How Kris Dehnert Built a $55M Brand Without Selling His Soul

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0:18Being a true visionary, can you see something so vividly, so clearly, that everybody else around you can see it as well? If they can, now you're at a point where you can, I love to say this, and people laugh, give direction, not directions. You paint this picture so clearly that they see it, feel it, taste it, hear it, and you can just back away. The micromanagement is not necessary. What you'll find is that people really flourish in an environment like that.

0:55Chris, so one of the things that I've taken away from your work and just the way that you handle yourself, Instagram channel, just looking through all your stuff. You're very authentic, dude, very transparent, dude, right? And you've had to come through business failures. Like you said, this is your ninth business, like, you know, ups and downs and all that shit. And I find for a lot of people, especially people that kind of reach out on the side after a guest have like these side questions. A lot of this shit comes back to like ego status. Like I'm scared to fail because what will this person think or if I fail here, then I'll never get money for my next business.

1:34Or how did you working through the various ups and downs, like stay yourself, like not get caught in. I got Charlie Kirk signing my bats and athletes and, you know, all these famous celebrities, you know, and you're getting all this attention. How do you kind of stay who you are, stay grounded in what makes you successful when you're going through all this shit? I mean, it's kind of it's two parts, right? Number one, you've got to know who you are. And that comes down to just kind of reflection and being honest with yourself. I know who I am and I know who I'm not. I know what the shit I'll put up with and I know what I won't put up with.

2:14I think understanding the makeup of you is important. And then really understanding that who you are and what you do are two different things. Because a lot of times those lines get blurred. And, and lastly, and probably most importantly, like, you know, I have a whole talk I do about currency, you know, and the different types of currency and not just dollars, right. But like real currency, time, experiential living, relationship capital, things like this. I think understanding what your core currencies are is super important. Because like, if I'll run into, like you said, you know, the hardships in business, but I'll, I'll be gaining a lot.

3:04Like this summer I was, I was completely useless from the business standpoint, but I spent, I mean, I partied with my kids all summer. We went to Chicago, we went to, uh, uh, the Bahamas, we went to Michigan. We did, we went bowling like 40 times, right? Literally. And, and it's just like this summer I collected a currency that is really finite, you know, not the dollar bill. So I think when you realize you can accrue different currency simultaneously, you don't get so I'm not winning or losing only, right? Like, because I didn't make a dollar or$10 or a million dollars. You know, I think that mentality saves my ass a lot.

3:50How does someone determine which currencies are important to them and which aren't reflection asking themselves right you gotta just you know what's important to you you know if you're if your parent has a month left and you knew that now how important would each day be right it's just reflection man like and and i got you know i got kind of sick when my daughter was born about she was about six months old and um could have not been here. You know, I got sick enough where I could have had a different, you know, that alternate timeline you're talking about. I don't even know what this timeline would look like.

4:29You know, everybody I've impacted ever since 2015. Right. So it's, it's a time experiential living. Can I play with my friends? Am I having fun? You know, these are the questions. And that's why I got the golf company, the cigar line, the bat mug company. I still do consulting, but that's because I get to chat with cool people, you know, on cool projects and shit. So for me, that's kind of how I measure things anymore. And that's what I tell people other people to do too. It's like, oh, if you get some advice to a young entrepreneur, what would you say? I'm like, that. Figure it out sooner than later because you could be running real hard.

5:09You don't have to go in the right direction. That doesn't do you much good. I love this idea of understanding what currencies are important to you. Yeah. And this to me seems like a really core tenant of being able to persevere. Because when you haven't, you know, I sold my business right at the end of 2023. And that was the first time that I like didn't know what I wanted to do next. And it's very first world problem. You know, you sell a business and now all of a sudden you're having some existential crisis. But like, you know, it's tough when you're like a doer and a builder and a creator. and all of a sudden you're like looking out at the world going, what do I do now?

