From 30 Years in Banking to Nearly $1M in 30 Days

We had the heart to heart and I go, “Brent, how much do you make at your job?” He told me, I go, “I think you ought to quit your job.” Because we had all this money just sitting in the bank that people paid. And yeah, I flipped that website back on and and we made almost a million, $965,000 in 30 days. Welcome to the Know Your Ship podcast presented by E-Hub. I’m your host, Frank Golce. This is Russ Warner, CEO, founder of Ghost Boards. We have one right here. It’s It’s an amazing company. Anyway, well, we’re excited to have you tell us the story of Ghost Boards and your career and what led up to

it and why you’re so passionate about it today. And it’s a great company. And and thank you for bringing this in to to show us. This one is called The Wave. Yeah, the resin wave. The resin wave. One of the popular models. Um, anyway, let let’s let’s jump into it. And you you mentioned that uh you have a background in banking. 30 years in banking. I was in mortgage banking. So, um, I started out out of college. I owned like a lawn care business in college. Uhhuh. You’re a lifelong entrepreneur. Yeah. I had a I had a business when I was in middle school. at a chocolate company when I was in middle school. And

so I would sell chocolates and suckers to like St. Mark’s Hospital and and uh that kept me really busy through elementary and junior high. Were you reselling or were you making? No, I was making and selling. So, I’d stay up till midnight after school and uh mix chocolates and put them in molds and Easter bunnies for Easter time, hearts for Valentine’s Day, Santa Claus for Christmas, and then suckers like every flavor sucker and mold type. So, I was spending a lot of my profits buying more molds and more molds. And so yeah, in elementary school I was a entrepreneur and then uh got into doing a a lawn care business. Mhm. And that grew pretty

big. And my brother came to me and he says, “Why don’t you grow up and get a real job?” You know, because in law care, you know, you have a Jeep, no doors, no shirt on, you know, you’re kind of just doing what you do. Yeah. But I had like five employees and so I sold it and he says come get a white shirt and tie job. So I was an older brother. Yeah. So I went into mortgage and uh stuck there for like 30 years. So were you a broker? You mortgage broker work? I started out as a broker and then I went and merged with a bigger corporation. Uhhuh. And there I was

told to come on inside and be the gut and fix guy. So it was a wholesale side. So I would fly out offices, fire everybody, restart it. I was the guy you didn’t want to see in the beginning. Oh. And I lived on a plane Tuesday to Fridays. So they say, “All right, Russ, go to Oklahoma. All right, go to Colorado. Go to Texas.” You wake up, you don’t know what hotel you’re in, what state you’re in. It’s crazy, right? Yeah. And and I love Texas. I love some of these places. I started spending 3 weeks out of the month just in Texas, you know, building a lot of business there. Uhhuh. So, I got

up to a lot of I had like 38 offices and hundreds of employees and and uh that song Cats in the Cradle, Silver Spoon, that was my life. My kids. Yeah. I’m like, oh, I’m doing this for you. Yeah. But you realize you never see them. Yeah. I never had time. Even when you’re home, you fly home and then every weekend you’re trying to get caught up. And so eventually I’d have figured out another bit, you know, a little midlife crisis. Is that how Ghost Boards came along? Yeah, Ghost Boards came about because So you’re in the banking business. Yeah. And And are you having these like feelings during this time? Like I’m not Well,

this is I this is really tough. Certain corporate businesses, they always get dangle that carrot. You’re this close. You’re this close to getting the reward. Mhm. And you’re making a lot of money and you’re you have all these sky miles. You have all these uh hotel points, benefits. Yeah. And you don’t want to use them. You want to go home and have a PBJ and a glass of milk. You don’t want another steak. You don’t want to leave to another vacation. you don’t want to be on another. No. And so I need to figure out when you start getting older, you’re like, “Okay, what what am I doing all this for?” And I’m like, “Okay,

I need to be around. I need to do something with my kids.” They don’t want to talk to me about mortgage. You know, that’s boring. Yeah. But my whole family was in and I think that was hard on them. Like I met my wife in mortgage. My brother owned a mortgage company. My father-in-law was in mortgage. My mom was in title. My other brother was an appraiser. My other one is is in mortgage. You’re in deep. So you go to a Sunday dinner, there’s nothing but mortgage talk. And talk about that’s excitement right there. Yeah. Oh, did you see the rate fluctuation? Oh yeah. Do you see that? See what uh what are we getting

on the back end on this one? Yeah. That was all the discussion. So, well, that sounds fascinating. So, yeah, Ghost Boards is an interesting story. It is. Yeah. Wait, I want to I want to ask you about this because I’ve I’ve listened to a lot of things that you like podcasts and other things you and things that you’ve said and I really like that you’re you are um really reflective about all of your experiences and the lessons that you’ve learned. So, I’m curious about this particular experience in your life. So, you’re like you’re successful. You’re doing well in the mortgage industry and and um highly regarded in in the in the industry, but you have

this maybe a little bit of a crisis of is this is this what I should be doing? Is this what I’m doing? Is this am I making a difference? Am I making a difference? Am I am I attentive to my family? Like all of these things. So what is the like what is your in your experience people who are going through this what advice would you give them? What did you learn from that experience? Would you get out of it sooner? Would you if you have a midlife crisis just go buy the sports car? I’m there. I No, you do. You get in your 40s, 50s and you start saying Yeah. What am I doing

with my kids? What am I doing with my spouse? What am I doing with this world? You know, is it about just making money? Is it about making a difference? In a mortgage, you you lie to yourself in certain businesses. Oh, yeah. I’m making a difference, helping people buy a house, you know, American dream. Absolutely. Yeah. And and I think why why my heart has been more on the skateboard world. It’s more than creating a product or seeing your product in the wild is one of the coolest things. All a sudden I’m in Florida or actually one time I was in Hawaii. Someone came to me like, “Hey, I know who you are. I follow

you on Instagram.” And you’re like, “Wait, what? Can I get a picture of you?” Or I was out in California one time and I and I was doing this event for Back to the Future and two people rode up on their ghost boards and I call that senior product in the wild is the wildest thing you can ever do. like, “Oh my gosh, can I get I I feel more giddy about it. Like, can I get a picture with you?” You know, than than the other way around. Mhm. And there’s this feeling of when you create something that’s around the world, everywhere. You love it. You have a passionate for what you made. Mhm. And

then how are you making a difference? And for me, Ghost Boards has been a little bit of a twofold of a, it gets people off their phones and outside to go enjoy the graphics outside cuz I would say the graphics are really cool outside. They’re better than your phone. They’re not pixelated. I think number two, I feel like I’ve made a difference in so many teenagers lives of having their first job working in a factory, making skateboards, uh, learning skills, and having fun. You know, they’ll blast music, have a lot of fun, and enjoy what they do each day versus, “Oh my gosh, I got to go to work to earn money.” You know, kids

actually takes a lot. Is it okay if I come in today? Can I come in early today? Yeah. you know, they they love being there. So, I think my experience when I was 16, I had a great boss that made a difference for me and and I kind of wanted to pay it forward. So So what what was that? What was the 16-year-old I I worked at a chemical factory. Uhhuh. And um there’s three brothers own this chemical business and I was employee like number six and I’d come in there at 16 and they gave me almost the whole warehouse to run. So, I had mixed the chemicals, did all the shipping, uh, and just

took ownership of this chemical factory and and loved it. And they kept encouraging me to this is what you need to do. Make decisions. And so, early age, I just kept learning, oh yeah, no, I can do this. I can figure it out and and just have fun at it. And so, I loved going to work. Yeah. So is that would that be how that your boss made a difference is kind of this idea of empowering you? Yeah, he empowered me and always encouraged me. You know, even when I got a little bit older, he says, “Russ, this isn’t for you. This isn’t your life.” And pushed me like, “You need to go do more.”

Cuz I’m like, “No, if you pay me $3,000 a month, I’m a life I’m a lifer with you.” You know, when you’re when you’re 20 years old, that sounds pretty good. Yeah. back then. I’m like, “Oh, yeah. No, I’m a lifer. I love this.” He goes, “No, no, you need to go now, go to school, go figure out what you want to do, and become more than really $3,000.” So, he he was he always encouraged me all the way around. Yeah. Okay. So, now I know we’re skipping around here a little bit, but now you’re a boss, now you’re an owner, now you’re a CEO, and all the other things. Do are you able to

utilize those lessons? Do you do you use those lessons you learned from that boss or whomever and Yeah. pay like you said, pay it forward? Yeah. So, going back my my boss um at the chemical factory um I I got kicked out of school when I was a senior in high school and I was living in an apartment to finish up school and and um I didn’t know I was going to do with my life and he kept encouraging me, hey, why don’t you go do a church mission? I’m like, uh, I don’t know what that is. So, I got kicked out of church when I was younger for having a mohawk, being a skater

mohawk kid. So, I was trying to figure out, all right, do I go back to church? I got kicked out. Do I do this thing that my boss said, go on a church mission to figure out who I am? And he and he came to me. He goes, “If you go, I’ll pay for it.” I was like, “All right, I don’t know what else I’m doing.” And uh so I went down to the church mission. I had my Marboro t-shirt on and pair down to here and they said, “You can’t wear that shirt. You can’t have that hair.” And I was like, “Oh, okay.” And we’re sending it to California. Like, “All right, perfect.” And

and so paying it forward, I’ve we’ve done a lot of scholarships for a lot of kids that work for me. Pay for their college. They’re going to go to college. We given and we have them write a paper. How did Ghostports change your life? And we’ve paid for some missions, too. You know, kids that want to go on missions and then giving kids jobs when they got back. So, so part of it is I wanted to do what my boss did to me, pay it forward to other kids. And when you get so many teenagers working for you, it’s um uh you become a little bit of their uh person they want to talk to

cuz they won’t talk to their parents about their depression, their anxiety, what’s going on in school or their bullying. And I became this boss that I had lines of kids that come in my office Yeah. and just want to spill. Yeah. And I felt this responsibility to listen to them and and try to help them through their things that they won’t talk to their parents about. Yeah. Because they’re embarrassed about something or Yeah. So I I love the job of being this owner co-orker of these teenagers that they’re going through this lost stage of life. Uhhuh. They don’t know what they want to be. They don’t know what they want going to do when they

graduate. And and they just talk to me and I just talk back and listen to them like, “So what do you want to do?” Mhm. Do you want to own this? Do you want to own a skate shop? You know, you’ve seen this. Or do you want to go be a doctor? Do you want to go to college? You know, do you want to date somebody? Do you want to Yeah, I think that’s interesting because a lot of it is just trying to help people understand or figure out what they’re passionate about doing. And if you can find that, you’re probably in a pretty pretty good spot. And there are some of those kids, oh

yeah, no, I’m going to do this. I’m going to be a dentist. And the others like I don’t know what I’m doing after high school. Yeah. And a lot of them say I don’t know how to deal with this being bullied or I don’t know how to deal with depression. Well, you know, it’s interesting because you’re you get to you get to manage or help manage that with kids early on in their careers. You have a lot of teenagers, younger kids working for the company. But it’s it happens at all stages. Like it does. There’s 30 year olds and there’s 40 year olds and there’s 50 year olds who are still don’t know exactly if

what they’re doing is what they’re supposed to be doing and they have depression and they have all the other issues. So, uh you don’t you can be a sound I guess what I’m saying is and a soundbar life coach. Yeah. You can be that at any talk. Yeah. And you that’s that’s really awesome that you have been able to find that uh opportunity and that’s what I look at. So what’s difference between mortgage and this? I feel like I I get to be more open with people or they get to be more open with me and just talk life versus, you know, what’s going on in your life? What addictions do you have? What are

you guys doing? And coach them through some stories I’ve heard from other people to what’s going on in their life. Sometimes just listening. I that has to be a really great culture that you’ve that you’ve built. You know, sometimes I think regarding culture, there’s it’s challenging because there’s so many things that you could say or do and someone’s going to get offended or feel bad about and and so you you lose some of the opportunity to be open and and have those discussions with people. So I think what you’re doing and what you’ve created is really meaningful and and you know sometimes you walk into a sterile environment that’s not everybody just does their job

