How Battlbox is Changing the Experience Around Survival Products

Kristen LaFrance:

Hey, everyone. And welcome to this week's episode of Playing for Keeps. Today I have John Roman on. A fun story, I was supposed to have him on in season one. We recorded a two-hour interview, and then I lost a good hour and 40 minutes of said interview. So he came back luckily for season two. John is the CMO of BattlBox. Honestly, one of the most fun guys I have gotten to meet. I got to meet him in real life at ChargeX last year. So you know what that means. It means this interview's going to be super fun, super casual. We have a lot to talk about so I'm super excited. Hey, John. Welcome back. How are you?

John Roman:

Hey, Kristen. I'm good. Glad to be back. Hopefully it records correctly this time.

Kristen LaFrance:

Yes. Thank you for your understanding with our audio issues.

John Roman:

Yeah, no. It was such a good interview. I was a little sad-

Kristen LaFrance: 

I know.

John Roman:

... when we found out it wasn't recorded.

Kristen LaFrance: 

Me too. But, we'll make it so much better the second time around. I know it.

John Roman:

I hope so.

Kristen LaFrance: 

I have confidence. Just to start off, can you tell us a little bit about your position at BattlBox? I know you have kind of an interesting story of how you came on to the company so just giving the listeners a little bit of background there.

John Roman:

Sure. As chief marketing officer, I oversee all sales, all marketing, and all technology so our whole tech stack and then obviously anything revenue generating, and all advertising and really just anything when it comes to touching the customer and converting them. Let's see. As far as the story, it's an interesting one. I have a Christmas party every year for the better part of a decade now. And a good friend from college had come up. His name's Daniel Dabbs. He, at the time, him and his business partner, had a company called Varsity Inc, which was t-shirts, apparel, kind of swag and design creation. They had a couple locations. They targeted college towns. So that business is traditionally really dead in December, which is when a Christmas party would be. So he was up there and just talking about ...

John Roman: 

So, Daniel's like an idea guy, always comes up with these giant, big, big ideas. We were talking, and I had some success at the time in B2B and really just selling software as a service and telecommunications, and he had the Varsity Inc experience. We were talking and trying to come up with an idea where something that would be bigger than Varsity Inc for him and something that could allow me to maybe stop working for the man. So we came up with some ideas. It was really all around consulting agencies and agencies and just taking our skill sets and teaching and showing other people how to have them. Agree we were going to follow up and try to keep it moving. Then, regular life got a hold and we didn't chat again about it.

John Roman: 

So then, fast forward in February. So that was 2014 Christmas party. So then 2015 around February, I'm talking to a guy named Patrick Kelly who's Daniel's business partner from Varsity Inc and he's like, "Yeah." He's like, "Daniel came up with this idea. It's called BattlBox." At the time, it was survival and tactical gear delivered monthly. I was like, "Like a subscription box?" And he's like, "Yeah." He's like, "So he's going to give me a part of the company and I'm going to handle operations and fulfillment." I'm like, "Well, I want to be a part of it."

Kristen LaFrance:

That sounds fun.

John Roman: 

That sounds really fun. So he's like, "Well, it's not mine to do that. I'm not going to give you any of my equity. You can call Daniel if you'd like." So I called Daniel. So it was about ... It had just launched about two weeks prior. It already had a decent amount of success and kind of they hit the ground running. I think two weeks and I think they already maybe 80, maybe 70 or 80 subscribers.

Kristen LaFrance: 

Oh wow.

John Roman: 

Which is pretty impressive for just launching with no playbook, if you will, to how to launch a subscription box. So call Daniel. We came to an agreement. I bought a piece of the company and in return we had agreed I was going to offer just kind of business acumen and kind of be another person helping in really kind of a back seat, few hours a week, no real giant time commitment for the investment. Then, that was it. Then, that just obviously, as the business grew, five hours a week became 15. Then it became 20, and then 30, and then 40.

John Roman: 

And then I was at a point about a year later in right at about a year later where I had to make a decision. This is demanding just as much time. I have skin in the game. I'm trying to think how to even describe it. I just had to make a decision. There's only so much time in the day so I made the jump to do it and go full-time, and we haven't looked back. That was, I guess, four, right at four years ago, about to be.

Kristen LaFrance: 

Yeah. So it's such an interesting story. I think not a lot of people come in and become CMO at a company coming in as an investor first and then just slowly being like, "Hey, I've fallen in love with this and now I want to operate on it." I'm curious how it was kind of to watch the brand grow from that aspect of it from seeing at first you're just looking at it kind of from an outside view. What was it about the brand and the growth that made you go, "Okay. Yeah, I want to do this full-time. There's something here. We should really jump all the way in"?

John Roman:

Sure. It's a good question. I guess let me set a little bit of a background on how Daniel came up with the idea because I think that speaks to a lot of its success. His wife was getting a Birchbox every month. At the time, 2014, 2015, Birchbox is the ... They're the unicorn in the subscription box space that everybody wants to be. They're doing everything right, or it appears that they're doing everything right. Clearly they weren't, but ...

Kristen LaFrance: 

Yeah.

John Roman: 

So she was getting a Birchbox every month. And she'd open it up, and Daniel would see her opening it up and there was this excitement level, and surprise. Just, it was an experience. Daniel saw that as was like, "Well, yeah. I'm happy you're experiencing this, but I'm going to get one of these subscription boxes for myself." Daniel's an avid outdoorsman, loves camping, loves the wilderness, loves tactical stuff. So he jumped online and he couldn't find one. And Daniel being the guy that he is, that idea guy, when you don't find something, that could be an opportunity, and that's ... It wasn't like, "Hey, we're going to start a business. Let's think of some ideas and whiteboard this and brainstorm." It was let's start a business because I just tried to buy something and it didn't exist so there's a need.

John Roman: 

I think even the couple weeks before I came on ... And obviously that first year of seeing exponential growth, I think it was 200 customers that first month, but then I think it was 1,200 new the month after that. I think the third month and moving on we were adding 2,000 customers a month.

