How the CEO of Bucked Up Bootstrapped and Scaled to 9 Figures

welcome to the know your ship podcast presented by e-hub I’m
your host Frank doce welcome back to the know your ship podcast man I could
not be more excited about our special guest today very special very special
in many ways he has an incredible backstory uh and he has another interesting
feature I’ll let you talk about that but this is Ryan what’s the feature I
got a big nose or no that that is a feature but that’s not the feature we’re
talking about no we’re we’re talking about your twin we’re going to talk
about your twin because you you’re able to like double your business process
and everything that you do because you have another guy sitting right next
you but we’ll talk about that a little bit but this is this is Ryan Gardner
of bucked up and I I think people probably know I mean I know a little bit
about the the bucked up brand and how it’s exploded but we want to dive into
the person a little bit more before we talk about the brand all right cool is
that okay yeah does that work you have a great backstory and background I
know you grew up on a farm yep in in Clearfield Utah yeah and and a big farm
and and my my mother grew up on a farm and so I in in Southern Colorado Lamar
Colorado wow yeah and so we would go back there in the Summers to visit my
grandparents and work on the farm yeah and there’s not work you don’t learn
how to work until until you’ve been on a farm until you’ve worked on a farm
and you realize that that’s not what I want to do for the rest of my life but
you say that but then I think man I’d really like to be back on a sometimes I
think I want to be back on farm for sure and you like to see stuff get done
manual labor there’s something to it and I love doing I you know even today I
still mow the lawn and everything else because I love seeing work being done
so and and when you complete it like there’s a significant satisfaction when
you see what you’ve done you’re able to stand back and say look what I what I
did y it just feels good so so that had to have a significant impact on how
you arrived here today A absolutely and you know um I have to hand it to my
dad sometimes it’s good and sometimes it’s bad but you know being on a farm
you’re taught to work really hard and there’s something to it um and
especially nowadays just with people that we work with nowadays I mean really
we want people that work hard and we work want to work smart too so the the
being on the farm teaches you that hey you’re willing to put in some time and
you’re willing to work hard to get what you want yeah so and you’re one of
how many your there’s eight kids in our family um I do have an identical twin
brother that I run bucked up with yes and uh you know it’s almost like having
two CEOs so there’s a little bit of a unfair Advantage at bucked up is that
there’s two of us are you just being kind about Jeff or is he it’s love
relationship no just kidding are you really the the brains behind the
operation and you know he’s just kind of you’re twin no we’re twins like
honestly we’re kind of like the ying and yang you know we both we we actually
think very similar um to each other we we think a lot alike like we can be in
a media and we look at each other and we know exactly what each other are
thinking you know and um it’s great you know I’ve had a twin brother you know
to be able to work alongside with and total trust total loyalty you know we
can throw fists and be best friends five minutes later so I was going to ask
you about that is it is was it is it a competitive atmosphere between you two
or is it more like you’re just aligned and no we you know we’ve been we were
fighting to get out of the womb you know like it was it was we’ we’ve been
very very competitive it’s almost like we’re mere twins we we’re we’re the
same in almost every single way like even with Athletics and sports so we was
very very competitive and I don’t usually tell this but I actually got sent
to Alaska my 10th to 11th grade summer because we are fighting every day four
to five times and my parents were like we’re just going to get rid of the
black sheep I guess I was the black sheep I don’t know I got sent to Alaska
for three months working up in Alaska it was awesome I wouldn’t have changed
the experience but that’s the only time we’ve been apart other than our
missions and your marriages and our marriages yeah yeah yeah we don’t share
everything okay well well no just kidding so okay so you got sent away yeah
Jeff stayed on on the farm on the farm in Clearfield what okay what do you
want to dive into Alaska a little bit like what what were was this the camp
what were you doing we actually had some friends that were local friends um
that ended up moving up to um Eagle River Alaska MH and they just thought
that Jeff and I needed a break and they were right and we took a break and
you know we we still fought almost every day but you know like you say
friends I mean we become friends five minutes later in fact there was we we
ended up going on missions when we turned 19 MH um and this was back when you
went on missions when you were 19 and I remember specifically remember one of
my companions got upset at me at like 9:00 a.m. in the morning right and they
held it against me all day and I I was so shocked I like wait a sec you’re
still mad at what happened this is 5 o’l at night you’re still happened at