and you know and they’re in their cubicle and and no one knows anything about anybody. Yeah. Exactly. And some of them want it that way and Yeah. Yeah. For sure. Anyway. Yeah. Good for you. That’s exciting. So are can you tell us why you were kicked out of high school? Are you Can you talk about that or are there some Yeah, my So, my parents were divorced and my mom was working two jobs. She was gone at 6:00 a.m., come home at 11:00 at night. And the reason she worked all this because she wanted us to live in a neighborhood that would give us opportunity for me to meet friends and learn what life could

be like. So, we lived in a up at upper Sandy that uh no way we should have been there. And but she did she worked all these hours so I could make friends with people that had dads and around and parents and dinner. And so I spent a lot of time eating at friends houses. That’s why I had that’s why I had a business because if I needed food or I needed clothes, I had to buy it myself. Yeah. So, it was more survival, you know, my mom was on survival mode, so I became on survival mode and and um and so when I was a senior, my sister uh couldn’t decide what she was

doing, what she going to college. She was two years older than me. And my mom was get got really upset with her. I she kind of took it out on me. And because one day I came home, I don’t know, midnight or 1:00 am. She’s like, “Where have you been?” I go as a teenager like why do you care? You’re never here. You know, I mean, I see you on Sunday maybe. And yeah, being a smart teen, I’m sure I probably said other stuff. In my head, I wasn’t that bad. So, she goes, “You get out of here.” So, I did. I packed up. My brother was going up to the U and um and

had a roommate. My dad owned this uh 16plex in the ghetto of Salt Lake and we’re talking Yeah. It also had bars on the window. I mean, it was a ghetto apartment building and my brother’s like, “You can come live with us. You got to pay rent.” And but as a he is a college kid and he’s six years older than me. So I’m like, “Okay, I’ll go move in there and finish up high school.” Uhhuh. And it was survival mode there. And so, um, one of the roommates, he worked at a gas station, so we could go there every day. The milk was expiring that day or the food they’re going to throw out.

We’d go gather up all that food. And then we made friends with all these girls that worked at the Dairy Queen and flirted with them. And so we could go there anytime and go in the back and make our own food. Sorry, Dairy Queen owner, whoever you are, but you you’ve you made me live. Yes. So, we’ go back. That’s providing a service. Yeah. They provided service for us so we could go back and make food anytime we wanted. So we lived off the gas station uh throwouts and and the Dairy Queen. So that’s how we survived and then trying to work two jobs, pay for school, pay for a car, pay for life, all

this stuff. Yeah. Well, these are things that we I I I told you when you walked in that I felt like I knew your story, something a little different, but this is none of the story that I knew. And this is all so meaningful because I think it just tells us about the desire that you had to I think I think any CEO, yeah, they go into a company and talk about, oh, how did you make the board and how to come about and oh, I saw you go viral on TikTok and you know, all these things. But I think there’s always a passion behind every CEO why they do what they do. Mhm. Here’s

the danger. I think of most CEOs. We become compulsive, addictive to our business. Mhm. And I’ve actually had to go to therapy with my kids because they’ve said, “You love work more than us.” And And it’s true. Actually, that was a true statement. I mean, I hate to admit it, but I had to. Mhm. I loved to go spend time working because you have to look at your background. My mom taught me. Yeah. Exactly. I mean, that’s why this I I was told you love. You go to work at 6:00 a.m. You you stop at midnight. Yeah. That’s all I ever knew from my mom. So, I did it. So, I worked at the chemical

company and then Sizzler. Yeah. And so I always even in college when I had the lawn care business then I went and worked at Red Robin because I go what do I do with this time at night and so I went and filled the void of what I was taught. Yeah. So you go work a second job. Yeah. And it’s actually my entire life. Actually I gave up mortgage only like a year ago. You’re kidding. No. How long has Ghostports been around? Eight years. And you were still doing mortgage? because I have this desire to work two jobs and it’s it’s in my DNA. I I’ve been taught it my entire life. Well, you said

it earlier. It’s like this survival mode that clicked on early and maybe it just has never left like you. No, it hasn’t. And and the survival mode I don’t know. I have I’ve gone to therapy. I’ve done stuff and I I took a vacation last year with my family and I did not bring work with me. They That was one of the promises my kids made me do. Were you like kind of twitching? Yeah. Yeah. Like uh I got to look at my phone. I I got to I don’t have a board with me. I don’t have a And I’ve always loved work and and that’s you know I go back to that Cats in

the Cradle song. It is my life. Yeah. I I’ve lived it. I’m I’m trying to do as much as I can with my kids now. And so even today I I try to plan out with my kids, you know, okay, yeah, we’re going to have dinner. We’re going to do this, you know, and I can start separating a little bit. Yeah. But it’s ingrained in me for so long that survival is what you do. Well, I mean, absolutely. I think uh prioritizing family is crucial and critical. And I think you know a you could point to data that demonstrates a lot of highly successful people come from a background of a loving and supportive and

meaningful family experiences and so that yeah absolutely but I also think at some point maybe your family will recognize the sacrifice and they have we’ve worked through a lot of therapy and talking through it And you know, my dad’s 90 and he’s still like, you don’t you don’t stop working otherwise you die. And so I got it from both sides. I don’t disagree with you. And and so and people look at, well, Russ, what’s your hobby? You know, do you like to go golfing or boating or this or skiing? I’m thinking, well, if I go golfing, it’s four and a half hours or how much work I could get done. Yeah. You know what? And

part of my hobby is work. I love it. It’s like we were talking a little bit earlier, you know, I love doing SEO and like how do you get number one? It’s almost a video game for me. I’m going to take this keyword, I’m going to make it number one. Like I I made this board, this uh cheeseburger long board looks like a cheeseburger. So I went to go figure out now if you look up world’s uh world’s greatest cheeseburger in Utah, I’m like number two. Even though I don’t make cheeseburgers, you know, longboard because it was like a game for me. How do I become passionate about the game of SEO? Yeah. Well, I

don’t know. Maybe you’re just wired a little differently. I I think I am, but I think I was wired because way my dad was because of your life life experience. And I think everybody when they go into marriage, I tell people when you get married, okay, you’re both coming from two different backgrounds. My wife was the oldest of five girls. And I was the youngest of four, then blended family, nine kids, step brother, step, like everything. And I was told, if you want a car, you go buy it yourself. You want to go to college. You go get a job to go to college. My wife grew up. Here, here’s college funds. We’re going to

put you in a dorm. You’re going to do a study abroad, you know, a little bit different life. And then you get married, you’re like, “How are you going to raise our kids?” I don’t know. They’re going to work two jobs. You know, it comes out of my mouth. They’re like, “Right.” The other side’s like, “Uh, no. School’s going to be important.” And I’m like, “Well, I didn’t finish college. You know, you don’t need college.” And my wife’s like, “Well, I finished in three years.” Yes. You know, so you come together in this love language and then say, “How do we work through this to raise kids?” Mhm. I think my wife’s been a lot

more patient with me, you know, raising kids, growing up, and supporting me and work cuz we actually met at work. Yeah. So, she actually entered my world. So, we had worked till midnight every day in the mortgage business together. Oh. We bought our first house and we had a blowup couch in the front room and we lived there two years and we used the microwave three times and the oven once because we were never there. We had this 3500 ft house on a halfacre and I can’t tell you anything about the house. We had our bed and a blowup couch. We didn’t even own a table because she entered my world of we we’re just

going to work. Oh, and so she’s been more supportive on my side. Yeah. Of like, oh yeah, Russ works. I’m going to support him in work. So she follows me in doing mortgage, then into real estate, and then she helped me with ghost boards. Any of my adventures of other business ideas, she jumps in and supports. And I’m like, I got to figure out how to support her. Not just the financially side, Yeah. but in the family side. Sure. There’s value in both sides. Like we’re we’re ying and yang. And I think that’s why we’ve done so well together. She takes care of things I don’t like to. I take care of things that she

doesn’t like to. And you’ve been able to find a balance. Yeah. And it’s worked out really well for us. I mean, 27 years we’re going on. So Amazing. Well, congratulations. Yeah. So we we made it through, you know, these crazy life adventures and starting businesses and Yeah. you know, changing mortgage companies to Yeah. all that fun crazy stuff in life. Well, I mean, pro probably your personal ex life experience as well. Uh you’re just you’re just willing to go to work. And so, even if that’s a marriage and a family, you’ll just go to work on it and figure it out. Well, that’s always been Yeah. I try to tell my kids, I go, “Whatever

hits you in the face, you just have to figure it out.” And so, if you fail at something, just get up. You know, none of [clears throat] us would learn how to walk if the first time we fell and scratched our knees and said, “That kind of hurt. I’m not going to do walking. I’m never walking again.” Yeah. That that that was a bad idea. No, you got up, you put a band-aid on it. You know, same thing riding a bike, riding a skateboard, work, you know, sometimes you’re going to get fired. Sometimes you’re going to mess up. Sometimes you’re going to make a mistake and you have to say, “All right, what I learned

from that and not do it again.” So, you know, it’s funny that you mentioned that. I was just thinking about this the other day about how we approach things when we were younger and how we approach things when we’re like how we might approach the same thing when we’re older. I was thinking about hitting a baseball of all things. And I can remember distinctly swinging and missing and swinging, missing and swinging, missing. But then I’d hit that one. Yeah. And that one was like a home run. And it felt so good. And you forgot about everything else. Everything else. And that was success. And I’m just like, and you could be a pro and only

do 30% of your job and be successful. Yeah. Be successful. 30% of your job. You are the best of the best. But I think we’re so concerned about the miss that we don’t take a chance of hitting the home run. Like, oh, for sure. As a kid, you approach it so much differently. And and I and I think I’ve actually so I’ve been trying to get into like Vans. I want to sell my boards in Vans. So, you know, I’m wearing a pair of Vans here. Vans, the shoe. The shoe, you know, because they’ve got like 600 stores. And so, I used to I’m kind of relentless. So, I I emailed a guy every month,

the buyer. Uhhuh. And then I would I’ve drove I’ve driven down to California like 10 times. Mhm. Knocked on the door. And then I sent him like five boards. Every month I’d send him another one. He finally called me. This guy named Blitz. He’s like, “All right, Russ. I’ve got all your emails. I’ve got all your boards. Let’s talk.” I was like, “Sweet. This only took me 12 months to get you to pick up a phone to call me.” Yeah. But it’s the same thing as swinging the baseball. I finally got this win. I’m like, [gasps] all those misses. Absolutely. And you hit a home run. Yeah. Well, hopefully you’re hitting a home run. We’re

we’re close on a bunch of these now new relationships I keep doing that with. Keep swinging. So, we where I grew up in Culver City uh down the street kind of toward uh Santa Monica is the original Vans Uhhuh. retail store. That’s where we used to buy all of our shoes. So, we grew up in in Vans. So really excited to hear you doing a collaboration with my childhood shoe. It’s actually funny. The reason I owned this pair cuz I was going down there and I realized I wasn’t wearing a pair of Vans. So I had her and go swing by buy a pair of Vans. So I didn’t want to show a little bit

of corporate office with your New Balance. Yeah. Jeez. So that’s why I own these this pair here. Nice. But I think that’s being a chameleon. I think if you walk in, if I walk into Ron John’s surf shop, I actually always buy a Ron John’s surf shirt. You have to have the shirt. I have a bunch of them now cuz I walk in there, I want to go look at all my boards on the racks and I want to show that I support them, too. Yeah. So, I always have a Ron John shirt when I walk into Ron John’s. Absolutely. So, you have to be a chameleon to wherever you go. Mhm. That’s a good

life lesson. That’s a good business lesson. Yeah. understanding your audience. Yeah. You’re going to go work with the Jazz, put on a Jazz shirt. Don’t take off the Yeah. Take off your Laker shirt. Laker shirt. Yeah. Don’t walk out. I mean, I think you have to always know your surroundings uh from home life, your work life to business and what you’re trying to do. I couldn’t agree more. I think being thoughtful about your surroundings, understanding your audience, critically important. Yeah. I hate when I get these AI LinkedIn emails. Hi, you’re looking like your business is doing so great and we would love to collaborate. Click here on my calendarly to book appointment. And I I