Kristen LaFrance: 

Wow.

John Roman:

And that's with us running Facebook ads and with no experience and just kind of figuring it all out as we go. So that exponential growth and that immediate satisfication of, okay, Daniel's not the only one that wants this. There's surprisingly a lot of people that want this type of gear and this type of box. The limited research we did at the time, subscription boxes, the average price point at that time was like typically $20. There was an occasional 25, but I'm pretty sure the mean was in the low 20s. And we're offering four tiers with the highest being 150 a month. And our average customer through this entire thing was spending over 100 a month.

Kristen LaFrance: 

Wow.

John Roman: 

So it was kind of reinventing kind of the walls on the subspace of the time of what was possible and what was expected. And seeing these hundreds and then thousands of customers come in, it kind of energizes you. You're like, "We're not just a business that's doing well that's a side hustle that's going to turn into an actual full-time business. We're providing a cool product that people needed and wanted. And not only that, we're delivering and they're loving it." Then, all of a sudden, this community starts to build. And when the community builds and these people, these customers, they're all speculating what's going to be in the future box, there's teasers, there's like this genuine excitement and it's extremely contagious. I think once I had been infected with the excitement, it wasn't talking myself out of jumping in full-time, it was honestly finding reason to want to do it and justify to my wife that, hey, you know I have this really good job. And we literally just closed on a house two months prior.

Kristen LaFrance: 

Of course, of course.

John Roman: 

But hey, I'm just going to quit and-

Kristen LaFrance: 

I'm just going to jump on over here.

John Roman: 

Yeah. We're going to send out survival gear every month, and that's a business. But, it just became a no-brainer. Obviously, the revenue and the new subscribers that lead to the decision. But to tell you the truth, the contagious effect of the excitement that our customers were getting, it kind of made me warm inside. So you enjoy doing something when you can instantaneously see the effect of it and you can see the satisfaction, people getting excited and loving the product. To get that instant satisfaction about a month later, it just made it a no-brainer. It made it super easy to jump into.

Kristen LaFrance: 

Yeah. I mean, every time we talk, I'm always in such awe of you and BattlBox's love for your customers. It's obviously from the get-go it was there because the founder was the ideal customer, so he was already excited about what he was creating. And then that I think just bled through the entire culture of the family and then through the community. And obviously BattlBox has a huge community. We're going to get into that in a little bit.

Kristen LaFrance: 

Another thing I wanted to note on is that we were talking about this story about how he was watching his wife go through this experience and he was like, "Wow. I really want this." And in the first few months, you find there's a need for these products. These people really want this. They need it. It's something they're looking for. And I go even further to argue that there's an experience these people were looking for that hadn't been then before. It was just they could go to REI and get these products, but it was really the experience that BattlBox gave that was something completely different and new for this market. And I think you guys have done a really, really good job of honing in on that. This whole customer experience is like my theme of 2020, is that customer experience is driving retention. You focus on that first and everything's going to follow. And I think you guys are a perfect example of that that you honed in on the experience and he understood the experience that needed to happen first and then followed that up with really good products and that's what really gave you guys that exponential growth.

John Roman: 

100%. Something we didn't mention that we did from the jump, another idea of Daniel's was we have ... We don't have it anymore, which is a long story. We had to give rid of it for something that is in the pipeline. But, we had the battlboxforum.com where it was just a old school community, Reddit posting board if you will. We saw every single customer came there, but then we started having people that weren't customers coming there and just wanting to talk and wanting to have this community. It was an underserviced area. People wanted to have these conversation and find people that were like-minded in their hobbies. It was just so cool because that just became part of the experience. Yeah, you're getting cool gear and the gear's worth a lot more than you paid, but there's so much more than that. It's a community. And it's you're like becoming a part of the BattlBox family, if you will.

Kristen LaFrance: 

Yeah. It makes it so much harder, I think, to cancel a subscription. When you're looking at the top reasons for churn on all subscription boxes, I mean, too much product is always going to be your number one thing. So eventually you're going to have ... I think we have 25 razor heads from Dollar Shave Club sitting in our bathroom right now. I've got like 48 cans of Ugly Drinks. At some point you're going to have a stock up of volume and you're going to say like, "Okay, do I really need the subscription anymore." And that's something that every subscription is going to run into. But what the community does, like you said, you're not just getting products at a great price. It's not that. You're part of a family. And having to leave that is really, really difficult. And that's going to just lower churn and up retention, and not like a sneaky, dirty business way. You've actually given them something that's worth staying around for.

John Roman: 

No. They want to stay. I think one of the cool things is ... So yeah. So obviously, for our category, one of the biggest reasons ... And it's still, unfortunately, is a big reason of churn because it's a reality is we're sending these big boxes. Boxes might weigh 15 pounds. They might have all this ... It's not samples. It's real gear. I've gotten in we'll call discussions with my wife because of all these BattlBox I have.

Kristen LaFrance: 

Yes, "discussions."

John Roman: 

Yeah, discussions. But that's the thing. So you might get a box and you're going to use some of this stuff, but then there's some stuff you're not going to use and that's where our problem lies, and that's something that leads to churn. In this community we have, there's buy-sell groups.

Kristen LaFrance: 

Oh wow.

John Roman: 

I apologize, not buy-sell, buy-sell-trade.

Kristen LaFrance: 

Yeah.

John Roman: 

We'll see every day there's multiple posts where it's like, "Hey, I think this is a cool product that came in the last box, but it's just not practical for me. Does anybody want to trade?" Then, within a couple minutes, it's a Facebook group. People will be like, "Oh, yeah. What are you looking for? What do you want?" And they handle the trade. We're not even involved in it. But, it's pretty cool. It's just making our customers want to stay longer because they have an avenue so that they don't get that pile up. If they're not going to use something, trade for something you are going to use or something you do want. I think that just helps so much with our churn as well.

