Shaping a Business around Community (+ Launching an SMS Program) with Eric Bandholz of Beardbrand

Kristen LaFrance:

All right, so SMS is the next big channel in eCommerce. You can't log into Twitter without seeing a new DTC brand launching a program, or seeing me rant about the iffiness of said programs. So how do you enter this channel in a way that's actually beneficial for both you and your customers? Well, Eric Bandholz, founder and CEO of Beardbrand, centers every business decision around their company values, freedom, hunger, and trust. From content development to, yep, a brand new SMS program, Eric dives into the what, why, and how of staying true to your brand on all of these channels. Here's our conversation.

Kristen LaFrance:

Hey Eric, thank you so much for being on this show. Welcome. How're you doing today?

Eric Bandholz:

What is going on, Kristen?

Kristen LaFrance:

I'm so excited about this.

Eric Bandholz:

I know. We're going to bring the party today, aren't we?

Kristen LaFrance:

Yes, we are. We just got to meet for the first time a month and a half ago, in person. I even got a tour of the office and got to meet some of the team members. It's really cool when I saw your guy's ShipStation commercial come on, now multiple times. Every time I'm like, "I know that guy!"

Eric Bandholz:

It's funny, I still have yet to see it live.

Kristen LaFrance:

Oh really?

Eric Bandholz:

Yeah, I think I don't really watch TV, so it just comes on TV, and then when my sport's team loses, then I just totally give up on sports.

Kristen LaFrance:

I saw it this morning watching the news and I was like, "Dusty, Dusty, I'm interviewing him today." And he was like, "I know you know him. You saw him at his office." And I was like, "Oh okay. Sorry, too excited." Well, awesome. Can you tell the listeners, just to start out, a little bit about you, how you ended up founding Beardbrand, and kind of just your journey into where you are now?

Eric Bandholz:

Yeah. So as I like to say, what's up listeners? Eric Bandholz here, founder of Beardbrand. That's my intro that I typically do for my YouTube channels. Beardbrand is a men's grooming company that has grown primarily through our organic content, like our YouTube channel, our blog. We even, back in the day, in the early days, we had a Tumblr page, it was a great way to really share our mission.

Eric Bandholz:

What happened is I used to be a financial advisor, and I don't know if you guys have seen any financial advisors lately, but they typically look a certain way, suit and tie, complete shave, side-part haircut. That's a cool style, but it's not really my style, so I didn't like the implied pressure of looking a certain way. I quit working there, grew out my beard, tried starting up a couple of businesses. And then going to these networking events, I always heard the same thing over and over again, it was, "Hey Grizzly Adams," or, "ZZ Top," or, "Duck Dynasty," and again, cool guys, but not me at all. I'm an entrepreneur, I'm a sales guy, I'm a designer.

Eric Bandholz:

I ended up attending this event, where I realized there's a whole community of guys like that, a person that we ended up coining the term urban beardsmen to describe. Beardbrand was created as a way to unite urban beardsmen and give them the tools they needed to, not just rock their facial hair style, but also invest in themself and take care of their grooming routine, and use that as a foundation of confidence that they then could apply to other parts of their lives. Improve their marriage, improve their relationship with their bosses or their employees, or spouses, and ultimately be like pillars of the community.

Eric Bandholz:

So that's what we've been doing since 2012. We're an entirely bootstrap company, and here in Austin, Texas, enjoying the hot January.

Kristen LaFrance:

Good old Texas, having a nice hot January. I love that you go beyond just ... You're uniting these people and this passion, but you're also saying what you said, invest in themselves as customers. I think for men especially, this has been an area that they haven't gotten served this kind of content and these kinds of products, even the messaging that at some point you do deserve to invest in yourself. Just anecdotally with my husband, the number of times I'm like, "You can go buy something nicer for yourself than this Old Spice bar that's giving you a rash every time you use it. There are things out there for you." What has it been like going into that realm and talking to a market that hasn't really been talked to like this before?

