All right, everybody, we are back with First Responder Financial Freedom, and our guest today is Mike Ettenberg. Mike is the founder of Frontline Optics and we're going to go over his story both on the job and off the job, and hopefully this provides value to you. Real quick, aaron is not here today because he just had his second child, so we are wishing him congratulations as well and we can get started. So, uh, first off, like mike said earlier, thank you for hopping on the show if you want to give us a real quick background and we can just go from there yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2:Um mike ettenberg. I'm from california, was born and raised in santa barbara, found my way to san diego for college and never found a good reason to leave, so um been here ever since. Um had about uh 10 years in fire and EMS before leaving to focus on Frontline Optics full-time, which is a sunglasses brand that we make sunglasses specifically for first responders. And yeah, got a wife, three kids, a dog and a cat. Don't really like the cat, but that's me.
Speaker 3:Can't blame you, man, I'm a dog guy myself. So how I guess? You said you were on the job about 10 years and I guess, did you always have that entrepreneurial mindset, or were you doing this frontline optics or some variation of before you got on the job, or is that something that kind of began while you were already?
Speaker 2:Yeah, um, entrepreneurship was always a thing, I guess, for me. So, um, growing up as a kid, the two people who I guess I idolized the most, um, other than my dad, were my, my uncle and my cousin, both very, very successful in business. And, um, you know, I just got to see the lifestyle and the you know the that they had, and so business was always something that interested me. Now, in addition to that, I always also loved the fire service, and there was something about flashing lights and a fire engine going down the street that just like, captivated me, like most kids. But I took it to an extra level. You know, I went to Radio Shack, got myself a little scanner radio, I had a Thomas book map guide and I would hear the tones go off and I could recognize the tone for the area of the city that I lived in, would flip to the Mac page and I'd see, like, can I jump on my bike and get there? Can I catch a glimpse? And I would literally go and chase it right Just to see if I could see it. So it was always this balancing act of, like, fire service entrepreneurship, fire service service entrepreneurship. Didn't really know how to do both or how to decide.
Speaker 2:So college comes around, um, as the first thing I do is take an emt class. And I will tell you right now, as an 18 year old kid I was not ready, um, professionally to be, you know, responsible for anyone else else's. Now I've met some 18 year old kids who are great so, but I was not one of them and the instructor saw that right away and they're just kind of like what are you doing here? Um, career day comes around. Members of Santa Barbara County fire department were there and I like walk up to the table with a beard kind of like Mike's, uh, except it didn't look quite as nice and you know, my hair was all over the place and flip flops. I'm like, hey, I want to be a firefighter. And they pretty much laughed and they told me, they told me to grow up nicely. But we don't want kids in the fire service, we want adults here. So why don't you go and do something else? Get some life experience, and once you have that, if this is still something you're passionate about, come back and find us and we'll point you in the right direction then. So I'm like, all right, my other passion has been business. So I started to take business classes and I found myself, going down that path, started a business in college.
Speaker 2:It was called Pacific Beach Bus Co. And for anyone who's ever been to San Diego there's this area called Pacific Beach, and this was before the days of Lyft and Uber. So you know, your choice was a $60, $70 cab ride to and from Pacific Beach from San Diego State, or driving drunk, essentially. So we filled that void with a bus. It was a 40 passenger bus for 15 bucks round trip. You could jump on our bus and it'll take you to Pacific Beach and back.
Speaker 2:On Thursday, friday and Saturday nights Didn't make a ton of money but, um, you know, we had a lot of fun while it lasted. But you know that entrepreneurial drive was still kind of going at that point. One night it was like two o'clock in the morning I was on my way to go clean up the bus and I saw someone crashed their car on the 15 freeway and they like flipped it into the ice plant. So I pulled over and I like helped try and get them out of the car and then an emergency scene developed around me and it was like that light bulb moment again where I was like this is it? So stopped everything, business went back, had to take an EMT class again, and that was like the start of my trajectory into fire and emergency services. So a little of both.
Speaker 3:Awesome. I can only imagine all the DOT regulations that you may or may not have been following with that kind of bus and the amount of stories you could tell only a bunch of drunk people on Thursday, friday nights, you know. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:It was, it was interesting, but you know you can't ever let the red tape stop you, you nights. You know, yeah, yeah, it was, uh, it was interesting, but you know you can't ever let the red tape stop you. You'll, you know, you'll hit you'll hit red lights and then you just got to figure out your way around them.
Speaker 3:And that's business, man Just pivot or push, pick, you know so. So all right. So presumably you then get in the get on the job after taking the EMT class, I presume still in the Southern California area.
Speaker 2:Yeah, San Diego.
Speaker 3:San.
Speaker 2:Diego. So I worked city of San Diego um rural metro at the time then became AMR. It's now Falk um, so it's kind of gone through the transition. But private ambulance became a paramedic and then I got hired by the Julian Cuyamaca Fire Protection District up where, if anyone's ever had a Julian pie right, that was our first in so worked there for about a year. It was a mix of volunteer and paid department, so I had one of those paid spots and then after about a year I got the call from the city of Coronado with an offer and I went there and that's where I, I guess, finished off my career early.
Speaker 3:Awesome. So I guess you're on the job, you're in California. I feel like, okay, sunglasses, standard issue, right. But like how did you decide to say you know what I'm? I'm going to make my side hustle sunglasses like.
Speaker 2:So follow your passion. I guess you could say I love sunglasses. I think one of the reasons why I like them so much is because for my adult life I was always in a uniform and the uniforms picked out for you. So you don't really have any style Right. You might have like five options of boots that the department approved, maybe one or two hats that the uniform committee was okay with, but otherwise, like everything was picked out for you.