mad at what happened at 9:00 a.m. it was just a shock to me because I just
didn’t you know that’s not how it was I was like hey we just get it done and
over with and and then we’re we’re fine but you know it’s just different not
dealing with an identical twin but you know being on a mission you’re with
somebody your whole time time and that’s how it was growing up yeah so so you
mentioned earlier that that you were you wanted to get off the farm is that
accurate you were you you grew up on a farm and you were kind of like I’m
ready to move when we went on our missions it was almost like a two-year
break for us right so my dad was very Stern with us held us under you know a
thumb he was very strict um you know some people could call it abuse but you
know looking back you know I don’t know that I would have changed it because
it’s what made us who we are today you know what I mean so I I think that’s
really interesting when people have Stern parents and I know it goes both
ways but I see a lot of very successful people come out of a highly
disciplined atmosphere yeah and is that something that you have now taken
into your parenting you know um I realized there’s different ways to do it
and through some counseling I figured out I figured out that hey look it you
know love has a lot to do with it and it’s not always about uh being super
strict and super um you know um super disciplined you know yeah I mean I do
believe that it was great with responsibility even on the farm when you’re
feeding animals and chickens I mean I could tell you a story but it might be
a little crazy but Jeff forgot to feed the chickens for about 78 days we had
60 chickens laying about 50 eggs day and we would actually take those eggs
and we would sell them to all the neighbors so we would go door to door sell
you know uh eggs um corn Tomatoes we that’s what we did and that’s how we
bought our school clothes um during the summer well Jeff forgot to feed the
chickens for about 8 days my dad went into the chicken cop and it was a blood
bath I mean chickens were eating each other they were eating their own eggs
everything he comes in and says whose turn was it to feed the chickens and
immediately I point pointed to Jeff and I said I’ve been feeding the horses
and the cow I’ve been feeding and so Jeff got his butt kicked all the way out
to the chicken coop well one of those and he had cowboy boots on one of those
he decided to try and block one of the kicks snapped his arm like that oh no
yeah they take him to the hospital and the doctor’s like what happened and
he’s like he forgot to feed the chickens when you put the cast on make sure
you pull it back far enough so he can still carry the 5 gon bucket that could
only happen back today he would have been in prison you know what I mean but
we were on Farm it was Farm life you know that’s what farm boys do you know
absolutely so it taught us responsibility for sure yeah don’t forget to I
mean you could use that as one of your you know you could put that up on the
wall in your in your office don’t forget to feed the chickens I mean that
could be a cultural thing for for bucked up so so that had to set some sort
of tone for you I know there were lots of difficulties in that but that certainly
set a tone for how you now managed the rest of your life to get to the point
where you are today yeah and for sure and then after we served our missions
we ended up going to school down at UVU it was called uvsc at the time um but
we realized hey we don’t always want to be on a on a farm and um I had some M
return Mission companions that were really good friends of mine and they said
hey Ryan you really need to come to work here on this sales floor and on that
sales floor they were actually calling on leads they would put leads right on
our desk and we would call and cell coaching and mentoring 5,000 to $20,000
packages like in an hour and a half two hours and then what we would do is
they would get you know help on one-on-one coaching and mentoring um and I
realized the guy who’s making all the money is the guy producing the lead and
so when the next time a lead provider came in I asked him for a job and got a
job learning how to drive traffic online and and uh and producing leads for
other other sales floors gotcha well that that leads directly into what you
ended up doing previous y to to bucked up but but let me let me ask you one
last question before we we move on to that so if you look back on your
experience on the farm I’m not sure you ever thought well I’m GNA I’m going
to be a social media internet entrepreneur yeah or or anything like that but
but there were certainly lessons that you learned on the farm oh growing up
what what are some of those lessons how have you Incorporated those into your
life and were there any role models in that time your parents or my parents
were definitely instrumental in in doing this so just just to give a little
bit of history is um when we were on the farm um my dad was a big farmer in
Utah owned a lot of land and they were they were farming a lot of land and um
and a business partner ended up kind of snaking my dad out of a lot of money
M this is when we’re young we had our barn burned down it was crazy we were
in California Barn burned down anyway so we so my my dad had this bad
experience with a business partner and they were running this Farm business
together and um and it help helped me realize hey who you go in business with