always I do I still respond like hey when you write this with you and non AI I’ll talk. I always say the same thing like you know when your human wants to write me a message let me know. In all of the automations and desire to be ultra productive utilizing stuff like AI, it goes against what everything that you’ve learned about building relationships. Yeah. All everything. And I’m embracing AI in certain things. Sure. It’s it helps me with SEO and productions and you know some things but a lot of it I think I was talking to my son actually last night about this. He goes he thinks there’s going to be a bubble. You know

it’s going to go a little bit too much. Yeah. And then it’s going to burst like okay no more AI people on Instagram. No more AI movies. Yeah. And no more AI written emails. Yeah. Let’s go back to kind of face to face cuz we went into co and we did we all separated out of office buildings. Put a mask on. Yeah. Put a mask on and didn’t talk to people. Mhm. And there’s a now a whole generation that grew up into this. Yeah. I’m going to work from home. Not going to talk. Never going to go. And I grew up um you’re not allowed to eat lunch unless it’s with somebody. You know that

was kind and you go through a thousand business cards a month. That’s the way my brother taught me. He goes, “Yeah, you don’t get lunch unless it’s with a business partner.” Never eat alone. Yeah. Never eat alone. So I’m like, so I train all my guys, you don’t eat alone or you don’t eat. You know, they’re like, “What are you talking about?” Like, “What are you doing? Why would you eat alone?” Our our most meaningful interactions in our in our business at E-Hub are always face to face. Yeah, if we can get a customer, if we can get a partner on site and sit across the table and have lunch and discuss, those are all

always our most meaningful interactions. Yeah, we do Zoom meetings and we do all that stuff and it’s it’s useful, but we never get as much out of the personal interpersonal interaction because people do business with somebody they have they like, they have a relationship with and they have something they’ve done with them. Mhm. They have some story now with them. Absolutely. Yeah. Uh until you have that something that’s why the the old guys uh older than us, they did all their deals on the golf course cuz they had experience now with them golfing or always at a dinner or they always went to Lamb’s Cafe downtown or the coffee shop at Little America. It was

done it was done over a steak. It was done over something. Yeah. And I think they had so much success that elbows on the table. Mhm. Do should we do business together? Should we be friends? You know, do we see eye to eye? It’s still the old adage. And I mean, it’s the the relationship portion of business is maybe as meaningful as anything else. I mean, you’re going to have data. You’re going to have the numbers. You’re going to have all of the information. But at the end of the day, if you’re sitting face to face with two people and one you’ve built a relationship with and one you don’t really know, you’re going to

you’re going to lean on them and say that tell me about this person. Yeah. Yeah. All my recruiting in mortgage was relationship. You know, I left this one mortgage company. I I went to another one and I had 28 branches follow me because I had this personal relationship and that’s hard just call people on the phone. Hey, would you like to move mortgage companies? They’re like, I don’t know you. Why would I move? You know, like that all my business was done face to face. I could tell you most my employees I knew their wife’s name, their kids’ names. Mhm. I had dinner with them. I’ve met them face to That’s why I flew so

much. Yeah. because I was a face to face guy. I was like, I don’t know if I want to hire you and I don’t know if you want to work with me. Yeah. Until we get to know each other, you know, this makes no sense for me to give you the the the pitch. You know, why you should change more money this that. I go, I don’t know. Are we a right fit? Yeah. And uh let’s just get to know each other. I feel like this is by the way to me like so I manage strategic relationships like so this conversation is really meaningful to me uh and I feel like the the way that

we utilize social media especially the younger generations are utilizing social media like that is a piece of humanity that we’re starting to lose and miss is building these relationships and talking to people and sitting down over lunch or going to dinner or spending time in an office together, whatever it is. Anyway, well, I I I really appreciate the relationship uh discussion that we’ve had because I believe it’s so meaningful. Clearly, that’s been something that’s been meaningful in your business experience as well. And so, as we transition, I I didn’t mean to get off so off track, but I really I I really thought that was a a valuable discussion for sure. But how so so

how did you utilize now all of this life experience you have because it’s a really interesting story about how you finally got to manufacture I don’t think I don’t think I’ve changed you know like I I still love most CEOs I call them um is step away from their company they don’t understand anymore a lot of CEOs don’t understand you know like for example I know a lot of CEOs in the mortgage age business have never done a mortgage in their life or have hadn’t done it like in 30 years. And so I was never one to be that guy of run a company I didn’t know everything about it. So I could tell you

everything about ghost boards of any of my businesses I’ve ever done. I can tell you it takes how much time it takes to cut that board, how much time it takes to assemble, how to ship this board to Fiji, you know, how to do the label because I want to be an expert to all the employees when they come to me and say, “Hey, Russ, will you come look at this?” I say, “Yes.” And also, you never want to be put in a bind of all a sudden I always call it get hit by a bus syndrome. Mhm. Your CFL gets hit. Yeah. No one knows how to do a wire. you know, no one

knows how to do tap, you know, or payroll. Yeah. So, I’m one of these maybe over the top I like to know everything, not maybe be an expert in it, but understand it, but how I use all of these life adventures into this business. I still talk to so many of the influencers myself, actually, all of them. Mhm. I’m talking to band members, to Hollywood people, to people all over because I also ask that same question like, “What do you want out of this?” Mhm. Do you just want a free product? Is that why you’re really messaging me or can we have a relationship? So, there’s this new gal and and down in California, she’s

this upand cominging new artist. She loves our boards. She rides them while playing the guitar, singing. And I said, “I kind of want to get to know you.” So, I went down to California and I met her and her mom and dad, everything for breakfast. And I love it when these young influencers bring their parents house cuz I don’t want their 18-year-old daughter meeting a 54 year old guy at a Yeah. You know, somewhere random. I’m sure. So, I always ask is, “Hey, let’s get your parents involved.” And now I just got a D I just got a text message this morning from her mom. comments. So, I’m usually talking to them and saying, “What

do we want out of this relationship? You like our boards. I like you. You’re up and coming. Let’s build something together. Let’s build merch. Let’s put your logo on them. Let’s sell them on your website.” And so, I’m a face to face guy. When it even comes this like, let’s just not give you free product and you did one post for me and and we part it as nothing. No. And and that’s the same thing with stores I go into. So, if I’m going to go sell to a new store, I want to go see the store. I want to go see, you know, what what do you sell here? What’s your surf shop? What’s

your hotel? What’s your, you know, what what type of demographics do you have? Cuz I’ll custom to it. So, the boards I sell in Hotel Coronado are so different than what I sell at Ron John Surf Shop to what different than I sell in Saks Fifth Avenue. You know, every one of them is going to be a little bit different. Like Sax wants butterflies and girl boards with pink and hotel Coronado wants the California bear and they want things about their hotel and they want things about the beach. And Ron John’s about we need Ron John’s and Sharks and Woody, you know, things like that. So they want a little bit different. Yes. And I

find another store like up in Wyoming, they want nothing but AK-47s on the board and bullets inside of it. It’s for real. I believe you. So, I am still that face-toface guy. When I do business with somebody, if it be wholesale uh or B2B or anything, I try to figure out, let’s look at your business. Yeah. Because I’ll get a business will send me their boring logo for a company. Like, oh yeah, I want 100 boards for all of our employees. And they’ll send me and they I’m like, let’s make it kind of cool. They don’t want your I won’t pick on any names. the logo, your big old logo across it. No, make it

small. Let’s do a cool design now. Because they don’t want to ride around the, you know, I won’t say I’ I’ve seen some. I’m like, can we make it fun? You know, give them some new ideas. Yeah. All your employees are not just want to You as a CEO love your logo, love your name, but your employees Yeah. You have this tie to it for sure. Yeah. But employees like love you give them a paycheck. love. You’re getting them a cool longboard. They’ll remember where they got it from, but let’s not let’s not do it over the top with your logo all over it. Yeah. Well, I think this is so valuable. Um your experience

with building relationships. A hard thing, one of the difficult things about building relationships is it’s not a quick sale. Like it takes time and you really have to be invested and develop but it but it costs more to keep replacing relationship after absolutely you build one meaningful relationship and that’s that that’s and you got to take care of it and so many people I think are transactional. Yes. And all they care about is go get another win. Go get another win. And I get that even my side, I get sold like, “Oh, use me for your ex.” And then I never hear from that rep ever again. He sold me. Mhm. He’s gone. And gone.

Well, and he the the rep that’s way paid. It’s way he’s told. Exactly. And that’s how he that individual is incentivized. Yeah. to not like in some ways incentive programs, compensation programs are designed to grow, grow, grow, grow, grow and and so it’s like you make a sale. Now that compensation for that sale is short-lived and now you have to go and do a new one. Here’s what they’re missing, though. This is what I you’re exactly. What they’re missing is if you do such a good job for that one guy Mhm. He’s friends with lots of other business owners, lots of other executives, lots of other friends, and he may not stick there. If you

make a good enough friend with him, he’s going to start telling everybody about you and every time he’s at if you I love the book Raving Fans by Sher. Absolutely. Best book ever. If you create a raving fan, they’re going to tell everybody about you. And and that’s what I built this on is even a consumer. I don’t know who just bought it, but if they have such a great experience of opening up the box and seeing it and loving it, you don’t know who they’re going to tell. And I had an experience. I went to a networking event the other night. This guy came up to me. He’s like, “You did such a good

job taking care of my son.” This is like five years ago that all I do is talk about your company. and and he then bought a board for this other guy named Sean Finnegan down in Utah County. Mhm. That gave it to another guy to I found out this other guy is like, “Oh yeah, I was on a jet flying to this private thing and your board was on this jet and the CEO of this company thinks it’s the coolest board ever.” I think it all beca because like because you Yep. you you took care of somebody and create a raving fan. So even the transactional guy, even if you’re selling cars Mhm. if I’m

going to sell cars, you’re’ll only buy one car your entire life. Mm. If you sell a car to somebody, why are why aren’t you just their car guy forever? And they call say, “Hey, I’m looking for this car. I got you. Let me go find it for you. I’ll have it ready for you, you know, and and just be their guy forever. It’s It’s so It’s so interesting. I feel exactly the same way about the car industry, and I’ve purchased lots of different vehicles. Do you remember any of your sales rep’s names? There there’s two guys. So, you do? There’s two guys who have done such a nice job of just making you feel like

it’s not the used car experience. Yeah, like taking the time, calling back, following up. Like I don’t know how many times I’ve reached out to somebody and said, “Hey, I’m interested in this vehicle.” And you get the standard Oh, yeah. response and then maybe I send something back and then that’s the like the end. Yeah. It’s so it’s so interesting to me. Yeah. the Arabian fans. I learned from this guy uh the restaurant Bugattis in Texas. Yeah. So the guy owner is Z. So we called and made reservations and he asked, “Okay, what’s your name for the reservation?” I go, “We Mhm.” He goes, “What’s your first name?” That’s weird. I go, “Russ.” He goes,

“Okay, party for what?” I go, “There’s going to be four of us.” He goes, “What’s the other names of the party?” I’m like, “What in the world is going on?” And you know, like, okay, it’s Linda Richardson, Lynn Beexstead, Denise Bickley, and Russ Warner. He goes, “Okay, I’ll see you at 7:00.” We get there and this guy opens up both doors for us. We walk in. It’s kind of a dive Italian restaurant. It wasn’t like anything over the top. Mhm. You walk in there, we sit down and the menu said, “Welcome XYZ Mortgage Company.” Cuz he asked where I worked. And there was a rose for Linda and a rose for Denise. And then the

water guy came over. He had white gloves on and a silver pitcher. And he called us by name. He goes, “Mr. Warner, would you like tap water?” “Mrs. Richardson, would you like tap water?” And I thought, “Are we being punked here?” So I looked around. He did it to his job as the water guy is to memorize everybody’s name in the restaurant at every table. And then the owner came over and greeted us. He goes, “Hi, my name is Z.” And he now I get a birthday card from him. I get a Christmas card. He has no idea. I’m talking about him right now. He has no idea if I’d ever be back to Texas.