Speaker 2:The only thing you could really pick was your sunglasses, and so so I became like an advocate and I was always wearing them and you know I had the different colors and whatever day of the week I was style I was feeling, you know I had those on and um nature in the back of a rig where everything's made out of metal and you know if you get, if you get a call to a fire and you're, you're close, right, you got to get ready fast things are getting chucked right across the yeah iPhones get like falling between the seats and you lose your keys and you know sunglasses naturally like constantly boom, boom, boom, break and scratch them, lose them, um, and that was kind of the driver.
Speaker 2:I was like sick of spending 200 bucks on every pair of Oakleys and so I figured there had to be a better way. I started looking to make it myself and that was kind of the birth of the idea of Frontline Optics.
Speaker 3:Awesome. So I guess, where do you even start? Obviously, like you go, I would just be Googling like how to make my own sunglasses, Like can you? Just kind of can you just like walk us through, and obviously you don't have to share industry trade secrets or whatever. But like what? What was some of the problems or hurdles you ran into from like oh, this is a really cool idea, to like actually manufacturing, distributing, et cetera.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's finding a good manufacturer, right. So the first thing I did was I went on this website called Alibaba and it's like um, you can find anything like literally anything on there. It's just a bunch of manufacturers in in not just China, but all over, um, like Asia, you know. And so, um, I went on there, started looking for different stuff and I would find these people. I would talk to them about quality. They would make all these promises and then they'd ship you your stuff and it was like it was junk, right, all of it was. Everything that came over was just junk, junk, junk.
Speaker 2:And I was like, all right, back up, this is not the way right, going to go and utilize Google the way it was. And I didn't look at a particular country, I was just like, okay, sunglasses manufacturers, and just started going down the list and further and further down. And the further down I got, the more likely they were to work with me because they were smaller, um, and so they're willing to work with smaller brands and the intricacies that come along with it. So eventually, after six plus months of talking to manufacturers, I found one that understood what I was trying to do, was willing to utilize kind of the design ideas, the quality aspects and they became my go-to manufacturer. We've been working with them ever since.
Speaker 1:And that's a good thing to talk about too, right, because if you think about a lot of this stuff that we hear is people are worried about starting anything because there's already competitors that are in the market, that they're so big, how am I, as a little guy, going to survive? And then I'm thinking too like in Southern California, oakley's headquartered here, you have other brands and then you built this thriving business. Were you ever worried about stuff like that? Or were you like more mission oriented to where you knew what gap you were trying trying to fill and you were so focused on that that nothing else really mattered? It's not like you were trying to be an Oakley, right, you're trying to do you, and you know that. Hey, I'm going to serve this segment and I understand this segment very well.
Speaker 2:That's exactly it. Um, I don't worry about the noise, it doesn't matter what industry you try and go into, there's going to be competitors, um, it's. You know, business is cutthroat and may the best man or woman win, right? So, um, I focused on, like, niching down and the fire service first responders. That was world that. And sure, oakley markets to this group. Right, there's other brands that market to this group, but they market to it amongst, like a branch of everything else that they do. It's not just solely focused on us.
Speaker 2:And so I wanted to create, like, a small American brand focused on the first responders here in the United States, and, being a first responder at the time I was still active um, I felt like I was credible to be able to talk about the things that we deal with and create a product and solution, um, that would kind of serve, serve our industry. Uh, you can't get cut out by the noise, right? Like sure it is, but if I had let that stop me, like we wouldn't have built this. It's obvious that even in a saturated space, there's still room for niching down and innovating within it, and that's that's exactly what we did.
Speaker 2:So, for anyone thinking of doing the same, like, don't get caught up. I mean, sunglass is probably one of the most competitive industries you can get in because they're a relatively inexpensive product, so you don't need a lot to get started. I would say, just don't put all your eggs in one basket, right Like. This started as a side hustle for me with a. I had a few forced overtime shifts, so I had some extra cash, and so I used that forced overtime to launch this business, and I ran that business while I was continuing to work up until the point that it got traction and grew to the point that it could uh, you know replace my income nice and then I saw you, so you started.
Speaker 1:So this was in 2021, right when this all happened, correct? And then I know on your story, if you want to go into more detail, I feel like you started. Your original, excuse me, order was order was around 300, 300 pairs of glasses. Is that correct?
Speaker 2:Yep, yep, 300 glasses we launched, figured like cool, I'm going to put these on the internet and everyone's going to buy them. And that's not how it works. So it was very, very slow at first. I had no idea how to do digital marketing. I had no idea anything really. You know, I was snapping pictures of the glasses on random anything I could find that was like, oh cool, here's an FTC, I'm gonna like put the sunglasses right there and take a picture with my iPhone, put it on the internet.
Speaker 2:Eventually I realized that you have to. You have to hook people right. You got to grab their attention and so my focus started to move towards marketing. First video that we did, that actually took, was a video of the sunglasses falling in slow motion out of the truck and I had my turnout gear like staged there and there was like the front wheel of the rigs. It was like it was obvious it was inside a fire station and I just voiced over it stop beating up your expensive sunglasses on the job. Cool music goes and all these photos now of first responders wearing it and our company just like blew up. From that. One ad went from, you know, doing 30K a year to 170K in the next year, really all off of one ad. And then, with that and the income that came in, I was like, okay, how do I recreate this? What was it about this that worked? And I became a student of advertising at that point and, um, that was really the, the ticket.
Speaker 3:So let me rewind just a hair. So you said your first um order was about 300 pair sets I don't know what the proper term is for all these sunglasses, but 300 sets, pairs and you said you did it with basically some OT shifts and I think that speaks to a lot of the folks that probably listen. And frankly, that's in essence how I got started in my quote side business is saved up some overtime and working part time on a private ambulance well, not private, you know EMS service and then that's how I parlayed it into my first real estate deal. The first 300 you bought roughly like what kind of dollar amount are we talking there? Like I have no idea what wholesale sunglass pricing is and I imagine it's all over the place. But could you just give like a ballpark, like what it costs mentioned, it's all over the place.