is definitely important and um and during that time my mom ended up going
starting to work when we were about 16 years old she went to work for a
jewelry company and she used to card earrings and they would paint the
earrings and they had a paint booth and they would paint these earrings and
she would be the one that was carding all these earrings and then she got
into a sales position at that at that um at that place um that jewelry place
my parents eventually long story short my parents ended up owning the jewelry
place and they had eight stores along the wasach front um in malls along the
wasach front um and I saw firsthand what it was to run their own company I
said hey I want to do that I want to be my own boss I don’t like working for
somebody else I want to work for you know I want to learn how to have my own
business and jewelry was just an experience so when I learned some lessons I
definitely learned the lesson from my parents more of the entrepreneurial
spirit and ideas that come and say hey oh we could do this better oh we could
do this and we could do this and so not only were we working on the farm but
we also had a Jew business that we were also running later on as well gotcha
so fascinating well you said the partner makes a difference like you didn’t
want to go into business with a bad partner that was critical you but then
you went into business with Jeff well Jeff and I have the same type of work
ethic it would be difficult to work with somebody if they didn’t have that
same type of mentality I could tell like even when there’s other people in our
business that are not really pulling their own way and like you know even as
the CEO bucked up right now I want to get everybody rowing in the right
direction and Rowing as hard as possible um you know they did a they did a
study of corporate America and people in the business and they’ve described
it as a boat that has 10 people in this boat and two people have their ores
in rowing really hard in the right direction yeah five just have their ores
in the water and then there’s two in the back that are drilling holes and
your job as the CEO is to get everybody rowing really hard and in the right
direction and that’s really my focus that bucked up okay as we yeah and
that’s that’s terrific as we move into more of your business experience what
is the secret sauce how do you get everybody rowing in the right direction oh
that’s that’s a hard thing to do I mean that’s the whole I mean I constantly
deal with it daily you know but there’s things that you can can set up in
your business that help hold everybody accountable and then other people will
make sure those other people are are accountable and they’re rowing and doing
the same thing so like for instance um we have a bonus structure at buck up
that incentivizes everybody to row in the right direction and when there’s
someone that’s slacking everybody’s on that person and everybody’s like
because everybody suffers yeah cuz everybody wants the end goal of the bonus
and everybody wants people who are in that are really rowing hard that are
really pulling their weight and if they’re not pulling their weight people
come and tell me all the time hey this guy’s got to go and it’s very rare
because we’re actually hiring the right people and that’s one of the lessons
that I’ve learned is it’s better to hire the right person right away then if
I had it over I’d be like hey I need to hire somebody with experience that
knows what they’re doing and uh and can and pull their weight and and
obviously if I hire somebody I want them to times 10 their their efforts you
know what I mean so well if you can find if you can find people on your team
who take accountability and help Drive the other people on the team then
that’s some of the magic exactly and and it sounds like you’ve been able to
create that at buck up yeah and at first we were like hey uh tight tight ship
run this tight ship and now it’s so big that you can’t possibly micromanage
everybody and you can’t you have to give a little bit of control up um but
you know you hire the right people to be in charge of those departments and
if you do it right obviously magic happens so absolutely y well this is
fascinating because I knew you and Jeff way back when right in the lr9 plus
days yes and uh and we had a chance to work with you guys a little bit then
when you were doing the affiliate marketing stuff and I think that is a
fascinating story and not I mean not just what you were able to do with with
the product but I think there’s something else in there that i’ I’d like to
talk about if you’re comfortable talking about some of the maybe mistakes
that you may have made and and what you learned from that and working with
with Partners so so maybe you can just tell us kind of that story a little
sure so Jeff and I owned affiliate Network so once I learned how to drive
traffic we started Jeff and I started an affiliate Network called big payout
where people would come to us with a with a product or a service and we would
drive traffic so they’d come to us and say hey how much would it cost to
drive traffic to our website we’d take a look at their website we’d give them
all sorts of advice we’d be like hey you got to do this this this and this so
really we were Consultants we were telling them exactly how to do it so that
when we drive traffic it works and it converts right we finally got smart and
we said hey we need to do this on our own the very next guy that walks in is
