Build for Community, Not the Playbook

0:00Bart Szaniewski:We've sold over a million hats and over, I think,$36 million in revenue in four years. How are you selling this many hats and you're still on a basic free template? We're selling a hat that says Dad King on it. It's a very good, high quality hat. But don't overcomplicate that process. Let's serve simple dads. Everybody's always thinking about like, oh, I saw Brand X added this thing under their site and they said that this lifted so we should get it too. I just don't think businesses exist that way. And today we have Bart Shanefsky, founder of DadGang, joining the show. One guy was like, I love that hat.

0:34Bart Szaniewski:I just bought it, but I'd love to see it in a duck camo with an orange outline. We tried it, showed it to the guy. He's like, oh my gosh, this is amazing. I can't believe you guys actually made a hat that I just asked for in a group. And then we'll post it on Instagram. That's it. If the comments go off, you know, take my money, take my card, all that kind of stuff. It was funny, like, I want it now comments. They will go ahead and trial it. But we don't have like that much pride in ourselves to always think that what we're designing is going to be the best. And we want these dads to really impact the brand.

1:10Bart Szaniewski:Sample it. Try it. Does well. Great. If it doesn't do well, we tried it. We want to be able to give back to the community so much that we don't want to put up these like typical business barriers so their stuff can't get made.

1:25bart welcome i'm happy to practice this last name of yours welcome to marketing trends yeah thanks for having me on i really appreciate it yeah i'm excited so where are you where are you calling in

1:34Bart Szaniewski:today uh i am in bonnie lake washington which is uh probably unheard of but it's uh yeah i don't know where that is i actually grew up in auburn which is like 15 minutes away and like an hour south of Seattle. But yeah, I'm in the northwest. We got some forest fires going. August is always just we got some orange sun sunshine this morning. Yeah, it's very smoky outside. Okay, well, sending lots of love your way. I heard about the fires. Yeah, all good here. It's mainly Spokane that's affected. Yeah, that's been terrible. Yeah, yeah. So tell me a bit about your background before we dive into dad gang.

2:16I want to hear a little bit about who you are. So then we know how you got into this company that you're in.

2:21Bart Szaniewski:Yeah, I was born in Poland, moved over to the US when I was seven. So just from a kid, I was just kind of enamored with American culture because it was so different than growing up in Poland and kind of, you know, they're back then, you know, we had like two channels on tv i was born in 88 so when i moved over from poland i was just kind of enamored with american culture especially like sneakers and sports and fashion and all that stuff and always knew that i was um just interested in kind of the like popular stuff the stuff that kind of moves culture whether it's fashion or sports or music um but i went to college never really like knowing what I wanted to do truly.

3:07Bart Szaniewski:I went in wanting to be a dentist because they made a lot of money. And it was like, I had a buddy who had a dentist dad. I was like, oh, this is, it looks like this could be a good life. And then I ran into chemistry in college and I was like, okay, I can't, I can't do this. So, but I was always really into like 2008. I was really into like the blogging era of marketing, um, writing blogs to bring traffic to your website. It used to be a strategy that worked really well. And so I like would spin up random entertainment blogs around music and fashion and sports while I was in college and then graduated with a degree in digital technology and culture, which is like, that's the stuff I was into.

3:51Bart Szaniewski:And they had a major name that was like, yes, I need these credits. So let's do that. And yeah, just through blogging and being into like social media early on, like right around the time YouTube was kind of getting to be a thing. I just wanted to like stay within that lane of marketing, blogging, digital stuff and within apparel for the most part. And so I've worked for random companies that needed bloggers. It wasn't some like, I was just learning on the fly for the most part. But I knew every website, every shop needed some form of attention. And how you get that attention was blogging back in the day, along with some social media posting.

4:38Bart Szaniewski:So after college, I worked for free for a bunch of people just to get a ton of experience. Parents are pissed. They're like, what are you doing? You're not making any money. You just went to college. But so I started looking for some work and just kind of working for, I think one of my first gigs was like$300 a month, which is still like, this is nothing. But hope you're having fun. And then eventually a company called StrideLine noticed all the stuff I was doing in the Seattle area. And they were an athletic stock company and asked if I wanted to come be their head of marketing. I was their first employee.

5:17Bart Szaniewski:There's two founders. Okay. and like wow you really jumped up and rank quickly yeah i was like are you sure i get that title um they're like well let's start with like social media something um and so i joined a company and i worked there i was the first employee at stride line and worked there for six years um and really got to like own marketing uh both the founders were great founders operators but not really like they didn't even like use their own personal instagrams they didn't even like really know how to approach that world. And so I took that on for six years and, and it was an awesome experience.