Kristen LaFrance: 

Yeah, and it really just ... It allows the customers to get the most out of the products, too. They get to not just get access to whatever is sent to them but access to the whole community to figure out, okay, what can I get that's actually the most beneficial for me. But then there's still the trust behind it that everything came from BattlBox so you know it's going to be good quality.

John Roman: 

Exactly. And if there's even an issue, we have policies and process in place where we make it right. If there's a problem with a product, we're not saying, "Hey, it's not our product." We're taking ownership 99 out of 100 times. The only exception would be if we'd been told adamantly by the actual manufacture brand that they want to handle it. And typically, I think maybe in five years it's only happened twice. Both times we didn't even really want to do it but we had to for whatever reasons. So yeah, it's just you know what you're getting with BattlBox and the experience is just part of it.

Kristen LaFrance: 

I mean, arguably, the biggest part of it is really that experience and the trust in the experience that when you're going to come back to BattlBox with anything you know it's going to be a good conversation. You know you're going to be treated well. And I think that's huge.

John Roman: 

What's funny is currently our head of customer service ... And through the years, we've had multiple members of customer service they all came. So Luke, Luke Bagley, he's head of customer experience right now. He came from the BattlBox forum. He was a customer. He was in there. At one point we made him a moderator.

Kristen LaFrance: 

Oh wow.

John Roman: 

Which was a unpaid, non-employee role. You're just in charge of helping us because you seem to have all the answers. He was a career nurse, practicing nurse. He made a career change and eventually became a part-time customer service guy, and then he moved into full-time customer service guy. Now he leads our whole team.

Kristen LaFrance: 

That's such a cool story.

John Roman: 

Yeah, he was-

Kristen LaFrance: 

I mean, it's customer love to the fullest extent there. You've got just someone who started as a customer, engaged so much so that now they are not just helping your business by continuing to buy and talk about it with their friends. No, they're a major integral part of the business. I think that's like the coolest customer retention story path that I think I've ever heard and I love it.

John Roman: 

Yeah, no. It's super cool. And even selfishly from an onboarding perspective. It's not like a traditional employee onboarding because they already knew everything. And they know everything, at least like the front-facing stuff, as well as you would. It could be argued they might know it better.

Kristen LaFrance: 

Yeah. I was just writing about this this morning, actually. I was writing about kind of the CX platform side of things, the machine that runs everything and how it's kind of the area that gets lost for brands on retention. So you've got branding that people look at. We talk about it all the time, all the exciting retention stuff. You've got your base level stuff operations, shipping, fulfillment, warehouse, all this stuff. That middle layer of things that are ... How is the business functioning? I think a lot of times operators don't actually get to experience it as a customer and see all these little touchpoints. Like how is the checkout going? How is the subscription going? Can you log into your account? How easy is it to log into your account? All these things that sometimes the customers actually know it better the operators themselves because you don't always experience it. So what a unique opportunity to get. You have customer research on your team right there because they've experienced it from both sides now.

John Roman: 

And that rings so, so, so true. One of the coolest things about Luke ... At the time, it's frustrating because I'll be working on something else, but he'll something that's from the customer side, whether it's something that's maybe not as a clear as it should be when they're adding their product or maybe set it, we need to probably add a couple sentences to one of our onboarding emails. But it's something, you're right, that as the operator, typically, you set it up once and you kind of overlook it. You might check on it every so often and try to revamp. But, he's finding these things because he's thinking as a customer, because he was a customer first.

Kristen LaFrance: 

Yeah, he understands that experience [crosstalk].

John Roman: 

Yeah. I mean, there's a couple things, a few things a month he'll find every month where it's just like, "Hey, I think we should tweak this to this," and you're like, "Man, it's going to be a little bit of work, but, dammit, you're right. Okay."

Kristen LaFrance:

We trust you, Luke.

John Roman: 

Yeah, we'll get the dev team to fix that.

Kristen LaFrance: 

Yeah. No, I mean, I love that. It's so interesting to think because, like you said, as an operator so much we set up and then just kind of go. Then when you go check on it, you're looking at some quick metrics, like how is the conversion rate, is this getting clicked, is it doing this. It's hard to step back and think of it kind of holistically and say, "What does this tiny little piece impact the entire experience a customer is having with our brand?" And having someone on the team that has seen it from that side and experienced it completely separate from the company from that side and being able to say like, "Okay. If you were a customer and you didn't know BattlBox, this actually doesn't make sense." I mean, having someone who's just been able to see it on the other side, like you said, just gives you stuff where you're like, "I've got to trust you on this."

John Roman: 

Yeah. No, 100%. One of the first things he did when he came on board full-time and took over leading CX was he's like, "Man, we got to redo our FAQ. It might to you look like it's where it needs to be but we need to change a lot of stuff. And I was like-

Kristen LaFrance: 

Wow. Yeah.

John Roman: 

... "Okay. Fine."

Kristen LaFrance: 

Fine, Luke.

John Roman: 

Yeah, you're right.

Kristen LaFrance: 

Poor Luke is just getting hammered by us right now. He's going to listen to this be like, "What did I do?"

John Roman: 

I know. I'm going to send ... When this comes out, I'm going to send this to him.

Kristen LaFrance: 

Good. Luke, you're doing amazing. So something I talk a lot on this podcast about and with a lot of people is the importance of really knowing your audience. We kind of touched on this. Obviously you guys know your audience because you brought them into your company. But diving even deeper into that, something really interesting with you guys is you actually market and serve to different niches. You can kind of look at it all as this technical gear box. But really, when you look into it, you've got you're marketing to specifically outdoorsman, ex military, doomsdayers. It's interesting to me because this is a box I would get my husband, who is super into camping, and hiking, and all things outdoors. But I know, say, like a doomsdayer ad or a doomsdayer post wouldn't necessarily ring true to him. So I'm curious how you approach marketing, and content, and all this with so many different personas you're trying to talk to.