Eric Bandholz:

The thing is, I can totally relate because I was totally that dude before founding Beardbrand, like the Irish Springs or the Dove bar soap, and you're paying a $1 for it, or $2 for it. I even remember when I was maybe a couple years out of college and I was looking at my arm, and I just had these weird red marks on my arm. There's always like a mom in the office. I took it to the mom in the office and she was like, "Oh yeah, I don't know what it is. Eczema or something?" So I thought I had eczema and dry skin, and it turns out it was just the soap. I just switched to a soap, a utility bar, and all of sudden, it just goes away.

Eric Bandholz:

For guys, and ironically or unironically, the guys who seemed to be the most "masculine" or "hyper-masculine" seemed to have the hardest time buying grooming products. It's like, it doesn't make you any less of a man to use a nicer product that you're already using, or to use a tool to help you get to a style you're looking for. So a lot of our content, half of it has been like, "Here's how you do it," and the other half is like, "Hey dude, it's okay. You're not all of a sudden going to grow boobs and turn into a woman if you use the hair dryer on your hair or beard. It doesn't make you any more feminine. To feel confident in your style and your routine, it doesn't take away masculinity points."

Kristen LaFrance:

Has that message been hard to receive for people? Or do you think the way you guys have approached it with storytelling and the content ... I mean, just like in your Instagram, you feature so many different kinds of men that you look at it and you're like, "That's a man right there," and it just changes the perception immediately. Has that been really well received, or was it kind of an uphill battle at first?

Eric Bandholz:

Yeah, we still get it to this day and it's more of just the YouTuber commenters. I think the majority of guys out there, and I think this is the case in pretty much anything out there, it's set in the middle. They're balanced, they understand both sides of the spectrum. Those who are at the extremes, also tend to be the loudest.

Eric Bandholz:

We have gotten messages from people, but it hasn't been so much like, "I was afraid to use a hairdryer because I felt like a girl, and then I started using it and I felt great." It was more about like, "I was at this low part in my life and I needed ..." maybe they got dumped or something like that, "... needed to get my act together. I ran across your stuff and that's when I started to invest in my routine. I really just found so much more appreciation for who I was as an individual and I was able to use that to get into shape, and eat to right, and to do everything like that." Beard grooming for us is kind of like that catalyst for so many men.

Kristen LaFrance:

I love that. It's about so much more than selling beard products, you're really selling accessibility into your own investment and confidence in yourself, which is huge. I think this leads really well into my next question, which, what is really the mission and core values of Beardbrand? Because I know you guys have some really strong ones you live and breathe by at the business.

Eric Bandholz:

Yeah, I'm a very philosophical guy by trade, so working on our core values and our mission has been something that we're always doing, and in fact, it's actually something that we're not afraid to tweak or change. Our core values, since we created them, they have not changed, so they've always been who we are. Our core values are, freedom, hunger, and trust.

Eric Bandholz:

I personally fall into the camp of having something memorable, not like 10 different core values, because no one's going to remember that. And then, I like single words because it allows you a little bit of flexibility to describe why something falls within the category. And then most importantly, I really like three of them because they work as a triangle. When you have too much hunger, or too much freedom, or too much trust, it actually pulls the other core values out of line.

Eric Bandholz:

It's something that we talked about earlier, is balance. You really need to have balance, and our core values, we believe the same way, because you don't want to have a situation like Away, where clearly hunger is one of their core values, but trust was not one of their core values. So when Away was "slave driving their customer service staff", they're eroding that trust with their team members because they didn't really show that appreciation for the individuals. So I really think your core values do need to have that balance.

Eric Bandholz:

And then our mission is to make men awesome. It's pretty simple. We believe that when a guy invests in himself that, as I said earlier, they've got that power to invest in their family and their careers, their community, and rather than have this top down, this is how you need to be to make the world a better place, it's bottom up, kind of grass roots, become a better individual, become the person you want society to be. If you want society to become a friendlier place, then start being a friendlier person. So, that's kind of the take that we have on our mission.

Kristen LaFrance:

I love that. When you have these core values and this really strong mission then, how do you go about actually feeding that into every single thing you do? I mean, it has to ripple through who you hire, to how you message a single ad, obviously. So how do you keep those values at the forefront of everything you're doing?