Dave shank oh and he’s he’s like hey I have this product I’m selling it to
your dad right now he loves it my dad’s like he he said that you know you
need to go meet with my boys you’ll they’ll put you on steroids and we said
oh okay what product is it and it happened to be an L argine plus product
right and with line plus that product helps reduce high blood pressure like
it helps support healthy blood pressure right and uh he was roughly doing
about $ 600 or $700 a day and um he came in and we took a look at it before
he walked out we owned 5050 and that was about two hours later and we said to
him hey just make sure that you have enough product in stock and you fulfill
we’ll drive all the traffic we’ll handle the website so that’s a that’s
essentially what we did is we took over the website we started driving
traffic and within four five weeks we were doing about $3,351 a day wow and
he was just making sure that we had the product in stock and that he was
fulfilling the product production and fillment and then um you know like the
story of of what we were talking about we had a a manufacturer come in and
say he wants to buy out uh he would he would like to buy us out Jeff and I
were like nah we we don’t need we don’t we don’t want to sell out because we
can see the potential of this product and it could be really really big and
Dave shank said yeah I want to I want to get out so he got out and we
actually sold 5% at the time so the person that brought in had controlling
interests so you sold 5% of your 50% that’s right Dave sold all of his his so
now the new the manufacturer owns 55% that’s right he owned the majority of
the business and so what happened is Jeff and I had all these ideas and
things that we could do to increase sales obviously he didn’t see it that way
and um and and we just said okay go ahead and do what you want to do they
hired guys they you know they were taking money for their marketing
department and we were like we’re marketing guys like why would you need to
hire a marketing department you know so we had some anyway there was a couple
conflicts there eventually he ended up buying us out of our position after a
few things were came to light um he had a CFO that was kind of stealing some
of the money out of the business and it prevented it from growing right and
we weren’t into the dayto day at that point at at that time and So eventually
we just said hey look that was your guy that was your mistake buy us out and
this is what it’s going to take and just strok the check and wow there we go
and so we were off of L arine but that was at the time that we started doing
deer antler spray so what happened is we ended up buying a domain name called
line.com yes and Google was rewarding people with exact match domains MH so
when we bought line.com we quickly jumped to the top and it was increasing
Revenue big time because we weren’t having to pay there was also payperclick
going on that we did a lot of but Google three or four months after we bought
LRG 9.com they shut off all the paperclick and guess where all the volume
came it went all our way AB right so our our profit margins and everything
even went up even higher at that point you know you know this is an
interesting you’ve mentioned this I I’ve listened to other podcasts that you
you’ve done and you’ve mentioned this before but kind of being in the right
place at the right time right I think that you you may describe that with
this l argine in a way Y and with with bucked up as we’ll we’ll talk about in
a way but but I mean being in the right place at the right time is only part
of it I mean there’s I mean look look there’s a lot of luck that’s involved
but you know the harder you work the luckier you get you know so you know
there’s opportunities that come your way and when you’re working hard and
you’re figuring things out they come your way and you just take advantage of
those opportunities so tell me about this the partner that ended up
purchasing 55% of the business and how that what lesson that taught you
moving forward and how you manage bucked up today well um obviously having
control of your own destiny is really crucial and important right and even
with bucked up we we we basically boo strapped it from the very beginning
we’ve never taken on debt we’ve had people come in and say hey I would like
to invest in your company and we’re like we’re not looking for an investment
we have really good profit we have good margins we have good iida and really
at the end of the day we’re looking for a strategic partner to help us get to
the next level and that’s the same with every business that we’ve ran is that
we’re like Hey we’re looking for strategic Partners to help us get to the
next level Jeff and I didn’t go to school like we’re not the sharpest tools
in the shed I don’t know if that’s true but you did go you went to UVU but
that was U shortterm shortterm Jeff got married within a year of UVU so he
stopped school um I actually went for two years got an associates degree but
it wasn’t like I was majoring in anything or focused on anything and I
realized school isn’t for me and that’s when my buddy asked me to go work on
a sales floor you know I’m like hey let’s give this a shot I don’t want to
graduate and make 40 Grand a year I want to make a 100 grand you know at that
time back in the day I was like 100 Grand so you know um and that’s how that
