YouSaid · the spoken record

Chris Ruder

lines on the record: 81
first: 2023-06-19
most recent: 2023-06-19
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“I used to be. Now, if I stumble on some rookies on the beach, maybe they're 22 years old and in general way better athletes than me. But if this is the first time they've been playing, yes, I will beat them. But if I go to a tournament, I get absolutely smoked. Depressing”
2023-06-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spikeball: Chris Ruder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think I'd probably put serendipity at number one. You know, had the Kennedys never purchased that set years ago, I never would have seen it. Luck is right up there as well. And I think another one is, you know, actually took that first step. So I'm grateful that I did take that first step and had a group of friends and family that took that step with me and completely recognized that I'm very privileged and that had friends and family that were able to write sizable checks and not everybody has that.”
2023-06-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spikeball: Chris Ruder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think it can become a significant profit driver. If you think of consumer products where you're making a physical product, margins aren't that great, right? You have to make a thing. You have to ship it and there's all sorts of stuff involved. Think of software businesses, you make the thing once, and if a million people use it, you don't have to make it a million more times. So, yeah, I'd love to see it. And I don't think it'll be able to be with RoundNet the sport being the size it is today. It's not going to be a major money maker. So in order for Fwango to become a significant driver to our bottom line, it needs to become a player in some other sports. And if it's pickleball, it happens to say, yeah, we like this, then okay, we're going to start working on some features. So if you like it today, you're going to love it tomorrow.”
2023-06-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spikeball: Chris Ruder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We are hearing from pickleball tournament directors saying this is a heck of a lot better than what we've got and it makes life a lot easier. So, very excited about its potential, and it's still very, very early.”
2023-06-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spikeball: Chris Ruder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I'm very, very excited about Fwango. Fwango is a platform that makes running tournaments much, much easier. So created for RoundNet, and this gentleman Alex Tuzel, he was running RoundNet tournaments. And I think he, like most others, I think it was like a Google Doc or something that they were using to run the event. And it was very clunky. So he designed it and started using it. And then other tournament directors started asking him about it. And he's like, yeah, you can use it. Go ahead. And everybody fell in love with it. And we became friends with Alex and said, hey, Alex, would you be up for selling your business? Like, we'll buy it and you join us as a full-time employee, but you keep doing what you've been doing. You'll just have some more resources. And the exciting part we've been seeing the last few months is there's fairly significant interest from the pickleball world.”
2023-06-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spikeball: Chris Ruder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I've got three kids at home, 100% of my income now is from Spikeball, and I cannot believe I just quit a cushy corporate job. I'm toast. And then a year or so went by and didn't really feel anything. We kept growing. And then another one showed up and then another one. And I think there's like over 40 now or something like that.”
2023-06-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spikeball: Chris Ruder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Lower end, you know, the same shape in general, same concept. And I was at the toy fair in New York when I first saw it. So I was absolutely terrified. I'm like, there's absolutely no way we can compete.”
2023-06-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spikeball: Chris Ruder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, we do have some patents that have been filed for, some that have been accepted, but yeah, the general concept is not protected. And I remember when I think the first one showed up in 2014 or 15.”
2023-06-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spikeball: Chris Ruder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I was just having this out of body experience. Like, I can't believe I'm standing in a field in Belgium watching a group of Japanese people play a group of Mexican people round that, you know, nothing more gratifying than to see that this is what Millions of people are choosing to do”
2023-06-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spikeball: Chris Ruder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I absolutely think we will be recognized by the Olympics. I think there will be professional roundnet players, and we will be considered a legitimate sport. The one thing that is a bit unique about us is that this is all being driven by the players, by the community. So, you know, I didn't sit in a conference room with some other spikeball employees and say, huh, we should start doing tournaments. Groups of friends were getting together with like a clipboard and drawing up some brackets, and the competitive juices were flowing. Same with the Olympic recognition, the IRF formed, and their tagline is paving the pathway to the Olympics. They are the ones studying what is needed, what's required. And I think you need, I don't know, 60 or 70 countries to have governing bodies. We've already got 37. That's a pretty darn good start.”