But guess what? If I go to Texas, guess what? I tell I tell everybody I tell everybody about Z. Yeah. And I remember his name and this was literally 10 12 years ago. And so I’m a raving fan. Absolutely. So in business, even if the car guy moves on to something else, if he’s made a relationship with somebody Yeah. Why wouldn’t you stay in touch with him forever? I don’t know. And by that’s the other thing is like, okay, so I’m not going to buy a car every year, but I’m going to buy a car every few years, four, three to five years. And if you as the as the sales guy have a relationship

with 50 people and those 50 people are buying a car every few years, like that’s a healthy like that’s a healthy business and then that just continues to grow. I have a similar experience to that in Riverton, Wyoming, which is a tiny tiny town in Riverton, Wyoming. And there’s I had a son who went to school up there for a couple years and I would go to visit him and there’s a few hotel options and I landed on this one Hampton Inn. Okay. And I got to the Hampton Inn and very friendly when I walked in and you know, whatever. But when I got to my room, there was a note with my name on

it, a personal note. Welcome to Riverton. And here’s all of the things we’re excited about Wyoming. Here’s all of the things that you can do more about while you’re while you’re in Wyoming. We’re so grateful that you’re here. We’re so grateful that you I still have that note at my house. That is so because that never happens. Like you wherever you should frame it and put on your wall. Yeah. Yeah. And so whenever I go back to Riverton, Wyoming, which I may never do, but there I’m not staying anywhere else. I mean, but we all remember those types of things. Absolutely. Yeah. I don’t know how many times when I used to fly a lot.

I go down to Arizona. Soon as I walked in, guess what? They always put me in the same room. They knew my name. Hey Russ, welcome back. I got you in room 621. Mhm. And they just knew me. And so why did I keep going there? Why would I go to a different hotel? Yeah. These people, they always had the water for me, the free breakfast. They knew my name. Mhm. Asked me how everything was. It’s cheers. It’s the It is you walk in norm I mean it’s that you create how do you do business like that today is the thing that with AI with technology. Yes. It’s technology can be a booster to remind

you to be human. Yeah. It can be an effective tool but it can’t replace the the interpersonal interactions. Yeah. So, anyway, I we’ve gotten way off track. I want to talk about Ghost Sports. All part of Ghost Boards. It is all part of it. I Yeah, I’m so glad we had that discussion leading up to this because I think it is all part of that. And your founding story of Ghost Boards is based on being I I partner for six years. Yeah. like you were working your regular job and you were also working on Ghost Board before you even knew it. Like it’s Tell us the story. It’s a great story. Yeah. I mean my

partner Brent was a neighbor, you know, the short version and he made a board for his son when he was 11 years old and this is like 15 years ago. Wrote over my house and I thought that was the coolest thing in the world and I thought I need one of those. He told me no for six years. He had an uh acrylic one. Acrylic board. Yeah. Yeah. And I would ask him every month, “Hey, Brent, can I have one of those?” Nope. Why? This is what I Okay, I’ve heard the story and this is what I keep wanting to ask you. Why did he keep saying no? Cuz he didn’t want to make it.

He didn’t want to do it. He didn’t want to make me one. That was it. Yeah. And then after he gave me one, then I bugged him for two years to kind of sell them. And he kept telling me and I understood. He goes, “Russ, I’m at the time he was like in his 50s.” And he’s like, “I don’t want a second job. I know you like having a second job, but I don’t want one. He goes, I go to work, work all day. I want to come home and that’s my life. And I go, but this could be really cool to share and make and and you know, the whole conversation actually came down

to a car cuz I said, “Would you like a new car?” And I said, “How about I make you $400? I’ll make me $400.” And he said, “Yes.” So I hurry and went made a Shopify website like two and a half hours sitting on my couch, put all the 10 designs up and I went to work. Did you Did you make all the designs? He came up with the 10 designs. Oh, very cool. He he is a very talented guy when it comes to art and work. And what is his background? So he worked at this place called 360 Scenery. So he was building stages for like doteras or Oh those anytime they had these

MLM conventions they would hire his company. So he was running CNC machines. Um his background for that he made lifeguard towers in California. So he lived in Lagona and he built life lifeguard towers. So hands-on guy, an eye for design, an eye for making things perfect. Mhm. He makes his furniture in his office. He makes his furniture, all of our furniture in our off. He made my desk. It’s an acrylic longboard desk, you know. And so he makes everything. He makes all the display racks. So he’s a perfectionist. And so he was like, “All right, let’s come up. I’ll come up with the Fishbone, the Maui, the Riptide, the Tortuga.” He came up with these

uh 10 designs. And I’m like, “Okay, I’ll sell your 10 designs.” And I just I’m a marketing guy, um, a relationship guy. And so I said, “I’m going to get this out to the world for people to see it.” Mhm. So every I got 79,000 photos on my phone. Every picture that’s on the website, that’s on social media, it’s all from my iPhone. So I don’t have a background. I don’t know how to use things to clean up pictures. Mhm. And I think people in business, they overthink starting a business like Yes. Oh, I don’t know. I’m like, I went to GoDaddy, found Ghost Longboard, bought it. I went to Shopify. Well, actually, I didn’t

even know what Shopify was. I Googled how to build a website and Shopify popped up. Popped up. It was like $39.95. Like, okay, sounds good. Bought the $39.95. I don’t I didn’t overthink anything and I just took a picture of a board and put it on the website and then went and did a video of me writing it. put that on the website with the phone and then opened up a Facebook page and Instagram page and just started posting posting and then people would buy and as I’d make the boards so then Brent would take his lunch break and make these boards for me, drop them off my house 6 o’clock at night and I’d

build them and then I take a picture of it and I have one more picture to share it. So every day I was, you look at a lot of my early pictures, it’s all in in my house or out in the street. So I have to look back and forth, no cars coming. I’d run a bunch out there, take a bunch of pictures and and look at the lighting like, okay. Yep. Yeah. And I’d take pictures, take more pictures, and then I would go ride and and do a video. I have two questions about this. Does Brent have like was he passionate about skateboards or did did he just make one for his kid? He

doesn’t know how to ride a skateboard, but he is a brilliant designer. But his kid want thought his kid wanted. Yeah. So Eric loved it. And so his his kid wanted a board and he was like, I’m not going to buy a board. I’m just going to make one. Make one. Yep. Okay. Yeah, that clears up that. I love that he’s he doesn’t know how to ride a skateboard. Okay. Yeah. So yeah, we’re polar opposites. What makes us good business partners? He’s tall, I’m short, he’s an introvert, I’m the extrovert. He’s good-looking. Yeah. I mean, I didn’t mean that. Yeah. It’s true. Yeah. Yeah. And um he loves the machines and he loves the design.

Uhhuh. And I love to sell and I’m passionate about the writing of them and the the selling and and the relationship. And he’ll tell everybody he likes to make my dreams come true because I’ll say, “Brent, I want one with lights on it.” He’s like, “Uh.” you know, roll his eyes like, “All right, let me go figure out an LED, you know, for it.” And I’ll say, so my my latest one is I’m like, I want a So yesterday I told him, I want one that has a So I’m making a balance board, but I go, I want the measure I want the um the little liquid thing that you measure the bubble. Uhhuh. Like

a leveler. But I want the leveler tube inside of it. So as you’re doing the bounce board, you Oh, you can see if you’re level. Yeah. Yeah. So then I said, “I want to do a liquid ghost board.” And he rolls his eyes. Okay, let me go look. So I have all these ideas and you’re Yeah, you’re you’re the idea guy and he’s the he’s the one who actually I’ll say, “Make me a cheeseburger long. Make me a board with top ramen in it.” And he’ll figure it out. He’s done it. I like I want a leveler. I want a balance board. I want a cornhole. So he made me LED acrylic corn holes now.

Oh, are you selling those? Yeah. Oh, they’re really cool. Amazing. Well, I’m in. Yeah. So, I just keep coming up with crazy ideas. I’m a dreamer. Yeah. And Brent’s like rolls his eyes at me. He’s the execution. You’re the Yeah. And he comes back and he tries to surprise me. He’s like, “All right, look what I made.” I’m like, “Oh, yeah.” Even even like my desk, you know, he surprised me with that. I think I was in Lake Pal or something. I come back and he had this cool long board acrylic desk in my office. Wow. So yeah, I just um he’s he’s brilliant. He’s a smart guy. And so I Well, it’s two of

you. Two of you are brilliant. I’m just I I just come up with weird stuff. So when you said don’t get don’t overthink starting a business. Yeah. Your thought on starting this business was I know you were you were working in the mortgage industry. You were successful, doing well. Was your thought about this business? Did you see the acrylic board and did you think I could make a million dollars with that board? No, I don’t think it was that. I mean, it was one is this could be a fun little hobby to have my kids help me do, you know, build some subtling some boards, go riding, teach him how to ride. Mhm. And give

Brent his 400 bucks. Mhm. A car payment. 400 bucks a month. Yeah. Yeah. For a car payment. Yeah. And I saw that it was a really cool product, but I didn’t think it was going to just all a sudden do a million dollars one month and say I mean when that happened it was just wild. So you So your thought in starting the business was like it was cool. Yeah. We could do 10 20 30 a month and people might like it. They’ll have fun on it. You grew up skateboarding and on the beach. Now I need a long board cuz I’m old, you know. Yes. And and of course you didn’t have enough to

do so. So you wanted to have a Yeah. I didn’t have a second job. You didn’t have a second job and you thought with my spare time I’d love to just go longboard like Yeah. go outside for a run. Yeah. And it Yeah. Just become a passion of mine that I love. So you didn’t dig into the data and analytics and No, I I never what the market. I never did a SWAT analysis on it. I’ve never done one or how many longboard. I didn’t even know another longboard company really. Uh, you know, well, I didn’t know what my competition was cuz I look at I I was like, I don’t have any competition. I

still don’t think I do cuz it’s different. All other longboards are wood, made from China, Mexico. They all have silver trucks and black wheels. Yeah. And I wanted our we have a 68% female demographic because we do butterflies, pink, purple, yellow, and butterfly is one of your most It was one that went viral. Yeah. Okay. So, tell us about this. You started this like it’s going to be a hobby. We’ll sell a few boards. We’ll have some fun. Get the family involved. The kids will like it. Yeah. And and so when did you determine when did you have this realization like wait a second was when we got over this girl named Maddie in Ohio

bought the butterfly board that changed our life. So Maddie uh Maddie did she call the company or did she send it in like a No, she just ordered it on shop on the Shopify website. Saw it on probably Instagram or somewhere and sent in a design or something. Um, yeah. I think she said, “Can I get a butterfly on a board?” Okay. Yeah. Cuz we had a little custom. You can customize your board. Mhm. On our website. And she bought a big long 48 pinttail. 17-year-old girl and she did a Tik Tok. Can I 48? Yeah. We Yes. board. Yeah. Tall one. A four foot board. Yeah. So, we make We call it our Pintel.

It’s a big long Yeah. Long board. Yeah. And um she did a Tik Tok and I wasn’t allowed on Tik Tok because it’s when adults were not allowed on it yet. It was kind of a just a dancing thing for teenagers. They sing along to songs and do stuff. And I have to admit I still don’t have Tik Tok. Yeah. And we weren’t allowed. I said if you’re over like 25 years old, you shouldn’t be on. Is that right? Is that back then? Is that true? Like that’s that was a Tik Tok thing. Yeah. I was just dancing to music. Uhhuh. And singing along to it. Yeah. So it was fairly new. Tik Tok was

still as early stages. Yeah. And she did a Tik Tok of And she said, “Hi, my name’s Maddie. I bought this ghost long board. Has a butterfly on it. Has yellow trucks and pink wheels that light up. And let me show you how to ride ride it.” And she did a video of her like a tutorial. Yeah. Her first tutorial of riding our board. Then she did a part two and a part three, but my phone just went ballistic. All a sudden there was like that 600 orders in one day. And Brent, that’s when he, you know, you’ve heard the story. He’s so mad. I know. I swearing at me to shut the website off.

