talking only about the features? I think I'm still figuring that out. Um, I know internally a lot of what the benefits of using the products are.

48:46I tend to talk way too much about the features or the design and the craftsmanship. And I have a friend that's like,

48:52Chris Cruz:it's so hard. He's like, you always tell me like how great the wood finish is and that it's solid walnut and that is this but like what can it do for me because not everybody meets out on like the paper stock and the the materials um but yeah i want to do a good friend i want to yeah i know i want to do more of the storytelling um and trying to film some more content and trying to get on camera more of me explaining like the why behind things you know why does analog look the way it is why is it a card not a notebook what is uh you know out of sight out of mind what are these concepts because I think it's all there, but right now, you know, it's 2025 and you know, we're September 2025.

49:31And I feel like a lot of those are buried under the surface and they only come out if you're talking to me or like you, you dig a little harder. So, um, I want to bring more of a community aspect and get people sharing their stories. Like we just had somebody writing a book, like taking these, these cards, they sent me a picture, they went on a writing retreat and they came back with a stack of the cards with all of the different chapters and they're like rearranging it. I'm like, this is incredible. We need to tell people about this.

49:56Chris Cruz:Yes. Those, those use cases are remarkable. Even some of the ones that you were mentioning with kids with ADHD or things like that. I'm like, Oh my gosh, your, your, your system is helping brains. It's helping us figure out how to make our lives be what we want them to be versus simply thinking I'm only going to be productive today. But like on here is also reminders for myself times where it's not, it's not simply just hey i gotta call a call this this company to send them this thing it's like also it's send a text message to so and so and it's like there's these things that make me a better human that are added to my my use for analog so i'm grateful for the product thanks for this conversation i'm looking forward to doing even more conversations like this with you and hearing about the future and how it goes for you and excited to see how as ugman continues to grow and influence how people live their lives with an intentional way.

50:48Chris Cruz:So thanks, man. I appreciate the conversation today. Yeah, thanks for having me on. I didn't even know you were a fan before this. I didn't even know you had the product. So it's kind of cool to make that connection.