5:55Bart Szaniewski:It was kind of like, here's all the tools. We barely have any budget, but try what you can. And so really got to do like everything from, from photo shoots to running email, SMS, working with like dev teams on building good converting websites, all the things that like you work with a marketing agency for. I was just one guy trying at all times. And then as the company grew, I got enough experience to really be in a head of marketing role after six years there and then jumped over to the agency world after StrideLine and worked for a couple of smaller agencies as a head of growth for different brands and then worked as head of marketing, VP of marketing for other brands.

6:46Bart Szaniewski:And that whole time I was just like, okay, I'm doing this for years and years now. There's got to be a point in life where like, I've done enough that I could try it on my own or try it with some friends. And that's kind of where in 2021, so I left dad or sorry, left stride line, the sock company 2019. And then around 2021 becoming a dad being best friends with grant and ej just kind of realized that there was this like white space or kind of unserved area for dads where we're just getting like a bunch of comedy funny stuff online for dads and that was that's not the reality of being a dad there are some funny moments for sure it's not what you live through on a day-to-day basis.

7:33Bart Szaniewski:But like you'd open Instagram, you'd be like, oh, all these guys do is mow the lawn, drink beers and have dad bods. Right. And so nobody was really representing like the entirety of fatherhood. We would always be in a text thread just using the term dad gang when we were like venting to each other or looking for help around sleep schedules or just like, you know, having somebody to lean on. And through that, we're like, hey, let's let's make some hats. Let's say dad on them. There was no like business intention whatsoever, but through working at stride line at the agencies and head of marketing at other brands, I was like, in my head, I was like, Oh, this is, this is the thing.

8:12Bart Szaniewski:This is the thing that like, you know, it was the M &M say, you only get one shot and one opportunity. And I was like, maybe this is that one shot, one opportunity for myself and for the three of us in total. And so we really leaned into it, started the brand with just 100 hats, very, very little money,$250 each, and made the hats and spun up a Shopify store. And through that, we all had full-time jobs. It's not like 100 hats is going to sustain you. And so we just did that, launched it out of my garage, just packed everything ourselves. Very, very simple operation. Those hats sold out fairly quickly.

8:54Bart Szaniewski:So we're like okay let's do that again there's no like oh my gosh here we go this is big it was kind of like a lot of the shopify orders and stuff were just like friends and family were like well let's try it again let's get some more hats and those sold again and we were leaning into the storytelling and like the deep aspects of fatherhood and after a few rounds of getting inventory we're like okay this is this is something now because we're not recognizing some of the some of the people ordering our hats. So now we owe it to the community to keep going. And we love doing this. So let's try it.

9:31Bart Szaniewski:And then eventually, you know, some people were able to step away from their jobs and it was kind of starting to flow. And yeah, that's kind of like the very beginning of it, but still a very simple, carefree start. We didn't sit down and think business plan, complications, Let's quit our jobs. All this stuff is just like, let's see what happens. And that's been the energy. It's the energy today. Like, let's launch something, see what happens, rather than like this stress-filled scaling to the moon type of operation. Yeah, I was going to ask that. Fast forward to today. I think you've now sold over a million hats, right?

10:13And you're past 30 million in revenue in a couple of years. Like that's a lot of growth. Yeah. Are you still carefree? And like just, yeah, building in the same way.

10:24Bart Szaniewski:Yeah. We, while this interview is happening in August, we've sold over a million hats and over, I think,$36 million in revenue in four years. How? Wow. Right. I say that in my head too. That's a pretty good job. Yeah. but it's still this feeling of like we don't like when i was at the agency world and i worked on head of head of growth strategy for 30 brands in two years and it was i i'm like thankful for the experience but at the time it was like it was hell i like really did not at first it's like okay this is cool. We get to grow some brands. And then I got to like, see the kind of the ugly side of growth and the stress, the egotistical decisions, the, like the, the stress that comes from like, not necessity, but like random goal invention or random, like, okay, we did this.

11:32Bart Szaniewski:So now we have to do this next month. I think I saw so much of that. I saw people emotions get controlled by Shopify dashboards. If the number was up, they were up. If the number was down, they were down. It's just like, we will not start a business to start to invent more stress. Like if we go into this, let's just go casual. Let's see what happens. And let's serve simple dads. We're not like, we're selling a hat that says dad gang audit. It's a very good, a high quality hat with a deep meaning, but don't overcomplicate that process. Like product, person, like that is kind of the process at the end of the day.

12:14Bart Szaniewski:And so, yeah, when it's still like you just asked, like, is it still carefree? Sure, growth does bring some like forecasting and inventory allocation and projections, all that stuff. But like still, we haven't felt like this has gotten to the point where we need to start freaking out about things. And I really hope it never gets there. At least we try to keep that energy for the brand. Yeah. Yeah. That's amazing. So I know when we spoke a couple months ago, you were talking about how, you know, through all this growth, you keep it simple. And you're still, I think, on maybe a free Shopify theme.