2023-06-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spikeball: Chris Ruder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I came up with the name around that. But as tournaments started becoming more and more of a thing, different leaders within the community started speaking up saying, hey, I like this rule or I don't like that one. And yeah, it sort of emerged that governing bodies started coming around. pretty well developed right now. You know, there's the International RoundNet Federation. That's sort of the global governing body. I think it's 37 countries also have governing bodies, and they all report up and into the IRF.”
2023-06-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spikeball: Chris Ruder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's a super boring word when you think about it round net. But if you take away everything you know about the name basketball or football or baseball, those are all pretty boring names as well. But what you know about the sport, all the brands, the athletes, etc., that's why you get excited when you hear those names. And when I did come up with the word roundnet, part of me, I'd say 10% of me was like, don't do it because I of course want the whole world saying the word spike ball, but 90% of me was like, look, if you are that controlling, this thing will probably never get, the sport definitely will not get to the size that I think it can be.”
2023-06-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spikeball: Chris Ruder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And she saw how we were using the name Spikeball as the name of the sport. And sometimes in a generic fashion. And she and some other folks I spoke with said, yeah, you need a name for the actual sport similar to baseball, basketball, football. You know, those are all generic terms that nobody owns the rights to. And I remember thinking like, okay, what makes our product unique? Well, the biggest thing, I believe, is it's a round net.”
2023-06-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spikeball: Chris Ruder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Absolutely. So Spike Ball is a company that makes equipment for the sport of RoundNet. I got to know a woman named Mary Horwath. She's the former chief marketing officer of Rollerblade. And she was there back in the 90s when it absolutely exploded. And back then, people were using the name rollerblade. A lot of people were using it in a generic fashion. Let's go play rollerblade hockey. Let's go rollerblading, etc. And she realized that if people kept using it that way, that they could potentially lose their trademark and rollerblade would become a generic term. So she is the one that coined the phrase or the term inline skates. So that's why at the X games there is no competition, no rollerblade competition. There's an inline skating competition.”
2023-06-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spikeball: Chris Ruder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it was massive. It was the final segment of the season finale. So yeah, we had a massive party at our office. Huge sales on spikeball.com that weekend. And in the weeks to follow. But the real lift was we started getting tons of inbound requests from retailers, primarily like smaller mom and pop sporting goods stores, toy stores, et cetera. And yeah, the thing I didn't plan for or think about was reruns. So we got that initial pop, which was amazing. And also it's a big pop, but a lot of people also DVRd it. So they'd watch it a few weeks later. But reruns are still running to this day. So it's this gift that just keeps giving.”
2023-06-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spikeball: Chris Ruder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Quite align with how I wanted to take the business. And when I expressed some discomfort with that, he said, okay, how about we license it? He's like, I got some friends at the NHL. Let's make some NHL team sets. And I was like, licensing in general, at least at this stage for our business, doesn't feel right. I want to build our own brand. Yeah, you know, we never officially called the deal off, but as some relationships go, you just kind of stop calling each other. And that's kind of how it went.”
2023-06-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spikeball: Chris Ruder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so we filmed in, I think it was September of 2014. And I think I spoke with him maybe like a month or two after we filmed. That was the first time I spoke with him since filming. And he was nice. He said, look, Chris, we can do the deal at what we agreed to on the show, or we can throw that deal out. And if you want to do something different, I'm open to that. And when we talked about sort of what direction it would be or what do we want to do, his main interest lied in licensing. So I think he said something along the lines of, you know, Chris, I've got friends at Marvel Comics. Let's maybe explore like a Spider-Man branded set or something along those lines. And while that sounds kind of cool, it kind of felt like we were treating it like it was a toy. And, you know, I consider ourselves like a sporting goods business. I want this to become a legitimate sport. And that didn't...”