5:49Like I had this thing that I did for all this time. And now, like you said, detaching your identity from what you do and who you are. And it's not easy. It's not easy. It's a daily practice. It's not something, oh, I figured that out next. Check that box. And it doesn't work that way. You know, it's just like being clean or dirty, fat or skinny. Like it's a daily practice, dude. You know, whatever you do consistently is going to be the outcome. So reminding yourself that I am also independent of what I do is important. Yeah, and it's when those bad days come. There's this idea. I'm working this idea through my head and through my own experience because when you have those moments where maybe business isn't going well, but you can spend, like you said, not that your business isn't going well, but maybe take someone whose business isn't going well, the currency associated with that part of their life isn't what they want it to be, but they're spending more time with their kids or they're able to be the coach or whatever, whatever's important to them there or time with a spouse partner, you know, that, that balancing and perspective and awareness.

6:53And that seems to me like how you get through it. Cause otherwise you just marinate in the bad shit that's happening in your business. And all of a sudden you find yourself on a, on a habit, a habit train that that's never going to get you back to where you want to be or just you know the perpetual lack of fulfillment yeah you know you're always trying to fill a cup that never really mattered if it was full or not what a fucking useless waste of time that would be so so dude talk to me how did you get to where you are as an entrepreneur today you got multiple businesses you still use some consulting obviously uh dugout mugs is blown up all over the place.

7:33I mean, anybody who's even touched baseball and sports even beyond that has seen these things, wants them, you know, et cetera. Talk to us about that journey. Because I know this isn't certainly your first business. So how did you get to this place? Like, how did you become the entrepreneur that you are today? Well, it starts all the way back at Gold's Gym, actually. That's where the whole journey started. And, you know, I was able to kind of learn people, you know, and, and, and the core of everything I do and, and all the projects I've been involved in, the wins, the losses, everything, it all comes down to people, right?

8:11Even in a world that's so digital and technical, you know, really comes down to people. And that's where I really learned people and my, and people skills. Now, my stepfather was a town barber. My dad was a car salesman. My mom was a solo entrepreneur before it was cool. So like, I've been around very outgoing people my whole life and that's a true blessing um and and i actually think that's where the kids are falling off right now is the the lack of interpersonal skills right but that's a whole other conversation but i think that was where it started for me was dug out or uh gold's gym and you know i was i leveraged this new website that came out called facebook and how to uh talk one to many and get people to drive into the club and i was putting up record numbers for the state We were winning awards for the Southeastern United States for the best club.

8:59You know, I was top sales 18 months in a row. I mean, there's no more room on my wall for awards, right? And that's when I really figured out that I had a knack for connecting with people and sales and communicating, right? Like really just communicating. And a guy came up to me. His name was Brian. I always remember I was standing at the front desk, and he said, the owner's never going to step aside and let you have this place. You've gone as far as you can go. And I was like, oh, that's a good point. And I put in my two weeks and it happened to be April Fool's Day, which was hilarious. And they're like, oh, I'm like, no, I'm serious.

9:38I'm out. I'm out. And so then I went into real estate in 2007, 2008, right when everything was crashing, but I was flipping short sales with a buddy of mine, Mike. And that's when it really kind of ramped up. I realized that I could go from knowing nothing about real estate to being a national influencer in a matter of six months. It shouldn't be like that. But what I learned in that in that time is that if my plan's better than their plan, they're going with my plan. and and this is something that has carried on into several other companies and I can explain it in a little bit but being a true visionary can you see something so vividly so clearly that everybody else around you can see it as well and if they can now you're at a point where you can you know I love to say this and people laugh give direction not directions and and you paint this picture so clearly that that they see it feel it taste it hear it and then you can just back away and the micromanagement is not necessary and what you'll find is that that people really flourish in an environment like that especially the newer age uh employees and the younger kids and the generations coming up the micromanagement's not cool right they're not feeling that as much but if you can be this legendary visionary and and have them see your vision they can walk towards it, usually without your involvement, because I'm a huge fan of outsource, delegate, automate, replicate, right?

