Business 🤝 Values | Bear Handlon Co-Founder of Born Primitive

0:00This is the Gary Vee Audio Experience.

0:30being in the foxhole. No, most people don't do it. It's like you're freaking Nostradamus, man. Like when it comes to this stuff, you always know where the evolution is happening. And you're always like yelling from the rooftops of everyone. Like, Hey, heed my advice because this pivot is coming or Hey, there's this new platform. Like, how do you stay on top of that? And I, and I guess to load the question, where do you see the next evolution going? Now, let me try to put everybody on you should live on tiktok shop and whatnot it's happening right now in real time you're just selling stuff live it's happening literally right wow that's awesome literally right now as you can see obviously podcast people if you're listening right outside my office i built a studio it's literally right outside my office this is expensive real estate by the way we're in the middle of manhattan and they are literally live right now selling v friends trading cards by the way if you like Pokemon go to vfriends.com v friends.com so it's awesome so you think that's where it's going people want that instant I got it first I'm telling you right now exclusive vibe I believe five to twenty percent of the content in for you pages next year or the year after will be live streams social shopping has already happened in China see what I do well is I watch I'm very good at watching.

1:45It's really funny. I'm a real tough read at first, but if you, you know, it sounds like you really got me pegged at this point. Like I'm a weird dude. Like I'm always talking, but really it's only 1 % of what I do. I'm always actually just listening. Right. Yeah. That's awesome. I've got a lot of good perspective. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like you guys all see me when I'm talking, but you don't see the 15 hours that when I'm not talking every day that leads to me talking about shit that's good. But it's a lot of things that go into that. But live social shopping brother you need to bet the farm on it okay it's you know tick tock was a big one i was super right about that and it was early for people a lot of people remember it as a pandemic thing as you know i was yelling about musically let alone tick tock and i was talking about tick tock 17 and 18 yeah you were 19 there was so much getting good then but everybody was over infatuated with cac and ltv pre ios 14 5 on meta what they didn't realize was the brand building that comes along with virality of organic posts is more valuable than best practices on performance.

2:46Yeah. And the thing you call it in your book is too, is like the, when it's an early, when you're an early adopter of something new, the platform rewards you for leaning into that. It's like buying real estate when people don't see it yet. Yeah. Cause they want to cultivate that new platform. It's not even that they want to even cultivate it. It's just supply and demand. It's not even the platform's doing it for you. I thought maybe like, you know, for example, like when Instagram stories came out. no, no, no. That's smart. They were like, all of a sudden, CAC and stories was like nothing. That's a feature.

3:15Okay. Yeah. When a new feature comes along, yes, the platform wants to get data on it. So they will push that feature. So adopting the feature is smart. When a new platform comes along, that's meant to be a winner. What happened in TikTok was there was fucking 50 million people on it, but there was only a hundred thousand people taking serious, making content for it. Now, there could be 100 million people on it with 50 million people being serious making content. What the fuck do you think happens? Everyone's like, you know what's going on right now on Instagram? I'm shadow banned. You're not fucking shadow banned.

3:47You're losing on merit. There's more people posting than ever and you're not as good as you think you are. I stay on top of it because I'm a practitioner. So what's amazing is I'm a coach player. Just to give you context, this will maybe land for you. this is me writing the actual copy to my instagram post at 8 47 this morning love it do you have a team that ghost writes it and then you tweak it or was you write that original this as you can see they give me the content okay like we talk a lot with each other about what content they're putting out content they give me the things that they think i'll like and there is so like think about where I'm at and I'm writing my own my own Gary V words literally typing with my own fingers and we have so many people that get like six months of success and outsource everyone's so quick like so first of all I'm a practitioner number two I run one of the biggest marketing agencies in the world so forget about just what Gary V knows on the Gary V accounts which is a big personal brand account I run a 2500 person global company that has employees in Singapore and Malaysia and Amsterdam and Mexico City and Toronto.

5:04So I'm sitting at the desk of a company that's spending billions of dollars in media, making hundreds of millions of dollars in creative and I'm looking at the math and the quant and the qual. I also do a ton of investing. I'm also Gary Vee so entrepreneurs like me now and I'm getting hit up early on. Like Gary Vee, I just went from zero to 10 million in one week on Pinterest. I'm like, you did? Let's talk. Like I'm so in the traffic. I'm in the fucking traffic. Then I'm another thing. I'm selfless. Now I don't view me telling the world that this is happening as me losing out on something. A lot of my most sophisticated friends in the world think when they see something that no one else sees, they get quiet.