Eric Bandholz:

You've toured the office, but we've got a couple of posters here in our office to help remind people, but it starts with our hiring process. During the hiring process, we ask candidates, what do these core values mean to you? And briefly describe them, how they affect your life. And then we do regular evaluations with vendors and our team members, and it all boils down to the core values. And then one little silly, I don't know if it's silly or not, but we'll have quarterly rewards for team members who represent the core values the most for that quarter, and we'll give them a little T-shirt that's says hunger, trust, or freedom. But none of them wear because it just says, like hunger, and then it's like, "I'm not wearing a shirt that just says hunger."

Kristen LaFrance:

Well now I want one of those shirts. I'll wear that shirt around.

Eric Bandholz:

Well, maybe they wear it to sleep or something.

Kristen LaFrance:

Awesome. Well, [crosstalk 00:11:38]-

Eric Bandholz:

They have the freedom to do what they want.

Kristen LaFrance:

I like it. And you trust them to wear it when they want to.

Eric Bandholz:

Exactly.

Kristen LaFrance:

Maybe when they're hungry?

Eric Bandholz:

Yes. Exactly.

Kristen LaFrance:

Did I do it? Did I rope it all in?

Eric Bandholz:

Yeah, that's the perfect balance, a hungry, starved ...

Kristen LaFrance:

We got it, right? Cool, well it's something ... I mean, we're going to have to talk about it, is you guys, this start you had with building a community first, and you have a lot of content and storytelling as a huge piece of your business, if not probably, arguably the biggest piece of your business.

Kristen LaFrance:

And something I want to mention that I think will feed really well into this conversation is I went to your website today, and currently on the Beardbrand website, the flow, is that you land on there and the first thing you see is a quiz, and then next you see recommended reading on the blog, and then you see product ethos, all before any sort of mention really of actually what you're selling comes up.

Kristen LaFrance:

And after that there is some products, but it's still not a grid of actual products, it's kind of this brand vibe design, how the products are going to feel. Under that you have company milestones. I mean, all these things almost go against a lot of marketing advice, which is like, make the conversion as quick as possible, get the product image right up front, make it easy to one-click convert from a home page.

Kristen LaFrance:

So I'm curious ... I mean, I love this approach and my listeners are going to be listening to me like, "Oh gosh, she's getting all excited about this." But I'm curious why you guys really went this route of not really putting products right up front, but putting a lot of content first?

Eric Bandholz:

When you think about it, I think the cool thing about building a business is there is no right or wrong way, and you have to do it to your own style, and what you guys bring the most value to in the marketplace. For us, a lot of times we think about what can Amazon offer and then, what can Beardbrand offer? And the reality is a lot of shoppers are comparing us to their options on Amazon and Amazon has a million different options, they've got two days shipping, they got ... Well, I guess that's about it, right?

Kristen LaFrance:

Yeah, super convenient, lots of options.

Eric Bandholz:

So what we can do is, we can provide really specific advice for what they're in need for, we can provide support, we can provide inspiration, and because of that, those are things that we focus on, is really the things that differentiate us from all the other competitors out there. So it's like our value is really our mission. I've said this before on ... I don't know when I've said it, but I've said it before. I've probably said it a lot of times.

Eric Bandholz:

The products we sell, I love them. I believe we've got the best products in the marketplace, but at the same time the products are almost a way for us to fund our mission, it's a way for us to help men be awesome. Where most companies are like, "How do I sell more products?", we're the other way around. We're selling these products to help us spread our mission, and bring more awareness, and bring more content. So it really just comes from being more of mission oriented organization than a product focus company.

Kristen LaFrance:

Yeah, and that leads straight into retention then, because like you're saying, Amazon can do these certain things. They can have two day delivery, they can have options, they can have low prices, but they don't have that connection with customers, they don't have the opportunity to do that. And when you do build that, you're kind of building in a natural repeat purchase model then. Someone's going to come back if they feel connected to the mission and then they have products that are backing that up. That just leads to extreme retention and customer loyalty, which maybe you can touch on that. Is that something that you guys are really seeing, that when you're getting customers, it's pretty easy to retain them because of this loyalty to a mission?