12:54And you've got a lot of pushback for that where people are like, how are you selling this many? hats and you're not taking advantage of all that Shopify has to offer and you're still on a basic free template. Tell me more about this thinking and has anything shifted since since that?

13:08Bart Szaniewski:We're still on that free Shopify theme. It's called Dawn. It's like the first theme you get when you sign up for Shopify. My thinking around it is. Yes, we get pushback around it. You should be over-optimized for conversion. Get the coolest looking website. Every, I don't know, every two business days, something new comes in like, hey, a new email will come in while we're having this talk. And like, hey, I was checking out your website. And you could really boost conversion if you work with me and salesy stuff. And then people will say things, but to me, the path has always been good brand, good community, good product, easy shopping experience.

13:57Bart Szaniewski:You will understand it through the content and the ad. And this is my thinking for my product. I don't think you could sell supplements or a complicated robot this way. But good product, good community, good brand. The content will tell you everything. You just end up on the hat. So that's been the path. And we've added theme elements to the website where maybe there's a community bar showing off recent dads that have worn our hats, add a little bit more people to the website. But I've always just thought like, If we're going to build this a simple way, we don't, if a dad loves a dad gang hat or a wife wants to get one for her husband, she doesn't need to land on a website that takes her through a crazy path of getting that hat.

14:53Bart Szaniewski:It's just like, there's a hat I saw on Instagram, click add to cart and you're done. Rather than all these widgets and plugins and apps. Like that was another takeaway from the agency world is that like, everybody's always thinking about like, oh, I saw brand X added. this thing under their site. And they said that this lifted, so we should get it too. I just don't think businesses exist that way. It's like the human body. If you and I run, we're both get different results, right? And I don't think plugging in a tool because somebody else did is necessarily going to help your business. Yeah. Yeah.

15:33I agree. I was looking at a number the other day and I think it was like 1300 MarTech products disappeared last year. Like they just are gone. And I'm only imagining in 2026, that number is probably going to be like crazy. And so it's probably a good thing you avoided a lot of these different pitches of like little widgets on the website and conversion hacks and all that. And kind of kept it simple because it does seem like that's where the market is kind of going now is like consolidating less tools, less large of a tech stack and just simplifying. And especially for, you know, companies like yours, like a D2C company, like you probably don't need to have a thousand tools trying to optimize for the greatest conversion of all history.

16:15Bart Szaniewski:Right. No, a hundred percent. And if you have an issue on your website or like a potential opportunity, you can just prompt it, right? It's kind of become so fast whether you're using, I like both Manus and Claude for different things. What do we have? We have like a new hat launching soon called Golf and Dad. It's just for golfing dads, right? Simple yet again. And but in order to build that landing page, I used to have to work with a landing page software, landing page person, manager, designer, dev, blah, blah, blah. Now I just hop into Manus, say, hey, this is the product. Here's all the content I gathered for it.

16:58Bart Szaniewski:Here's what I'm here's what the product's all about. please build me a landing page i like to say please to my ai chats um and it just gets it done in about eight minutes rather than like that back and forth so i i would never say like i saw this coming because i did not but the fact that it's here even more so allows you to like build simply because you used to have to plan out like a week or more if you wanted a landing page design And now it's like, oh, if I have 15 minutes in the deck, probably get it done. So for your customers, are most of them coming from Instagram or how do people find you?

17:38Bart Szaniewski:Yeah. Majority of our of our traffic is is Instagram heavy. Facebook and Instagram. But if if we look at like we have a no commerce post purchase survey, where did you see us? Instagram is is usually way up there above all channels. Mm-hmm. Do you ever get concerned about being so heavy of acquiring new customers from Instagram? Yeah. I'd say every once in a while the thought crosses my mind, but at the same time, we really lean into building a real authentic, deep meaning brand and community. And I think that's super important today. While things are going so digital and so AI, is to like lean into real in person as gary v's been saying just more analog type of stuff and we have we have dads that have over we have a ton of dads that have over 20 hats we have a segment of dads that have over 100 hats and like people creeping up to like 200 in their collection so we want to keep people around not for the sake of like them buying more hats but like what else can the community actually do for people can we like meet up in person and golf or hang out or have like a i don't know a dad gang i i don't know like a conference would be cool you know where it's just like we all just have fun together and like get a break or something Um, but Instagram is still super heavy for us.