Speaker 2:But could you just give like a ballpark, like what it cost five grand to get started. So five grand got me 300 pair. It got a shopify website built, um, it got a trademark filed and it uh, left me a little bit of money left over for marketing and you were the one that did all that set up the shopify, you know, ordered the product, distributed the product market of the.
Speaker 3:You were basically doing everything, correct.
Speaker 2:Yeah, or finding the people through you know inexpensive options like Fiverr.
Speaker 2:So, people on Fiverr that'll build your website for you. You tell them what you're trying to do and they'll do it. There's companies that'll file your trademark for you. So you give them, you know, you give them this stuff and they'll do it. And I would encourage that, for for some of that stuff, like if your Shopify store doesn't look professional, people will immediately turn away and be like I'm not, you know, giving them my credit card information. So you have to have some legitimacy built in Um, and so you want to make sure that you you do it right. Especially, like pay a little bit more for that Shopify. Don't get the cheapest guy to go out there. He's going to do it for you know, 10 bucks. Right, spend a little bit of money because, again, that's that's your storefront, right? That's what a customer sees when they click on an ad or go to your website and it's the first impression.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and the older I get, the more I just totally believe that, uh, you know, cheaper is not always least expensive, you know, like that kind of stuff you might save a couple bucks up front but it's going to cost you in the long run, you know. Um, so did you try and pre-sell any of these sunglasses before you placed the order? Like, uh, we had we've had some folks on that, you know, I've done this with, like job coats and different products, where they basically tried to pre-sell, like a firefighter escape system ahead of time to help basically pay for the first order, so to speak, or did you just buy them?
Speaker 2:all and open a prayer. Yeah, just stupid, right? I didn't even know that pre-sale existed, right? Like I was just cool, here's my 300 pairs of sunglasses. Like how do I listen?
Speaker 3:Right, that's what everybody's getting for Christmas, kids yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly so, um, no, I mean, I had no idea. I didn't know what I was doing. Um, you can't let that hold you back, Cause you're gonna. You're gonna learn as you go and you got to understand right, like when a toddler's learning how to walk they fall constantly Right and they're getting like they're skinning their knees and they're hitting their head and they're crying. But what does a toddler do? They get back up and they do it again right and they learn from it and they keep going. So when you start a business, you got to think of yourself as like a toddler. Like you're gonna fall on your face, you're gonna skin your knees. It's going to happen. You're not just gonna like magically create the best thing in the world and everything's going to be, you know, sunshine.
Speaker 3:And I just had this conversation earlier with. I was on the phone call with a previous guest we've had on the show, travis Oglesby, and we were joking about a you know a deal and, like you know, naively, when you first start out, you just think everything's going to go perfectly as planned. I don't care whether it's a $200,000 deal or $2 million deal, things are going to happen. It just, it's just the way it goes. Whether you're starting sunglasses or you're selling loans or flipping a house, it happens.
Speaker 3:But, like you said at the beginning, like you've always been an entrepreneur and you know, I still have to remind myself of these types of things at times, because it's easy when you're the one in the weeds like, oh man, this sucks, it sucks. But I have a quote literally right above my laptop that I constantly just kind of reread and it's a Henry David Thoreau quote. It says just go confidently in the direction of your dreams. So if you just kind of recalibrate like, hey, this sucks's, I can figure this out, type thing. So, um, what are probably the biggest issues you ran into with that first batch? And I keep going back to the first batch because I feel like that's the next step for a lot of folks listening and you know they may not be able to wrap their head around. You know pixeling and meta tagging and social media and all this stuff that might just get too too crazy, too quick. So, like the first, next problem what was that?
Speaker 2:Quality improvement. You know we started out as a cheap, a cheap option, right? The original products that we had were 42 bucks um, plus a no questions asked replacement fee, you know. So like our program. So like, literally, two pairs of sunglasses for for 50 bucks Um, pretty inexpensive.
Speaker 3:What percentage of your sales took, I would say, advantage of that offer.
Speaker 2:Uh, initially it was like 15 to 20% and now it's you know it's more it's. It's known's known. You know that. That's that's who we are. So some people use it how it's designed. Other people are just like cool, like it's. Like I'm kind of getting bored of these and I want a different color. But, like, whatever right it's, it's a no questions asked replacement, so we won't ask questions when you want to utilize it, you know we'll just shame you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm just one, right, you, you get one per pair. So and we build it in. But again, you know, the product itself was, was inexpensive, and so we had to find ways to improve it. So it was, you know, improvement to the lenses, improvement to the hinges, improvement to the plastics that were used, but none of that stuff was anything that I, that I knew about at the time.
Speaker 2:I just would look at what I had and I would look at Oakley and I'd be like, well, what, how are these different? What's different? And again, having the right manufacturer, they can start pointing you in that direction and oh, this is made from this type of plastic, or they use this type of hinge, or we could make this type of modification and you should look into this type of lens. So it just kind of started to evolve. And as it evolves the product gets more expensive. But that was always what we wanted to be was like a premium quality product, not at that premium price point, which is where we found ourselves right around that $80 price range with a replacement.
Speaker 3:So are these ANSI rated lenses on the job. Okay, so they basically meet most, you know, OSHA and uniform spec requirements.