Eric Bandholz:

Yeah, I think like any customer base, you're going to have that five to 10% that just get it, they're bought in, they're all bought in, they know about the mission, they know, they've consumed all the content. And then you get the majority, who are maybe recommendations from friends, or maybe they ran across one video, or they saw an article that recommended our products, and they haven't really dug deep into the brand to understand the brand. And then you have the people who maybe didn't have a great experience, or it didn't match them and they're kind of on the way out.

Eric Bandholz:

I think our goal is to have such a great experience that they want to come back, and it kind of goes to one of our core values of freedom, understanding that every single day we have to convince our customers to buy from us. We never have an assumption that someone becomes a customer and then they're going to buy from us forever. So we always want to work hard to win them over, and to continue to bring more value, and to continue to fight to win their business.

Eric Bandholz:

We do have higher than industry average repeat rates, but also, I think we can do a much better job at continuing to grow that, and making sure that our customers really understand the value that our product and our company can bring.

Kristen LaFrance:

So why is storytelling and content been such an important factor for the Beardbrand growth and everything as you continue. I mean obviously, you started in this realm as a blog, as a content creation, but why has that really stuck? Why is it so important for your audience?

Eric Bandholz:

Well, in the early days, we were selling a product. Our primary product in the early days, and still to this day is beard oil. And in the early days, no one had heard of beard oil. They literally thought it was oil from someone's beard.

Kristen LaFrance:

Ew!

Eric Bandholz:

Yeah. So I mean, it was like, how much can you put on a little two inch by one inch box that tells everything that the product can do? So for us, storytelling really allowed us to show the value of the product and tell the value of the product, so that person could understand it and see the difference, and see how it could be worked into their life. And then also, you can't get people to be awesome, like our mission, we can't make men awesome by just putting stuff on a box. You have to support it with content, email marketing, messaging that really does give them good ideas.

Eric Bandholz:

Like if you saw the email that went out today, it was on journaling. And what does journaling have to do with beard care? Absolutely nothing at all, but our mission isn't about providing beard care to all the men, it's about making men awesome, and journaling can make a big impact on a lot of people by getting your thoughts on paper, or setting up better practices for how you're going to work.

Kristen LaFrance:

And that really even goes through to something I think you guys do uniquely is your welcome flow, on your emails. I signed up for it today. And also just seeing you come up with, yes, you have a product offer, but you're also introducing, okay, we're going to do, I think it's ... and you can correct me if I get this number wrong ... a five day course. And that's what you're delivering first up. You can tell that content and actually getting across the mission, and bigger things, and value just beyond products, is really important to the brand.

Eric Bandholz:

Yeah, and it kind of goes back to our earlier conversation about men and their insecurities. The reality is a lot of our customers, they've never grown a beard before, or some of them didn't have a father figure in their life, to be able to learn from them, and they're looking for that expertise. We love educated customers. We think that the more the customer's educated, the more our product stands out, whereas, I think there's a lot of companies out there that maybe sell on price. They don't want customers looking at the ingredient list, or they don't want them shopping their products, they just want to get them in on a low price experience, whereas, we're like, "Men, learn as much as you can," because we know that once you start learning and digging into it, you're really going to see the value that we do.

Kristen LaFrance:

Yeah, absolutely. Something really unique about your content is that you are actually a really big face of the brand, a lot of people recognize you. Your beard is basically internet famous, your personality and all this. This is really what I think a lot of Beardbrand customers find you through and connect to, is this personal connection to you as the founder, as well. So how do you think your image really works with the brand? And how do you strategically use that to really continually drive those deeper connections?

Eric Bandholz:

Beardbrand's easy for me because to a certain degree, it's almost an extension of me. I'm passionate about the products, I'm passionate about the mission. I'm a guy who grew his beard out, who used to be a financial advisor. I know what it's like to have your mom threaten to cut your beard off at night. I didn't grow up as a rocker, or as a Duck Dynasty guy, so I'm able to just talk about the things that I want to talk about. And I'm also, to a certain degree, I like being on in front of the camera. I like being able to tell the story, I like being on stage, for me, that's fun for me. If I was given a choice, I would do that all day long. I know there's a lot of great leaders who, they have been behind the scenes, they like the operational side of things, but for me it's just too enjoyable to not want to be out there.

