E225: Acquisitions and E-Commerce: A Success Story from QVC Sales to Disc Golf Entrepreneurship

[00:00:00] Ronald Skelton: Hello and welcome to the How2Exit Podcast. Today I'm here with Martin Bispels and we're going to talk about all things, mergers, acquisitions, buying companies. And man, you got a pretty cool background. I was looking on here, before I get your orientation story and stuff, just know that when I first seen this I was like, oh, he's one of those guys. And you have a career from the start in the QVC and then you bought a company. And, but, tell us kind of how did you get, thank you for being here. First of all.

[00:00:25] Martin Bispels: Of course. Yeah, happy to be here.

[00:00:27] Ronald Skelton: And then we always do the joke, man, you were born and now you ended up on a show about mergers and acquisitions. How in the hell did you end up on the show, man? Give us your origin story.

[00:00:35] Martin Bispels: Uh, so yeah, I started out at QVC and TV production. I loved it in the control room, live TV. I loved it. And then I jumped over to sales after being a producer and Tony Robbins producer and all of that. Live TV moments. Lots of, lots of testimonial calls, as you said. And then, yeah, I climbed my way through QVC and then had a consulting business and then acquired my own business.

So I say that I'm like a, recovering corporate executive turned entrepreneur.

[00:01:02] Ronald Skelton: Yeah, that's cool, man. It's cool interactions. You've had that experience and stuff. And, QVC is a heck of a, a platform to cut your teeth on what works, what doesn't, what sells, what doesn't, right? To understand the consumer's mindset. That's a, that would be one heck of a learning. Like you got, pretty much got your own PhD in consumer, uh, behavior.

[00:01:23] Martin Bispels: Exactly. I mean, it really was an education, even in the control room, understanding, listening to the callers, understanding what spike sales in real time, right? And then as producer managing the show, and then increasingly, you know, ended up running sales and teaching my, my staff. And essentially it was, you know, here's a product.

How are we going to present it? Go. And you know,on TV and then over time, online on mobile and social. And so absolutely, it was incredible. I feel so fortunate that I had that time of climbing the ranks and learning so much about exactly as you say. Consumer insights, what really resonates with the customer, building trust, all of the content strategy, everything that I learned there is very, very grateful for that time in my, in my career.

[00:02:10] Ronald Skelton: I can see how powerful that would be to be able to look at a product and go, this is the way that has to be presented so that people get it. and it translates from, like you had video there, which means you had spoken and images. But it also translates into your written copy and everything else because, uh, you know, you have the foundation of what triggers the, and I love that real time. One of the things I used to love to do for my business is, and I don't do Much of it anymore, because it's such a specific thing that we do is radio spaces, because I know when the ads run, you got calls right then.

But, uh,it's cool to have different advertising mechanisms where you see this is said and then the phone rings, right? Or this, they, they changed the angle of it and showed a demo of it. They put the turkey in there, they put a fake turkey in the roastery oven and turned it around a couple of times. Oh, people got it and they started calling. 

[00:03:01] Martin Bispels: Yeah, you have to put it in the customer's lives, right? And, we were really good at that for presenting on live television. But then this is like 2005, I was the guy that was saying, we have a dot com team upstairs that nobody ever talks to. Like, shouldn't we all be working together? And figure out how to really have like multi, you know, now it's a tri term, but multi channel on the channel.

This was all at the beginning of that. And so figuring out how to make the channels work together,was just terrific. I mean, it was such a learning experience. It was great.

[00:03:29] Ronald Skelton: Now where are you located? I didn't, everybody on the listeners know I'm up in the Redwood Forest, Northern California. Where are you currently located?

[00:03:36] Martin Bispels: So I'm about an hour Northwest of Philadelphia. I raised my kids here when I was at QVC, which is at Westchester, Pennsylvania. So I'm still in the area. And then I work in my barn. When we moved here pre COVID, my wife said, I'm taking the basement for my pottery studio, but you can have the barn. I said, well, that's a deal.

[00:03:55] Ronald Skelton: That's cool. So let's talk about Disc Golf because you went from QVC to being what we were always referred to on the show as acquisition entrepreneur. You bought a company, right? Tell us about what you bought there.

[00:04:05] Martin Bispels: Yeah. So I resigned from QVC in 2014. Had my own consulting firm. I've had that for the last 10 years, but in 2020, bought this e commerce business in disc golf. And,like everybody, six months post COVID was thinking about, well, okay, what's next, right? What do I want to do? On the other side of this thing, assuming there was going to be another side of this.

Back when there's some kind of normal, what do I want to be doing? Do I want to keep consulting? And I love consulting and I still do that just a couple of clients at a time. But yeah, I said to my now business partner, Jim,you know, there's a lot of great companies out there and we could go buy one.

I'll run it day to day. Cause I'm an operator. And,he's, he thought that sounded good. So, we went off together and discovered this business on, uh, Flippa,marketplace to buy and sell. And, I happen to know the CEO and the team there. And so, ended up finding a business to acquire and was just thrilled to be able to find Upper Park andmade the acquisition and here we are now.