John Roman: 

Yeah. So it's not super easy. From a top of the funnel targeting prospecting, it is obviously really easy. We'd have different messaging for each of those buckets. You actually nailed the nail on the head with the different buckets and what they are.

Kristen LaFrance: 

Oh, nice.

John Roman: 

But yeah. So from a targeting prospecting and landing pages, it is easy because you get to segment and say exactly what you need to say to the right people. But once again, the ecosystem, it's a little bit challenging because you do have to hit on all those parts. Currin, who does our unboxing videos ... Which 30 minutes on YouTube, surprisingly, the average time spent watching is pretty close to the end, which is-

Kristen LaFrance: 

Wow.

John Roman: 

... kind of mind-blowing because that goes against everything YouTube and videos are supposed to be in general. But, he does a great job and all of our messaging does a great job. We hit on everything. We mix it all in so that the outdoorsman that loves outdoors like your husband to the tinfoil hat guy that is probably thinking the current thing with Iran is going to be way worse than it is. We have to hit everybody. I don't know how we pull it off, but I guess we do.

Kristen LaFrance: 

Yeah. Then, thinking about retention, once you get them in as a customer, you've got all these different customer types you have to talk to. Are you guys segmenting content? Do you segment people in emails kind of based on what they seem to be interested in or do you just have to kind of try and ... I mean, the other thing there we can talk about is maybe they have these kind of different top-level identifiers. But when you really drive down into the motivations of these customers, they obviously share a lot of stuff. And is it just that you need to find those commonalities and hit on that or do you try to keep it very separate on your channels?

John Roman: 

No. I mean, at the end of the day, we have ... So we just shipped out mission 60, which is pretty cool. It's our mission's 59. Mission 60 is shipping out next month, and that's our 60th box, which is five years.

Kristen LaFrance: 

Wow.

John Roman: 

Which is mind-blowing. But I mean, at the end of the day, while we do have four tiers, basic, advanced, pro, and pro plus, they stack on top of each other. And they're the same for all of our customers, right?

Kristen LaFrance: 

Mm-hmm.

John Roman: 

It's not if you're an outdoorsman versus a prepper, you're still getting the same box. So it's a unique challenge. Daniel still leads that up, just finding products that ... And it's tough. Finding products that are going to appeal to the masses, to all of those groups. So it's no easy task. We definitely have lessons learned where we made something that was too camping specific or too tactical specific and then 80% of our base doesn't like it and we see some retention issues, churn issues. Luckily, we kind of figured that out in our infancy, in that first year, first year and a half. And now we do a really good job of finding products that it doesn't matter if you're a camper, tactical lover or law enforcement. You're going to see some practical use out of the gear we send.

John Roman: 

Honestly, to accomplish that, we've had to honestly invent and create some products, too. So manufacture now a decent amount of products when ... Not decent amount but there's definitely a couple products we'll manufacture that'll be BattlBox branded or one of the brands we have, Lord & Field, Going Gear branded stuff, but we have to because we know what the customer wants but sometimes we can't find that actual product or a similar product so it's interesting. As, I guess, we've learned lessons, we've now done a better job of making sure the products in the box appeal to everyone or as many as possible. It's never going to be perfect. There's always going to be people each month that, man, I don't want this tent. Right?

Kristen LaFrance: 

Yeah. You said something that I want to highlight for the listeners, the sentence we know what the customer wants. That is the backbone of everything here. Everything we're talking about is the fact that you guys aren't just saying, "Hey, you guys need this because we think it's cool. We're going to send it in a box and you're going to like it. If you don't, too bad," which kind of is an aggressive way of summarizing how a lot of eCommerce really does work. You guys actually start on the flip side and you said, "Okay, what did the customer actually want, and can we find that for them? Can we fill that gap that is in the market right now?" Which leads really quickly to really good retention.

John Roman: 

Sure. So there's actually a couple ways, obviously with the community and the Facebook, the forum that's not a Facebook group. We get a lot of posts that are like, "Hey, guys. What do you think about this product?" Mean, they're sending it to us. We also have an email address for suggestions. But when they're sharing in the community, they're sending it to us but the whole community sees it so you're getting a quick temp check on if it's a good product. Something else we actually started doing at the last part of last year, which has worked out really cool. There's certain products we know everyone's going to like, right?

Kristen LaFrance: 

Yeah.

John Roman: 

We're just that confident. But then we get products where we're like, "Man, it's a really cool product, but does everyone ... Is the majority going to like it?" And sometimes we're not sure. So this new thing we've done, and we do it every Thursday now, we take one of these products we're kind of on the fence on and we do a full video testing, explaining it. Then, the call to action at the end of the video is what do you guys think.

Kristen LaFrance: 

Wow.

John Roman: 

We've been told on a couple of these products absolutely not. Then we say, "Okay. Well, good. Then we're not ... " Exclude it. Scratch that for March.

Kristen LaFrance: 

Scratch that one, guys.

John Roman: 

Yeah. But then we've gotten feedback where they love it. And it's like, "Okay, good. We were pretty sure, but we do want to ... " At the end of the day, we can't just always think that we know what they're going to like. We have to keep a pulse on the community and get their feedback, and get their ideas, and their suggestions, and recommendations. Because if they're willing to give them, it would be silly not to listen and not to take them into consideration.

Kristen LaFrance: 

Yeah. I mean, with those videos, there's so many prongs of benefits you get from that. Just thinking off the top of my head, not only have you created content, whether or not your audience decides they like the product or not, you're still creating really engaging and exciting content and you're asking your customers to engage with it. So there's a bonus right there. It's just more content for your brand out there. It builds brand trust because you guys are saying, "Hey, let's pull the curtain out from this. We'll tell you how we find the products and then you tell us what you think about these." There's, I mean, so much trust being built between the consumer and the brand at that point. It's not an anonymous transaction. They know who they're dealing with. Again, I said engagement.