You have six like you have orders that are now multiplying. As we had a thousand orders by second day and I did I shut the website down and he said, “Shut it down.” Yeah. He goes, “We can’t.” And I was in La La Land cuz I was listening to the Kaching from Sha’s like kaching kaching kaching kaching. And I’m just singing along like, “Yeah, money’s money’s money.” You know, this is so fun. But reality didn’t hit me cuz again, I’m the dreamer, you know. And he’s a realistic guy. He’s like, he goes, “Um, Russ, there’s a thousand boards. We don’t know how to make a thousand boards.” He goes, “Russ, do you have a thousand

sets of wheels?” I’m like, “No, I got like 20 here.” He goes, “Do you have a thousand sets of trucks?” So I’m like, “No, I got 20.” He goes, “Do you have a thousand boxes?” Come on. Thousand bearings. Franc’s just raining on your I know. He did. He did hardcore. And And my saving grace is I I’ve always been a solution guy. People always come to me with their problems and mortgage and I figure out what their problem is and come a solution. So I’ve always been a solution. I’m like, “I’ll figure it out.” You know, just like make a website, whatever. I’ll figure it out, man. Yeah. So, I called this Allan Wong guy

in in California, Riverside, California. And I go, Allan, hey, I need a lot of wheels and trucks and bearings. You own a wholesale distribution company for skate. Yeah. And Allan’s like, “Yeah, I saw I saw your problem.” He goes He Yeah. Yeah. He goes, “I saw the Tik Tok.” Uh, the Tic Tac. What? What is that? Yeah. I asked my daughter to log into Tik Tok so I could see it. and uh he goes, “I got you covered.” He goes, “People love your product, Russ. Turn on your website.” So that’s [clears throat] when Brent and his wife came over, sat on my couch. We had the heart to heart. And I go, “Brent, Alice says

he can get us all the wheels and trucks and bearings that we need.” Mhm. I go, “How much do you make at your job?” He told me, I go, “I think you ought to quit your job. We ought to do this.” Cuz we had all this money just sitting in the bank that people paid. Mhm. And I’m thinking, and that’s the beauty of online e-commerce. You get their money first. So, we built the business on the backs of Mhm. the people that ordered and Yeah. And I flipped that website back on and and we made almost a million $965,000 in 30 days. How many boards? That was like 6,800 or something like that orders in

one month. And how important was your scrappy background? A lot. You know what I mean? Like that that’s where all of I learned of working till midnight, working till 2:00 a.m. It just it was like I didn’t have to think about it. No, this was just natural. I just kicked in. And being a solution guy, I’m like, “Oh, okay. I’ll call this come.” And my wife also knew me well enough she jumped right in. She like she went out and found four other machinist says, “Hey, could you help us? Do you have a CNC machine?” She didn’t know anything about the machines. They’re like, “Yeah, we do.” She goes, “Can you cut this for us?”

and like yeah she goes we’ll pay you this much can you do a hundred a day for us so she committed this company up in Ogden then she went to Pleasant Grove then to Highland American Fork and she went out and found for cuz Brent kept bringing me the problem like we he goes I can’t at my lunch break make more than like 10 boards so my wife’s like well I’ll figure it out and I’m like let’s figure it out so she went and found she already committed that we could get 400 a day before we even owned a machine. Yeah. Then we went to Brent’s company and said, “If we use your machine, we’ll

pay you $5 a board.” And they’re like, “Oh, sweet. Okay, cool.” And then we went to one of Brent’s employees and says, “Hey, you’re newly married. What are you doing at nights and weekends?” He’s like, “I need to earn money.” We’re like, “How about 20 bucks an hour?” He’s like, “Oh, sweet.” Yeah. And so we committed him to 100 boards he had to do for us. Yeah. So we we rounded went around the state looking for help and then I went around to the neighborhood and that’s where all the moms came over sitting at my kitchen table doing labels and UPS and effects are sitting on my they’re sitting on my couch every day. Mhm.

because we’re like, “How do you do labelled to wherever Canada?” Mhm. And so they were there every day. And then I had three popup tents in the driveway and every teenager and underageed people at this time showing up and I have Domino’s Pizza on speed dial every day, right? So they’re delivering 20 pizzas a day and Mountain Dew every day. And uh I said, “Let’s just do it. Just figure out this, you know, whatever our problem is, let’s figure it out. And so I’m I’m uh organizing all the orders. I’m answering 600 emails every single day. And that was that became my life and running a mortgage company. Oh my gosh. Did you ever feel

during that did you ever feel overwhelmed? Oh, absolutely. But okay. Did you ever feel like you couldn’t do it? Yeah. Really? Yeah. Uh, every day, every day is, can I pull this off? Can we do this? Am I going to cry? I’m getting people yelling at me like, “When am I going to get my order?” I actually built the Shopify website. I started putting a banner at the top says, “If your order is from this to this, you’ll get it three months from now. If your order is this to this, you’ll get it four months from now.” And I’d update that every day saying, “Wow.” Telling people when they’ll get their order. And people kept

ordering. Yeah. Yeah. And they still kept ordering. I was put on there like, “Can I get this for my birthday this next week?” Like, “No, unless you give me an extra $100 and people then I’m rearranging a lot of uh rush or priorities.” Yeah. Yeah. But I was making the money up for it. I’m like, “Okay, wait. These 20 now go in front of everybody else’s and and then I’m running out of product like crazy, too. Like, where’s the white wheels? We’re out.” than calling a hundred people like, “Hey, I know you wanted white wheels, but we have blue, green, red, yellow, purple. We want to take one of those guys.” Like, “Yeah, we’ll take

blue.” Okay. You know, then all of a sudden I’d find out, “Oh, we’re out of blue now.” You know, it was a constant nightmare of inventory. Uhhuh. Cuz I could not do inventory on the website because everything was still you got to pick what size board you want, what design you wanted, what color trucks, what color wheels. So you don’t know what is going to run out. Yeah. At any given time. And so you’re producing boards one at a time. Yeah. I mean, you may cut shapes, but you’re you’re you’re making every one of them is all being handmade. And so then Brent is going around teaching all these other machinists how to use, you

know, how to engrave, how deep it needs to be, how thick, and everything. And he’s inspecting all of them. And he’s dropping off a new zip drive. Say, “These are the ones you’re doing today. They’re doing all 40-in boards, all butterflies and and skeleton roses. You go the next one, you’re doing all 30-inch boards, all going to do this. And then he was running around with with a truck just picking up, you know, these boards every day, bringing them back to me for assembly. Assembly. And I’m then trying to print out like which one goes to what. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so we’re trying to figure out shipping. We’re trying to figure out boxes. are

trying to figure out. We messed up so bad on compliance. And so I had customers call me up and says, “Hey, [clears throat] Russ, uh, I just got 14 boards sent to me and I ordered one.” And I’m like, “Okay, where’s logistics? Were you double double printing labels?” Yeah. There’d be like five people just printing labels and they’d be like And they weren’t cross. They weren’t Yeah. Yeah. because I just said print print and and you have five people all printing the same label and then a label gets lost or something or something like hey where’d that label go? I don’t know. And so they just go make a new label. So now oh oh

what’s that label right there? It says on the back it’s a fishbone. Here we need a fishbone. Where’s another like labels everywhere, packing slips everywhere, parts everywhere. My house is being trampled until we can get a warehouse. So then we got this big How long did that take? Like how long? My My wife was in real estate, so she jumped on that pretty quick. So she jumped on, uh, Russ, you need a HR. You can’t have any more of these uh 12-year-olds working here. No more Venmo paying everybody. You manager payroll. Yeah. Yeah. She’s like, uh, bills need to get paid and you need a warehouse. Needs to be out of the house. And so

she jumped in. Uhhuh. She also is just like I’m a solution person. I’ve been with Russ. We Yeah. just and being the oldest of five girls, you know, that’s always kind of been her role is you just take care of everything. And so she’s jumping in like, “Okay, I’m going to get you a warehouse. We we’re going to order a machine. Brent, which one?” You know, we need two machines, you know. Okay, we need a forklift. We need, you know, this. We need racking. We need and Russ you order like the wind of order 20,000 sets of wheels and trucks and bearings like Okay. Could you have survived without your wife or someone with that

kind of stuff jumping in? Yeah. Yeah. Cuz I had no idea. So she’s networking with everybody. We have a neighbor that had a payroll company. So she’s down talking to Terry. Terry payroll. Yeah. Like how do we do payroll? How do we set up all these employees? how do we do this? So, she jumped in. That’s like I’ll get all that set up. Give you W9’s to everybody and you get everybody on a W2 and and um so she’s jumping in figuring out, oh, Russ, you need insurance, you know, like workers comp and you and like, okay, you so she figured all that out. She’s like, all right, let me call around to that then.

And I’m trying to figure out I’m still trying to figure out sitting down with a FedEx and UPS guy how to ship labels everywhere and what duties and taxes even mean, right? I didn’t even know that there was such a word. Mhm. I’m like, send something to Canada, they have to pay an extra $46 for our board. I better tell the customer that. Well, that’s one of those things shipping to Canada. Sometimes they show up on the doorstep and they’re trying to collect from the customer. Uh-huh. And I had a lot of those. Like, uh, they won’t give me the skateboard until I pay them another $46. Like, oh, we forgot about that. So, I

need a company that calculates now. So, you’re luring on the fly. I mean, we we have a airplane with all engines burning, you know, going 900 miles an hour thinking, “All right, there’s no parachutes. We got to we just got to do whatever we can figure out and and you wing most of it. And I think there’s so many business owners, they don’t want to start a business. They get I call frozen until everything’s perfect. Oh, I need to know exactly how this is done. And I’m thinking, dude, you’ll never launch. And and your business will pass you by. You’re exactly right because um maybe it’s not necessarily your personality. Maybe it’s more like Brent’s

personality. It is, but he he wanted to know. Yeah. Yeah. All details. Starting a business need to say, “Heck no, we’re just right. Someone may have a great idea, but that individual would be like, well, I don’t know. I don’t know how to source. I don’t know payroll. I don’t know HR. I don’t know all of and I’m going to have to have all of these things in place. And you just said, I just want to make really cool skateboards. Let’s do that. And then my accountant at the end of the year, he had a lot of clean up for me. And I was Bill is like, “Oh my gosh, yeah, we need receipts for

this. I need this.” I’m like, “So my wife had to go clean up a lot of stuff like, oh, our accountant needs all this so we don’t get in trouble.” Yeah. Did we pay any taxes to this? So, how long did it take to find yourself in a place where you felt like it was under control? Yeah. Uh, two years. Really? Oh, yeah. It it was it was chaos for at least a good year and a half of mad house. Yeah. Cuz you’re learning. You’re still making mistakes, learning. Mhm. So, I have this whiteboard in in Elizabeth’s office and and we’d write on it every month of just three things that were burning down, you

know, that was on fire. And my my rule of thumb has always been you only fix three things a month because the end of the year I’d have 36 things I didn’t have last year. Otherwise, you get overwhelmed if you wrote every problem going on, right? Yeah. So, Elizabeth, even today, I’ll go in there and say, “Okay, tell me why you got emails. What’s the most common email?” Be like this. They don’t understand how to charge the LEDs. I go, “Okay, I’m going to make a video. I’m going to do a QR code. It’ll be inserted with now the board.” Mhm. So, then they can scan it, goes to YouTube, talks about it. And it

So, every little thing has been like that. like, “Oh, I noticed that people are like, “Oh, yeah, just tighten it with your skate tool.” And a bunch of people like, “I don’t know what a skate tool is.” So, today, everybody that buys a board gets a skate tool for free. They they don’t even know that, but And then it has instructions. Your wheel doesn’t light up. It’s lights up with friction. You just tighten it if you need to change. So, I’m like, I solved a huge problem just by inserting a dollar skate tool into every order. Mhm. you know, so I’ve learned little things like that of, okay, how do I fix? So, every year

I’m like, okay, I have 36 things I have last year and now what are the, you know, what’s the new three fires that I got to figure out? So, that’s that’s all I’m doing is fixing three things now. Yeah. Well, that’s an interesting lesson as well of, you know, every business is going through something, probably more than three things at a time. Oh, yeah. But if you can prioritize, if you if you have that, if you can. Yeah. If you cuz I always say if our phone rings, we get an email, we failed somewhere on telling people what they’re getting on the website or in the package that they opened up. So I always ask

her, why did we get phone calls and be and as an old grandma, I’m ordering a board for my granddaughter and I don’t know what size or what to get her and then we help her out. But but you know, so a lot of things Yeah. like okay, that was a one-off. But if everybody called says,”I don’t know what size for me and I put it for a long time right on the front page. It’s still on there. What’s the right size for me?” Oh, you know, so I started to try to figure out, okay, let’s just put that on there. Yeah. You know, let’s Okay, what about Q&A? Let’s put that on there. Sure.

