Transcript
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Last week on Share the Struggle podcast, we recapped Daytona Bike Week for Loud Proud American.
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We placed a major focus on the most important part for me the people.
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But the truth is it has to come down to dollars and cents.
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If you don't make enough, then the sacrifice doesn't make sense.
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Enough, then the sacrifice doesn't make sense.
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So today on Share the Struggle podcast, we dig into dollars and cents and we discover if this all makes sense.
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Let me tell you something Everybody struggles.
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The difference is some people choose to go through through it and some choose to grow through it.
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The choice is completely yours.
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Which one you choose will have a very profound effect on the way you live your life.
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If you find strength in the struggle, then this podcast is for you.
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Do you have a relationship that is comfortable with uncomfortable conversations?
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Uncomfortable conversations challenge you, humble you and they build you.
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When you sprinkle a little time and distance on it, it all makes sense.
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Most disagreements they stem from our own insecurities.
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You are right where you need to be Back on time.
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We can back off the whole day gone, but we're behind.
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What in the world has been?
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What in the heart did it do?
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Good Lord, almighty, am I so excited to be back with you.
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Oh, it's true.
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It is damn true.
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How do you do?
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I miss you, boo?
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Welcome back to the podcast that is proudly sponsored by, hosted by, represented by loud proud american, that proudly made in usa apparel that I put on day after day, and I beg of you to do it the same way.
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Sorry, get on my high horse there, but this podcast is brought to you by Loud Proud American, that apparel brand that represents the American spirit, with an unrelenting commitment to providing only made and American products.
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The name of this here podcast is Share the Struggle, because everybody struggles, and this week we are going to recap the greatest struggle for Loud Proud American the trip to Daytona, daytona Bike Week, the absolute most out of the comfort zone challenge that this brand has ever taken Leaving my wife and my baby and my mama and my family and everybody behind, which I'm going to tell you right now, before we really get into the dollars and cents to see if it all makes sense, because that's what we're here to talk about today.
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One of the toughest things to do was to leave my child behind, and I had multiple conversations with Brian during the week about leaving my child behind, about leaving my child behind.
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That's going to be a big focus on today's episode because, as I reflect on the hard facts, as I reflect on the results from the bike week, that you just can't put an emotional underlying reasoning behind.
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I know this sounds crazy, but allow me to elaborate here a little bit.
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When I had the recap last week which thank you so much to so many of you that reached out and said congratulations and followed up on the episode and said, hey, man, that cliffhanger has really got me cliffing and hanging over here I need to know.
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I need to know how things went.
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How did it all go?
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I appreciate each and every one of you for those conversations and reaching out and checking in.
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The truth is, when we are talking about dollars and cents, there's no sugarcoating it.
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I can't sprinkle emotion upon the results.
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When we look at last week's episode, I can dress it up however I want.
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My perception is my reality.
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You've heard me say this many, many times before Perception is reality.
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However you perceive things to be, it shall be, and for me, one of the emphasis is always on people.
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It's always on relationships.
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Loud, proud, american.
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For me is relationship retail.
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It's not about a transaction.
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It's not about one t-shirt, it's about all the t-shirts.
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It's not just about the apparel, it's about the mission, it's about the brand, it's about the task at hand Relationship, relationship, relationship.
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I can justify so many decisions I make based on the quality of relationships that I make.
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So I can sprinkle a whole lot of positivity on last week's show.
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I can sprinkle a whole lot of positivity on all the amazing things that happened by going to Daytona, if I just start to peel back the onion a little bit and I think about those things.
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Number one, being accompanied by a brother of mine, brian Parmelo, and his boy, zach, them doing a father-son trip, the fact that I am just over a year off of losing my dad, and I'm thinking about how much I would have cherished making that memory.
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I think about the times that I'm driving through the night by myself, when the boys are taking a nap, when it's my turn to roll the wheel, and I'm thinking about my dad and my choices.
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Those things, those experiences.
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That's a positive sprinkle.
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I can sprinkle that positivity all over my little donut here, the relationships that I've made, the connections that I made, daniel Johnson, I can sprinkle a whole ton of sprinkles on my little donut, thinking about the relationships and the opportunities and the possibility of making that friendship, that brotherhood, when I think about all the people that I've met, those connections that we've made.
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We did a great job in the course of a week of establishing ourselves as regulars, between Brian Zach and Dirk and myself, going out, meeting bartenders, becoming friends with Abby and her, introducing us to other pivotal people that are involved in the local scene in that area.