you know and then we decided School wasn’t for us you know and now it’s
coming down to hiring the right people you know and when you bring on money
or you bring on investments we look at it as hey we what do you bring to the
table for us and thank goodness we’ve teamed up with um some really good
people and really good partners and the best thing about it is they never had
leverage on us and when they put money in we took it right off the table yeah
and so that’s been the beauty of it is that hey now let’s go for let’s let’s
go all out right yeah so um you know um I think that with like the last
partners that came in they were actually a PE firm and I highly against PE
fir I was highly against it and they said hey we have little secret we have a
we have a you know we have a an a service agreement with a company called
great Point Brands and they they actually help people grow their brands and
the and the person who’s in charge of great Point brands at the time is the
former CEO of do pepper and we did an agreement with him and eventually we
hired him as our coo so he the former CEO of Dr Pepper is now our CEO uh coo
yeah so and that was huge cuz he’s huge strategic guy that could help us get
more distribution gotcha now at this point in the company we’re probably
jumping Ahad we’re jumping a little a few steps but at this point in the
company uh I believe before you hired him you were doing about 4 million cans
a year Y and they couldn’t believe that we were actually selling four million
cans we were just Hustlers like we were like selling and they’re like wait
how are you doing this and they were literally laughing like how are you
doing this that’s the drink correct that’s not the preor preouts had already
been established and everything was doing really well we started that in 2016
but then in 20120 is when we started really going hard with energy drinks and
in 2020 we sold about 4 million cans okay 2020 you sell 4 million counts and
then at this point you’re starting to do an agreement with the service
agreement with the PE firm okay yes and that leads you to to Gil who is the
COO who was the former CEO okay now this is I think this is the the
interesting part that you’re talking about because strategic Partnerships how
critical that is uh you were looking for a strategic partner he landed in
your lap in a way what was the effect on the business of that so the very
following year we’ve sold roughly 20 million cans last year we did over 40
million this year we plan on doing 65 to 70 million it’s been huge with the
energy drink portion of our business and obviously energy drinks have a
really good uh multiples you know and energy drinks even though you’re not
necessarily making a lot of ibida or profit in the company it still comes
down to the revenue that’s being done with energy drinks because as soon as
you stop the marketing and everything for pushing that forward then you start
making a lot of money with it gotcha so would it be fair to say that if you
hadn’t hired Gil or hadn’t gotten into this relationship your energy brand
would still be growing yes but not at the pace that it is in fact we didn’t
even know what you know he comes in and says hey let me help you build out a
distribution Network and we’re like what’s that like we had no clue what it
was and we’re like obviously you know who it is he can make phone calls and
he can get it done and that’s uh essentially what it is now the most
important thing is is that when you get distribution is that your drinks sell
it’s velocity and we’ve done really well at marketing and that was our Forte
and our background and thank goodness that when they do go into stores they
do sell absolutely yeah well what was there any concern about the price tag
associated with hiring a guy like oh of course of course and we were like
this guy wants to come in and he’d be making more than all of us and we’ve
put Blood Sweat and Tears in for five or six years and he’s going to already
come in and do and we had to take that leap of faith and now looking back I
wish we would have taken that risk a lot sooner you know what I mean and
hiring the right guys I mean at the end of the day if you hire the right guys
whatever you pay them they’re probably going to be worth 10 to 20 times what
they what they’re what they’re getting paid I think that’s really an an
interesting part uh because the culture having the right people on the bus
everybody rowing the boat in the same direction what are some of the things
that you look for when you’re out hiring uh and you’re trying to fill
specific roles on your team is it aptitude or is it culture fit what are the
things that you’re looking for it’s both like culture fit and experience to
me is at this point is what it’s going to come down to um we need people that
know what they’re doing especially at this stage of the game now at the first
I want somebody that’s smart that’s trustworthy and they’re willing to put in
the hard work I’ll hire those guys all day but now at this stage of the game
when you’re doing hundreds of millions of dollars in Revenue you got to have
the right people if you want to grow your business how do you manage uh
people that just don’t fit well we’ve had a few of those um and we’re
actually really quick to get rid of those that don’t fit and um you know even
on my mission I learned to adjust quickly to the environment or the
experience of people and um dealing with different people I just have learned