Speaker 2:Our pomona line is the only one. But our pomona line, which is the, you know, by far the best seller, is our nzz87 option. Um, their safety stamped on the lens and on the frame. So you know, if you do have that safety officer come by and want to check your stuff, you've, you've got the stamp on there to to show them. But, um, the others are a little bit more delicate. I guess you could say they're still bomb proof, but you know they're made out of aluminum, which aluminum obviously isn't going to hold up, the same as, like a durable plastic, to any kind of impact. It'll bend. But uh it, you know, it all depends on on what you're looking for in terms of the product and real quick.
Speaker 1:I was just thinking about a couple of things. Number one is if we all knew everything that was entailed in our business now when we first started, probably wouldn't do it. Everybody like for me it's like, oh, I'm going to flip real estate and make millions of dollars or I'm going to sell sunglasses, and it's like I think that exuberance gets us through to the point and we start problem solving like we do when we're first responders, and it just you. You work your way through. And I was also kind of curious too, if you view um, so I know your policy is well known. It's on your website, it's on your social.
Speaker 1:Do you kind of build that in? It's almost like a marketing cost. Right, because we're advertising. Because if you tell a phone, tell a friend, tell a firefighter, I mean the word's getting out. So up there I go. Hey, this company frontline. You know you can get your parents. What happens to them on the job? They're going to replace them for free. All my strike team stuff. I would always like go into my strike team bag at the start of the season and sure enough, there's like last year's sunglasses that are just like because they've been sitting in the gear locker the whole time yeah, yep, yeah, we do.
Speaker 2:we build um into the price so that you know, we know it's coming. There's still a service fee, so it's a $12 service fee and that kind of helps cover the fulfillment costs and the shipping costs. Uh, doesn't cover everything, so we do lose a little bit of cash every time we ship one of those out. But again we we kind of collected on the front side and the um. The bet that we've made is that the experience will be positive and people will tell their friends and the organic word of mouth will grow and we'll continue to um kind of expand.
Speaker 3:So have you started to off uh, offload some of these responsibilities. Are you still stuffing boxes in your garage type thing that you graduated, right, yeah?
Speaker 2:yeah, no. So we, we partner with a 3pl here in san diego, um 3pl third-party logistics. They do all of our shipping fulfillment for us. So, um, you know, we give them all the stuff, we tell them exactly how it's supposed to look. You're gonna pack the box like this, and then they do it for us perfectly every time, get it shipped out right away, same day. So if you order before 1 pm pacific time, your order will ship on the same day. Otherwise, the next business day other than saturday and sunday and, like you know, holidays, like memorial days coming up won't be open then.
Speaker 3:But, um, any normal business day when the bank is open, right, we're open okay, what I guess at this stage of the the business is your main day to day. Like, are you just trying to push sales, or um?
Speaker 2:marketing. Yeah, a lot of marketing. Um, meta ads is an animal ever changing. It's always changing. As soon as you figure something out, they tweak an algorithm and they won't tell you when they do it. The only way you know is things start to decline and you're like your head spend stays the same, but your results go down.
Speaker 3:Oh shit, they changed something. Yeah, exactly Like we're in it right now.
Speaker 2:Right, like you know, prior to this call I was digging in deep to that. After this call I'm going to be digging back into it looking at all the data. But yeah, that's the majority of what I do there. I come on podcasts like this, try and just increase some awareness of the brand and then kind of focus on business development new styles, new designs, a lot of logistics stuff. That's kind of what my day-to-day. It can ebb and flow, but it's a mix between content marketing and growth.
Speaker 1:So for that I I love this stuff too. That's actually kind of where I gravitate a lot. I like figuring all this stuff out. I noticed that you have some of the fire department coffee guys on your site. Yeah, um, is that I mean it's cool? Either way, I mean it's cool because a they're both first responder businesses and I'm assuming you guys are cross-marketing to each other's brands because you guys both serve the same demographic. Is that a new thing? Have you always done stuff like that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it is a paid relationship, as with anything, but it's a mutual one, because they won't support a product that doesn't stand behind. You know them and their brand and vice versa, um, but yeah, so it is a pay to play, but it's. I mean, they're a strategic partner for us, um, and it makes, it makes a lot of sense. Early on, it validated us as well, because, if you know, you've never heard of us, but everyone knows, you know jason and fenton, right. So, like if those two knuckleheads have our sunglasses on and are talking about it, it instantly validatesates the brand as being like, oh, like I'd seen those ads. Now these guys are talking about it. Let's go check it out. And it kind of helped to move people to that. Okay, I'll give you a try. And then again, once you try us, you know you'll see it, you'll get the glasses, you'll realize that it's not like a gas station quality, like knockoff pair of shades, like you're getting.
Speaker 3:You're getting good stuff, um but yeah, that relationship's been awesome, fun guys. We will uh need to connect you with the brotherhood buff guys. Okay, the energy drink, the job coat there's several, you know. Maybe not all of them have the footprint that those guys do, but, um, brother and boss got a pretty big reach and you guys might be able to do something cool.
Speaker 3:So, I'll make. I'll make that introduction for you. Um, I forgot I was going to say oh. All right, so I won't mention the name of the sunglasses I currently have, but, uh, I guess. See what time it is, See if mine will ship today, I'll order them. But I have glass lenses. Does that differ from plastic? So, like, my sunglasses have glass and I noticed you know that obviously they're heavier. But like, have you played around with any of that lens quality or type?
Speaker 2:Glass is for sure the most clear kind of lens that you can get um, most clear kind of lens that you can get um. But they also are prone to like scratching and then, from like a shatter perspective, right like if yeah just your eyeballs by something hard enough.
Speaker 2:You've got glass, like you know, half an inch from your eyeballs. So, um, I know, like maui's are like real big on, like the glass lens and they're known for, you know, the optical clarity. But we have to find that balance between durability and because we're again, we're making job glasses right, we're making something that's strong enough to be used on the job. With enough fashion statement I guess you could say that you'd be comfortable wearing them on the beach or at the pool as well. So that we look at polycarbonate.