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Thinking about those things, those connections, those relationships that could pay major dividends for us if we decide to go back.
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Those are all positive sprinkles.
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Major dividends for us if we decide to go back.
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Those are all positive sprinkles.
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I can sprinkle the shit out of positivity, but the truth is the reality is dollars and cents and if you don't make enough of either, then it just doesn't make sense.
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You need to make enough dollars, you need to make enough cents.
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As I referenced, leaving little Paisley Rain behind.
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That's one of the most challenging things about this entire experience, for more than one reason.
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Number one leaving my little girl behind, when, if you've been listening in, then you know that I've become like daddy daycare during the week.
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It's my time to spend with my little girl.
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During the week it's my time to spend with my little girl.
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So since leaving Freiburg Fair, I spend every single day with my little girl.
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To be gone for a couple of weeks isn't easy.
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To be gone for a couple of weeks and not turning the results that you want.
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When the results don't outweigh the sacrifice, some major head games begin to happen.
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I myself consider myself a veteran of this game.
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I consider myself a veteran of the vendor lifestyle.
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My wife likes to call it a carny lifestyle that we have to live.
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In.
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The beginning I would ride these highs and lows like you could only imagine right.
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Would ride these highs and lows like you could only imagine right.
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If you would start an event off with two negative days.
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I could let that tail spin me in so many ways.
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But I have trained myself, I have learned lessons the hard way and I can now consider and call myself a veteran of this lifestyle.
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I can figure it out, I can ride the lows and I can just capitalize on the highs.
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So I've begun to become really equipped at talking myself off a ledge at all times.
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This particular adventure happened to ramp up the amount of difficulty because it's the first time that I've really left home without my family.
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Now, as hard as it is to leave your wife and go do these things, leaving your wife and your five-month-old, who just happens to turn six months old while you're on the road, it really just ramps up the difficulty of being away from home.
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So if things aren't going the way you want them to go, it becomes even more of a challenge to keep yourself away from those negative thoughts.
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But I do truly feel like I was doing the best I can because I knew, no matter how great the success, it needed to be a triumphant result for me to really be okay with leaving my family behind.
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Let's be honest, I'm not a scumbag, okay, so I'm not trying to leave my family behind and just book a vacation to uh, you know, just dick off.
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Okay, so I'm not a scumbag.
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The results have to be tremendous for me to be like oh yeah, no problems here, because there's always going to be a problem, there's always a difficulty in leaving your family behind.
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But doing it for the very first time, sprinkling on the distance being the greatest distance I've ever traveled for the business, all those things layer into a big donut of sensitivity.
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So I have this sensitivity donut we're talking about.
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I must be craving donuts.
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That was wrong of me.
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I have a sensitivity donut that I'm sprinkling positivity sprinkles all over and that's how I'm going to sum up bike week.
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Okay, you're going to leave the state of Maine on your big, just old-fashioned sensitive donut and as you start adding and stacking victories and encounters and relationships and all these positives, you're starting to sprinkle your positive sprinkles on your sensitive donut.
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Okay, that's me in a diabetic nutshell.
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I don't know why my fat ass is craving a donut.
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I don't even think this is about donuts, but I'm just using something I can relate to and apparently that is a donut.
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And here I am finding myself rambling and you might already tell that I might have spilled the beans here a little bit, because why in the ever-loving hell would I start off talking about missing my child and positive sprinkles and a gosh darn donut if I crushed bike week?
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Well, this is not the cliffhanger that I was trying to set up for today's show, but the truth of the matter is it didn't go the way I hoped it would go.
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Matter is it didn't go the way I hoped it would go Now, when I set out to do one of these little journeys or any event for that matter, I set a level of goals.
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I have a range of goals that I'll forecast for myself and it basically kind of sets up like an expectation and then like your hopes and your aspirations.
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So when I'm going out there, for anything I do, I will try to set a break-even number.
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Hey, we have to achieve this.
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Once we cross this number, then we're starting to make money.
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I always set that.
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I set a realistic goal for myself that, hey, this is what you should expect, this is where you would like to be.
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I have an increase above that a little bit.
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That kind of makes me a little bit happier.
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And then I have the ever-loving home run.
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And when you are robbing Peter to pay Paul and you're maneuvering and doing all these crazy cost-cutting things and pulling all these last-minute deals to fund a trip, when you're doing all these things and banking on the success of a trip, when you put the expectation in your head that this trip could save your business and your brand, that right there builds kind of an unrealistic home run goal.