5:51I get loud. Got it? Yeah. No. And that's a complete inversion, right? Because people, Oh shoot. I know the new trick. I know YouTube shorts is a new thing. I'm not going to say shit, right? I'm going to put a ton of content into shorts, right? Cause I want mine, right? You're the opposite. I am. Right. That's awesome. I'm the opposite because I think the world's abundant and I feels good. Like it feels good to sit opposite someone at a table who has admiration for you that you've earned. Yeah. It feels nice. There's no, you know, I'm even getting the goosebumps there's no dollar amount that's like um five million dollars right now put on this table doesn't feel better than the way i'm feeling sitting opposite of you the countless endless emails texts and dms i get that just say thank you do you know what it feels like when somebody dms you and says i had a t-shirt business that was failing i was fucking working as a fucking pre like a lawyer that i was miserable but i had to pay for my fucking family i could this thing was about to give up, but I saw your TikTok thing.

6:48On the ninth TikTok I made, I sold 10 ,000 t-shirts. Three years later, Gary, I'm doing$3.3 million. I make double my salary, take home that I did as a lawyer. I'm picking up my kid from fucking work every day. Do you understand what it feels like, I'm reading this shit and I'm like, this is fucking insane. I as a lowly, like this little human over here, one of eight billion, I'm putting out this content and this fucking man, this kid, on the other side of this man taking him to work, to school every day. His life is forever changed because I decided to make one TikTok to tell this guy to make TikToks.

7:22That's rewarding. I understand why people do nonprofit work. I understand why people serve this country. I understand why people want to be guidance counselors and coaches and fucking, you know, therapists. It is an intoxication when you know you're leaving a positive impact on someone for certain people. Absolutely. And I think it's one of those things. If you do good enough, it comes back. You know what I mean? In the biggest way, bro. And not in fucking Lambos and fucking hot boyfriends or girlfriends. In fucking just peace of mind. Yeah. In fucking soul. In fucking laying in your deathbed and being like, you know what?

7:59I fucking gave it a good run. One that I can be proud of. I'm pumped my grandkids can say nice shit. So I speak at an event every quarter. it's a, it's a co-organization that helps transitioning special operations veterans that are going into civilian world. So they bring me in. I'm a prior special operations veteran and to, as they do an entrepreneur panel and that we just take questions and the guys can ask anything, Hey, you know, even like, how do I start my LLC and this and that. And is that a physically done? Is that not virtually? It's visible. Yeah. I do it in Virginia beach. I'd like to do it once with you.

8:29Would that be awesome. You know, they bring me in and I think they're expecting me to come in and be like, you should do it and, you know, be an entrepreneur. And it's awesome. And I always give them a very sobering answer and say, all right, fellas, Let me break this down for you. At best, 7 % chance of success. In my case, seven years didn't make a penny. I mean, the business was making money, but when you're growing, you have to put it all in there. If this is something that, you know, is burning you alive and you're staring at the ceiling every night thinking of it, it's probably a reason to do it.

8:57But if you're going to come into this thinking this is some glamorous thing and that, oh, I don't want to work for the man and, you know, be the hamster wheel. I said, you know, working a nine to five with a good company and building back some equity with your family. And like what I basically said is I don't want you guys to think it's this romantic thing. You just told guys you told them the truth. Like I it crushed me now. Not only that, what ends up happening is people fall into very deep depression and suicidal thoughts when they publicly say I'm going to build a huge company. You can't hide in entrepreneurship when you start a company.

9:30and you say to your entire inner circle, I'm starting this fucking pizza shop. I'm starting this new AI app. I'm starting this fashion brand. You have now put a fucking target on your self-esteem because unlike when you work for the band, when you work at VaynerMedia, my company, and I fire you because you know you're a fucking loser. Do you know what you tell all your friends and family? Gary's a dick face. They fucked me. My manager, actually Gary's, I'm pretty nice. that Gary's nice, but he doesn't get it. You blame everybody but you. And guess what else? Everyone believes you because everybody hates the corporation, right?

10:07Yes. When like people have excuses for everything. When you work in the government, a corporation for a startup, you can always blame somebody. When you have a company, when inevitably like 90 fucking three, 5 % of them, inevitably when it goes out of business in two to three years, you can say shit like, oh, I picked the wrong time. or like I got fucked, the economy. No, no, no, this is sports. Like that's what entrepreneur is. Like you picked the wrong time. In all the, do you know how good the lipstick business was during the Great Depression? I'm being serious, Bear. During the Great Depression.

10:46Was it great? It was great. During the Great Depression, because everybody was poor in the whole country, humans are still humans, they still need a light. one of the few things that was somewhat luxurious, that was somewhat affordable was lipstick. And women, lipstick exploded during the Great Depression because they couldn't go out like the roaring 20s and hit the clubs in their dresses, but they could put their lipstick on while they're fucking in line for porridge. And it was important for them. So whoever decided to start a fucking lipstick business during the Great Depression picked a great time.