[00:05:01] Ronald Skelton: I've interviewed Blake a couple of times. He's a good guy. So, so you, you found it on Flippa?

[00:05:06] Martin Bispels: Yeah, we found it on Flippa. We, I had M& A experience. It was one of the things I had done at QVC. It was, actually started their corporate business, corporate development strategy. And so knew how to do M& A, knew how to build criteria. Do the proper due diligence and all of that.

And so we went off and I was looking at all kinds of different businesses. But yeah, I found, uh, Upper Park on Flippa. It hit all of our criteria. And I also really liked John, the original owner. He had had it since 2011 and had some, you know, some good years. And, but just was at a point where, you know, out of time and money.

And so he was looking to exit. But one of the things I did was I talked to him and I said, look, I like what you've built. We're going to make you an offer, but I actually like you to stay in the business and remain as an equity partner and help me grow. And so, he was thrilled because this is sort of his baby, right?

He didn't want to give it up. So he was thrilled. And I said, well, what do you love doing? And he said, I just love making the products better and better coming up with designs. And so great. What do you not enjoy? Well, supply chain and, you know, other, and I said, okay, I'll deal with all that. You just keep making the products better and better.

And that's what we've done. I was just chatting with him, actually. He lives out in the Pacific. 

[00:06:20] Ronald Skelton: I was curious on whether, whether or not you're like you're totally an e commerce play where you, where you just sell other people's products? Or do you guys have your own product line? 

[00:06:29] Martin Bispels: Oh yeah. No. So the core of the business is really our disc golf bags that we manufacture overseas and, but that we've designed here. And John originally, right, because he was the original owner, was a disc golfer. And so he just made a bag that he thought he would want to use a disc golfer. And so, then we just continue to make improvements and based on customer feedback as well.

So the core of the business is the disc golf bags that we manufacture and sell online. And then one of the ways that we've grown, especially in the last six months or so has been throughadding categories like apparel, discs and some gear and things like that. So we have a combination of some drop ship products as well. Yeah.

[00:07:10] Ronald Skelton: Yeah. Gotta have your swag. You gotta have that hat to go with your bag and I don't know what, if it is like golf, everybody wearing polo shirts. Uh, how big is the industry? I bet when you looked at this, you did some analysis, right? Like how big can this get, right? How many players, I know right now pickleball is real big, right? Disc golf was kind of the pickleball 10, 15, 20 years ago is when it first came out, but people still love it.

It's a, it's what I refer to as a passion niche, right? It's our niche or whatever you want to call it. How big is the industry? How many people do you, how many players do you think there are out there?

[00:07:41] Martin Bispels: Yeah, well, there's certainly a few million players in the United States alone. And then it's also pretty big in Europe, Scandinavian countries, you know,is really, I mean, they teach it in gym class, right? And Finland, Norway. And so, uh, one of the criteria that we used when we were first vetting the company and one of the, the criteria we're using for what company we wanted to acquire, was just a fast growing space.

And so remember COVID hit and everything outdoors just exploded, right? You couldn't buy a bicycle cause they were all sold out. And so disc golf was part of that whole trend, everything outdoors. And it had the advantages of, you can be outdoors, you can be with people, but you can still be, you know, have distance.

And there's a novel to your point. It's one of those sports that like either your way into it or you're like, what the heck is this thing? These metal things in the woods, like what are these? And so,it was definitely part of the whole boom of COVID. But it's been around for, for, a long time and steady Ed Headrick was the inventor way back when.

, So there's, there's a few million, at least players.A lot of them, just amateurs. But there is a disc golf pro tour. They're sponsored players. There's all of that. And so, it is one of the fun stats. UDisc is one of the companies in the space and they do a report.

[00:08:58] Martin Bispels: And one of their stats that there's five new disc golf courses going in the ground every day.

[00:09:03] Ronald Skelton: Oh, wow.

[00:09:04] Martin Bispels: Which is pretty cool. And a lot of them are in parks and places like that, where, that are free to play. So it's got a lot going for it as far as being a good, niche sport and, uh, really based on a great community of people.

[00:09:17] Ronald Skelton: Yeah. All the ones I played at were kind of public parks and that some of them were in some of the little rougher public parks, but, I'm from Oklahoma. So, redneck, gun toting, concealed carrying guy, didn't bother me to go play in the rougher parks. Yeah, I can't do that here in California. I had to put that stuff away. 

But, uh, let's jump back into, I love the fact that you pick something, but you pick something that, what I refer to, if we talk, I mentioned it earlier as a passive niche. Meaning that, the reason I like passion niches is, they usually are economy resistant. I wouldn't say like where they're immune to economic changes, downturns, upturns, just like that. But they're usually, people are passionate enough about it. They're going to play disc golf, whether the economy is doing great or whether it's doing bad. It's kind of, you have fanatic users. Anytime you have somebody who are, is almost irrationally in love with a particular topic, they're going to buy the next thing you come up.

You come up with an innovation or a way to improve their score, they're going to get it. I think about that as golf. I'm a big avid fisherman. I love that you went into something that's passionate. If people fall for, fall in love with, and they're going to do one way or the other. How do you grow it? What's the, do you add other passion issues, add other products in your product line? 