2023-06-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spikeball: Chris Ruder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, the sharks were all super nice. And I do think when, whether it's Mark Cuban or the other sharks, I think if you see them taking some jabs at the entrepreneur, I think it's usually because the entrepreneur didn't come prepared or one thing that I also have noticed when watching the show is if they get a feeling that the person is there just to get exposure and they don't actually want to get a deal, they really don't like that.”
2023-06-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spikeball: Chris Ruder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, yeah, the way it works is you, of course, fill out an application like a paper application, but then they want you to send in a video and it's super low budget, just a selfie video of you telling your story. And you send in version one and then the producers give you some tips and they say, okay, why don't you tighten this up or tell us more about this or maybe go outside where you've got better lighting? I felt like I went through maybe three or four versions of each video becoming better and better. And yeah, eventually made it to the point where they said, all right, Chris, here's the dates we're going to film. So come on out.”
2023-06-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spikeball: Chris Ruder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I was like, you're crazy. We're growing like crazy. We just got to exporting goods. Like, what are you talking about? And he said, Chris, sometimes companies die from growing too fast. I think the line is you die from indigestion, not necessarily starvation. And what he showed me in very clear. To a wholesale one where you're going to have to wait a couple months and you're going to need to figure out how to do that transition. Terrified me”
2023-06-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spikeball: Chris Ruder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“When you're dealing with a retailer, especially the larger ones. Don't get paid sometimes two, three months after you ship it or sometimes after when they receive it. And I almost gotten some trouble in the early days not recognizing that. I was a member of this group called the Junto Institute, who's like an entrepreneurial group. And we all had to show up with our finances, balance sheet, P&L, et cetera, cash flow forecasts. And I remember showing it to the instructor, and he said, Chris, you realize you're going to go out of business and run out of cashier in a couple months”
2023-06-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spikeball: Chris Ruder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It did. I remember I think the product had been on the store shelf for literally four or five days or something like that. And Dix reached out and said, guys, sales data is off the charts. We're ready to go all in when you are, but we'll go at whatever pace you want. The first couple days were incredible. And then we eventually added, I think, maybe another 50 and then 100. And I think they have north of 700 stores now or 800 something like that. And the tricky part, though, was Wildly different cash cycle when selling to a dick sporting goods than selling on spikeball.com. When you sell on spikeball.com, you literally get that money in your bank 24 to 48 hours after the person buys it.”
2023-06-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spikeball: Chris Ruder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Do well. Maybe we add another hundred or two hundred, but we'll eventually get to all stores, but the risk to go in all of them on day one, that's just too much for me. And they said, yeah, we'll go whatever speed you want to, Chris. So that's how we got in.”
2023-06-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spikeball: Chris Ruder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They emailed us, and when I saw it, I was like shocked. I was like, wow, I thought if we were ever to go into Dick Sporting because we'd have to call them and beg and plead. But I remember my initial response was I didn't say this to them, but I remember thinking like, I'm not sure I really want to go into dick sporting goods because, you know, that's a big box store. And we're spikeball. We're this like cool cult underground brand where we're kind of too cool for that sort of thing. And I remember talking to a friend of mine and I said this to him and he kind of smirked and I forget exactly what he said, but he essentially said, Chris, get over yourself. This is dick sporting goods. Like, are you kidding me? That's exactly what I needed to hear. Dicks did want to go in all stores. I was nervous because I was like, wait, if we go into all stores and we fail, they're not going to give us a second shot. So I said, all right, how about this, guys? Let's start with maybe 25 or 50 stores.”
2023-06-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spikeball: Chris Ruder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They find out about you. I was floored. I was like, wait, what? I'm not sure how. You know, people were playing in very high visible areas. So Harvard was one of the first colleges to really take off with this and they're playing in Harvard Yard where tons of tourists, international tourists, Sheep's Meadow in Central Park, tons of people playing. So I would imagine some employee at Dick's kind of stumbled on it and was like, huh, This is kind of cool. Let's take a peek.”
2023-06-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spikeball: Chris Ruder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yep, yep, that's when Scott Palmer, our current COO, joined. And yeah, it was about a year later that when Dick's boarding goods actually reached out to us and said, hey, we'd love to carry your product.”