So, every day I’d always have the same questions. Oh, do you ship worldwide? Are they slippery? Do I need grip? Will they break easy? What’s the weight limit? Okay, all those things. Now, I’ve addressed I address it on on my Instagram. There’s those five things are written. We ship worldwide. No, they’re not slippery. A weight limit is 240 for 3/4 and 680 for 1 in. 680 lbs. Yeah. Does it matter? Does the length matter? No, not on that one. Cuz it’s a 1 in. It’s I call it my big boy edition. Yeah. And then I even have a video of two guys that weigh over 300 lb both jumping on it. Do you have a

particular demographic that Yeah. seems to Yeah, with us it’s really weird. Most skateboard companies tend to a 11year-old to 25 year old male. Most uh we fit in to a 2-year-old to a 60y old which is really odd. And then 68% female. Most skateboard companies only sell to 90% male. Mhm. 10% female. Now, with Olympics picking up skateboarding, more females have started getting into the skateboarding world, but we came out with we have girl designs or you can design it. You know, no other longboard company has mermaids on their boards and butterflies and, you know, whatever. And we do it, but also we do the skulls and the the bears and the vipers, you know,

for the guys. So, we we’re this weird company that we don’t quite fit in. I always say we don’t have competition and um because we’ll get a brand new 2-year-old that wants their first board and they want light up wheels and cute and they want, you know, some little something on it. Yeah. And then we get a 13-year-old girl that’s like, I’m afraid my brother won’t let me touch a skateboard or longboard. I kind of want my own. I want to go learn, try to do it. And then brother sees hers like, well shoot, I could get the one with the skulls on it and the drop through and the, you know, the meaner wheels,

you know, the the cooler, faster wheels. And then he gets it. Then dad’s like, “Hey, I’m 40 years old. I can go out and ride with my Yeah. my kids, right? So he wants one that’s kind of fits his style.” Then the mom comes along and says, “Can I get the long 481 easy to ride cruise with my daughter, you know, down the road to the mailbox and and kind of have fun and and it’s cute.” Yeah. You know, I I want the pink and yellow on it. So, we’ll hit all these demographics. Then we hit companies really hard, which is wild. A third of our business companies come say we want a cool gift

for our clients or our customers. Like we’ve done the oddest ones too. I mean like for like Utah Jazz bought 300 boards for all their top clients. Uhhuh. And then we had a orthodontist bought 100 boards to give to all his dentists that gave him business with each of their logos on it. Oh. We had a developer for Christmas came said I need 300 boards with all of our investors that have given us money, you know, and wanted their name and year that they invested in their company. And then we do a lot of one-offs. So like Cutbop will open up a new store and say, “Hey, can we get a Cub board for a

giveaway or beaches tanning salon wanted one?” So what’s weird about is we’ve done HR companies, AI companies to sports to. So every company like, well, a skateboard’s not for our company. Well, Bambr didn’t think so. They bought 150 of them. You know, Utah Jazz didn’t think so. Waffle Love didn’t think so. So, I don’t know what your deal is. We’ve done banks, credit unions to Zion’s Bank did a a ghost board giveaway. Well, I I just walked you around our office with your board beforehand, and you saw how excited people got. I mean, it’s different. A guy got up, one of our developers got up. He was showing you pictures and looking at this. Another

guy walked out and said, “Your board made me switch from a competitor.” Yeah. You know, and cuz it’s different. And we have one guy who works here who had a son who was working for the for the company. Yeah. Work for us. I had to see his picture again, see where he was. And Yeah. So I that’s what I think I love about Ghost Boards rather than just another skateboard company. And when you see one of ours in the wild, you see a guy on a skateboard or longboard riding by, you don’t know the brand of that one except ours. You’ll see something there with LEDs litten up or clear. Mhm. You’re like, “Oh, that’s

a that’s a ghost board.” Cuz I I can’t I can’t pick out a Land Yacht, Sector 9, you know, any other brand longboard that’s just riding by on the street. Yeah. You have no idea. No. So, we kind of stick out like a sore thumb. Where did you Yeah, in a good way. Yeah, in a good way. In a good way. Uh, how did you come up with a name? Well, they’re clear. Pretty simple. Yeah. Ghost. You didn’t have some epiphany about where I did struggle is on a logo. I didn’t make a logo till like two years ago. Oh, really? So, I found some logo is this red skull and I put ghost in

this teeth and and uh I [snorts] don’t know, I just thought it looked cool, but it had nothing to do with a ghost. And someone kept hitting me up, you need a ghost. You need a ghost. And finally, you know, one of the guys that that uh worked with us named Chris, he’s like, Russ, we you need a logo. You don’t have a logo at all. And as that’s when we’re going through identity crisis later I I’ll do my cleanup of the business later. Yeah. Because actually the business started as I had another business side business night job. It’s called marketing fruit. I built mobile apps and games. So I had games like Billy Booger

and yeah I had a mortgage calculator. So Ghost Boards Ghost Longboard was a DBA of marketing fruit. Eventually, I had to get Ghost Longboard its own EIN number. And then I said, I don’t want to be more than just Longboard. So then I shortened it to Ghost Boards. Then I decided to incorporate it in Delaware. And I now I just pulled it back to Utah. I I’ve been again I didn’t I didn’t I didn’t write the checklist of what should you do to start, do you need a logo? So I’m like, so we made a we finally made a logo and he’s like, well, you have to file that. I’m like, okay. So we finally

so I hired an attorney firm. So I I didn’t do everything in the in the very beginning. Yeah. I just did it recently. Yeah. Like oh I guess I need a logo. Okay. Now I have a logo. Yeah. You know and then I needed a name registered and then I needed you know all these things I just kind of you know I’ll get to one of those things later and fix it. you know, then I moved from a Shopify to Woo Commerce and that was a that was an overhaul that I was not expecting. That one kicked my butt. You go from a system that just makes life so easy and then you but they

it kept breaking on me because Shopify only allowed us to have a hundred variations per product and everyone my product had almost a thousand variations. So there’s 22 22 different colors of trucks, 40 different types of wheels, six different shapes, and Shopify, you can’t do that. You can only have 100. So I’d have to have butterfly this version, butterfly this version, butterfly this version on my website. And then I had all these add-ons and all these plugins and I was up to spending like a couple thousand dollars a month on the Shopify. And then you’re using their payment processor, which I didn’t know what a payment processor was. And then they’re like, “Oh, if you

go build your own website on this WordPress, you have to have a payment processor. You have to have this.” And you have I’m like, “Oh, so I shop that out.” I’m like, “Oh, that’s kind of cool. I just saved $35,000 a year now by getting a different payment processor.” I didn’t know that existed, right? you know, you can keep shopping those out like your insurance you absolutely you know like and then uh and then I own the website [snorts] and and then I had to figure out a hosting company. So like I went with one hosting company like oh you got too much data now it’s going to be this much. I’m like so I

found this one called Hostinger and they’re like yeah pay for three years we’ll get you the fastest speed and it’s a onetime fee. I’m like sounds better. Yeah. I’m like, so I own my website. I don’t have any monthly fees on it. I have it hosted on my server. I can host up to 50 websites on this server. I had to buy, you know, whatever. But I don’t need that many. And I have no more plugins. And I got to customize my website, everything I wanted. And I got a new payment processor. Yeah. I’m thinking, oh, okay. So that, you know, you learn these things like I never tell people not to do shop. If

you’re starting a business, go do a $39.95 Shopify website. You guys can pay me later. Shopify, you guys are wonderful until they’re until they’re not. Yeah. Yeah. As you look back across this experience, um what has been the most meaningful marketing effort that you’ve made in terms of increasing? You mess up on every marketing thing because you get sold like, “Oh, spend money on Pinterest. Okay. Oh, hey. Oh, go spend money on Tik Tok, Google, Amazon, blah blah blah, Facebook.” And I I’ll tell you a a couple things back up. So, we opened up a retail store at the outlets, too. M that was probably one of the coolest decisions I made to open it

and coolest decisions ever to close it. So no and and I’ll explain why. It’s um [snorts] when you open up retail that’s where I got real feedback on our boards. I got to watch customers how they interacted with them. Touch them, feel them, look at them, walk through because you don’t get to see that on your website. [clears throat] How they view your product. And I got so much feedback from opening up this brick and mortar and my daughter loved it. She’s like, “Dad, I don’t want to be the only girl out of 50 guys working at the warehouse.” She was and she wanted a a store. So, we opened up this retail store and

she killed it. And she used raving fans as, you know, it was funny. We had a chair up there, you know, for to sit behind the counter. And my rule was if someone walked in the store, first of all, I I use Raven fans to a tea and Disney experience. So both doors are open, didn’t matter if it’s snowing or not because people walk by if they feel like they have to open up a door. So both doors are always open. Feel the air if it’s cold air, hot air, whatever’s coming through. You come in, you walk in and you have to ask them a question. Have you ever been here before? and not most

people when you walk in a store if you go to the Gap or Nike store they’ll say hey can I help you and what do you always say no just browsing so we get the no out of them say have you ever been here before and they always say no I haven’t and we say great let me take you on a tour so the employee has to take on a tour this is here’s the demo rack you ride any any of these you want in the store you can you do whatever you want here’s all the different sizes shapes here’s here’s our soda shop in the back here’s a couch sitting and we have a

spin wheel, come win a free prize. So you interact with them, take them around the store on a tour and then we’d give away a prize. And on the spin wheel is like had this big coffin of free candy or you win a sticker or you win a keychain or you land on it says, “Do a chore for me.” And uh and so I’d give me a if you land on that, you got a rag and a squirt bottle and you had to go clean up one of the boards on the wall. It was the funniest thing ever because people wanted to do it. I had kids always lined up, “No, no, can I just

do the chore?” And so we made it interactive. So we had m we had 80s music for the parents in there. So every parent walking like, “Oh, this is kind of fun.” Yeah. You know, I remember Tesh mode. I remember Boingo. And then we have a TV on there with skate for the skaters, couches for the grandmas to sit on. And we just made it this fun interactive place. So what I learned from the very best in marketing is I had to learn how the customers viewed my product and I learned what how important the window shopping was. So in the window I put the craziest boards. That’s where my top ramen board was. My

guitar shaped longboard. I mean anything that I could have Brent make the craziest weirdest because that got people to stop and say what in the world? I gotta go walk in there to see what’s in there. Mhm. So, and and your website is the same. So, on the front of my website is me writing the UFO board. That’s the very top. Cuz you have to say, “What in the world?” It’s a LED UFO longboard. I’m I’m going to look see what else there is in here. Yeah. What what other weird crazy dude is making. So marketing is I think a is learning a lot about your customer and how they view you and tweaking to

them. What I learned so Brent’s favorite design um that he kept he came up with nobody ever wanted to buy. It’s called the epicenter. Yeah. Actually I write all the time because it reminds me all the time how important it is to listen to your customer versus your idea. Brent doesn’t like butterflies. I don’t like butterflies. But we list for a customer and made a butterfly board. Made a skeleton rose is our number one dragon. You know, things that we never thought of. Our original 10 hardly ever sell. And so the number one thing is watch and listen to your customer for marketing and adapt to them. Number two was um the importance of going

deep with an influencer. Uh and instead of just asking for a product, we probably do do more with influencers than probably most companies, but I go deep with them. I find out who are you, what’s your demographics, this is what my expectations are, what are your expectations and get to know them, build relationship and and then say, “Okay, yeah, I have this girl named Surf Stera in the Netherlands and I talk to her brother cuz she also he protects all the weirdos out there. She’s this hot girl riding a board, skimpy clothes, whatever.” And she’s a hardcore skater, but then fell in love with our longboard like, “Oh.” So, the skaters love her because she

can kick flip and do all these crazy skate tricks and then she goes dances on our longboards and and it goes viral to the point YouTube just reposted her. Wow. Yeah. I’m thinking, “Oh, that was Yeah. I mean, people love her.” I’m like, “Okay, this is cool. Let’s make sure we have a good relationship.” Yeah. So, that’s that’s So, I think relationship so you can spend money on Google, spend money on Meta, spend money on all those things. I think I think the last advice is say don’t say no. I I listened to a talk from the CEO of Skull Candy. He said, you know, people kept trying to push him to be on Tik

Tok shop and he’s like, uh, you know, everybody’s like, oh, no, no. You know, we got a website. And he goes, I I don’t know. I’ll probably hash it, but I think it’s like 20% of their business now. Because he said yes. Mhm. So, I I don’t think you can say, “Oh, Tik Tok’s not for me. Instagram’s not for me. YouTube’s not for me. Reddit’s not for me.” Why? You know, I I I I went down that road. I said, “Amazon wasn’t for me.” Cuz I thought, “Oh, they take 30% of my profits. I don’t want to be on Amazon.” Mhm. Now I’m kicking myself. I I did my first year on Amazon last year.