19:15Bart Szaniewski:And yeah, I think putting all your eggs in one basket when it comes to marketing is a risky approach. Um, so we still play around with Tik TOK. I've even done some like Reddit testing, app love and stuff, a little bit on Google, but I think building like a true authentic community organically really will, will help like alleviate that, that stress, I guess around that. Okay. So when thinking about community, you mentioned this a few times of like you have a really good active community. I think there was a moment in your story where someone at one point asked you, like, where is your community?

19:49And you couldn't fully answer it because you're like, yeah, I don't know if it's really the followers or the email count. Tell me more about about this. Yeah, that was Brock or no, it was Chris from Crossnet.

20:01Bart Szaniewski:If you've heard of that, it's like a four way volleyball game. OK. Oh, yes. Yes. I have heard of this. A lot of people here in Austin are super fans of this. I'm sure it's out there. But yeah, he asked me, he's like, man, you got all these like followers, blah, blah, blah. But where are they? And my answer initially was like a no brainer. I'm like, they're on Instagram. They're in my email. Like I've got all these emails and phone numbers and followers. And he's like, yeah, but those people are like scattered out. You know, you can't, you don't have a room where you can like speak to them. Because if you post on Instagram, what, 3 % to 10 % of your audience will see it.

20:40Bart Szaniewski:With your email, your open rates are 100%. Not everybody's reading everything. So I was like, dang, he's right. Where are they? And then he sent me an article from Brock, who owns the brand FrostBuddy. And he wrote a cool article about Facebook groups. And people use other digital groups. but I was like, well, our demo is like 30 to 45. That's like our biggest purchasing demo or communities made up of those men. And it's like, I know they're still somewhat active on Facebook. They probably log into certain platforms using Facebook. And so I was like, if I can put them all in there, they'll see everything that's posted and shared.

21:24Bart Szaniewski:And we wanted like a place where dads can just like ask questions about fatherhood and like your kid's starting school. How do I deal with that? Like little tidbits of advice. So I was like, well, let's just do the Facebook group. Once again, the approach was like, let's try and see what happens. And people started joining it really quickly. And we're at like, so we're at like 365 ,000 followers on Instagram and then 15 ,000 members in the Facebook group. so that like love all those followers on instagram don't get me wrong like that is also where the community is but as far as like being able to reach everybody facebook is is definitely the place and and we use it like it's it's got a bunch of uh there's just like more in there you can see behind the scenes of what we're developing stuff that's coming up sometimes you can get early access exclusive discount codes to the site.

22:24Bart Szaniewski:And then dad stuff, like not dad gang stuff, just stuff that you'd want to just advice on and deal with. And dads are always sharing like cool moments in there. So a little old sounding because people are like, what a Facebook group, but it works. And so I'm just kind of like, it works. I don't like, I'm not going to leave and change because somebody thinks I should have like a different forum or be somewhere else. It's just like, it works for our brand. Uh, the dads don't mind being in there. There's been no complaints around like, Hey, put us, put us somewhere else. Yeah. Right. And so, um, so it's worked and that is, yeah, he asked me, where are they?

23:08Bart Szaniewski:I answered. He's like, well, you don't have anybody then. And so moving them into Facebook really, really changed that. Yeah. I mean, I love that because if you do look at, you know, anyone maybe on Twitter or marketing groups, they would definitely be like Facebook groups, 2026. That's dead, not exploring. But I love your tagline for all of this stuff. It's like, it works. Boosting Instagram posts. It works. A basic template, you know, of the free template on Shopify. It works. So yeah, I love that. So for Facebook, is there anything you're strategically doing to try and stoke the engagement in these groups?

23:43So are you literally just created it and letting the members contribute? Or are you like posting certain content ideas and trying to also like, yeah, create engagement in there?

23:52Bart Szaniewski:It's not very strategic. Like I wish I could say, you know, I do this once a week. But it's we just incentivize those guys a lot. You know, we really want that group to be special. We want them to feel loved back from the brand. And so we incentivize it a lot. But I don't see that as like, personally, I don't think like, oh, here goes my strategy on growing this group. We, as far as growing the group itself, we have access into the group everywhere. So it's in our email flows. It's in our SMS flows. You can join it through our app. It's on our social channels. And then every once in a while, we'll send out a message that like, hey, we're launching this hat.

24:37Bart Szaniewski:But if you want it like 15 minutes before the launch, you're going to get the link in the group. I think like external group growth strategy happens. But as far as posting in there, like we keep it to the we keep kind of a wall there. So like your post has to get approved before it goes in because we really just don't want people like spamming other things or like reselling stuff in there because groups can turn into that. So we control what goes in, but for the most part, everything's approved because it's just dad sharing like cool life moments. Yeah. Oh, that's amazing. And inside this group, are you also, I think you're, you invite dads in to help with the design or new hat styles, correct?

25:19What does that look like? And is that only in the group or is that in other areas too?