11:23So, you know, the other thing I take to tell the fellas and the ladies is, hey, when you fail, when you make excuses, your loser friends will believe you, but all the real people know. And one of the reasons I try to talk people out of entrepreneurship a lot is, to your point, I love how you said it, if it's not eating you up, then you're probably not it. I'm gonna pull out my report card for you, Bear. Love it. There's a reason. There's a reason this report, this is my high school report. What year is this? This is my all four years of high school recap report card. All right. For the for the listeners, there's some D's, a few A's, some C's.

11:59No, no, not a few A's. There's four A's. One A a year. What class was that in? Gym. Phys Ed. That's right. The only A's I got in high school were in gym because I was a gym class hero. Nobody tried harder to win in gym than me. Just smoking dudes with the dodgeball. Literally. And like like not because I was so much better than everybody, because, you know, normal high school kids are like, it's fucking gym. who gives a fuck and I treated it like game seven as you should have look at my class rank at the bottom all right where's that at the bottom here somewhere okay GPA 1.67 class rank was 243 out of 254 so bottom fifth percentile for sure there was only 11 fucking losers worse than me why why why did this report card happen it happened because I wasn't capable to go all in and something that wasn't real to me.

12:52I understand why someone can't be a good entrepreneur because if you, if it's not in you, it's not in you. I wasn't able to be a good student, not because I'm an idiot, but because it wasn't in me. I just couldn't. Humans are animals. It's really hard to be a giraffe when you're a fucking penguin. Yeah. People need to find what that is for them. Right. And they need to be not scared to try to find it. If you're a big bulky dude like you and fucking ballerina is in your fucking soul, then fucking be a ballerina. What the fuck is someone going to say? Don't forget you're a big dude. Punch him in the fucking face.

13:25Well, and I think one lesson for people is like, I think they think they have to get it right the first time. Right. And it's like, guys, like, especially like at any age, really, but you know, people, you know, they're in their late twenties and they're like, Oh, they have this grand decision. It's like, dude, just do it. And then pivot. Right. And shift. Um, you know, my, I launched a business right before born primitive and it was a failed business. I threw the hail Mary. It was an idea that I had in college and I raised$110 ,000 in capital and I got a lease on a warehouse and all these things and was pitching Anheuser-Busch and Miller Coors.

13:54And I was up there. I thought I was in and long story short, we had a purchase order. The director of the Miller Coors point of sale division got fired. And a new guy came in. He said, I'm clean. I'm clearing house on the program and everything's on hold. Oh, I had just ordered$50 ,000 worth of foam overseas. I raised 110. So That was nearly half of my capital. I just signed a lease for a$70 ,000 printer, a giant printer to print the graphics. And I have a five-year lease on a warehouse. And I now have a 54 foot container coming to me full of foam that I now can't use. So I tried to pivot and do a direct to consumer angle of like selling it to the consumer, but it was a product for a keg.

14:33It just wasn't, it was a B2B play all day long and skinny post down the field, hail Mary, right through his hands at the five yard line. You know what I mean? And like that, it was done. Well, because maybe I'm just too dumb to know any better. I immediately pivoted and launched this little born primitive thing. You know what I mean? And out of the garage. Right. Um, had I been deterred from that experience, then it wouldn't, it never exist. And that's why I try to tell people, it's like, Hey, you don't have to get it right. The first time I pick a direction and go. I got a good one. I got a good one.

15:03It helps a lot of people. I've had hundreds of emails through my career on this. Entrepreneurship is baseball. Entrepreneurship is UFC. Entrepreneurship is baseball because if you go three for ten in baseball, you will go to Cooperstown, New York and be in the Hall of Fame. Three of ten. Three out of every ten times, especially now with the way they're fucking trying to all hit home runs and everyone's batting 230. If you bat 300 for your career, you're fucking in striking distance. Obviously, there's other variables there, but three out of ten and you're one of the best ever. Next, UFC. Obviously, there's been a couple guys who pulled this off, but I think people really resonate with this nobody's gonna end up being undefeated in that right yeah like you're gonna fucking lose eat a dude's gonna come along a lady's gonna come along that's better there's also you're gonna lose to somebody inferior to you because it's so raw you just might get caught with a punch right right there's a huge fight we're looking at madison square garden right now that's why i have my office here i'll be there next week you will steep base fighting john jones so i don't know if you know this vayner sports reps deep i do he's one of our athletes, born primitive athletes.