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That I'm not going to drag out today's episode and lead y'all on.
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I am not here to lead y'all on, I'm not trying to get you to buy me dinner, to wine me and dine me.
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No, no, no, I didn't hit that number y'all.
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When it comes right down to it, this venture, when it comes down to dollars and cents, unfortunately didn't make enough dollars and cents to consider itself a home run.
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It didn't save the business.
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It didn't launch us off for the most amazing, tremendous 2025.
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It didn't do all the things I needed to just keep the business alive.
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Those things didn't happen.
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Those things did not happen.
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The truth is that we didn't lose money, but we didn't set any tremendous goals.
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As I'm talking about this sensitive donut and I'm factoring in hard-hitting results, I always think about those positive sprinkles, those relationships and those things and those opportunities that happened.
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But I need to make decisions based off of results, and the results weren't as successful as I had hoped for.
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And, to be honest, if I were to just make a business decision off of numbers and numbers alone, if I was handed a spreadsheet before this event and I was given the opportunity to read all the numbers and say, hey, you're going to leave your family for over two weeks and you're asking some close friends of yours to leave their family for over a couple of weeks, and this is your cost to play and this is your final end result for doing so.
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If I looked on those numbers, and those numbers alone, and I made my final decision, I would have stayed home.
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I would have stayed home.
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It didn't equal out to all that I wanted it to be, but if you've been listening along, really even just so far this year, you've heard me talk about the guiding words.
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Right, the wife and I had a great episode about picking and discovering, identifying your guiding word, which please go back and listen to that.
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I think that's a powerful thing, it's a powerful message and it's one that I've truly been using to make decisions and, to you know, honestly guide my life, to guide my decisions.
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Hence the name of the freaking word, a guiding word For me this year.
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It's about being courageous.
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It's about making those sacrifices, and if I was not picking my events, if I was not finalizing my decisions in line with my guiding word, then I would have stayed home.
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But I couldn't start the year off identifying that mission for me, that guiding light for me, that word for me of being courageous, and then, literally two months in back off of the most courageous thing I could possibly do for my business.
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Then what was the time spent on?
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What was all the research, the thought and the whole process?
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It was all for nothing If I spent all that time identifying something to motivate me for the year and then very quickly, two months into the year, I don't utilize that philosophy.
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I need to stick to my guns.
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As I said to you by looking at the numbers, if I was just based off of a spreadsheet I wouldn't have went.
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But the truth is, if I remove the spreadsheet, I'm glad that I went.
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It's a major accomplishment, it's a milestone moment for us.
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We learn so damn much and I know I'm kind of just rambling here and going out of tune.
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I've got a whole list of things here and I'm not even remotely in order of the way I wanted to talk about today.
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But I guess that's what happens when you turn on a microphone and you just speak your truth.
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You just give the time to your heart to vent and uncork your emotions.
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The results were not what I hoped them to be.
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The results were not what I hoped them to be and if you listened last week you heard me talk about the two days that we spent with Lisa from Bentley Saloon and her giving us a masterclass in promotion and the pep talks and everything and the conversations with her and Bentley about how well we were going to do.
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It was tough for me to admit to Lisa that, hey, this really didn't turn out financially like I hoped it would.
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And we had a great conversation at the end of bike week and she said I need you to give yourself some credit.
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You've been in business for five years.
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In five years in business you just put your brand on the map in Daytona bike week.
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People now know who you are.
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At bike week we went out for days meeting and greeting, shaking hands or introducing ourselves, putting information out there, and when I think about the hundreds of people that now have loud, proud american merchandise on their backs, in their suitcase, in their closet, that's a difference, that that's what it's all about.
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So to hear from Lisa and her saying you got to give yourself some grace here, man.
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You've only been in business for five years and you just tackled Daytona, that's something that when you start this business, when you start building this brand, you kind of write down a list of places you'd like to go, things you'd like to achieve, and that's one of them, that's one of the most difficult ones and we've crossed it off.
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So I'm going to give myself and my friends and my family an extreme level of grace and recognition for pulling this off.
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So truly, I'm thankful for that, for pulling this off.
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So, um, truly, I'm, I'm, I'm thankful for that.
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And you know, to kind of get things back on track, when we rolled in there you've heard me talk about the 26 hours in the bus to get there, to make it happen, and rolling in and seeing our location and being extremely excited about our location and being excited about our vendor spot.