Kristen LaFrance: 

And then lastly, I think the big thing is excitement and delight. Again, when they see these products, and let's say it's one that they're like, "Yeah, we really love this," now you've got a whole subset of customers that are waiting anxiously for that next box because they know one of these products that are coming they already know they love it. They've seen it. They know how they're going to use it. And they're really excited about it. Anticipation, surprise, and delight is everything, especially for curated boxes.

John Roman: 

Yeah, that's a really good point when it comes to retention. Because the reality is with the quantities we're dealing with, us deciding we're going to put something in a box, it's not going to appear in this month's box. The vendor, or if we're manufacturing, wherever we're sourcing and getting it from, it's not like they have that many sitting on a shelf. It's always a custom. Whether it's us or the vendor, 99 out of 100 times it's a custom manufacturing run because of the quantity. So it is going to be typically two to three months away. So yeah, if you're super excited about that product, you definitely want to stick around. You don't want to leave.

Kristen LaFrance: 

Yeah. It's a really cool long-term retention play.

John Roman:

I agree.

Kristen LaFrance:

I love it. I kind of just mentioned this when I said with curation, surprise, and delight is especially important. We've talked a lot on this podcast with some replenishment type subscriptions, things that are pretty obviously you put them on a subscribe and save, like dog food. You're going to run out. You're going to want more of them. It's the same products coming. I think in season two you are going to be ... BattlBox will be the only real curated box brand-

John Roman: 

Oh wow.

Kristen LaFrance: 

... that's been on the show, which is super exciting. I know it's a different ball game with retention here than replenishment. There's a lot of similarities, but then there's a lot of things that are different, that require different things because the way you're delivering and what you're delivering. So I'm curious what you've seen, kind of how you guys approach retention knowing that you have a little more work to do than maybe say a replenishment subscription.

John Roman: 

Sure. Do you know I'd love to sit here and lie and say in 2015 and 2016 we were super focused on retention and keeping churn low, but we weren't often.

Kristen LaFrance: 

Yeah.

John Roman: 

Don't get me wrong. I mean, we cared and we wanted to provide an amazing experience and cool products, and we wanted our customers to stay on for as long as possible forever, but we didn't ... Pure naivety. We didn't say, "Okay, well, how do we break churn?" We just accepted. In 2015, we knew we lost ... I mean, we were on Cratejoy at the time and they told us we were losing 12% of our customers every month.

Kristen LaFrance: 

Oof.

John Roman: 

We knew what it was. And when we build our models and business around that, we didn't until a couple years ago, though, start having these strategic conversations. How do we get that number down? What changes do we make? When and where do we surprise and delight? How do we keep the customers engaged? How do we do these videos I just spoke of? We didn't make it kind of a priority, unfortunately, to focus on, okay, that number's at 12. How do we get it to 10? How do we get it down to 8? How do we get it down to 6? How do we get it down to 4? Which is our current rate. We weren't having those conversations, unfortunately. But now we are. And now it's a very important conversation that we have on all of our calls that we're always trying to discuss and try to take a couple ... Well, now it's not a couple points off. I don't know if we'll ever be able to get below four.

Kristen LaFrance: 

Yeah.

John Roman:

Yeah, it's a completely different conversation that we're having now than we have back then.

Kristen LaFrance: 

Yeah, and I think that's normal. I think you guys did start talking about it even earlier than a lot of brands are. I mean, we're in 2020 and I'm doing this podcast in hopes that more brands will start thinking about it. So you guys were still ahead of the curve. So going from 12% to 4%, can you highlight just some of the things that you look and you say, "Okay, we feel like that really made an impact on retention"?

John Roman: 

If I had to think, man, it's like a ... Seems like a very simple question, but-

Kristen LaFrance: 

But retention is never simple, is it?

John Roman: 

No, it's not. So the first thing we had to do when we started making this a priority and spending time and focus on it was breaking churn apart into the two parts, right? So there's traditional churn. Kristen, you don't want any more BattlBox for your husband so you go in there and you cancel. And you're actually logging in and doing that. Then there's passive churn where the people did actually decide or at least not proactively cancel their account. It's just not renewing correctly, whether it's they put a janky fake credit card, whether they don't have the funds, whether they aren't receiving emails or it's getting stopped by the bank. It's not anything necessarily from the customer, at least not blatantly clear.

John Roman: 

So really, the first thing we did is we broke churn down into traditional churn and passive churn and attacked both of them at the same time and say, "Hey, how can we hit both of these?" And that's really where we saw the ability to move the needle because we were hammering both sides and we say double the results instead of just looking at it holistically. Okay, our churn's at 12. How do we get it down to 10? We said, "Okay, our passive churn is X, and our normal churn is Y. How do we adjust X? How do we adjust Y?" And kind of had two teams working on it. So I think that really, really helped. I know that's still a very generalized answer. I guess it is a generalized answer.

John Roman: 

Now, of course, if you want to break it down a little more granular on both sides, okay, are we engaging ... So on the traditional churn, are we engaging with the customers? Are we keeping the community what it needs to be? So little things like deciding we're going to do in that group live streams, engage with customers. Are we doing probably better vetting on the products and making sure they are going to appeal to the masses? A big part was internal surveys, doing a little NPS score.

Kristen LaFrance: 

Yeah.

John Roman: 

So after a customer gets the box, we're sure it's been delivered, and we've given them a couple days to kind of unbox it, look at it, we send an internal NPS score. We want to know how has your experience been. So in just following, I mean, it's not like we're using a software company for that. It's us just taking the concept and the ideology behind NPS, and we send it to them. And if they click 9 through 10, they're going to go in some automations so that we can make sure this fanatic is spreading the BattlBox gospel. That's 9 to 10. If they're 7 to 8, they're going in some automation but it's nothing crazy. But if they're 0 through 6, the reality is unless they filled out the survey wrong, which weirdly happens a lot ... It's really surprising, but I think-

Kristen LaFrance:

People are in too much of a rush?