You know mergers and acquisitions now. What's the strategy to,to grow this thing? 

[00:10:33] Martin Bispels: Well, in the beginning it was just get in stock because there had been some good years, but there were, there was no sales and no inventory. So the first thing was, just get back into inventory and get back in stock. And then, relaunching the brand. The brand had been Upper Park Designs.

I thought that's interesting, but it kind of sounds like an architectural firm. And so we rebranded Upper Park Disc Golf to really, commit to the sport and say what we're about. And then really, focusing on the brand messaging. We have a set of core values that we share with our customers.

We talk about sustainability. We have a number of different sustainability initiatives. We talked about how our products are differentiated. We don't use Cordura for example, which is the material that almost everybody else uses. And we use so lightweight, modern materials. And then also as part of sustainability, we use recycled materials.

We were the first to use recycled materials in our disc golf bags. And, honestly, it just occurred to me like, well, gee, for a sport that's based on plastic, it seems like the least we could do is make our products out of recycled materials. And so we do. And we use shipping materials that are recycled and recyclable.

So, re, just getting back in stock, reestablishing and relaunching the brand. Having some clear differentiators from other, other companies, and, you know, there's plenty of other companies that make disc golf bags. That, that was really the beginning. And then over time, our slogan is actually play different.

And so I tried to do some things that were different than the typical. So for example, we have a brand ambassador program, which is different from others that sponsor pro players. We have pro players on our team, but that's not where most of our focus is. It's really on the everyday disc golfer. 

And which is much more interesting. So we don't call it this, but it's like an affiliate program, but very successful and I build it in a way that everybody wins. So, we don't pay our brand ambassadors in points or swag or any of that nonsense, we pay them in cash. And so, and it's a commission based on what they sell through their codes.

And so that's one way we've differentiated. And certainly the way, one way that we've grown. And then the other way is, throughhaving additional categories. Discs, apparel, and going about that the right way and with the right, the right business model. And then in the future, honestly, the way to grow this thing is to expand on our assortment.

We have three bags in two colors each. Well, gee, if we had five bags and maybe a few more colors in each, that's an obvious way that we could grow. And then geographically. We're mostly in the US. We ship overseas, but you know, honestly it's, cost and duty and everything is expensive. The other obvious way to grow would be to have a warehouse in Europe and serve that market with a better value proposition because of the, the shipping costs, would be much more reasonable for the customer.

You know, so those are the some of the sort of past, present and future, ways that we're growing.

[00:13:26] Ronald Skelton: What's the second, if United States is one of the biggest markets for this, what's the second largest market? If you wanted to go overseas, where would you want to go?

[00:13:34] Martin Bispels: Yeah. Europe for sure. You know, we, like I say, the, yeah, Norway, Finland, Sweden,disc golf is huge per capita. a number of courses, a number of players per cap, I mean, it's much higher than nowhere else, but really throughout Europe and increasing and growing throughout Europe. So, you know, we, like I say, we ship there now and we even have players from our team, from all, all those countries.

And, so that's another way. But you know, it's really growing around the world. One of the things I've done is,in the beginning, once we got in stock, I reached out to some folks in the space and I said, well, there's got to be a disc golf charity, right? Something related to disc golf.

And so I found one, an incredible one called UPlay Disc Golf. And it's headed up by executive director Zoe Andyke, who's a 10 year pro disc golfer. She's amazing. It's one of those people that comes in and just lights up a room. She's wonderful. And I got to know her and one thing led to another, she ended up asking me to be the President of the Board of Directors for her nonprofit.

And so last three years we've grown, uh, UPlay. And one of the things that we do is we teach disc golf around the world. So Zoe's literally been, we were counting the other day, I think five of the continents so far and, where she's actually taught disc golf. And there's been like 50, 000 people taught disc golf in the last four years.

So, really there's a huge impact and a huge growth in the sport all over the world.

[00:14:58] Ronald Skelton: So I would imagine kind of like the golfing community. A lot of the golfing community is primarily like high end business users. So there may be more than the prime, the golfing community, but in this, disc golf community, I imagine a large percentage of your people love these parks. Love the fact that there's reserved places to do stuff like this. There might be a decent mindset where you're talking about your recycled materials and stuff, to actually have something you guys create, like there's some type of stamp you put on it and say, this is a environmentally friendly company and we carry their products, right?

You can almost, kind of own that space inside of this market to where you're like, Hey, if it's on our site, just understand we've done certain checks and balances to make sure that the future of this sport, including the parks and stuff that are there in is going to be, continue to flourish.

[00:15:50] Martin Bispels: Yeah. We've done quite a bit. And then those sustainability initiatives I mentioned, and yeah, absolutely. The customer appreciates it. I mean, we've put it out there and they've really responded well and understand not only that our sustainability initiatives, but also the fact that we stand for something. One of our core values is be a good human, treating people equally and celebrating diversity.

And so, having that kind of mindset and developing a real brand as opposed to, just, Oh, it's just another company that sells stuff, it makes a big difference. 