to adjust and and and adapt and we like to like I said if they’re not a fit
we try to go through a pretty fast and say hey this is just not working for
us yeah and hire the right people yeah you know in the right fit so before we
before we move on there’s a there’s a lot of stuff in there before we move on
to the next we’re going we we are but that’s what I love I love this kind of
conversation just kind of free flowing uh tell just give us some of the over
30,000 view I mean you started you know on the sales floor from a farm to the
sales floor to L arine to L arine we bought the domain name lr9 we actually
read an article in Sports Illustrated that says deer antler spray is banned
in Major League Baseball yeah and we had no clue what deer antler spray was
we of course go to the GoDaddy look up dear antler spray it was available for
$6.99 we purchased deer antler spray there was other people selling deer
antler spray but they didn’t realize the power of domain names wow but
through the experience of line.com we realized wow this is pretty good and we
immediately ranked for deer an spray but we were only selling about 10 to 12
bottles a day CU nobody read the articles nobody read sports illustrate but
but then was it Ray Lewis eight months later Ray Lewis gets accused of taking
deer antler spray for his torn tricep right before the Super Bowl so Super
Bowl media week just like what we had last week yes it just happened to be a
guy in the audience of one of the reporters holds up a receipt and says Ray
Lewis we see that you purchased dear antler spray is that how you recover it
so fast he’s like I bought it but I didn’t use it so it was actually perect
he didn’t inhale he didn’t inhale um so it actually worked in our favor and
we sold all of our bottles in one day and the very next day GNC calls us and
says how fast can you fulfill 30,000 bottles and so we produced you know we
produced the bottles as fast as possible three or four weeks later we’re in
GNC selling thousands of bottles every week okay so tell me why would deer
antler spray be illegal or banned well because they feel like it gives an
athlete an edge so if you can recover faster a ped or yeah like I mean it’s
not necessarily A ped but that same hormone that causes their antlers to grow
that velvet that’s on there it contains a hormone called igf-1 MH um now
injectable igf1 is illegal because it helps you recover really really quick
this gives you enough that gives you a kick that helps you recover a little
bit faster so they feel like it gives an athlete an edge and Ray Lewis came
out VJ sing Alabama football team all these people came out and was like well
we didn’t know it was illegal but it was for professional athletes gotcha but
for everybody else why not recover faster I don’t know and it and it felt
like uh you know they feel like it gives a athlete an edge so they’re like
hey let’s ban it and at one time it was banned on the water list but then
they took it off gotcha okay so and and so everyone in the tour to France
uses it and everything else because they they just use everything they use
everything that’s right in fact I want to see that I want to see I want to
see a bucked up sponsored tour to France team yeah I think that would that
would be something bucked up racing absolutely okay so now you’ve gone you’ve
purchased deer antler spray and that leads into um yeah so we started going
to Expose Fitness Expose and we were selling just deer antler spray and we
noticed that everybody around was selling a pre-workout and we’re like what’s
a pre-workout I took I remember honestly I remember taking a pre-workout at
the fit expo in in Los Angeles I took it and my face was melting off and it
was that beta allany and I’m like what is going on I’m allergic to
pre-workout you know I thought at the time but beta alanine helps give you
that flush or that tingle or that itch and it helps buffer lactic acid that’s
why 99% of pre-workouts have beta alanine in it but anyway we were like
everyone’s selling a pre-workout we got to come up with a full line of
supplements we got to come up with protein multivitamin like let’s come up
with a full line of product but let’s start off with a pre-workout and we
said hey what should we call it let’s keep along with the deer theme and
let’s call it bucked up went to the domain name God Daddy bought the domain
name for about 1500 bucks and we were Off to the Races so that’s how we
started I think one part of the story I’d like to hit on is you know it
sounds it sounds like it’s been this easy you know we just do this and this
and this it’s been a lot of hard work I know that but one thing that you’ve
talked about in the past and one thing that I think is is really important in
your story is that you and your brother have had this concept of look if you
can’t afford it you don’t buy it right we save weest we put tight ship for a
long time ship but that I mean that philosophy also allowed you to do the
like hey we need to we’re going to create a whole line of product now you
have the resource a available to do that and you don’t have to go to outside
that’s right investment and what we did is you know our our whole lives and
our whole time of doing businesses we never took money until there was money
at the end of the year if there was money left that’s when we took and so we
never did that before we never even paid ourselves a salary for the first two
three years ru