2023-06-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spikeball: Chris Ruder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. So we had a million dollars with zero full-time employees in 2013. And that's when my wife and I agreed it was safe to quit the day job.”
2023-06-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spikeball: Chris Ruder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Still just me, and I forget what year that we kind of outgrew my basement, but got a larger self-storage unit in my hometown in Kankaki about an hour away. So whenever my basement would start running low on inventory, I'd drive down there, bring those back to my house in Chicago, put them in the basement. That inventory may last a couple weeks. And then, you know, depending on the time of year, go back to Kankake, reload the car, et cetera. And yeah.”
2023-06-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spikeball: Chris Ruder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I was getting literally zero. And we were spending next to nothing on advertising. So, yeah, manufacturing the sets was by far the biggest expense we had.”
2023-06-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spikeball: Chris Ruder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I believe the initial raise we did to start the company was maybe 100 right around 100,000. And then I think it was in year three. I think we raised another 20,000 from the same guys. And that is what got us through.”
2023-06-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spikeball: Chris Ruder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I did not initially, I knew it was very popular in central Pennsylvania, especially Lancaster, Pennsylvania. And we got an email from a reporter. Saying, Chris, I'd love to interview you about the Amish and Mennonite influence or participation and spike ball. And I was like, holy smokes, what a dream to get a note like that from the Wall Street Journal, but not in a million years did I think that would be the topic. And I had seen some pictures on social media before of people in what I would consider traditional Amish clothing or Mennonite clothing playing. And yeah, we wound up getting a front page story on the Wall Street Journal on that topic.”
2023-06-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spikeball: Chris Ruder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Absolutely. Yeah, they'd tell us, like, you know, we're always looking for cool new innovative games. One thing we did hear from them, which I loved, they're like, you know, of a group of, let's say a class of 25 kids, there's usually three to four that are pretty difficult to engage. You know, they may not want to participate and do what everybody else is doing. But when we bring out the spike ball nets, those are the kids that are most wanting to engage and they're most into it. So that was one draw of it. We've heard from teachers that have students in wheelchairs and stuff. And I've seen countless videos of four kids in wheelchairs playing, and they absolutely love it.”
2023-06-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spikeball: Chris Ruder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yep, and they would call it ultimate. I learned that. I used to think it was called Ultimate Frisbee, but they corrected me. And I think they were attracted to this sort of odd slash alternative slash niche nature of spikeball. Yeah.”
2023-06-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spikeball: Chris Ruder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I'd see that. And then, yeah, as I, you know, again, it was only available on SpikeBill.com. So I'd see the emails come in and I'd start seeing more email addresses that ended with at YoungLife. And I was like, okay, this is starting to the fire is growing.”
2023-06-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spikeball: Chris Ruder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I thought I was on to something, and back then I was also reading a lot of Seth Goden books. And I remember him talking about how you need to give away a ton of your product for free. If the product can't really travel on its own, it can't market itself, then you might not have that great of a product. So as I'm talking with Eve, I was like, oh, do you have any other young life friends that you think may be into some free sets? And she'd give me some names and I'd ship them. And I then stumbled on, went to the Young Life website and saw that there was a directory of like, I think they call them Young Life Leaders, like a global directory open to the public.”
2023-06-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spikeball: Chris Ruder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it's massive. And I had never heard of it. But yeah, asked the question, how'd you hear about it? And she said something along the lines of, oh, yeah, I work with Young Life, and it's becoming very popular with our kids. And sorry, Googled Young Life. And yeah, I think there's like literally millions of high school kids that are a part of this all over the world. She explained to me that, I don't know if it's every week or every couple weeks the kids get together at somebody's house. So there may be like 50 kids in somebody's living room. And I believe it's like a two-hour meeting. The first hour I believe they're talking about their faith And then the second hour is some sort of group activity. And the preferred activity, at least in suburban Nashville, was Spikeball.”