[00:16:19] Ronald Skelton: So I imagine having your background in video production and video sales and stuff that,does that come in play now? Do you guys do product demos and 3d animated,you know, views of stuff. And, do you bring video in a lot now that, or was that already there when you looked at it?

[00:16:36] Martin Bispels: Yeah. No, no, we've done a lot in video. We actually, we produced a really fun piece of content called Planet Disc Golf. So we had like the David Attenborough, kind of mock, you know, voice. And we did this mock documentary all about disc golf. And really it's on our YouTube channel. And really fun celebrating the sport.

I love those planet earth documentaries with David Attenborough. And so we did our own version and yeah, people ate it up. They loved it.

[00:17:04] Ronald Skelton: I bet it's, I think the reason that you it's, I think it's probably a lot cheaper to set up, to set up a disc golf course, right? You get a post hole digger and some cement and you put the poles in as opposed to like a golf course where you got to change the entire landscape, mow the lawn a certain way and then plant certain grasses and have certain obstacles and purpose and stuff. Pretty much any filled with a few trees on a few natural obstacles could become a disc golf course, right? 

[00:17:32] Martin Bispels: I mean, it's like anything. There's pros that really can make amazing courses. And, and you can spend as much as you want building the course. But absolutely, I mean, the great part of the sport is overall. It's much cheaper than a lot of other hobbies, because really you just need a couple of disc to start playing.

And so, even ball golf, you set a clubs, we'll set you back, you know, a grand or so. Easy. And so, this is an easier way to, to start out. And much more affordable. And then, yeah, the baskets, I have these baskets. I just plunk them down in the grass. And, I didn't even build tea boxes or anything.

[00:18:05] Ronald Skelton: And so you can, and there's people that build amazing courses. I know some of them. But, yeah, so it's much cheaper to get started. And, uh, and then like you say, I also like it because, you know, the maintenance is much lower and the sustainability. I think is much better having, natural areas as opposed to a lot of the golf courses are just so manicured and overdone and chemicals and everything else. Let's talk about your consultancy. How does that play in? I know you, you owned a consultancy before a consulting company or you were a consultant prior to doing the acquisition of this. What kind of, what was that space? Is it marketing or what type of consultancy were you, were you, are you doing?

[00:18:43] Martin Bispels: Yeah. So marketing, helps small and medium sized businesses grow through sales, marketing, business development, as like a fractional CMO. So, one of the things I had done at QVC was develop a program for entrepreneurs and inventors to get started with QVC. And so really enjoyed that we would nurture them along and I had all this whole program. And I really enjoyed that.

And so I resigned from QVC in 2014. I said to my wife, I'm going to resign from this, or resign from this kind of cushy executive gig and be a startup consultant and she said okay. I said, are you sure? Like this is a little risky and she said, you'll figure it out. So for the last 10 years, I've consulted with all kinds of different companies, mostly consumer product companies, but I've gotten into SaaS and B2B and lead gen and all kinds of things.

And so unlike a typical marketing consultant or agency, that'll come in and sort of do, Oh, we'll build your website or we'll do SEO or I come in as a, as a CMOlevel kind of executive. And I say, okay. What are we really trying to do, develop a real strategy and then actually execute that strategy.

And so marketing is, fraught with big ideas and terrible execution, unfortunately. And especially now where everybody's hyperventilating about technology and AI and they all have their purpose. But, it's a comment and actually have, like, here's what we're really trying to do. Here's a plan to actually achieve that, that I know based on my experience. And then actually be accountable to deliver results.

So I become a member of people's team. I only take on a client or two at a time. And, and I really look to, work with them. I, my typical engagement is like 18 months. And I, and not because I trap them into a contract that actually a month to month contracts, because I always want people to be happy working with me.

And so, I just take on one or two clients at a time. And what's interesting is that it, it gives me really great perspective on my e commerce business. Because just working on something different, gives you perspective when you come back to it, right? Like anything, you can get sort of lost in the weeds.

And so having a break and working on something completely different than Upper Park, actually brings me back and gives me fresh perspective. And it's helped a lot, actually, the last four years.

[00:21:00] Ronald Skelton: What do you think about some of these guys doing the QVC style on social media? I see them and I'm intrigued by, I love good entrepreneur, by the way. So, I'll stop on those channels, either TikTok or, when they go live and they have their little, they're selling crystals or whatever they're selling.

And I just, and I hear I'm taking orders. Oh yeah, here's your order. And they're putting it in a basket. I'm like, this is really working for them. And, you see the, a lot of people are watching live and stuff on this. And I'm thinking these guys are popping up little mini qvc's right their own, their own channels. And the first person, one of the first persons I ever seen do it, she stopped now she's dealing with some medical issues, but uh,shout out to, to my Aunt Kay. She was an entrepreneur all my life. She's one of those people that you look, I always looked up to because no matter what happened in her life, she just kept fighting and kept doing things andnever giving up. And one day I popped on Facebook and she's selling jewelry of some sort, like probably, probably it was an MLM, but she had a little product line and she'd do this demonstration.