16:09I know that, I forgot about that. You gonna be there? Yeah, we're gonna hang. Oh, hell yeah. Look, John Jones is arguably the greatest UFC fighter of all time. Stipe hasn't been in the octagon in four years. He's been firefighting in Ohio. And yet, I'm gonna go into that arena and say, one punch can change everything. And so, same in entrepreneurship. You might be a remarkable entrepreneur. I've had things not work for me in the last five years that are silly given my craft. you know we all know this like the best always make mistakes because we're fucking humans i i love that you tell people that and i talk about it all the time i'm like if you are scared of losing first why almost always it means that you're worried about what people think about your losses um but if you're worried about losing this is not for you yeah Yeah.

17:01And, you know, there's so much. Honestly, I think losing first helped me because it painted reality. Right. And I learned all the hard, you know, first of all, never place an order for raw materials until that P.O. is locked down. Not only is it locked down with a deposit. You know what I mean? I'm about to go further until the money hits the bank, even approved money in the actual bank that can't be taken back. Yeah. Well, you know, I'm 23 years old. We're drinking beers with the director after. and like, yeah, and I'm all excited. Oh yeah, order the phone. And you know, there's many lessons I learned from that.

17:35Even negotiating my lease, I should have had an opt out. I should have, and I did none of that. So, you know, if in a way it's like, well, go ahead and do it. And actually, if you fail, that might be even better in the longterm. For first time entrepreneurs listening, remember the first time you made out or had sex or ride a bike or drive? I'm like petrified that I, I'm thinking back to the first time I drove a car. I'm like, how the fuck did I not die? Like, no shit you're gonna make mistakes the first, you sucked at everything the first, even if you're like a natural talent, like I'm like LeBron, I promise you the first jump shots were not as good as the ones today.

18:11Like no shit you fucked up. It's, entrepreneurship is a series of micro losses with an occasional macro win. All that entrepreneurship is, is micro losing every day and occasionally having a macro win. Micro losses, occasional macro win. If you're interested in that, then come and hang with us. If you're not, which is 90 % of people, no judgment. Fuck, there's a lot of nights that I wish I wasn't entrepreneurial. If you don't think there are nights, I just got out of a budget meeting. Actually, when you were here, I got out of a budget meeting and I literally left it thinking, and this is a direct report to me running one of my companies.

18:52And I literally said to myself, walking out, this literally just happened, said, I wish I had his job. Because like, I want to make that kind of money without any of the fucking stress. The number two is the best job in the business. The number two is the best job in the business. I think there's a lot of burdens that business owners carry that the employees don't realize, right? It's 24 seven. It can never, Now you get the fruits of that. I always tell my homies. It's true. I'm going to say this real quick. If you're confused, your employees shouldn't care or carry the burdens you carry. If you want them to, let them get as much money as you get.

19:33It's true. Yeah. And by the way, I don't actually expect compassion or empathy from my employees. That's not what they signed up for. They didn't sign up to work here to worry about me. Now some people are compassionate, empathetic humans. that like, I mean, people see me sitting in this fucking room for 15 hours a day, every hour not eating lunch. They're like, all right, they probably, like that's beautiful. But yeah, you know, I think that a lot of employees that become entrepreneurs are hit smack in the face, surprised, they're like, they didn't understand all the variables that came along.

20:05And by the way, that's what happens in parenthood. All of us grow up and judge the living shit out of our parents. And then we become parents and we're like, oh. Makes sense now. Makes sense now. Love it. Well, I want to tell a quick Gary Vee story. Well, it won't be that earth shattering for the listeners, but you might get a kick out of this. So I actually saw you speak, I think it was in like 2018 or 2019. It was out at Common Thread Collective. I don't know if you know Taylor Holliday, the crew out there. You came and spoke at an event and they had all their clients come and you were talking about the landscape of digital advertising at the time.

20:38And you got up there in typical Gary Vee fashion was telling us like, you guys don't realize it. you are in the golden age of social media ads right now. Like, I don't even know what CAC was. Like, I know what CAC means back then for those listings, customer acquisition costs. Our CAC's like 55 right now. I don't even want to know what it was when you were speaking. It was probably like eight bucks. I don't even know. And you were saying, spend, spend, spend, because this window of time that you are in is going to close quickly. And it was at a time, and I think you've alluded to this before, there was actually a guy, one of the clients we were there with, um, that had his own, his own brand and he would put puppies faces on socks.