Kristen LaFrance:

I think the advice that comes out of that really is, for brands, as your listening to this, is figuring out where your passions and your value lies and what you can bring to your brand, and really honing in on where your skills, your interest, where you can come off really authentically. YouTube is obviously just a channel that really works for your personality and your brand.

Kristen LaFrance:

If you're listening to this and you're wondering, "Oh God, does this mean I need to start creating videos?" Take a second and see if that's actually applicable to your specific business and your customers, and then also your strengths as a brand, as the story you're telling, as a person, as a team. Really just figuring out, okay, this is something that I feel we can go all in in and do really well and it feels like a natural fit. That's going to show a lot of authenticity and I think, Eric, that's why your videos do so well, is because your playing directly into a strength and you can really feel the passion through everything you do.

Eric Bandholz:

Yeah, and to add onto that, I would say two points. The first point was, when we started as a bootstrap company and you have no money for marketing, what other options do you have than to just get out on social media and just talk to people? That's what you have to do. We started with 30 bucks, and grew it from there. And then the other thing to say is, why not both? You can be the face of the company and you can also have other faces of the company, or you can just have other faces of the company.

Eric Bandholz:

There's always going to be risk with everything in life. So if I was the only face of the company, if something happened to me, if I died, that could really put the business at risk and I didn't want that. But at the same time, if you build around somebody else, they could go and do something that's stupid like Jared of SUBWAY, or Papa John's.

Kristen LaFrance:

Yeah, good example.

Eric Bandholz:

Yeah, Papa John's. So you kind of want to have ... In my opinion, I think having multiple faces is the way to go, because not only are people able to now connect with me, but if they don't connect with me, if they find my style a little abrasive, then we've got a couple of other guys. We've got Greg Berzinsky, Carlos Costa, a bunch of people we've worked with on a one on one basis, where these customers and fans can connect with them and build that relationship with Beardbrand through other individuals. So I think that's a really strong way to build a business, and it also helps with content by not having that burden all come on me, because creating content can be very time-consuming as well, and very exhaustive to your mental endurance.

Kristen LaFrance:

Yes, definitely. I think what you just basically summed up was you have to have balance, which I think is what we're just going to-

Eric Bandholz:

Oh man! Is that a B?

Kristen LaFrance:

... keep coming back to. Look at it, we're just going to keep circling back to the mission and the values. I love it. Okay, so something really cool that you have actually told me about, that you have rolled out is, one on one style consulting via SMS for your customers. I am so excited to talk to you about this. I'm curious what the strategy behind that was and why you guys decided to go with the SMS route?

Eric Bandholz:

The thing is, everyone uses ... When they think of SMS they think of it ... I think it's a really new platform and maybe I'm showing my age or something like this. But I feel it's a little intrusive to "market" through SMS. Any time I get any kind of message that's telling me to buy something, it just makes me so angry. For whatever reason, it's the most invasive way to market, and that's not the Beardbrand's style. We never want out marketing to be abrasive. We want to be able to send you something every single day and you're excited to get, like you're like, "Oh my God, I can't wait for my Beardbrand email because it's bringing me that much value in life."

Eric Bandholz:

And for us, we found a way that SMS really worked well, because what we want to do is go down a little bit deeper and provide style consulting, and by having the client have it on their phone, they can quickly take a selfie, send it back to us, and we can say, "All right man, you're taking your cheek line too low," or, "Your neckline's too high," or, "Maybe give your beard a little more length," or, "Maybe take it up," and, "Here's the hairstyle options for you." And really, again, do the things that Amazon can't do. We do this after the customer buys from us, so it's not part of getting people in the funnel, it's more of a bonus feature of buying from Beardbrand, is you're able to get this style consulting immediately after buying from us.