Like, if you want this one, here's the tag. It's number 42. She had unique numbers for everything and she was making it work. And I was like, wow, this is creative. And I seen all these other people doing it too. Did some of your clients, they, they do that? Are they going, trying to get on the real, I don't even know if QVC is around anymore. I don't watch TV. I don't know. I don't have cable anymore. is QVC still around? 

[00:22:13] Martin Bispels: Yeah. Well, QVC is still around, but they're not nearly what they were at, at one point. Part of the reason I left in 14 was I honestly thought that, the sort of their headwinds and the best days were behind them. But I took that experience and a lot of those lessons learn.

And carry it forward. But yeah, I mean, look, live shopping is huge. You've seen the stats from like China, for example. There's a guy doing in the middle of the field. He's got his beef jerky. He's selling from his animals that are right behind him live. There's, there was a story recently about this guy and, he did millions of dollars in sales and then he got shut down, of course. Because But, absolutely.

So live shopping absolutely works. There's a trust and a credibility that comes with being live. The mistakes I see that are happening is the same thing that happened in the early days of what was called home shopping, on cable. Which was hypey, false scarcity, the, some of the nonsense. And so, you know, we would really bring a different approach to things and try to inform customers about what they were actually buying and be,trustworthy on actually delivering the product.

You know, having it, really having it in stock, not have it be vaporware. Like you see some of the crowdfunding programs out there that, if we raise a whole bunch of money, then we might make the product. Okay. You know, yeah, sure. Let me sign up for that. And so, 

[00:23:33] Ronald Skelton: It's working though. People are doing it. Yeah.

[00:23:36] Martin Bispels: Yeah, absolutely. And so, but you know, look, some of the, some folks are doing it great. And so I have worked on different things over the last 10 years. I actually had something called product search live, which was, just that somebody wanted to do a modern style, home shopping show. And so I, I built the whole platform, trained all the vendors, got everybody ready to go.

We had 12 vendors on the show live stream. And it was great and it was wonderful. And, I'm not doing any more because the guy, my partner on it was trying to raise some money for it. And, it's a very tough time to raise money right now, as you know.But you know, that idea is out there and I don't look for it cause I feel like I've done it.

But certainly if there's people in that space that wants some help with it, I can do that. And also I do bring it to my clients. So, as you say, I'm really passionate about video production and telling a message through video and I'm pretty good at it. And so I,I bring that to all of my different clients.

I just started working witha company that has one of these, this is my consulting practice, but, it's one of these smart cards instead of a business card, where you tap. 

[00:24:42] Ronald Skelton: Oh yeah. And you just tap it. Yeah.

[00:24:44] Martin Bispels: And so this company is called net cards and ETT. And,they have great technology, some proprietary stuff. We're actually launching in a couple of weeks.

But I've developed for them, the whole go to market strategy, merchandising strategy, pricing, all of that. And then we'll, we'll get out there and go live pretty soon. And so, and through that we're going to use a ton of video. To tell the story and differentiate the features and benefits and all of that.

And then, you know, all kinds of neat live stream ideas over time as well. So I, I love having that experience. I learned a ton and I bring it to both my e commerce business and my consulting clients every day. 

[00:25:23] Ronald Skelton: It's, it's brilliant that the people are taking those models to their house, right. You've got like, you flip through, if you flip through Tik Tok or whatever, once you've seen a couple of them, the algorithm starts feeding them to you.

And, uh, and now it's like, why is it showing me this one? Oh, cause you looked at three other ones and you stopped there for more than 10 seconds. Like I'm not in some kind of a, like, I'm not interested in that type of product. Why are you showing me this garbage? And it's like a risque stuff. And I was like, and I was like, why you showed me that? I'm not weird or I'm not, I won't use the word weird because they're not weird. I'm not into some of that stuff, right? I'm getting old.

[00:25:57] Martin Bispels: But I love to go every to your point, discovery of content is, it's terrific for them.

[00:26:02] Ronald Skelton: So, where do you think the kind of the industry is going in this space. Now that people are going away from the standard cable companies and stuff like that, that everybody's got their, like, I'm probably the leading example of that. We're in a tiny home. We don't have a single TV in our house. We don't own one.

I have a computer out here in the shop and then everybody in my family has their personal entertainment device. But because we're in such a small space, nobody wants to hear what you're watching. Especially me.

I watched documentaries and nerdy stuff. The kids don't want to hear that. They want to hear their cartoons or they want to play their game on their tablet. 

So, that took away something from the places like QVC and online shopping and stuff. But, where do you see kind of the industry going as far as, I wouldn't be surprised, like here's where I'm going with this. I wouldn't be surprised to see something on Netflix or one of these other sites where they have a channel for shopping. Maybe they already do. And I just didn't look. 

[00:26:55] Martin Bispels: Yeah. So, you know, a lot of people have tried doing making their own QVC. And, you know, I mean, look at Amazon, they've had their Amazon long enough for a long time. And, honestly, most of them were terrible at it. And because, they haven't quite learned that there's a lot of, uh,ingredients in the recipe, shall I say. 

And so, a lot of them are missing some key ingredients and I, you know, it's easy for me to look at, say, Oh, okay, well they're doing this part well, but they're not. But no, I think overall the trend, as you say, is it's individualized, right? It's not about, the, I think less and less so the blockbuster movie that everyone sees, right.