John Roman: 

Yeah. Like, "I gave you a zero. You guys are awesome. Best decision I ever made." But if it's 0 through 6, we have automation. The moment that comes in, it hits a Slack channel we have where all of the owners are in there, Luke, head of CX is in there, couple others. So we know, okay, we missed the mark here. What are the next steps? How do we make sure this customer has a better experience? And how do we fix the issue they might have? Because they might not even told us about it. A lot of times consumers don't take the care and approach and they just passive-aggressively you're just going to give us a bad survey score and they didn't make a loud noise. So we're able to kind of, as soon as we see that, jump on them and try to turn that frown upside down. If you can do that, then obviously it's going to lead to them potentially actually renewing and not likely canceling like they might be doing.

Kristen LaFrance: 

And even going further, they might end up liking the product even more because you guys quickly responded and you were like, "Oh, no. You had a bad experience. How can we fix this?"

John Roman: 

So, so, so true.

Kristen LaFrance: 

And just something as simple as time and timeliness of that response, and then also the fact that you're not automating just a blanket robot message. You're looking at the cases and saying, "Okay, from a human standpoint, how can we help this individual?"

John Roman: 

So yes. Here's some of the ways we did the traditional churn. Obviously, on the passive churn, shout-out to you guys.

Kristen LaFrance: 

Ooh.

John Roman: 

Because we obviously use Churn Buster and that's actually helped significantly. That's how we got our total churn from 4.5 down to 4, that last little half a point. Which doesn't seem like a lot, but it actually ... Proportionally, that's a massive, massive amount.

Kristen LaFrance: 

Yeah, it's a massive percentage. And just for the listeners, one, I did not ask John to call out Churn Busters. He did this all on his own. We're going to do a little team dance after this. Makes us so happy. BattlBox is one of the coolest customers we have, and their campaigns are really amazing. We can kind of talk about that later. Their campaigns with Churn Buster are amazing. They work really well.

Kristen LaFrance: 

That 4.5 to 4%, like John said, might not sound like a lot. But really, it's 5% of recurring churn that has been ... or .5% of recurring churn. So it's not just this little bit, half a percent. It's half a percent every month, over month, over month that's going to keep growing if you're not diminishing it.

John Roman: 

Right. It adds up.

Kristen LaFrance: 

Really want to point that point up. It adds up really, really fast.

John Roman: 

No, it does. It has a huge, huge, huge effect, and taking it ... Not to get stuck on the Churn Buster piece, but it is a good example. So whether you're using Churn Buster or you're using something else ... We have this email series, but we decided we're not going to do this email series. It's like, "Hey, your card's not working. Fix it. Hey, you're going to miss out on your box. Fix it." Because we've built this community, I believe the first email is, hey, something's wrong with your billing. Here's a link. But the second email is from a staff member they might know. Our community knows Luke, right?

Kristen LaFrance: 

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

John Roman: 

He was once a customer. In the community, they know he's head of customer service, right?

Kristen LaFrance: 

Yeah.

John Roman: 

And he's in the group so people will tag him. So that email, second email, comes from Luke. The third email comes Currin, Brandon, who makes all the videos, is the face of our brand. They know that. So you really customize the experience where it's not just BattlBox says you need to pay your bill. It's, hey, it's Luke. Hey, it's Brandon. Hey, it's John. It's we're really going full on with the experience. It's they're getting a message from those individuals. And you see their responses. Brandon. Thanks, man. I'm going to take care of it tomorrow when I get home from work or ...

Kristen LaFrance: 

Yep.

John Roman: 

It's really cool. It's a little touch, but it makes a huge difference. It, again, pushes the ... It's not even just a narrative. It's the way we operate that it's BattlBox and just the customers are part of the BattlBox family. Whether they're giving us ideas on products, whether we're saying, "Hey, you need to fix your card," it's just this big community, and I think that ... You said it earlier. I mean, I think that was obviously community place to experience and that's the magic thing that we do.

Kristen LaFrance: 

Yeah, and I love ... This is why I love you guys, this campaign so much is because it is so friendly, and it's on brand, and it's coming from the community. We get a lot of people who come to us and they say, "This is such a small touchpoint. It can't be ... Improving these emails can't be that big of a difference." Then you look at a campaign like yours and you say, "Yeah, obviously it really does because ... " To build that trust, to build that community, to build the engagement where people feel comfortable responding to an email about billing, it has to be that every single touchpoint feels authentic and it feels like the brand that you know and love. So when it comes to something as not fun as billing, being able to still put that brand foot forward and your best foot forward and be really engaged with your customer, you're going to recover so much more than you would if you're sending the same your payment failed please update your card seven times in row, which is what ... For any brand operators who run a subscription, go check on your dunning campaigns. Because if you're not using Churn Buster, I can almost promise you that is what you're sending your customers right now.

John Roman: 

We were sending the same message every single attempt.

Kristen LaFrance: 

Yep.

John Roman:

And it's just super robotic. And honestly, we did it for so long. Again, naivety. But now looking at it, at what we were doing, it's almost cringe worthy. It's like ugh. That's not a good experience. Half of these people, in our case more than half, probably want to fix their stuff, but let's humanize it a little bit. Let's not just robotically send the same email. And if you're using Gmail and you don't separate threads out, it's all just in the same thread. It's disgusting-looking [crosstalk].

Kristen LaFrance:

Yes, yes. You can end up ... I have one in my inbox right now as we speak from a company that I will not name. But, I have a tread of nine dunning emails that say the exact same thing over, and over, and over again. And the first one landed in my spam inbox, which means that all nine emails are sitting in my spam. So if this is something that your company runs into, I am now a customer that cannot be reached because you have nine threaded emails in my spam box, and it's not a good look.