11:13And just get the hell out of the way. Like I am, I do not want to be in the way. I want to do what I do best and then outsource the rest of it and, you know, keep that train going. So anyway, back to the real estate side of it, I started to realize that I could, I could see these visions and I had national guys on TV were hiring me to do online what I was doing for myself without the all the credibility and recognition right so anyway my that's when I launched my um my uh consulting company I had you know probably 50 60 thousand dollars a month I was bringing in just telling people what to do and it's beautiful I loved it and um then all the technology right the the Facebook and the Instagram and way back when it was called realestateinvestor.com and MySpace and way back.

12:01And what I identified is that these platforms gave you an opportunity to speak one to many, but in a very interpersonal, personal style conversation, which was my forte. So then it was like, okay, so I just communicate and connect and whatever. And I started getting these big pages, the biggest page in the world for Tim Tebow or Duck Dynasty or Andrew Luck or any of these, you know, all I did was created a fan page for these people. But because I understood how to communicate with people better than they did on their own, my pages grew bigger, faster, stronger. And then I was like, oh, so now I controlled 7 million fans I had at one point.

12:41And it's like, so what do you guys want to buy? And they started telling me, I was like, okay. So I go over to the resources. I'm like, hey, I'm sourcing this. And then I got into the print on-demand t-shirt world back in like 2013, 2013, something like that. There was a brand that came out, it was called Teespring. You know, I'll give them a shout out even though they screwed me over. But if you're a maintenance supervisor for a commercial property, you've had to deal with everything from leaky faucets to flickering light bulbs. But nothing's worse than that ancient boiler that's lived in the building since the day it was built 50 years ago.

13:15It's enough to make anyone lose their cool. That's where Grainger comes in. With industrial grade products and dependable fast delivery, Grainger can help with any challenge from worn out components to everyday necessities. Call, click Grainger.com or just stop by. Grainger for the ones who get it done. I got on Teespring and we ended up doing like$20 million in sales, on demand t-shirts, no inventory, no nothing, using OPM, other people's money to pay for it all. It was kind of dreamy. And then I got into physical products and I was like, oh, this is pretty cool. And we made a bunch of money and then I lost money.

13:53I was in the cannabis space. I was in a restaurant. I was anywhere I could literally burn money into ashes. That's what I got involved in. And, you know, and if we're talking about actual application of thoughts, like from an investment standpoint, point now, one of my first, first check boxes is can I impact this deal positively using my skill set or my network? If not, I don't invest, right? And that has served me pretty well. And I've stopped burning money to death. And, you know, one thing led to another. And, you know, I got sick in 2015 and I came out the other side of that with a completely different mindset.

14:39And we can dig into that later if you want to. But but then I came out for the sake of time, I'm going to shorten it. And I came out of that and I met a guy named Randall who invented a baseball bat mug. Right. And to me, this was the same as a T-shirt. It was a blank canvas that I could put something on. And I told Randall, he was like, I need you to invest. I'm like, I got no money. I burned it all basically. I just got done being sick and almost dead. Like I can't do that. But what I can do is I can, I could take this thing for a ride. So if you want to quit your job, call me back and we'll partner up and, you know, chop the company.

15:14And we took it from 60 or 70 ,000 in sales. So we're over 55 million now selling bat mugs. Right. So that's a sped up version of 15 years, but that's kind of how we got here. I want to dig into this idea of like, so you said something that I found very intriguing. You've, one of the ways that you started to leverage an audience and build an audience and a distribution mechanism was by creating fan pages for companies that weren't paying you. Is that, is that the idea? So you would, you would pick a celebrity influencer brand, et cetera, create a fan page for it, grow an audience and, and then dig into that audience for products that they could potentially want associated with that, that you could create?