Speaker 2:You can't get an ANSI-rated glass lens. It won't pass. You have to use specific types of materials. So from that ANSI perspective, we use a polycarbonate lens. We use a greenish base color for the lens. So it actually gives you like some companies will try and coin it as like hd vision, right, but it enhances the environment around you, versus like a brown lens that kind of dulls the colors. So, um, so it's a pleasant viewing experience. And then for our non-anti-erated, we go with the nylon lens, which again has a lot of durability. Um, it's almost at that same caliber of clarity of glass, but a little more durability, a little more scratch resistance. And then it's not glass because, even though they're not rated, they are going to be worn on the job.
Speaker 3:Sure, I was just kind of curious there on that one, so I was going to say, oh, are they polarized? They are Okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so yeah, they're all polarized, uv 400 rated, so you are getting that protection. We do have non-polarized options in prescription available, so if you wanted to go, you know, if you really needed a non-polarized lens, you can always get everyone. Everyone. Even if you don't want to admit it, everyone could get a prescription right. Nobody's eyes are perfect they can all.
Speaker 3:You can use your hsa account for these?
Speaker 2:uh it, you can do a reimbursement. So we can't, we can't take an hsa card, um, but you can submit for reimbursement after the fact, which a lot of people do, sure do.
Speaker 1:Sure, you're on me, so you started off obviously on your own now. So, now that you've progressed in business like what, what kind of team does it look like as far as what does it take to run the day to day?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So you can get virtual employees, which anyone who's starting out. You can find them anywhere. They're here in the States. It's also very popular to get them in Latin America and the Philippines. So, depending on what it is that you're doing, if you're just starting out you're not making very much money right, Like when we were doing 30K a year. I got a VA in the Philippines to help me with following up on emails and things like that, just because I was still working and I would get caught up on runs and I didn't want my customers to have to wait three days to hear from me because I got busy. So you know, it made sense. But right now we have a team of two customer service reps and then, like a jack of all trades, administrative assistant for me. Then I handle the marketing and we have a 3PL doing all of our shipping and fulfillment and from that, you know, we could easily get ourselves seven figures and beyond. Just that small team that's awesome.
Speaker 1:That's efficient too, yeah.
Speaker 3:That is very I was trying to count sets basically 14 members, right Including you, and then an outsource basically logistics, just distribution facility. Yeah, that's pretty slick. Members, right Including you, and then an outsource basically logistics distribution facility. That's pretty slick, though, man.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we could get away with three, but I wanted to have some like after hours customer support so that people didn't have to wait after five o'clock, cause a ton of us like right, Like working night shift or working all day, right, you're still on there asking questions. So the fact that we can answer someone's question at 10 o'clock at night, I think it's helpful.
Speaker 3:Well, and it never hurts to have, like, I'm a big proponent of efficiency. But like, some redundancy is great, especially if you ever have turnover, and I don't care whether that's stateside, near, shore, offshore, it doesn't matter. The staffing model, like having a little overlap, is always, in my opinion, great. Yeah, but yeah, I've been there before there.
Speaker 2:So definitely, everyone on our team is trained in customer service. So you know, even if I had to, you know I can still jump in there and every once in a while I do, I'll see some, some ticket will come in. I'm like, oh right, like maybe they mentioned a department that I want to chat with somebody because I've got a friend there. Whatever, every once in a while I jump in. I try and leave it to people who do it better than me.
Speaker 3:I was going to say two questions you have. First off, it looks like you really lean heavily into customer reviews to help make the sale for you, which I'm a big proponent of. I do have some issues with the review review platform, cause it's like it's so easy for somebody to leave an unfounded review and even if you respond professionally, it's still like tarnishes it like the star rating. Yeah, I got Airbnb did that to me and I just recently had that with one of my storage businesses. It's annoying, but it is what it is. And regardless of the facts like they can sit in that, sit there and leave you a one-star review and just like then you're trying to play catch up, yeah. Second part of the question is I guess my question is with the reviews, like you, how are you soliciting those? Is that something like where you're automatically sequencing to follow up? Follow up like please leave a review, please leave a review, type thing?
Speaker 2:Yeah it's, it's automated. So, um, it's like about three weeks after they receive the product, they'll get an email and it's essentially like hey, how are you liking your new shades? With the link to click on and plug in your you know your star rating. Leave the review and for the most part, you know everything's positive. Every once in a while you do get a negative, but the negatives almost help you because people will go to look for it and so if you explain what you did right, like oh, like they didn't fit my face right, like once you have a fat head, yeah and then it's like hey, like sorry about that.
Speaker 2:We do offer, you know, free returns and free exchanges, so make sure you know to reach out to our customer support. So we do offer, you know, free returns and free exchanges, so make sure you know to reach out to our customer support so we can get you in something else, right? Or like oh never, they never arrived, right? It's like, oh, thanks for letting us know. We've got a new one that's already on the way. Like, so we can, we can do things with that that show that the brand will take care of you, even in that worst case scenario that we're not going to like leave you high and dry. But you know, the majority of our ratings are five stars, with a handful of four stars that come in here and there. It's from people who refuse to give a five star rating, you know.
Speaker 3:But Grant Cardone and I. There's a lot of things I like and a lot of things of his I don't like. But he did have a comment or statement once about a customer complaint is like your opportunity to like either make the situation worse or get a customer for life by like how you handled it. And if it is a legit complaint, like hey man, these things suck, like something happened, quality assurance, whatever it is and you're like hey man, that you're right, that that is unacceptable and that does not meet our standards. Tell you what you got a pair on the way and a second set for your wife on me. You know, like that man, that's an opportunity to sit there and say, like you're right, like it was legit. And now that customer is probably going to go tell 10 other people because of how it was handled. Because I think and myself included you're expected to like, you expect, when you have some sort of issue like that, for it to not be like a good outcome.