I did like 125,000 first year. I’m thinking, geez, I wish I would have started eight years ago. I’d probably be at a million dollars a year, you know, just I think why was I so blind to I don’t want to be on Amazon. Then I then I go home and every single day my wife has a package on Amazon from Amazon. I’m thinking and and so I don’t think you can say I don’t like Snapchat. I don’t like Tik Tok. I don’t like I’m saying I don’t know. Get got to give it a shot. Give it a shot. Let’s look at it. Yeah. Does it make sense or not make sense? Right. So my advice

is don’t be close-minded to any marketing, thought, idea, opportunity. And sometimes you fell at them. Sure. Yeah. We we just launched on a I probably shouldn’t say out loud because I don’t know yet, but one of them that should the appearance look like it we could kill it, but um I haven’t seen a single order from it yet. Oh, and so and we’re hard to be found on this website and they get millions of, you know, like. So, I’m like, okay, maybe it’s us, maybe it’s them, maybe, you know, I, you know, I went through a lot of work to get a warehouse audit done and this and this insurance policy to be on this

do business with these people and the licensing for this. And so, uh, I’m still like hopeful I didn’t waste x amount of time and energy and cost, but sometimes it will happen. Sure. And sometimes you have to eventually pull the plug on, okay, we’re not good on XYZ platform, right? Try a different one. your your discussion about influencers. I mean, would you say that started with Maddie? No. A little before Maddie, there was a couple others that that helped me grow my Instagram page because it’s hard to start from scratch business. You have I have one followers. It’s my mom. Yeah. She would always like comment and everything. Fast forward ever. I’m like, yep. Rated

by my mom. She was actually she ordered my the first three boards to give to my nieces. You know, my mom’s my first customer, you know. That’s great. And and actually Brent’s my mom passed away a few years ago, but his mom is also one of our biggest raving fans. She she likes every post I post. She comments, you know, fire and hearts on every little thing. And so we’ve had both of our moms be like our raving fan, you know, like helping us out, you know. Great. But yeah, we’ve slowly start selling and then, you know, I’d get some famous girl like, “Hey, can I work out a deal?” You know, so even even

the beginning there’s a few that also we jumped to 30,000 followers from a few of those way before Maddie. I think we were almost at a 100,000 followers before Maddie came in cuz we were starting to do you know 30 boards a month and then we all a sudden Vivit ordered 150 boards like okay that was cool then we’ll do 30 and then you know we started doing this slow climb and then few influencers would would bounce us just we’re getting this heartbeat of influencers until she came about and then it was a spike and that launched. Yeah. Yeah. And you did something you did something nice for Maddie as well. We did. Yeah. So,

you know, I got friends with her mom and dad too. And um we set her up and we started paying her uh 15% or actually 16% more than any other all the other influencers got 15. She got 16 on anything that came through her. And so it paid for her I think her first year of college. And yeah, I think she made 30 $40,000 and we did some custom boards with her and Christmas gifts and yeah, I she’s still on my list. I She just got married uh last month. I do want to fly her up to Utah. She’s been on my list to come take a tour and a visit. There’s three people who

have made like this huge difference in us been cheerleaders of sporting that I want. One of them actually said that she was coming up to Utah this next week or two. I haven’t I’ve been working with her since she was like 13 years old and now she’s this big- time model something, you know, in her 20s and Mhm. and uh yeah, I’ve I’ve talked to again I’ve also met her mom and dad and yeah, say that she’s coming up to Utah and she flies over the country from Dubai to everywhere. So, but it’s still fun that she we she’ll still talk to me, you know, because we have this relationship when she was before she

was famous, you know. [clears throat] Absolutely. And I think that’s fun is me to get to even watch some of these people that have used my product to go famous or or go viral. Sure. And it’s been kind of fun because then we get to talk, you know, how fun it’s been. You get to go on that that journey as well. That’s Yeah. Really? Yeah. That’s very cool. Like I got that new girl in California. She’s just on this journey. I mean, she just posted 3 days ago and her post story is like 220,000 views on it. Wow. And she doesn’t know she’s famous yet. I mean, she’s, you know, you know, like we’re still

DM it. We’re still texting. Yeah. Like, hey, yeah, that was so awesome. And yeah, that’s great. And and and when she goes famous, I just hope that she remembers small little people. all the little people that Well, you’ve done such a nice job of building relationships. I’m sure that’s Yeah. And I think And that’s what’s fun is is I try not to intimidate people and and be real with them, be transparent. Uhhuh. Yeah. With that of what we’re doing, what our purpose is, and and how we can make a difference. Yeah. Has there been a nearly catastrophic mistake that you’ve made over this period that you Yes. Can you tell us about that? A few

of them. I I think all businesses uh you get punched in the face uh with business. You think things are fine until they’re not? Mhm. And you take your hands off the steering wheel and you realize the car just went off the cliff and where’s the parachute? and and we have you you go through these different crisises of how do we fulfill all the orders trying to stop business? We’re trying to slow it down to get our hands on top of it to organize the business to making huge mistakes and and we’ve done it. We we’ve uh cuz so much of always bootstrapped where yeah I had to come in and say oh my gosh

we we didn’t think about Amazon. We didn’t think about these other and and we’re in a different world where life just doesn’t you know houses just don’t appreciate 3% a year and rates stay the same. We’re in this crisis from COVID to economy to uh Democrat Republicans hating each other to world problems to tariffs to there’s so much going there’s so many more moving parts I think in a life that falls into business you know is there a middle class anymore today is only rich versus poor will people spend money on groceries or a longboard today. Are they are they in survival mode themselves on $5 gas or now it’s $2 something? You know, like

everybody’s unsure and there’s certain people have abundance, but your middle class is what really generates America and that buys and does spending and all the reports. And I think they’re hurting right now. and we have a product that’s that fits in more a do I got $200 for a longboard or do we spend $200 on something else, you know, or something. And so we we are we we’ve hit uh so we’ve been pivoting and pivoting. So we’ve been punched in the face a few times where yeah, I just brought an investor sold 10% of the company to and I’m actually going to do it one more time. I’m going to sell another 10% or 20%

of the company. You know, the the problem with the product is I’ve got half million dollars worth of product sitting on my shelves. It’s all paid for. It’s all raw material. So, I’m in good shape. So, I can make anything. If I was another type of skateboard company, I would have picked a skull and I would add a half million dollars of skulls sitting on your Yeah. Set my shelf. So, we can We’re very nimble. Mhm. you know, and I could pivot to this balance board, which, you know, and I could pivot to the cornholes. I could pivot to other things. I’ve got the machines paid off, the forklift p, you know, but, you know,

we’re like, okay, I’ve made mistakes in my my Google used to cost me $6.86 a sale, which is insane. I was told I thought it was like that was normal. And now it’s $58. And so they woo okay um okay where’s my cost tariffs we haven’t we changed our prices you know we have a 55% tariff on raw material you know coming in so you’re like okay I got to absorb 55% Amazon takes 30% uh Google takes uh 30% you know and so you’re trying to pivot but I can’t take my price any higher I’m already at where people look for pricing on a longboard. So, yeah, you’re you’re trying to be nimble in, okay,

what do we do? And and here’s the hard truth. Most CEOs never want to unveil their hardships or how hard it is. They always want to put on a face of we’re happy. We’re the Willow Wonka chocolate factory, right? Yeah. I mean, the hardship is I went a year and a half without a paycheck from it. and way we we set up in the very beginning, me and Brent would pay ourselves just $5 a board, you know, and it’d be very easy, but hardships come and it only falls on one person’s shoulders, you know, when when you’ve got $130,000 of overhead. Okay. Um, no one else cares. And you have to figure out, okay, I

have to pay that no matter what. And so there’s hard decisions that have to happen. and you cut out certain things, you’re like, “Okay, how do I take my overhead down to 50 or 60,000 and what things do I want not want or need?” And um was that we ran down that road on that uh uh buying that Zoom info and and I paying now two grand a month and no one’s logged in, you know, for three months like, “Oh, shoot. That looked cool when I got the demo, right?” you, you know, or it’ll look amazing. Or or this other software I’m paying now. There’s another one I Sorry, I’ll probably be cutting you off

today. Uh two grand a month that I they promised me this return on investment and and I’ve got three orders from it in six four months. And okay, that’s expensive board, you know, like Yeah. And so you start cutting off things and and trying to readjust and then you have finally say, can I do it myself or do I need to bring in someone to help you? Mhm. And and that’s a hard pill to swallow as a owner of a company of like, okay, I may need help. And is it a bad thing? Actually, it isn’t. Uh sometimes you need someone that has talents and things that you have or you know, we have this

one account. We’re on the one yard line. This big big company said they’ve got like 600 something stores. Said, “Hey, we’ll test you in 50 stores. Let’s figure out which 50 stores.” And I know we’ll kill it in there. And I’m on that one yard line, but also it’s uh soon as they even say yes, 50 stores, I got to be able to make x amount of boards in an amount of time to get them out there. And and then I’ve got right now I’m right in the middle. I’ve got acrylic on the ocean coming in at a 55% tariff and I’m hoping, you know, the boat doesn’t sink cuz it’s like $200,000 worth of

you acrylic in these containers, you know, like and you have to float that, you know, so in a product you’re floating all that cost on your shelves. Yeah. Everybody’s got rent, everybody has employees, everybody has insurance, but then you have a product of raw materials. You have to have x amount of Yeah. So I am at that point, you know, remove the face mask. Yeah. We’ve done millions. We’ve done well. We’ve had a lot of fun. But to go into wholesale and B2B, you know, some of these to expand and and pivot, it’s going to take some money that’s going to make me really really uncomfortable. that I may say, gosh, I need somebody that

loves again a face to face. Does somebody love this as much as I do to come in and say, I can help you and not be a shark. I’m not I’m going to charge you 30% interest. You know, that will sink you, too. rather than I’ll come in for $5 a board too or or 10% interest or a 10% ownership or a 20% to help you now get into the big box stores because when you get in the big box the business then becomes residual. Yeah. Because a direct to consumer is not residual. And and this is a hard thing I’ve learned. Yeah. I love the big box because like Ron John’s they order every

every other month, you know, and I’m like, “Oh, okay. If I’m in a thousand stores, Yeah. and every one of them are selling only three boards a month. Yeah. That’s a lot of boards. That’s 3,000 boards a month. Yeah. At a, you know, X margin, I could I could make a ton of money just on 3,000 boards a month. You know, at one point when you start a company, like, oh, I want to do biggest company in the world. I want I want to do 10,000 boards a month. You have to figure out what’s your sweet spot. And our sweet spot really is that 3,000 boards a month. We make a lot of money without

changing without needing another machine or more cost or bigger rent or bigger you know like all those things like so me and Brandon have gone through and that’s why I could tell you it takes every design I could he could tell you that design is 7 and 12 minutes to cut that was 12 minutes the 70* 7 minutes. So I can say okay we can do 100 boards a day really easy. Our max was 401. That was our record. But that was uncomfortable. That was a tough. But we can do a 100 a day, clock in and still love our job and make a lot of money doing it. And so I he had to