15:57Is that the, the, the block? Yeah. So, so what I looked at is it's, it's, um, I call it data harvesting, right? What, if I put something out there for, let's say duck dynasty, cause that's the picture on my wall over here, a picture or a gift I got from them. So it's like, if I get, if I put that out there, who is the demographic, right? I always try to dig a few layers deeper. Who's going to follow that page we know the demographic that's going to follow that page more likely Christian more likely older more likely certain interests and things like that so what I did is I would post with purpose I would post things that would gauge or where I could gauge interest you know everything was a test for me if I posted a certain design with a verse on it from the Bible in that way and people really resonated with that.

16:50I was like, the media, like, hey, what do y 'all think if I put this on a shirt? You know, it was, it was this A-B testing instant, right, because you're using social media, and the fans for, like, sports are way more predictable. They're only buying when their team's winning, for the most part. We know the type of stuff they're going to get, and it's really just aggregating all this data, right? Because I don't look sophisticated, but I'm a data guy. I really lean into data as much as I can. And you got to trust it, right? So that's what we did a lot of with these pages. We tried to understand who's following, why they're following, what they're following for.

17:33And then what I did is kind of a 2.0 of that. I use gamification a lot. And gamification, are you familiar with gamification? Yes. Yeah. So I loved it, right? Even something as simple as you post two pictures and now with AI, oh my God, like this would, what a dream that would have been back then where I could take a picture and say, hey, I come up with five differences in this picture and duplicate the picture here. That post, you put it out there and say, Sue, the first person to guess all five. Well, all we're doing was manipulating the algorithm, right? So all this engagement, people staying on the picture, zooming in and out, commenting, man and it would just it would just manipulate the algorithm to a point where every time we would post every time we do anything there's so much engagement that the organic sales and traffic were just through the roof and you know then we did games where the first person to comment uh five times in a row wins something well then there's people commenting 10 times a second right and it's just i mean with 40 50 000 comments what does that do the algorithm of Facebook or Instagram, right?

18:39It was amazing. So I started again, because I felt like I understood people and why they were there, what they were there for, and God forbid they win. I got to give them something worth like 10 or 20 bucks. Yeah. Right. But what did I get in return, you know, from a growth standpoint? And then, yeah, so that's kind of what we did with the pages. But ultimately, I always post with purpose because I'm not here to the... The vanity metrics are useless. Oh, I have 10 million followers. It's like, dude, how much money did those 10 million people make you? Right. That's a real number. Right. And from a business standpoint, when you're looking at bottom line, vanity metrics aren't on the spreadsheet, you know?

19:25Where did this idea come from? Like, how did you like this, this fan page business? Because again, and I'm not, I'm not interested just in the fan page side. I know a lot of people, like so many people today so many owners this is where they get stuck dude like like the stuff you're describing the second level stuff that you're describing not the tactics of the page but the stuff that i'm really interested in is is this this idea of thinking through like your like your duck dynasty example right developing a fan page for duck dynasty because you understand the demographics associated with that brand and know then you can find ways to add value and ultimately extract it as a business like that's a level that's a second level thinking where most people stop at i need to find something i like and create a faceless fan page because i was told that they make you know five thousand dollars a month from wherever right like they gets caught in the surface what are some what are some of these second level ideas like data of harvesting, like trying to gamify things that you found work over and over and over again or continue to work today?

20:37Gamification and reverse engineering, right? So number one, something you just said, people think, well, stop because that does not matter. What you think is so irrelevant, like it doesn't matter at all. You could have an idea, but that's it. And then you put it out there and you get real world feedback you know mr wonderful take the dog out back and shoot it right take it behind the barn man sometimes but you got it you you you gotta rely on feedback and and actually that's what happened with randall when he gave me the mug i was like that's kind of goofy i think but he's like carried around for a week took me like three days i carried it around i was like all right dude you're right i was wrong let's go right thank god i was i wasn't chock full of ego uh at this time where i was like no that's stupid and i know everything right and walked away i would have missed out on a tremendous opportunity um so gamification and i feel like gamification for interaction is always going to be relevant and i think it comes down to a couple of things it's it's the average um person's mentality when they're scrolling through through social media.