Speaker 1:Like you, just kind of go into it.
Speaker 3:Maybe I'm just a jagged Like you go into it, you're just like, oh God, this is going to suck, you know. But then, like when they make it right, you know it's like you're at the restaurant and they mess up your meal. But then they're like, hey, you know what, like that appetizer was on me, let me get you a round of drinks. Type thing. You know, it's like all right, it still sucks, but it like smooths it over and you're more than likely going to come back again, type thing For sure.
Speaker 2:So yeah, uncle Grant's a smart man, so yeah.
Speaker 3:I always say he's got a jet, I got a pickup truck.
Speaker 2:So I mean we, we live and breathe by. By that. I mean it's in our core values. Essentially, customers always right. Even if they're wrong, they're right and we're going to bend over backwards to help them.
Speaker 2:Transparency is another one. So if we do screw up, like we've had, it's like anything. If you manufacture something, you're going to get a batch. That's not good, right. If the batch ends up having an issue, we're honest with them and we tell them hey, like, we identified an issue with this batch, here's what we're going to do about it. Right, it's, it was free. You're going to get another one on us when the next batch arrives. It's below our standards? Right, we meet these standards. We stand behind our product and we're going to get you taken care of and it it's the only way. As far as I'm concerned, it's the only way to do business longterm and long run. Cause, again, you get a bad experience and then it's met with a bad customer service experience. They'll never buy from you again and they'll tell everyone in their circle not to do it as well. Yeah, outside, like you said, it's true, and especially those people who leave like a one star review, they'll be extremely loud, either for you or against you.
Speaker 3:And it's up to you, based off of how you respond to them, which outcome you're going to get. Yeah, and so I kind of took something like that, because I get a lot of phone calls and I have a call center for our storage facility, but I instituted something where it's called 50 to Fix it and I kind of stole it from, like you know, the Ritz, carlton, dan Martell, all these different people I listened to, and it's like if, if the problem is going to cost $50 or less to fix it and make the customer happy, and it's like a legitimate issue If they're just calling to complain because they want a discount, well, that's not really the intent of the policy. But if there was an issue, they got there, the light bulb was burned out, this, that or the other thing. Hey man, tell you what? I'm sorry for the inconvenience.
Speaker 3:What I'm going to do is I'm going to put a $25 credit on your account for next month and we, you know, just basically, we give the autonomy to the customer service rep, or in this case, my operations manager, to kind of just fix it without having it all come back to me. Or, in your case, you know, can I replace these? I'm sure you have a policy where it's like if this, then that type thing, and that's been super helpful, because then people are like oh, thank you, you know, and it's like it's turned some of those what could be the like three or three and a half star interaction into a five star interaction with those folks. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and people like to buy from people, you know.
Speaker 3:So if you show your your human, you know, like this shit happens, dude, Like you know, like even if, even when you try and you're on point, like stuff happens, you know yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, that's like everybody's always happy when you're winning Right, and then when you're losing, you know the real things start to come out, and you mentioned a couple of things, and Mike mentioned it too. So, like you mentioned core values, which not many people who are starting the business really focus on. So my question is have you focused either time and or money into business coaching, anything like that? Do you like to read a lot? Where are you going to get answers outside of what your current?
Speaker 2:experience is yeah, there's a. There's a ton of good resources for free. A lot of great podcasts as you mentioned Dan Martell, I'm a big fan of, like Andy Frisella, Harmozy yeah, so like these guys are, you know they're they're players in the space that have so much more knowledge than at least that we have now. I guess we can all aspire to be on that level and it is possible, but they can help point you in the right direction just listening to you. Like Andy Frisella has a Q&A show once a week where people call in with their questions, and I find so much value in listening to his responses on how he would handle different things. Um, and that's kind of where we came up with with our core values was based off of things he said there.
Speaker 2:And so now when we interview somebody, our interview questions are based off of the core values. When we have like a conflict that happens and we have to talk about something, the, we point to our core values of the company as we describe like a conflict that happens and we have to talk about something, the, we point to our core values of the company as we describe like what went wrong and why we need to fix it, and usually that encompasses two, two core values, right? So, um, yeah, those are super important, and then we list them on the top of, like all of our SOPs and everything. So anytime you're going to research um, research anything related to the company internally, you're going to get our core values, followed by our mission statement, followed by, like, the table of contents of what you're trying to find, just to like hammer the point home.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you're building a business like, not a side hustle at this point, you know Correct 100% and that's what I was thinking when you were saying that.
Speaker 1:I'm like this sounds a lot like Andy and Ed, because Andy and Ed are huge on core values and everything's built around it and I thought it was interesting. On this week's episode, I'm not sure if you guys going to be disappointed. And he's like I'm walking around here and you can see everything that Andy preaches at the first form offices. So I think that's huge. And, yeah, Hermosi is legit as well. So, okay, well, a lot of our people that are listening are looking for something to start and, like you said, your initial startup cost was 5,000 and you just went out and did it.
Speaker 2:But if they're looking to do anything, let's say consumer related as a product, what kind?
Speaker 1:of advice, I guess, now that you've been in business, for going on five years.
Speaker 2:Where would you have them start? Just start. It's easy to say, but just start. Ready to fire in? Babe? Yeah, exactly, exactly so.