21:18Right. And this guy had a Lamborghini. And I remember thinking, man, you know, when the going's good, when you have an e-commerce brand where you put people's puppies on socks and you have, are you rolling around in a Lamborghini? That's when the paid game is freaking, you know, that window has came with because you don't need LTV first order profitability. when cacks that low just printing money around the holidays and then a wait three nine months do it over again right that's right um i want to shift gears a little bit talk about storytelling and authenticity which which you hit on of course um and i think that like for me i kind of want to present this through a born primitive example one to kind of have you maybe pick it apart okay but also if you feel like there are cool things about it you know kind of lean into what you think is all right so i'm in the originally you know we started in fitness apparel we've branched out We're in tactical apparel, outdoor apparel, left leisure, jeans, flannels, footwear, everything.

22:12You know, we're in a lot of your full brand. We're in a lot of lanes now. Right. And, you know, anyone who's in apparel knows you got to be a little bit of an idiot to go in that space because there's no barrier to entry. It's anyway. There's just there's thousands of brands and there's a lot of noise and you have to do something different to differentiate yourself in that space. and okay, what is your actual value proposition, right? Everyone can make good leggings. It's not that hard, right? So you can't just be, oh, we have great sports bras and great leggings. While good product helps, there needs to be more to it.

22:43So we've - Yeah, big product, good product is the cost of entry. Yeah, that's almost, I call that like an implied task. Like you better have good product. No shit, because even if you're the coolest brand and you're winning on cool for a minute, you will lose over time. Yeah, if the shit sucks. That's right. Yeah, so what I've tried to do over the last couple of years, once I got out of the services, We need to lean more into the values of our company that makes us different. And for us, a lot of that is kind of giving back to military and first responders. It's authentic to us because it's the roots of our company.

23:11100%. You know, over half of our employees are veterans, spouses of active duty service members, firefighters, cops, or the spouses of those individuals. So over half of our building, we got 80 people, right? So it's in our DNA. That's not intentional. You know, we hire whoever comes in and is awesome, but it shakes out that, hey, that's kind of the disposition of our company. We live in the walls. Was it intentional early on? Early on, it was funny. It was just, I'd hire like my buddy's wives that I served with. Like, hey man, can you give my old lady a job? I'm like, yeah, yeah, she seems awesome.

23:41And like, now she's the new email girl. You know what I mean? Knows nothing about it. That was the early days. By the way, similar to my background, most of the people around me that have built companies with me are bad students. I just was like, yo, I get that. I'm like, oh, you're a scrapper with Fs. Like if literally 15 years ago, if you went to Harvard and then walked in for a job and you were a kid that dropped out of high school. And but like but you told me that you sold blow pops and in junior high. I always I always hired number two. That wasn't right, by the way. But it was right sometimes.

24:15Yeah. Now, at four turning 49 next week, I know that half the people that went to Harvard suck shit at the game and half the kids that sold blow pops and suck at the game. Well, I went to Yale so I can confirm the Harvard guy sucks. Right? Yeah. I mean, like, you know, you learn. But on the flip side, I used to blindly think all the scrapper kids would be monsters. And I was like, oh, I got back rates for a different reason than you got back rates. You're just not it. Hey, everybody. Actually, I'm sorry to be jumping in the middle of the podcast. But the truth is, I'm like shitting the bed on this.

24:47Everybody else is getting people to review on Spotify and Apple. And like the Vayner Nation does none of that because I've never asked. So if this podcast has ever meant anything to you, please go to Spotify or Apple right now and leave a review. By the way, even if you give me a one star review because you think it's shit, I respect it. But just leave a review, an actual review, four or five stars and the actual details of why. Yeah, that would mean something for me. So thanks. Now back to the podcast. Well, so with this example, I started to realize when we would lean more into that part of our value proposition, it made us stick out amongst the noise.

25:22And one example that I'm proud of. What year is that? So I got out of the service at the end of 2021. So now I actually had the full week that I could, you know, I'm not doing the other job, which was very serious and stressful and intense. Right. And it opened up my aperture. OK, now I can actually like take a step back and see how I'm going to kind of position my forces here. You know what I mean? And I realize I say we got to we got to lean more into this because that's what the consumer, I think, wants, at least from our consumer. And as you know, you, the, your consumers don't choose you, you choose your consumers by how you market.

25:56Right. Um, and, and I, I wanted to be more assertive with that. So one of the things we did in June, it was the 80th anniversary of D-Day coming up in June. And, uh, this popped into my head. I was getting on a plane in Wyoming two years ago and I said, I want to do this. I'm going to make a D-Day shoe for the 80th. And, uh, so we made an 80th anniversary shoe for, for D-Day And we donated$50 ,000 of the proceeds to fund a group of like 60 World War II veterans who went back to D-Day for the reunion. And a lot of them were original, like first wave Omaha Beach guys. Right. Those Omaha Beach guys?