kind of bring me back in. They Russ, you you keep wanting to be here. Why don’t we look at a really cool business here? Yeah. So we’ve we’ve gone through a lot of mistakes. Sure. Blown money that was life experiences, you know, business experiences. And I wish other business owners would would have came to me and said, “Can I coach you a little bit? I’m going to tell you mistakes I’ve made.” So today, actually, I’ve been trying to do that. Yeah. Yeah. So, I go I go teach help teach a class at UVU at American Fork High School and Salt Lake Community. And I tell any young entrepreneur, if you’re starting a business, come in

my office. I’m going to tell you, don’t do your shipping this. Don’t go drop your stuff off at the post office. You’re wasting money. Do this. Here’s how you do your taxes and duties here. And actually, I have uh two companies in my warehouse right now that are incubators. Mhm. And I’ve had quite a few. They move in for a couple months to get started. We help them and they and eventually they move out. Yeah. And and I would want to do more of that because I want to help them don’t fall for the traps I did. Sure. You know, they come to me and said, “Hey, should I spend five grand on this migan

tool, the one you’re getting ready to cut off?” I’m like, “Don’t do that. Don’t don’t do that one.” Yeah. Better yet, can I introduce you to one of my influencers? I like the lawyer product. Yeah. and I’ve done a bunch of that. So, yeah, I’d rather help I think I want to get to a point where I can help other businesses uh not make the mistakes I made. You know, I don’t know why there’s not more that don’t. There’s one thing that you talked about I heard where you say something like talk to everybody and you’re willing to offer to consult to offer advice to help people overcome obstacles even in the same industry. Oh

yeah. And that’s been super meaningful for you a ton. Yeah. I’m best friends with now I think every skate longboard company. They were afraid of me in the beginning. I’d go to a trade show and I felt like there’s this bubble around me. They’d see me and like oh they walk around me and I like so I just go walk in their bubble like hey I’m Russ of Ghost Boards you’re the owner of Sector 9. Oh let me shake your hand and and at first I made them uncomfortable. Now they see me like oh this is Russ you know. But I help him out too. There’s a new brand new skateboard company in in Minneapolis

and and he calls me all the time. So he goes Russ I need help. And so I I’m selling them now, wheels and trucks and bearings and really even cheaper than, you know, than I would sell anyone cuz he’s starting out. And I even told him he he shipped me one for free to check it out. This crazy new board that’s pretty wild. And I said, “How much that cost you to ship to me?” He told him, I go, “Dude, let me help you out. You just paid triple what you should be paying.” I go, “I know you’re not big enough, but I could work out a deal. I’ll charge you a dollar. you know,

it should be labeled a yeah, use my account or something, you know, and and all the time people like, “Well, where did you get your boxes made?” You just bought from Uline, dude, you’re paying like $6 a box. Let me show you where you get them for $1.88, you know? So, I am I I’m good friends with a couple skate companies in California and kind of all over. And uh one in one in Detroit, we talk all the time. He’s like, “Hey, Russ, if you could help me also, if you get in that store, will you?” As we share, he’s like, “Hey, you know, if you talk to that buyer, Yeah. you know, tell him

about me, too.” And we do. Yeah. So, I’ll see him at Surf Expo. He’s like, “Hey, what leads did you get?” He goes, “Who did you talk to?” I go, “Oh, I didn’t see that, you know, that store buyer.” He goes, he let me give you their name and phone number. And so, I’m thinking, I’m not their competition. you know, they’re not mine, but we’re all trying to do the same thing. So, we talk all the time like, you know, where do you get your wheels or how would you pay for that? How much was your box? Yeah. How you doing in shipping? So, we’re trying to coach each other. Mentorship of Yeah. in the

same industry, right? And most people are so afraid like, “Oh, no. Absolutely. You’re another mortgage guy. I’m not going to tell you my secrets. You’re a competitor and I I can’t give you any advantage.” And Yeah. Yeah. I’m like, “Guys, let let it down.” Like, seriously. You know, even mortgages like like there’s 6,000 people bought houses here in Utah last month. How many loans can you do really a month? Can you do 6,000? Yeah. Uh maybe 10, 12. Okay. Yeah, dude. That’ll keep you so busy and make you so much money. We’re not competition, man. You work with those three realtors. I work with these three. Yeah. There’s plenty for everybody. Yeah. You don’t have

the live live in abundance here, right? If you want help, you know, where to place that loan, call me up. Yeah. Whatever. Absolutely. Or skateboard shop. And that’s a others like, “Oh, no. I can’t tell you my secret of of of who the buyer is, you know, for that store.” I’m like, “Why are you afraid they’re going to kick you out and bring me in? You know, they that you’re so insecure of your skateboard?” Yeah. That that it just sucks that bad that I’m going to do it anyway. That’s a bad place to be. Yeah. The market’s going to figure that out. Yeah. The buyer will figure that out. Yes. You know, did we ever

talk about You said the one of the best things you ever did or the coolest things you ever did was shut down your retail store. Yeah. Yeah. I’d say so what happened with that? So, we had it for like four years. I learned so much from the customer. Mhm. A retail store is like owning another business. Yeah. One is you have security cameras, you have cash, you have theft, you have and then you have to sell more than just longboards. I had to have shirts, t-shirts, hoodies, beanies, fidget rings. Cuz everyone that walks in doesn’t have a $200 bill in their pocket. But they have a $5. Okay, I have to have chapstick now. Oh,

they have a $20. I have to have a tech deck. Oh, they have And so I had to start learning. I had have a ticket item for $5, a $20 item, a $50 item, a $75 item, $100 item, and then you’re open and then the malls kick your butt. They don’t care if it’s snowing. You can’t leave until it’s closed time. Doesn’t matter if there’s not been a single person that’s come to your store. I did. I told one of my guys, “Dude, go home for this.” You know, there’s no one. He goes, “I haven’t seen one in like three hours.” I go, “Go home.” Then I got a bill for $50 in the mail

from the mall. You closed early. Yeah. So, what h then Adidas came in and they told the mall that they wanted our space. So, the mall’s like, “Uh, Ghost Bors or Adidas?” They said, “Sorry, Ghost, you guys are gone. We want Adidas.” Yeah. They booted us. But it was a great thing because it was another job. I’d be at the warehouse till like, oh, 4:00 in the afternoon and then I would go up to the store to bring inventory. Mhm. Then I’d get calls all the time. Oh, I forgot it’s school dance on Saturday. I was working I was working every Friday night, every Saturday, and every Sunday cuz kids like, “Oh, my mom says

I have to go to church.” And so I was I was working three Sundays out of the month. I was working three Saturdays out of the month. So talking about a retail store can own you. I mean, I learned some value valuable lessons, but man, so today I’m like, it’s kind of nice to have a another business in a way. Yeah. But I but also I learned from that when I go now sell to stores what the expectations are. Yeah. You have I know how a store runs. Yeah. And I I’ve never done retail before. So So that was I feel like I’m an expert now in retail. In the retail side. Absolutely. So, if

anyone out there ever has a retail store wants some feedback, you know, I could tell you we killed it on having the spin wheel and free candies and stickers and and we got so many Google reviews, people up there and just a hangout place for people. Yeah. And people would always come back like, “Yeah, we’re here cuz my kid, they just wanted to come back to the ghost store.” Yeah. There’s nothing. So, I went to the pet shop. That was it. That was us. Yeah. We were like the pet shop. Yeah. because they could ride around in there to have fun. Yeah. Did you I mean, you’re a relationship guy and we’ve just talked about

uh all of the challenges that you’re that you’ve gone through and you know still have challenges that you face. Did that ever strain any of the relationships of people that you worked with? I mean maybe specifically like Brent. Yeah. A lot of people think, oh, they don’t seem I mean it seems me and Brent are pretty open about this is we had some hard talks, some really hard talks because also it’s a new marriage in a way and Mhm. and you both have different work ethics. You both have different talents and you’re both, you know, we’ve gotten besides that very first one I’m yelling at me about shutting the website off. We’ve had many of

those trying to get to know each other and how to work with each other of, you know, what are you doing? Why am I here on Saturday? You’re not. To why am I here till midnight trying to get all this figured out? You’re not. Why are you off at doing a podcast? I’m here running a CNC machine. No, but there becomes all sorts of those conversations. You have to say and you have to be very good at communicating. So me and Brandt do I I stop by his office. I walk in his office on the bottom. I’m up above him upstairs. I stop in his office, check on him. What do you got today? What’s

most important? What do you see? We talk about what’s on my plate. And every time I come downstairs or he’ll come up to my office like, “Hey, Russ, there’s this. Why don’t you come look at it, tell me what you think? Are we on the right?” You know, so we have to talk all the time. You know, if I’m down getting ready to go do a trade show, I’m say, “All right, Brent, do I have everything ready? Do you want to look at this? Do you want to, you know, before I take off?” You know, and so and then then I’m calling them sometimes, “Hey, I just heard this person hadn’t heard back from anyone.

can you please pick up the phone and you know call this and you know this thing just got messed up. Yeah. Yeah. So so yeah there the yeah there’s anytime someone has partners you gota you got to sit down and communicate and even through the hard stuff. So I’m I’m guessing that you’re not a guy that lets it sit like if there’s a hard thing you No. And I actually hate confrontation. I hate it. And my wife just always pushes me like, “You got to go have the heart talk.” I’ve always been more of the nice guy of all, I’ll fix them. I’ll make people feel good. I’m more of a giver than anything else.

I’d rather give up everything in mind to make sure someone else happy. And it’s one of my weaknesses. I’ll be the last guy to take care of myself. I’m the last guy that gets something even from a paycheck. Everyone else will get paid, you know, before me and everybody will get something for me. And that’s my personality and and a weakness too. Well, yeah. I mean, overall probably a strength, but Yeah. But but but in the moment it can be. According to my family, it’s a weakness. Yeah. Yes. Okay. I just I’ve I I really appreciate all of this insight. It went a different direction and I’m so glad it did because I think we

got all of this really fascinating business insight background and your personality and things that are things that are really meaningful to you and and how that’s been helpful in building this business. Okay. I just have two more questions before I let you go. Is one is did does Brent think that he made the right decision? Yes. To quit his job? No. He he loves it. He’s always been always worked for somebody his entire life that 8 to5 and he will tell you all the time he loves his job. He loves what he does. That’s great. Yeah. And every day he thinks it’s a blessing that he gets to share his talent and his artistry you

know with the world. So yeah. Yeah. He he loves it. That’s great. Okay. That’s good. All right. as you look back across this whole journey so far and starting this business and and not not really having a I don’t know if it’s a plan is the right word but understanding all of the components or being super thoughtful about all of the pieces that you would have to consider would you do anything differently yeah you know I think people always ask that even with life a lot of times we always say I wouldn’t want to change anything I was raised or grown up because it actually made you who you are today. I think business is

the same. All the hardships, all things actually kind of make you and what you know today. Yes, there’s always little thing. I wish I would have done this, this, this, you know, like blah blah blah. You can’t change it. But yet, you have to say, what did I learn to help somebody else out in another business or your future business or your current business? How do I learn from those good and bad exciting and you know and and take the good say how do I duplicate that again? The bad is how do I remember or put that sticky note on my desk to never do that again. Mhm. And so you never want to change

anything. Even if we go bankrupt, fail, it’ll still be the best experience of my life. I learn so much of the good, the bad, the relationship, it everything’s still good. No, no matter what, I you learn from the experiences and it makes you again who you are. Yeah, that’s great. So, I’m homeless with a sign out there, you know, doesn’t really matter. Well, Russ, thank you so much. This has been this has been fascinating. I hope you’ll come back and see us again and and we might even twist your arm. I think a lot of people are interested in acquiring one of these. Uh, yeah, I need I need your logo, but we’ll make it

small. Yes, just enough to see it. Yeah, they they remember where it came from with a cool design. Yeah, you got it. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you for listening to the Know Your Ship podcast presented by EHUB. Don’t forget to subscribe and leave a review.