Or the show that everyone watches. It's just not reality anymore. And I think that's really healthy thing because it means that there's diversification and you can get into different things. Whatever you're into, I have three kids and my two boys, I've gotten into all kinds of different hobbies and also communities of people, because they have something in common in that niche.

I think it's a beautiful thing. I think, in some ways, we're more connected than ever, right? Because of, not because we're all watching the same thing, but because we could share these experiences within these niches and connect with people. Like my motorcycle group. People that I would never meet otherwise, I met because I was riding a motorcycle.

And I think that's a beautiful thing. I think that part of what gives me, hope for humanity.

[00:28:19] Ronald Skelton: There was something that QVC did right inside of that space, because that's the reason my grandmother watched it more than anything, because she got to be on TV every once in a while. They got her voice, right?

They, you know, I was on TV today, so we almost, I'll give you a picture. Grandmother had been, by the time she passed, she had been fighting cancer for 12 years. So she was onrier than snot, but most of her life,adult life she was a, a nurse that basically monitored EKG machine or the heart machines. 

So she was, she was a hospital nurse. But when she was at home, she usually had like a, a marble light and a can of curlers in her hand. She was not your normal grandmother. But, boy, when you came in to say hi to her, she, she'd sit down her beer and say, I was on TV today.

It was first thing that come out of her mouth. So the thing that QVC did right and that I think that a lot more customers, a lot more marketers out there could get right, was find ways to get your customer involved in the process. To give them a little bit of limelight, a little bit of a, not just testimonials, but give them, share them with your audience, right?

Like, I've tried a couple of times at companies that, that I was trying to acquire, even though, the deal didn't go through. It's like, you got to come on the show, talk about your process of selling the business and stuff. And they don't, because they don't want the employees to know yet, or all this, there's all these reasons why they don't. But, I'm willing to share this platform, to, to people that are trying to get something done. But, I think more marketers, if they shared the platform, it would build a bigger audience. I think QVC nailed that off the beginning.

[00:29:45] Martin Bispels: Yeah. And this idea of celebrating the customer. 

And realizing the value and not just looking at them as, you know, a wallEt. And actually engaging with them and listening to them. And that was one of the things QVC did very, very well early on. There'd be a lot of customer interaction, including live television, live on TV callers.

One of the funny things about new hosts, right? The new hosts that work for QVC. One of the hardest things for them to learn in the beginning is when you have a caller that's telling you that they have the product and that it's really great. Stop talking and let them talk. You know, the, the power of the testimonial, the power, because everybody expects you to say how great the product is. 

But to let customer tell you, right. And because they're just so much more trustworthy. Because everybody, everybody knows what they're being sold to. 

[00:30:35] Ronald Skelton: That third party validation is so, powerful, right? They call it testimonial. But anytime there's a third party validating a product or service, whether it's a customer, even a competitor. We had one product where the, uh, our competitors would recommend us. In, in one of our companies, the competitors, like, Hey, you should just call these guys.

They're going to do it cheaper. And if you don't have a, severe problem, these are the guys that are going to do it. That's a hell of a testimonial, right.Same way, same way that I think inside of your space, if I owned an e commerce store, I would try to figure out like for every product, I would put a contest out there and say, for every product, if you love our products, shoot a short video and I'll include it, like when you roll through the vote, I think Amazon even does this now. Where I can look through test, look through the customer ratings, I can see videos from the customers now, right? So I'll watch a couple of those.

When I'm looking to buy something, especially, something big, and I'm a very avid user of Amazon, because number one, I don't like crowds. I just buy everything there. When you said they had Amazon live, I was like, that's horrible marketing. Cause I spent a lot, I spent a thousand dollars on Amazon this week.

I spent a lot of money in Amazon, right? I think it's very powerful to actually have the, not even just testimonials, like somebody else using your product and liking it. And, or even if they have just a slight, Hey, this could be improved or that can be improved. 

If I'm spending money on anything that I expect to last for a little while, I look at those videos, I avoid the five star ratings because most of the times there's a lot of those are just BS. And I avoid the one star ratings because a lot of those guys are, they hate the world anyway. So, but the two and three star ratings, I want to see those because it kind of tells me what to expect. Oh, this spring dies after your thing breaks after six months, or this happens after this period of time. I read through those and that's kind of tells me what to expect. And sometimes I still buy their product, right? I look at it going, you know, I'm going to use this thing two times and it's going to stick on the back of the shelf. I just need it for right now. Then if they have a, a longevity problem, not a big deal, but. 

[00:32:27] Martin Bispels: No. That's right.We use product reviews and all the usual tools and a lot of UGC. The matter of fact, our brand ambassadors, you know, we, I've asked them and they've been great about sending in content. I want to see you wearing the shirt that you bought for us and we'll feature you and give you a highlight and even promote your code, right.

In exchange for you sharing a picture. Cause I can use the mockup pictures, but I'd rather have real people wearing and using our products. And so, whether it's the, product content and images and so forth, or the, the good human, good humans got to disc golf where we use their pictures.