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As the time would peel off the clock, we would realize that our vendor spot wasn't that great because we were kind of set off on an island and people no offense are lazy and they're just going to walk and shop the perimeter, they're going to follow the line, they're going to walk the road, across the street.
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So when it comes down to the amount of people that were showing up, we really weren't seeing more than a fraction of those people.
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So, you know, just kind of thinking about people's shopping tendencies, the laziness of a consumer sitting back and watching it for a week, I realized that our spot was working against us.
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Now, what I'm about to talk about is not excuses.
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These are factual things that I need to file away and consider when making my decision as to whether to return next year.
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So we're just going to be jive talking a conversation here and I'm going to peel back the onion a little bit for you to understand how I think, read and react to what just happened and whether we should do it again.
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So, being there and having these conversations me and Brian analyzing, you know, the buying tendencies of people we begin to think listen, with a different location, even in the area that we're in, just flipping us over to the other side, you got to think it's a 15 to 20 percent increase right off the bat in business, because you can just see the amount of people that are that are shopping there.
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But the key is not enough people were leaving those, those vendor locations, with bags.
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There just wasn't enough people that were leaving with bags in general.
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So I need to begin to think about that.
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While I'm sitting there, I'm looking around and I'm analyzing everything that's happening.
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I'm watching all the purchases that take place around me and I'm trying to identify why would somebody buy there and not here?
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What do they have?
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What do I have?
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What do we not have?
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Are they a similar customer?
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Is it not my customer base at all?
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I know the overall attendee at bike week is absolutely my customer base at all.
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I know the overall attendee at bike week is absolutely my customer base.
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But I'm analyzing based off the location, the person.
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You know what they're wearing, what they're into, what they're riding.
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I'm building a portfolio in my mind all day long about a consumer profile, about a target customer, about what's right for me and my brand.
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Even when I'm sitting on my ass or I'm in the sunshine drinking a bush light, I am analyzing and I am calculating every single move that happens.
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So, as the week starts, friday and Saturday were actually pretty damn good.
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They weren't incredible days.
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But when I talk about my expectation at even a large event for day one, this was really right there, because your first day at a lot of events, um, is is not one of your best events or one of your best results, I should say and um, our first day was pretty damn good.
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And I told the boys like listen, I know your expectations because for them, they're coming out with this, this crazy theory in their mind because they're excited Right, and I want them to be excited and they're like dude, we're going to sell out by Wednesday.
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We're going to make, you know, 40, 50 grand in a week.
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Like I'm trying to be more of a realist on what's happening and what's taking place and trying to kind of guide each other through that to really balance each other out.
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I love their confidence and I need that to give me the fuel to get out there and push.
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But at the end of the day on Friday I said, fellas, I know this doesn't seem right to you but based off of what I've always been through, this is kind of in line and I think we're going to be fine.
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This is going to really work out.
00:22:42.355 --> 00:22:45.846
And then Saturday came and Saturday was another pretty good day.
00:22:45.846 --> 00:22:59.169
It was not what I hoped for for a Saturday, but I can say that as the weekend wrapped up, I said you know what we're going to be breaking even here pretty damn quickly.
00:22:59.169 --> 00:23:04.067
And you know, when you're a couple of days in and you're like OK, I've paid for this.
00:23:04.067 --> 00:23:13.339
I've paid for my event fee, my registration fee, my camping fee, I've paid for my fuel to get here, you start crossing things off the list.
00:23:13.339 --> 00:23:19.501
I'm working on my fuel to get home, my tolls, any transaction that's made I'm checking and cross -preferencing because I'm away from my family.
00:23:19.501 --> 00:23:21.307
I want to make sure that this makes sense.
00:23:21.307 --> 00:23:24.778
So with every transaction, I'm thinking I'm calculating when I'm selling something.
00:23:24.778 --> 00:23:26.119
I'm thinking I'm calculating when I'm selling something.
00:23:26.119 --> 00:23:28.241
I'm like, okay, man, that's a tank of fuel right there.
00:23:28.241 --> 00:23:31.345
This is going to get me one state away right here.
00:23:31.345 --> 00:23:33.928
All that shit is what happens in my mind.
00:23:33.928 --> 00:23:46.910
So we started things off pretty decent Not tremendous, but pretty decent and I'm telling myself, if you can get out of the weekend and put yourself in a position where you're just starting to make gravy, then it's all going to be okay.
00:23:47.795 --> 00:23:54.836
Well, unfortunately, that's when the barrel fell out of the basket and we began to get real damn slow.