Speaker 2:Um, you can very quickly get caught up in the like I'm not ready, I need to consume more, I need to think more, I need just just get started. Uh, a couple of things I would mention is um, first off, try and fix, pick something that doesn't have a massive capital investment to get started, because you don't know what you're doing. You're going to learn through the process. Not every business that you go through is successful right at the beginning, but you'll learn something from it which you can then take into the next one and the next one. Hopefully, the first one you pick works right, but I started a bus company, right. That obviously was not going to get me where I wanted to be long term, but the lessons I learned from that and even in like guerrilla marketing and all that kind of stuff, helped to kind of build up what I've learned now.
Speaker 2:So get started. Get started with something that's relatively affordable and don't quit your day job. Affordable, and don't quit your day job, it's going to be the big one. So I had the luxury of building Frontline Optics for two years before I ever took a penny out of it. That allowed every dollar that came into the company to get reinvested back in.
Speaker 2:And if I was trying to pay myself a salary, who knows if we ever would have actually gotten off the ground. But I didn't need to because I was still working for the fire department and I still had my paycheck coming in on that side and it allowed me to focus this hobby and build the hobby into something where it actually created an income stream for me. That then made it make sense to move over to it full time. So as it starts to pick up traction, try and minimize your costs in your life. So don't buy the expensive car, keep your old one right Like, just find ways to downsize. And as that revenue starts to get to a point in your business where it can meet your current declined lifestyle, that's when you now are at the crossroads where you get to decide is this a side hustle that I do, or is this going to be? You know my full-time thing and then just commit.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think that's the biggest thing is commitment.
Speaker 3:Everybody and you know I'm guilty of this Like we're in such a world now, like I can order it today, have it tomorrow, type thing, or you, you watch these reels or whatever it may be like.
Speaker 3:And the one thing that I, looking back, I'm super glad I did is whenever I got started in real estate is I made myself like personally commit to myself, like I'm going to give it five years because and I've heard Hermosi explain it Like if you zoom out over a big enough time horizon, like a lot of these problems get small and like as it relates to real estate, if you zoom out over a big enough time horizon, like a lot of these problems get small and like as it relates to real estate, if you look at like just a little snapshot of a rental property, like a month or two, you can have like the worst two months ever. And then you zoom out like another 24, 36 months and it's like those two months are just a blip on the radar and everything else kind of leveled out. But if you just only focus on that little bit of time, man, it's tough. So committing is super huge and sometimes you just need to do it long enough for the plan to play out where it's like see it didn't work.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no, kidding, cause you own that house for four and a half months. Yeah, You're right, you're not wealthy yet. Yeah, you know, wait 14 more years or something. So yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2:And it gets hard, like they always say. It's like, right, when you're about to hit your breakthrough, like so much stuff is going to happen during that period of time that makes you doubt it. Right, that's the moment. Right, that's the peak of at least the first mountain. Right, that's your peak and you're going to break through and get to the other side. And it's like a whole new world once you get there and I've seen it now a couple of times you know we're still small, but I've seen it a couple of times now where you feel like everything's stacked against you, the deck's stacked against you. But that's just that opportunity to like build up, you know, and like push through and get some resilience behind you and know that, like, once you get to that one, you're like, oh, like, next time I hit these hurdles it's because I'm about to break through to another level. And each time you do that, the rewards just stack on top of each other with each one.
Speaker 3:So yeah, it's like and and the stuff that you consider a problem now, like four years ago, would have just been disastrous. Now it's like, dude, that's tuesday before lunch disastrous. Now. It's like, dude, that's Tuesday before lunch. Now, you know, it's like it just becomes a.
Speaker 3:And the one thing that's helped me with that is and we talked about it last night at a group I was in where it's like you get involved with these other circles or guys that are in business and whether they have a first responder background or not, just a lot of these things can be solved with like bounce an idea off Tyler, or a couple of phone calls and if I don't know, I bet, within one degree of separation within your network, like hey, man, I don't know how to do this, Tyler's like oh, I got a guy like you know, like I'm, you know it's just like one phone call or two phone calls in 15 minutes.
Speaker 3:Next thing you know you have like 70% of the information you need to solve said issue. Where it seemed like so unbearable is just, I don't know. That's something. As I've kind of like gone through this, it's helped me a lot. It's like I don't know anything about X. Well, let me see, I bet that guy has an idea, or that guy, and next thing you know you're working through the problem one bite at a time. So your network is your net worth, right? Oh yeah, I mean that gets thrown around a lot, but it's so frigging true.
Speaker 2:Yeah, right, oh yeah, I mean it. That gets thrown around a lot, but it's so freaking, true. Yeah, like the other one I've heard is like um, you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with, so 100% looking out a bunch of degenerates, right yeah generate too.
Speaker 2:Um, but each person at a higher level at that table, um, they start to pull you up to you know to median, so um, keep that in mind too. When you have people that you're hanging out with, um are they people that are going to build you know to median, so um, keep that in mind too. When you have people that you're hanging out with, um are they people that are going to build you up in any aspect of your life, whether it's personal, professional. Um, just have people that are are going to push you forward, not kind of hold you back or keep you stagnant.
Speaker 1:Uh, real quick too, as we're getting close. Um, I do want to mention. Which I love is you are a niche product for somebody, for first responders, but you guys also donate to first responder charities. From what I see and correct me if I'm wrong it's first responders children's foundation, the burn Institute, firefighter aid and then next round.
Speaker 2:I think next round is that um charlie brown and and those guys okay yeah, so, yeah, we um, we want to give back to the community.