21:50They're sheep, right? And I hate to be so blunt about it, but it's what it is. They're sheep. They have an attention span of a housefly, right? It's like you got four seconds. If you made them laugh and even in the post, if it says share, if you laughed, like they're that basic. They're like, oh, I laughed, share, right? And it just starts going viral. And then, but all pages are different. So you have to try different things. All audiences are different. You have to try different things. And once you find something that works, you do more of that thing. It's not rocket science, right? And then the reverse engineering piece of it is kind of start with the end in mind, right?

22:35I know that's obvious, but that's important. You know, what is what is the metric you're measuring by here? Like what, what do you consider a success? And then what does that look like when you, with here's the, here's the end. Well, then if I need success, I need 10 people to buy something. And if 10 % of people engage and I need to get a hundred, right? Like it just kind of back it out. And then, and it kind of at least helps you put the, the, the rails in place, you know, the, the infrastructure a little bit.

23:11this stuff takes a lot of discipline, right? Because what happens is you get busy. Anything we're doing does. Yeah, you just throw up, yo, I got to be active today, so I throw some nonsense post up. And I've been guilty at this probably times too in what I do. And you get it up there and you get that little dopamine hit of, oh, I was active today. I put something on my page. Nothing happens. You get one comment. You know what I mean? And then you just rinse and repeat the next day. And so I completely agree. Everything we're doing takes discipline. But when you're running multiple organizations or you're trying to run multiple pages or you're doing like, how do you personally stay committed to these things?

23:51Like, is it just having a North Star? Do you have a system? Do you have a process? Like you have a lot of things going on, right? You're responsible for different decisions in your business. As much as you say you outsource, automate, et cetera. How do you stay disciplined through these decisions to make sure that you're not just being active for active stake and you're actually continuing to do the things that push the ball up the mountain? Well, if you take a look at my business pages right now, you will see that they are not being attended to. And that comes down to the fact of the hierarchy of importance.

24:23It's not important for me to be doing that right now. It's more important for me to be fixing the gears within my company with things like tariffs, with things like labor, with things like cost of goods increase, with the things like the economy doing weird stuff. Right. Like so, in fact, that's, you know, I'm living that, you know, you will see that it is not the most important thing I need to be focusing on. So I don't do it right now. Would things work better if I did? Sure. Right. But when I only have so much time in a day, and in my world, money's not always the North Star, right? I dropped my kids off at school this morning.

25:00They started back, right? I'm going to pick them up from school today, right? So there's other things that are more important to me. And if it's that or posts on social media, well, social's just going to be crickets for a bit, right? Now, on my personal stuff, which is more private, it's consistent. You know, I'm consistent on there because that's where I share my world with my very close circle. And in, you know, until I can do it better on social or put somebody in place to do it better on social the way I would want it done. We're just going to let it let it idle. But, yeah, I mean, how do you stay dead?

25:41And I see now if you go back to when I had pages, that was my business. Right. Right. Like that was like that was the point. So we had we had meetings. And I think digitally and this is something for the listeners, too, is like digital, you know, the whole world went digital and people treated it as like a side hustle or just a digital thing. We had meetings. We had we had designer meetings. We have creative meetings. We had ad meetings, you know, for ad spend and things like that. you have to treat it like a business if you don't have the discipline to work from home I've worked from over over 10 years way before it was cool right I had the discipline to do that a lot of people don't and you have to understand that and that comes down to self-reflection if you can't do something the right way you know that's not the way you need to do it yeah so so anyway that's a lot of answers to the question but no i think it's good stuff man i mean i i think your point on the hierarchy of importance i'd like to dig into because one i think this idea of a hierarchy importance incredibly is is important because what hierarchy of importance is important you can tell my brain to mouth is working really well today um so because i this is this is essentially right strategy which is which is prioritization and what you know i think a lot of people look at you and from your business from the outside and say, well, shit, he's got a physical product company.