Kristen LaFrance:

It's really cool because it's becoming a channel for you guys, rather than just a marketing broadcast, and I can reflect that feeling. My husband, when he heard that I was talking about SMS marketing he was like, "No, God no, please don't let that be a thing. Please stop this, I don't want brands texting me. There's enough in my inbox." There is that big fear of SMS for customers and I think they're even to the point where you get a text from a company and you're looking for it to be something off, you're looking to be upset about it, and so I love that you guys are approaching it in this way. So is it really, do you have a team that's sitting and handling these text messages?

Eric Bandholz:

Yeah, it's Sylvester is the guy who's doing it, and he's like one of our most stylish guys here in the Beardbrand office, and he certainly knows his way around style and of course beard grooming. Of course, the first message is always automated, just tells you a little bit more and gives you some guides and says, "Hey, hit me a message if you're looking for some advice and I'll be here for you." So we don't have any kind of bots in there. I don't know if I'm ... Not always, not every application, but bots generally tend to be a little cheesy and they never do what they claim they can do.

Kristen LaFrance:

Yeah, exactly. So this is obviously just a ... it's a really big retention play then here, because you said, it's not used for acquisition, it's once a customer comes on. It sounds like you're rewarding loyalty, you're rewarding engagement, really encouraging customers like, "Hey, we're actually real people on the other side." So are you finding that customers are really open to actually engage in this way?

Eric Bandholz:

Yeah. They're sending photos and Sylvester's cranking out those conversations all day long. And a funny story I want to tell you about our ... Oh man, I might be spoiling the podcast, but I've got a recent story that just happened today. Sylvester got this message from one of the clients and he's like, "This is my beard inspiration." And it was a guy who had come to ... We had put on a conference, we call it the Alliance conference. So one of our customers who had come to the Alliance conference and we took photos of him and we put the pictures up. So Sylvester got that message, and then what we did is we sent that message on to the other customer who ... It's essentially one of the greatest compliments you can get to be someone's style icon.

Eric Bandholz:

So it was really cool to be able to just connect these two customers with that common bond of style investment. And I don't know, I just found that charming. You're not going to get those experiences unless you put on conferences, or unless you really have that direct one on one conversation with customers that aren't just focused on, "Hey, my stuff didn't come in," or, "My stuff's broken." We actually get to learn and know about our customers.

Kristen LaFrance:

Yeah, first hand and really learning in their language too, what they're dealing with is a really unique opportunity. So how are you guys measuring success of this program as it evolves?

Eric Bandholz:

For us as a brand, a lot of things aren't about success or not success. For us, we'll have basic metrics of how many people are engaging in the conversations, and we'll look at the data of people who engage in the SMS and they're repeatability, and how much more likely they are to become a loyal customer. So those are the big metrics that we'll keep an eye on, to make sure that we're not just spinning our wheels, but at the same time, these are our customers and we want to serve them. In business, there's always going be things that you just have to do on faith, that may or may not actually have accountable ROI.

Kristen LaFrance:

This is something I've been talking a lot about is kind of this customers first and then metrics second approach. A lot of times with customer experience and creating these really good experiences, being what Amazon can't be, a lot times means you're going to have to take a risk and do something that you might not get instant data on, or a number that's going to tell you, like this converted at X percent and you should do this with it. A lot of this stuff is just really focusing in on, okay, what do our customers need? Can we give them value? Can we give them a good experience? And then taking a leap of faith in trusting that the metrics are going to follow, retention is going to follow.

Kristen LaFrance:

I can pretty much assume that you guys are going to look back and find that yes, people who engaged with this text message program ended up being higher repeat purchase rate customers. It just kind of follows a natural thing. So I think it's really important that you brought that up, that you can measure, there are these numbers that you're looking at, but also sometimes it's just a gut feeling of knowing that you're doing best by your customer and trusting that that's going to follow through.

Eric Bandholz:

Well, I want to tell you another story. We recently installed this app, anyone who's on Shopify, the app is called Grapevine. It's a cool little app, it allows you to ask just one simple question in the checkout, so after someone purchased from you. And the question we ask is, how did you first hear about Beardbrand? And we're cranking through that data and of course, as you would expect, YouTube is far and away our number one source for us, but not far behind that is word of mouth. It was something like 18%, for the time period that I ran, was word of mouth. And it's like how are you going to attribute word of mouth to something?