I love incorporating their content. Absolutely.

[00:33:05] Ronald Skelton: It's brilliant because then they get to go play disc golf with their buddies and go, Hey, look, I'm a model and they pull up your e commerce site and show photos of them with the product. Right.

[00:33:13] Martin Bispels: Right. Hey, there I am. You know, that's cool. And celebrating that will, will feature our brand ambassador of the month. That kind of, that kind of focus. People love that kind of stuff because again, they want to feel part of something and part of this community. And if you could, that's really the power of brand, right?

Is if you could connect with people over your values and what you're offering, as opposed to just, anybody can sell stuff.

[00:33:37] Ronald Skelton: So, how I know the, during the COVID, you had a bump cause everybody's going outside. How's the business doing now? Is it steadies? It's steadily growing? Have you managed to, I mean, you've got your team has a hell of an asset, right? Marketing, you know how to make consumers understand what you're selling.

You may not be able to make them buy, but you're, if anybody has a shot at triggering a sale, you've got the skillset to do it more than most of the people on the planet. So how has it, you don't have to give us direct numbers on it if you don't want to, but when you bought it, how was it doing? And are you guys steadily growing now?

[00:34:12] Martin Bispels: Yeah. So we are.And both top and bottom line. And so, the beginning there was no inventory, no sales. So, there was a huge spike, just getting back and relaunching. And that was great. And we went from zero to a million in 18 months. 

Uh, you know, really. Yeah, because, people were, there had been one of the reasons we bought it was a great brand reputation, right?

Everybody loved the products. They were thrilled that it was back, right? And then we enhanced that with the brand strategy and so forth. And then, you know, last four years, really, the biggest opportunities, challenges have been,getting all of the internal workings,working just right and tune, you know, if you tune the engine, use a car metaphor. And so, for example, I'm on my fourth 3PL, right?

We, we inherited one. We went to another one. That was a disaster. Went to another one. That wasn't great. Now we're on the right, the right structure. I have a great 3PL. And, the cost structure, the communication, all of that is right. The product mix, all of that. So yes, we're growing, we're profitable.

And there's clear opportunity to continue to grow. My, my biggest issue right now is I happen to be out of our, one of our really popular bags. We only have three, so we're out of one. But I'm working on it. I just got an email from our, you know, factory. And so, but that's, that's the only thing that's slowing this business down is,being in stock, making, managing the whole supply chain, which can be challenging at different times.

But overall it's pretty tight. And then,the growth in the future is, continue doing what we're doing. And I've always said, I will get inquiries about, if people want to invest. You know, I've always said I'm opportunistic about it, right? I'm not looking for an investor, but if I found the right person with the brought, more than money, right?

You know, it really brought some insights or some strategic alliances or some capabilities. If they owned a 3PL, for example, and could give me a better rate or something like that. that could be, uh, interesting. But otherwise we'll just keep on keeping on here.

[00:36:08] Ronald Skelton: For the guys that don't know what a 3PL is. What were you talking about?

[00:36:11] Martin Bispels: So third party logistics providers. So the people that actually warehouse and ship your products for you.

[00:36:17] Ronald Skelton: Well, you just don't use Amazon. Doesn't everybody just use Amazon?

[00:36:21] Martin Bispels: Amazon. I don't want to be part of the Amazon ecosystem. I'm a direct to consumer guy. I want to own the customer. I want to have the product margins. I don't want to get caught in the trap, honestly, of, the Amazon vortex. 

[00:36:35] Ronald Skelton: Yep. I spend money on there all the time. And if I were looking at a company to buy, if more than say 20 percent of their revenue comes from Amazon, I see that as a giant red flag.

[00:36:44] Martin Bispels: I have friends who are devastated because they had products. And they were killing it. They were driving fancy cars. And all of a sudden Amazon decides they want to be in their space and make an Amazon generic product that sells what they sell. Luckily for one of them, Amazon offered to buy him out. And I was like, look, we're going into your space. We can, we'd like to buy your company. If you don't do that, we're still going into the space. And it was a subpar offer. I mean, it wasn't something that was top of market. It wasn't a horrible offer. It was, slightly below average for him, in my mind, where I thought he should be. As far as the multiple of earnings type of thing. He'd had done selling it, he'd done better selling to anybody but them, but they, he didn't have a choice. 85 or 90 percent of his revenue was from them. And he didn't know any of his customers. It's a bad place to be. And the way with any retailer, if you know, if that's true and all of your businesses being done through Target or Walmart, you're at their mercy and that's a bad place to be. And so, 

[00:37:38] Ronald Skelton: Walmart's the worst, right? Cause they're constantly needling you to get down the lower, right, lower rate, lower rate. I know a pet food company that was in Oklahoma. The CEO was trying to sell later on, but I knew him cause I used to have a marketing consulting thing. My master's degree is in marketing. If you're familiar with Jake Conrad Levinston, I was one of the guerrilla marketing coaches for the guerrilla marketing system for a little while there. Was licensed under detail. I would hold seminars and stuff. And, that said, one of the companies in town was a little dog food company and what almost killed them as they got to Walmart. And Walmart kept knocking their price down, knocking their price down.