27:13He's selling these, these mugs, you know, he's got to be active on social. He's got to be driving new leads. He's got to be driving new traffic, you know, and they would get caught up in, and okay. So if someone's listening to this and they're, and they're, they're, they're kind of latched onto this idea of a hierarchy of importance, not necessarily your hierarchy, but how do they think through the things in their business to understand how to create it for themselves right i think people get lost in this they get lost in what they feel like they should do versus what they actually need to be doing and don't necessarily have a plan for figuring out what that is as crazy as it might sound yeah and then it's and then the whole plan is just we're going to try to make more money than we spend yes and that's not scalable it's doable it's not scalable and it's not fun um I would say you know reflection man it's reflection and and I know what I'm not good at I know what I'm really good at I know what I'm not good at I know what I like and I know what I don't like and and you got to be really clear about this I mean I'm doing a 290 pound guy why am I not out there jumping hurdles probably because I'm not going to get over it, right?

28:29Like maybe I shouldn't be running hurdles. And that's what a lot of people do. Like I've seen some of the worst sales pitches on earth coming out of some founder's mouth. I'm like, dude, you don't need to talk to people in public. Like you're horrible at it. You did yourself a disservice just now. So like my point is, it's like if you're not good at sales, don't sell. If you're not good at public speaking, get the hell off the stage. You know, find somebody who, you know, is your, the puzzle pieces, you know? And now there's times, I'm not, you know, I'm not foolish. I realize that at the beginning of a business, you are, you know, you wear all the hats.

29:10You're the janitor, you're the CEO, the CFO, the CMO, you know, and the salesman. But it has to be very short-lived in my opinion. You have to be very clear on what you stand for, what you don't stand for, what you're good at, what you're not good at, what you like, what you hate. I hate numbers. I hate the bean counting, right? Like I want to be the visionary. I want to be involved in the sales, the marketing, the promotion. Put me on TV. You know, I'll fly up to New York and be on Fox and Friends. Put me on, you know, World News Tonight, right? Like that's where I belong, front man. And I haven't been to the warehouse in like weeks, right?

29:53I wasn't, you know, hanging out with the kids in Bahamas and all over the place. Weeks. I don't belong there. I'm not good there. I just get in the damn way. So I think, you know, on a smaller scale, when people are getting started, you still have to understand these things about yourself and, and try to avoid those, those lanes as best you can. Yeah. We talk about it. Um, in my company, we talk about it as zone of genius and, uh, the company that I'm currently running, I started actually as an angel and, and board member. and these guys were great technical founders very very nerdy smart top of their industry top of what they do as much as i love them the death couldn't sell their way out of a box and you know what ended up happening was you know to this conversation of zone of genius i'm raising capital business development visionary they are ones and zeros dotted eyes cross t's guys and you know we had a very long conversation around look like the operations of the business are a mess the product itself is fucking amazing but the product is never going to get in the hands of your customers if this operation if you know if operationally there's no pipes connected you know what i mean like we this is this is a problem and when we move them out of um you know operational leadership over into the technical side where now all they had to do every day was wake up and operate in their zone of genius.

31:25And I stepped in and took over an operational role as the president running day to day. Now, all of a sudden, the last three months, we've seen, you know, we've seen this massive uptick. To your point, it took and I give them incredible props, you know, very proud of them for making the decision to say, you know, it's a tough decision to say, like, I'm going to step out of operations as the founder you know the person who came up with the idea for the company in the first place to step aside um but it's again it's just aligning they had the self-awareness to know this is not what i'm good at like i don't see the deals i don't see the connections i don't see how to get from this point but i can make the ones and zeros do that no one else can do right and like i think i think for a lot of people out there um these are like you these are conversations we have to have, we can't avoid these conversations.