Eric Bandholz:

Word of mouth is these small things that you do, that create such an amazing experience that people want to talk about you. I mean, we're not making sneakers, we're not making pants, shirts, hats, things like that. You're not making things that people can see and start the conversation, so it's only going to come up if someone's talking about their beard, or if they're just so passionate about the brand that they're going off and telling people about it.

Kristen LaFrance:

Yeah, totally. Just hearing word of mouth, up to 20% of your business, is a huge chunk that if you're doing something that's going to drive that, even if you can't attribute it to it per se, in your data, is still really important. And if you were to say, not be doing those things that make customers excited to talk about you, that's 20% of revenue you could really start to drop off on. So it's important that even things that aren't necessarily trackable are still really, really important in this day and age.

Eric Bandholz:

Yeah, and in my opinion, as a bootstrap company, word of mouth is the most cost effective and sustainable way to grow a business. And not only is it the most sustainable way to grow a business, it's the best for the customer too, because if you're creating such a great company that they're going around talking about it then, man, the customer wins, you win as a company, because you're not having to pay all this money to acquire customers. And yeah, I mean, win-wins, man. I love those.

Kristen LaFrance:

Just wrapping up in this SMS program that you've launched, I can only imagine if say, I'm a guy and I do this text, I'm like, "Hey, what do I do with my hair?" No one has probably ever told me at this age how I should style my beard or my hair, and I have this experience where then I come out with a lot of confidence, I've connected with a brand that I trust. I can just imagine you're going to your friends and they're like, "Oh hey man, your hair look is looking good. Did you do something different?" That's just a quick like, "Oh yeah, there's this brand and they texted me, and I got one on one style advice. This is really cool." It's unexpected and it's going to drive a lot of word of mouth stuff, so even if you can't look back and say exactly, like this engagement drove this much repeat purchase, you can say, this engagement probably drove a lot of organic shares.

Eric Bandholz:

Absolutely. As much as the world gets to Facebook pixels, and attribution for every single thing, and tracking your customers, you got to have faith in your business. You got to have gut feels, you got to make those judgment calls from time to time, even for things that may not be working. Yeah, it's just the fun of business is just that unknown and you're trying to figure it out.

Kristen LaFrance:

I'm curious how you really share that motto with the team. What we're seeing at Churn Buster is sometimes when there's an organizational dysfunction, or really intense focus on metrics, or growth, that a lot of times there's people who'll come with really good ideas of like, "This would make an extremely cool customer journey or a really great moment of surprise and delight," but then they get this immediate fear of like, "Well, If I can't prove it by next week's meeting that it was worth it, in revenue or on a number on a spreadsheet, then I might be in trouble. So instead of bringing this up, I'm just going to table this and keep doing what I've been told to do." So how have you really encourage your employees to bring ideas like this to you, to think outside of the box of metrics?

Eric Bandholz:

Probably a little bit has to do with the fact that I'm not really a metric driven kind of guy. We do have metrics and we do try to follow them and we do use them as ways to tell stories, but for me, it comes down to our core values, freedom, hunger, and trust. It's like, you have the freedom to develop new ways of doing things or find new opportunities, and then we trust that the reason you're on the Beardbrand team is we trust who you are and the talent you have, and we trust you to go and execute things that you're passionate about. We'll test things as well and challenge your thoughts, to just make sure you have conviction in it and you're excited about it. And then you've got to have that hunger to go out and do it.

Eric Bandholz:

So it really does come down to our core values of what we are and the type of people who we look to bring onto the team. People who are looking for instruction and are looking to be told what to do, aren't really successful at Beardbrand. They can be incredible workers, incredible teams members, great people, but if you don't have that ability to want to find opportunities for improvement, and then that confidence to go and take it, to make mistakes, and know that we're okay with mistakes as long as we're learning from those mistakes, then yeah, that's just kind of the Beardbrand way.