00:23:54.836 --> 00:23:56.921
The week was an absolute struggle.
00:23:56.921 --> 00:24:08.429
I must also say I was surprised by how cold it was in Florida, and I was told they moved bike week up by about a week and in doing so it was just a colder time of the year.
00:24:08.429 --> 00:24:11.660
There was not as many people riding, that was for certain.
00:24:11.660 --> 00:24:24.727
I'm thankful they moved it up because ironically, there's a lot of hurricanes or tornadoes that have been happening and they started happening over the weekend and we would have had to have either packed up during those or drove straight through them.
00:24:24.727 --> 00:24:29.487
So I'm absolutely blessed that we've avoided and missed that whole scenario.
00:24:30.976 --> 00:24:35.500
But I was beginning to feel like this is slow, this has to be slow.
00:24:35.500 --> 00:24:36.694
Something doesn't feel right.
00:24:36.694 --> 00:24:42.763
So I started asking around and other vendors started to tell me yeah, man, this doesn't seem right for bike week.
00:24:42.763 --> 00:24:44.903
This feels pretty damn slow.
00:24:44.903 --> 00:24:50.946
So we started having those conversations and Bruce, who's a vendor that recommended me to be there he's kind of my voice of reason.
00:24:50.946 --> 00:25:05.317
We're having these conversations and chatting about things and as I'm talking to him he says listen, don't start to count or criticize or think about anything to do with this location until Wednesday.
00:25:05.317 --> 00:25:13.865
If you make money Friday, saturday, sunday, monday, tuesday then great, because you're going to have an amazing day on Wednesday.
00:25:13.925 --> 00:25:16.901
When Wednesday hits, that's one of the biggest days of the week.
00:25:16.901 --> 00:25:17.121
Here.
00:25:17.121 --> 00:25:18.547
They have events here.
00:25:18.547 --> 00:25:23.760
They have short people wrestling okay, midget wrestling Across the street.
00:25:23.760 --> 00:25:27.536
They have a coleslaw wrestling and it just brings all the people out.
00:25:27.536 --> 00:25:35.058
So Wednesday's the day, and then on Saturday they do those events all over again, and when I was heading out there.
00:25:35.098 --> 00:25:42.387
I thought it would be open on Sunday, that Sunday would be a good business day for us, but the location that we're at, they cancel all their events on Sunday.
00:25:42.387 --> 00:25:47.083
Everything happens through Saturday, and then Sunday morning they're tearing the bars down.
00:25:47.083 --> 00:25:50.949
There's no bands, there's no entertainment, there's no reason for somebody to be there.
00:25:50.949 --> 00:25:53.423
So on Sunday we're just packing and rolling.
00:25:53.423 --> 00:25:58.800
So instantly I lost a day getting there because I didn't realize that's how they plan things out.
00:25:58.800 --> 00:26:01.307
So we roll into Wednesday.
00:26:03.075 --> 00:26:09.961
Unfortunately, we did okay on the day, but it was not what we hoped for, because it was tremendously windy.
00:26:09.961 --> 00:26:11.807
We had some rain.
00:26:11.807 --> 00:26:14.875
It always looked like it was going to be shit weather.
00:26:14.875 --> 00:26:20.997
I heard that downtown Daytona was pretty bad, so folks weren't really leaving that area and it just didn't pan out.
00:26:20.997 --> 00:26:22.798
We weren't pounded by rain, but the threat of it kept people away.
00:26:22.798 --> 00:26:28.544
We weren't pounded by rain, but the threat of it kept people away, and the temperatures certainly kept people away.
00:26:28.544 --> 00:26:35.010
So it was an okay day, but nothing that we had set our expectations on.
00:26:39.894 --> 00:26:51.103
Now, as I mentioned, we made these conversations across the street, so we would walk across the street to the Cabbage Patch, which we realized was a much more successful location, and one that we should consider for ourselves next year if we go back.
00:26:51.103 --> 00:27:00.491
They just have their vendors laid out much better, the traffic flow is extremely better and their entertainment is tremendously better.
00:27:00.491 --> 00:27:06.605
There's always something going on and, to be honest, our location had some awful music.
00:27:06.605 --> 00:27:08.628
They did a really shitty job at booking bands.
00:27:08.628 --> 00:27:12.804
Many of them sounded even remotely decent.
00:27:12.804 --> 00:27:16.425
They weren't good enough to keep people around.