Speaker 2:Our primary is the first responders children's foundation, so a portion of every sale from our online sales immediately gets donated to the first responders children's foundation. Those other organizations um are like event based or situational based, or we'll, um, we'll donate to an event or do some aspect outside of like our sales. I guess you could say it's just something extra, but you know we, we have a mission behind us. It's, you know, we're creating a brand that's for us and for our community. But you can't be for us and for our community if you're not going to support, you know, our brothers and sisters when they're in their difficult need or their families are in their difficult need, and it's part of our nature, you know, to it's part of that brother and sisterhood is to to to help be there for people. So we wanted to make sure the brand you know stood on that value, and so we, you know, give a significant chunk of change each year to to these different organizations.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that that's awesome and uh, yeah, I'll definitely have to put you in touch with the end. They had buffed energy but, due to a copyright issue, has a different name now. But they take a portion of each sale and donate it to a firefighter based charity. I don't want to misquote the name of it, but it's, uh, basically the same for, like the widow or the children, rather. So, okay, but it's basically the same for like the widowed or the children, rather.
Speaker 3:But yeah, that's awesome and you know it. Just, it's like capitalism, but compassionate, you know, and it's like you can, you can have like this new mission and we didn't even get into that and I know we're coming up on time but, like, I would be curious to see if you had like any sort of identity issue as you transitioned out of the fire service day to day world into you know business. I mean, I know it's always like a tug of war of you know you liked both, but I think that's still an interesting topic and like one that I didn't know if you had any any thoughts on know if you had any any thoughts on.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, it's um for sure, there's some struggles that come with it, uh, especially when I'm driving down the road and I see like a good header and I'd like you get that, like, oh man, that would be fun, right, but um, you know, all in all, I uh I still get to be involved in the community just because the brand is focused on the community. Um, so like, I get to hang out with you, fellas, today, right, so like I do get to be with like-minded people, and now I get to be with like-minded people in our space as well as in the entrepreneurship space, which is even more cool because we've got more to talk about that. You know a standard conversation around the kitchen table. You know only half of what I like to talk about I could talk about with that group, because the other half didn't understand it.
Speaker 3:Well, you're in good company. Yeah, hence the Genesis for this group.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, I love it. I love it and your community here's. You know these are my people, so I'm happy to be here today. And then, additionally, I teach. So I teach EMT and paramedic at one of the local community colleges here, which keeps me involved as well, kind of bringing up the next generation of people to do the job that I still love and passionate about. So I get to pass the torch and share my experience and kind of mold the next group and make sure that we push the bar up and not down.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's awesome. I meant to ask do you do affiliate marketing, or is everything you said paid partnership with Fire Department Coffee, but like no, we're the affiliate.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we have an affiliate program brand ambassadors so we've got different ways to kind of get involved to help spread the word and spread the mission.
Speaker 3:Okay, I'll put you in touch with another guy. I know that has a pretty decent following, but probably would be worthwhile to reach out to then for you two to talk. Yeah, man, so got just a few minutes left. I know you got a lot to do. You guys are out on that West coast time. It's almost the end of the day for me, but is there anything else you wanted to just mention that we didn't get to? There's a ton of other stuff I could bring up, but I know we don't have that kind of time today. Anything else?
Speaker 2:No not really. I mean, just follow your passion, follow your gut. If you want to get into something else, just do it. Like cut out the noise. The noise will always hold you back. If you go to bed at night and you're thinking about doing something. And when you're running on a treadmill aimlessly you're thinking about doing something and you're surfing podcasts and you're thinking about doing something, it means that it's in you. So just go do it. Don't hold back and just understand that as you do it you'll learn Right, the first product that I came out with. I'm not proud of Right, but like it got me where I am today and I'm like damn proud of what I've made now. So you know it's, it's all part of the journey, it's part of the process and you're only going to learn if you take that first step forward. So if you feel that drive, just embrace it and go nice, what?
Speaker 3:what version of those glasses are you on since the very first one? Like, how many iterations have you had to make? Five, so it's like version five. So basically once a year, right, pretty?
Speaker 2:much pretty much we'll make some like minor changes here and there. I guess version four is what's out right now. Um, version five is the prototype is still being built out, but, um, we're actually going to be coming out with uh, anzi z87 plus rated ipro, which um actually have the sample like right here. That got tested and just like completely destroyed. But we had to redo the way the hinges are. Um, you can see like the little battle marks on these things. They're like scuffed up, pretty good, um, but they've got snap-on side shields that'll go on the side and it'll pass all of the OSHA ratings. So now you can throw this thing on and you know, take out the saw and you're covered by OSHA standard issue birth control glasses.
Speaker 2:Yep, there you go so, yeah, we're gonna actually try and go after some of the ppe companies once that's in there and see if we can get these things specked into some uniform policies seriously, just get them into logistics, and then you're getting orders for a thousand of them at a time.
Speaker 3:You know, right, right, they're probably gonna pay 80 bucks though, but all right, so so, mike, this massive audience we have, this group, we're going to distribute this to, probably in about a week, where, if they want to know more, if they want to order your product, where should they be following you? Where should they be going to check these puppies out?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so if you just want to see what we're up to, check us out on instagram. Um, it's our most common platform. I guess you can say uh, it's just at frontline optics, otherwise our website, frontline-opticscom. You can check everything out there as well. Get on our email list. Our email list. We share everything when new releases come out. Um, we've got some aviators that are going to be coming out here. This is the one and only example of those guys right there.
Speaker 2:These are actually going to be releasing in just a couple months. If you like aviators and you want to be in the know, make sure you're on that email list.
Speaker 3:Nice.
Speaker 1:Thank you, this has been awesome. Like Mike said, I'm sure we're probably going to ask you to come back on, because there's a bunch of stuff I think we can go deeper into if you're willing.
Speaker 2:Always willing. Just let me know, I'm happy to jump on anytime, okay All right guys.
Speaker 3:Well, I won't steal Andy's line about sharing the show. But if you get value out of this. Go ahead and support these other first responder businesses. So check out Mike and the fellas over at frontline optics and get yourself a pair. All right, Don't be a hoe. Share the show.