John Roman: 

No, it's not. And the truth of the matter is 2015 might've been ... We should've been doing it then, don't get me wrong. But 2015 Facebook advertising, we were getting customers for $4, $5. It was a different time. So yeah. It might've been I don't ... I don't think we were doing it right then. We weren't. But I could see strong arguments. We're getting a customer for $4. It's so inexpensive to get one. Just get more.

Kristen LaFrance: 

Yeah, just focus there.

John Roman: 

But now, the truth of the matter is, especially I think across the board right now, January being a traditionally tough month ... But going in Q4 where advertising costs are greater anyway because the Facebooks know that it's the time and there's so much competition. But, you fight so hard for customers now. It's not the wild west of yesteryear, it's just so much more difficult to get a customer. Just do everything right once you get them because it's so much easier to keep a customer happy and have them loving your product than to find a new one.

Kristen LaFrance: 

Yeah, if that's not the pull quote of the episode, I don't know what is right there. Wrote that down. It's going to be in our intro I'm sure. Yeah, I mean, exactly what you said. You're trying so hard now to get customers. Do everything you possibly can not to lose them. Actually, you guys just backing up, breaking it up into voluntary and involuntary or traditional and passive churn, that's something that a lot of companies don't even do and they don't even look at it.

Kristen LaFrance:

And like John said, it really seems to help kind of tune down the chaos of retention and churn. And when you look at it, it can just be so overwhelming. But then when you start to divide it up into two sections, then you can keep whittling it down and saying, "Okay, if we have this working and we're working on ... " If we've got the passive side kind of taking care of itself, we feel good about that. We know we're doing right by our customers. Now we know that that's working. We have the ability, and the resources, and that recovered money to go and then actually work on the voluntary side of stuff. I think it gives a much clearer path for kind of how to navigate churn which is ... I mean, we have a whole podcast on it. It's a mess to deal with.

John Roman: 

Yeah, no. I think you articulated it perfect there. It can be an overwhelming task and you don't know where to start. So by separating it out, it makes it tangible and it makes it possible.

Kristen LaFrance:

So just one more thing before we kind of wrap up. We've mentioned it a few times and when we have to talk about, and that is you guys's YouTube channel specifically. All of your social channels have tons of followers. Facebook alone 253k followers. Thousands in the Facebook group that you guys are talking about. But on YouTube, 80.3k followers on YouTube. That's huge. And you don't normally see that. And like you said, you also have videos that are, what, 30-plus minutes long. There's so much personality to the brand, with the videos and content you're pushing out. So I'd love to hear kind of your story on the YouTube videos, how they came to be a thing, and how they help with retention and acquisition for you guys.

John Roman: 

Sure. Part of the community and part of the experience is our content. We have a guy named Brandon Currin that does ... He does all the videos. He's the face of the brand. He's a character. He's likable. He's funny. He's perfect, right? He is BattlBox.he is exactly what BattlBox should be.

John Roman: 

So it's funny, he actually ... The story of Currin1776, as his handle is, is an interesting one. So when we actually launched, we had ... And this wasn't necessarily planned. But in the first couple months, people were buying the box. They were subscribers, and they were doing YouTube reviews, right?

Kristen LaFrance: 

Mm-hmm.

John Roman: 

Trying to monetize their channel, trying to grow their channel. It's good content. It's this new company, new product, new box. Let me review it. He actually was a customer as well. Same story similar to the Luke's story, so he-

Kristen LaFrance: 

Oh, man.

John Roman: 

Yeah. It's pretty nutty. So he was doing videos. He was paying for the box, paying the $150 for the pro plus a month box doing the reviews. Obviously, when we launched, we didn't have any followers or any content. I think we registered a YouTube channel. We didn't know what we were going to do with it.

Kristen LaFrance: 

Yep.

John Roman:

So we had a pre-purchase, which ... Pre-purchase survey, which we've since gotten rid of for conversion optimization reasons and now we have the data skills to know where everybody comes from. But at the time, how did you hear about BattlBox? And there was all the usual suspect in there, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, but there was another. And if you clicked other, you could type something. So we started seeing in the first few months a significant percentage of our customers were clicking other and they were saying Currin1776. We were like, "Okay." So we had obviously seen the videos. We got excited every time one dropped, this cool dude that is going to talk about the box we just sent. So we would watch him anyway. We were fans because he seemed like an ambassador of us and loved the box.

John Roman: 

We actually had open communication with him. There was a point where we said, "Dude, we love what you're doing. We're no longer going to charge you the 150 for the box. We're going to send you the box for free and just continue to give your unbiased review, but you don't need to pay for the box. You're bringing us business." Then we saw the monthly customers we were getting was growing but there was still a decent percentage that were saying him. And we were like, "Okay, well, you didn't ask for it, but we're going to start sending you ... " I think it was $500 a month to do the box reviews.

Kristen LaFrance: 

Oh, nice.

John Roman: 

So you're going to get the box for free. We're going to give you $500. Just keep doing it. We need you to keep doing it because we're getting all these customers from you. Please.

Kristen LaFrance:

Please don't stop.

John Roman:

Please don't stop. Then from that open communication became regular communication. And back to the BattlBox family, and the community, and the experience, we were chatting with him. He was becoming kind of a buddy. YouTube for him was kind of his side hustle hobby. He was, as he calls it, turning wrenches his whole life so he was not like a influencer. He was just a guy doing YouTube videos. He had had some moderate success. He was on a hunting show I think on a cable TV show in a couple appearance. He was definitely a personality, right?

Kristen LaFrance: 

Yeah.

John Roman: 

But then we saw his YouTube channel was growing exponentially at the same time he was doing his videos, and it just became this weird thing where our community ... Okay, the box has dropped. All right, Currin, dropped his video and our whole community would go watch it. So you had new people finding it signing up. You had our customer base that literally would go and just wait until his box dropped. So it was very, very cool.