And they went from a decent margin, what I thought was decent margin for their space. When they were selling to through, they were pretty much only through veterinarian. He, the guy was a traveling salesman before he started a dog food company. So he just, created a real high quality, worked with veterans, veterinarian, sorry to figure out what dogs needed.

And he had a dog food company that had that, had that material in it. And, he finally got the thing into Walmart and thought he had made it and they just kept cutting out, even cutting that into where he was barely.And then any time his supply or his product costers, cost of goods sold would go up, he would almost be in the hole because they were such fight him. So, so much.

[00:38:47] Martin Bispels: Well, it's a bad place to be. And also we've surveyed customers, and we've asked them, where do you buy your disc golf stuff? And, a very small percentage. It surprised me, honestly, very small percentage said Amazon. 

And so that also told me that, and I think this is part of a trend overall is, is, people want to buy from people like them, right?

People that know, they know that, I mean, I've played disc golf for 30 years. I have disc golf all over my proPerty. 

[00:39:11] Ronald Skelton: Cool. Cool. Well, we're running out of time here. What would you say is a key takeaways today? If somebody is out there, and they're wanting to get in this space, not your space, not disc golf, but they want to be an acquisition entrepreneur, if they want to talk to you about your consultancy, cause they think they could, with your help grow their brand. First of all, how would you want people to reach out to you? And then we'll do it like, let's do a three takeaway thing. So first of all, how do people get ahold of you if they want to work with you? And then the second one is we'll, we're done with that. We'll, we'll cover your three main takeaways for the day. 

[00:39:42] Martin Bispels: Uh, you know, the easiest way to get ahold of me and what I prefer is LinkedIn. But don't just send me a random LinkedIn invite. I actually ignore the ones that don't have any context. I'd much rather you just write a simple note. Hey, I heard you, on, uh, Ronald's, podcast and we would love to, you know, chat with you about X, Y, Z.

I'm happy to connect with people. I'm happy to give free advice. I love meeting smart, connected people. So just shoot me a LinkedIn note with a, with some context in it. That's the best way to connect.

[00:40:10] Ronald Skelton: Awesome. Awesome. And then three takeaways. If somebody could, if they listen to the hour and a half or the hour and 10 minutes that we're doing here or whatever it ends up being after edit, if they listen to the show today, what would you want them to walk away learning, knowing and use in the future?

[00:40:24] Martin Bispels: Yeah. So I think if you're considering an acquisition, you know, really think through all of the different parts of the business and whether you have the right expertise in place. Honestly, I have a lot of expertise, but I learned along the way that I was, I was missing, I had some gaps. And so, the stronger you go in, the better off you're going to be.

The second thing is if you have, any kind of consumer product or service, and you're looking for somebody who can make sense of your marketing, that's a good reason to reach out to me and I give a lot of free advice. I'm happy to help people. Or for the few that I work with,really one or two at a time,become a fractional CMO where I'm part of the team and really helping to, you know, engage and grow the business.

And then, you know, the third thing is, I don't know. I think that, any kind of business, e commerce especially is, the importance of really building a brand and relating to people in an honest way, more than just, here's some stuff and I want you to buy it. Ultimately marketing is about connection and, the humanity of it. 

It's not about whether ChatGPT can write the perfect product description. So, you know, remember the human side and,when you're offering any kind of product or service.

[00:41:39] Ronald Skelton: It's funny as I used to have a unique definition for brand that I, that I probably stole from somewhere because I read too many books and taken too many courses and stuff. But I always said that your brand is what your customers say about you and your company when you're not around. Right?

It's a story that they tell about you and, you can influence that and shape that. Be honest I used to coach against it in the beginning. If you're doing less than a million dollars a year, you should be marketing to make sales. And you should be cognitive, in my mind, you should have been cognitive. So like, what brand do you want to build?

But it should be not a sideline, but, kind of the, number one is I put a dollar in, I need a dollar 25 out. Cause you're bootstrapping most likely unless you're funded. And then, be aware of the brand, but so many marketing agencies out there on this planet will sell branding on this sake of they can't get results and see like, oh, we're just built, we're building your brand. 

And I was like, that's just because it can't get you results. If you get a good marketing guy, somebody with your skills, right? Somebody with my skills, we're going to look at it and go, we put a dollar in and what do we get now? What are you, the brand isn't, you know, when we start talking branding, I was thinking somebody's, they're profitable, they're steady. Now we can say, I'm going to put this ad out. I know it's not going to drive sales, but it's going to solidify my brand name. And I'll get some sales later on from that. There's some long term life benefits of it. But, uh, so many people sell marketing and advertising on the sake of branding because they don't know how to truly get results.

And that's, that is a sacrilege in my, in my, it's heresy in my world. It's like, stop doing that. So, I appreciate you and who you are and what you're up to and the knowledge you bring to the world. So thank you for being here today.

[00:43:14] Martin Bispels: Thank you very much, Ron. I really enjoyed it.

[00:43:16] Ronald Skelton: Cool. We'll call that a show. Hang out for just a second afterwards.