Kristen LaFrance:

I think it just creates this big cycle of from the top down and then back into the business. So when you put trust in your employees and they have trust in you, then that trust is going to be felt to the customer and then the customer is going to trust you as a founder, and you as a brand. It just creates this symbiotic, complete holistic experience from the back end of a brand to what the customer sees. Just having that trust built all the way through is really amazing.

Kristen LaFrance:

So the community obviously around your brand is huge, really active. You guys have customers who are interacting with you one on one like this, and yet, building a community like this, from the ground up is really, really difficult, especially in 2020. So if you have a brand who's really wanting to invest in community and customer relationships, do you have one piece of advice they could take from this podcast?

Eric Bandholz:

The only way you can serve your community is to be part of the community. You have to be in there, you have to be engaging with them, you have to be responding to those YouTube comments, or to your blog comments, or podcasts remarks, or Twitter, or whatever. You have to be in the thick of it, and that's the only really strong way that you're going to know if you're hitting the mark, or if you're off base.

Kristen LaFrance:

Yeah, I love that. So you already gave us a really great customer story, so I'm not going to ask you that again, unless you want to share another one. I'll let you go for it.

Eric Bandholz:

I've got a million of them.

Kristen LaFrance:

Oh, let's do it. Okay, give me another favorite customer story.

Eric Bandholz:

Well, since I went with a recent one that I got today, I'll go back to one of my first customer stories, and it was from a customer who was having issues with their child not wanting to hug or kiss them because he had a scratchy beard or something like that. I can actually relate as I recently shaved off my beard and my daughter hasn't kissed me since. But what he said is, he bought some beard oil and applied it and put it on, and for the first time, his boy noticed the smell of the beard oil and then went up and snuggled with the father. That's a little more product focused and it's just kind of cool how that product can ... Actually, it's more than just something for the individual, but it can affect other people. It was just a really touching story for me.

Kristen LaFrance:

I love that. So what's something that's really surprised you as you've grown?

Eric Bandholz:

As a company, I think as an entrepreneur, how challenging it can be to build a team up, and to really give them the support they need to be successful in their roles. I think we added years to the growth of our company just by trying to figure out how we hire people and how we, I want to say ... evaluate is not the right word, but just show them the things that are important to work on, within in the business. As an employee, back in the day, I was like, "My boss is stupid, they should be doing this or that." Or, "How can they not know how to hire people?" Or, "How can they not know that this person's not going to work out?" Once you get into that role you're like, "Oh my God, yeah. It's really hard. It's really hard."

Kristen LaFrance:

Yeah, totally. So last question for you before you wrap up, where do you see Beardbrand heading in the next three to five years?

Eric Bandholz:

We're just going to continue to do what we do well, but try to do it better, so that means just try to create better content for us, try to grow our YouTube audience. Continue to develop the great products for your beard, body, and hair, and try to expand that outreach to a larger audience. So a couple of big projects. We pulled out of Europe about a year ago. We're going to focus and work on how we can really solve that operational challenge of international business, which as a small bootstrap company is a lot more challenging than when we thought the first time around, so that'll be probably one of the bigger projects that we undertake within the next year or two.

Kristen LaFrance:

Super exciting. Well thank you so much for coming on Eric. This was so much fun. Listeners, check out Beardbrand, their products are amazing. My husband loves the beard oil. The sea salt spray, ladies and gentlemen, it's amazing. It completely changed my hair, so even if you are a woman without a beard, go check out their sea salt spray, because it is amazing.

Eric Bandholz:

The other thing that I'd like to add on is, if you're an entrepreneur, do yourself a favor and just grab one of our products, not just to take care of yourself, but also to see how we do business. How we market to people, how we send emails, how we have a post purchase flow and pre purchase flow, and all those things. Definitely experience the Beardbrand experience, because we've done everything on purpose and with thought, and we're certainly trying to make it better, but we're also at the same time, pretty proud of what we've built so far.

Kristen LaFrance:

Yeah, definitely go through their experience as a customer, it's the best way you can really learn how to build a business, especially one that's so successful and growing as Beardbrand. So thank you so much Eric.

Eric Bandholz:

Thank you. It's been my pleasure.