John Roman:

Then, we came to the point we were like, "Hey, man. You want to quit your job and move down, move your family?" He's got a wife and kids. And move down to Georgia and set up shop and just be Currin, but be Currin1776 full-time and be a BattlBox employee. Yeah, he was like, "Okay." We're like, "Sweet!" And that's all she wrote. So he started as a customer, started doing reviews as kind of a side hustle. His channel blew up. We were getting customers because of him. And from paying for a box to free box to a little stipend each month to, hey, just quit your job and let's do BattlBox, and the rest is history. It's actually due to nondisclosures I can't go into details but I can make a statement or two that his personality has done so much that there's something coming in the middle of this year because of his awesome personality and his video skills that is going to be ... It's going to be pretty ... Hopefully we're going to see some exponential growth because of it. But, yeah, it's just a great story of like ... Both the Luke and the Brandon story of just kind of being a part of the community, being a customer, and then the full transition to being a BattlBoxer.

Kristen LaFrance: 

Yeah. I mean, that's customer retention to the most insane levels.

John Roman:

Yeah.

Kristen LaFrance: 

And I think I said earlier this episode I was like, "Wow! That's the best customer story I've ever heard." And now you've given the two best customer stories we've ever heard on Playing for Keeps. So awesome.

John Roman: 

I like it.

Kristen LaFrance: 

I've only got a few more questions just to wrap up with you. One thing I love so much about BattlBox is how much fun you guys have both as a brand, and a company, and a community. So I'm curious kind of with all of this that we've talked about, what's been your favorite part about growing this brand?

John Roman: 

I hate to sound like a broken record, but honestly it's the community. It's the engagement. It's, probably since we've been recording this, the 15 to 20 pending posts in our Facebook group where people are ... Because it's shipping week. Hey, has anybody received shipping notifications? Hey, I just got one. It's going to be delivered tomorrow. Just how much the community cares, and it's just ... I don't want to say mind-boggling because that's not fair. That's not the right word. I just get such a sense of self-worth out of this. We're not just selling a box of procured gear. It's just so much more than that. And seeing the excitement level.

John Roman: 

A really good example, we have hundreds of pictures saved for user-generated content, but we have so many cool pictures and stories of a dad taking his daughter or taking his son out with the BattlBox gear. It's helping the father-son, father-daughter bonding. Seeing those pictures, it's just like holy cow. It's silly to say. You wouldn't think we're making a difference, but you get that feeling that you are.

John Roman:

We've had a couple emails where ... We had this guy about a year ago. He sent us this article and it was firefighter came in. There was a victim committing ... Not victim. There was a person committing suicide and the firefighter had undone the vessel that they were hanging themselves with, had undone it and saved their life.

Kristen LaFrance: 

Wow.

John Roman: 

He had sent us the article, and he was a BattlBox customer. He's like, "Hey, I actually used this FOX knife that you put in last month's box."

Kristen LaFrance: 

Wow.

John Roman: 

He's like, "I had it on me, and I has like a ... " It's like a air, sea, land tool, like knife that has a bunch of functions, and he had used it. There's a little rope cutter in it, not just the knife itself. He had used that and sent us the article and a picture of ... I don't know. It's seeing the community and the engagement level, it's such a motivator and it's the best part of BattlBox.

Kristen LaFrance: 

Yeah. I mean, such a ... That's a beautiful story. What I've heard on this podcast again and again is the brands that are really doing well, and growing, and have this engaged community are the ones who have this passion that you're saying right here. It's the ones who care about the people that they're caring to, not just the profits on the other end. That's what makes my job so amazing is being able to talk to brands and people like you who look at business in a way that's not just making money. It's about doing something bigger and better. That's what this podcast is all about. What's what everything I do is all about. So just hearing that come from brands is so amazing. So I really want to congratulate you guys and highlight how amazing that is and the work you guys are doing.

John Roman: 

Thank you, Kristen. That was very kind.

Kristen LaFrance: 

Oh, you're welcome. Okay. One last question then. Where do you see BattlBox in five years?

John Roman: 

Oh, giving me too much credit that we think that far out ahead. I mean, I think we'll just continue growing, continue on. We'll probably have additional offerings. And we'll just continue kind of just setting ourselves up as the subject matter experts when it comes to the outdoors and gear. We just want to continue what we're doing. I'm sure as growth comes there'll be other avenues from trainings, and different types of features, and maybe customization at some point. We just want to keep doing what we're doing and just do it on a larger scale.

Kristen LaFrance: 

Yeah. And I mean, you guys are doing right, so that's what I hope to hear. Well, what I hope to see in five years.

John Roman: 

Yeah.

Kristen LaFrance: 

You guys are just thriving and doing what you do.

John Roman: 

Oh, I'll be in my 40s there.

Kristen LaFrance: 

Oh, what great years.

John Roman: 

Yeah. Thanks.

Kristen LaFrance: 

I'll be in my 30s then.

John Roman: 

Must be nice.

Kristen LaFrance: 

I'll be over the hill. Is that what they call it?

John Roman: 

Now, I think 40s are over the hill.

Kristen LaFrance: 

Over the hill?

John Roman: 

I don't think 30s are.

Kristen LaFrance: 

Oh.

John Roman: 

Yeah.

Kristen LaFrance: 

Okay. Well, I got time then.

John Roman: 

But that's it. Yeah. I'll be over the hill. Thank you.

Kristen LaFrance: 

Okay.

John Roman: 

I appreciate that.

Kristen LaFrance: 

You're so welcome. Thanks for coming on.

John Roman: 

I'm going to ponder my life for the next hour after this podcast. Thanks.

Kristen LaFrance: 

Welcome to coming on to Playing for Keeps where I give you daunting advice about your life. Oh, man. But, thank you so much, John. This was so much fun. I really appreciate you not just coming on once but coming on twice and going really in depth with me. This was amazing.

John Roman: 

Always a pleasure. We didn't go as long this time, but I think we still-

Kristen LaFrance: 

We didn't go as long.

John Roman: 

We got some good, good stuff.

Kristen LaFrance: 

Yeah, we got good stuff.