2023-06-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spikeball: Chris Ruder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That was the general format. And I wanted people to know that there's an actual human behind this business. And it wasn't this just kind of nameless, faceless thing. I think people, when they got that email, they were kind of confused like, wait, the CEO is emailing me saying that he's going to personally drive this box to the post office? What is going on here? But I think a lot of people were intrigued by it.”
2023-06-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spikeball: Chris Ruder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Let's say it was somebody that lived in San Francisco, a guy named Mike. And the order came through. I would send Mike an email saying, Hey, Mike, thanks for the order. I'm actually going to head to the post office tonight and drop your box off so it should arrive there, I don't know, Thursday. See you live in San Francisco. I used to live there. What an absolutely beautiful city. If you don't mind me asking, how did you hear about Spikeball?”
2023-06-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spikeball: Chris Ruder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Not because I was going to really get value from it. And I think, yeah, by the time I got to page three, I'm like, no, I actually need to work on a Facebook post or an email newsletter or trying to find some content rather than, you know, I'll get back to this document And I never did to this day, we don't have a formal business plan, but yeah.”
2023-06-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spikeball: Chris Ruder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Had been gathering the email addresses, so I do like an email newsletter. I don't remember if it was once a week or two a week or something like that. That was part of it. It's interesting to hear you say what was the plan? Like, I remember Googling how to write a business plan. And I found a format. It was like, I don't know, a 20 page document or something. And you could just basically start filling in the blanks. And I think I made it to page three before I gave up. And I remember thinking, like, am I really going to get value from this? Oh, I should do it because business plans, that's what real businesses do. And I hope Spikeball one day would become that. But I was almost doing it almost as if I feel like obligated. Like that's what you're supposed to do.”
2023-06-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spikeball: Chris Ruder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right. But again, if the lens I'm looking at this through is it's a fun side job. And okay, if we did 10,000 this year, if we can do, I don't know, 15,000 next year, that'd be amazing.”
2023-06-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spikeball: Chris Ruder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and actually, I didn't know if 10,882 was good or bad. It was 10,882 more than we had the year prior, right? So we hadn't even launched.”
2023-06-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spikeball: Chris Ruder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I consider nearly all of those pity sales, you know, people that didn't necessarily want the product are like, oh, Chris and these guys are starting this new company. We'll support them. And I see all the orders coming, and I knew nearly every single name in that month of June. But we finished that year at, I believe, 10,882 dollars.”
2023-06-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spikeball: Chris Ruder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I thought it was pretty good. And then I think in July, I think we did like $700. I was like, oh my god, what's happening? Right, because”
2023-06-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spikeball: Chris Ruder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right. But once you have that first rally or that first spike, you're hooked. And that's where you can literally see the light bulb go off and that person smiles a little bit more. Maybe they start talking some trash to their friends. But as long as they're willing to play for five to ten minutes, they'll get it. But if they give up before then, our chances of keeping them are pretty low.”
2023-06-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spikeball: Chris Ruder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Walking up to them, I thought, I'm like, you know, because the rules of the games are nearly identical. So walking up to these players, I was pretty confident they're going to love it. And they played. And like anybody that plays, those first five to ten minutes, it's kind of awkward. You don't know how far the ball is going to go. You don't know if you should have a flat hand or kind of cup it a little bit. And, you know, these were also two on two volleyball players. So, you know, you got to be a pretty good athlete to play two on two. So they were used to being at the top of their game. They were used to looking pretty good when they play their sport. And they looked like absolute fools when they were.”
2023-06-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spikeball: Chris Ruder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Grassroots marketing is what it's officially called, but in our world, what that meant was going down a North Avenue Beach in Chicago. And yeah, we had like a Thursday night league that we'd play. So I just started emailing a bunch of friends that lived in the area. Yeah. Like, and anytime I'd see somebody stop their bike or stop running and just kind of look at us, I'd like walk up to them, introduce myself. Oh, I'm Chris Ruter just started this company. And we got a league here. If I can get your email address, would love to add you to the newsletter. And I literally had a clipboard and a pencil. And that's how our email list began. Other times I'd see people playing volleyball and I'd walk up to them with this weird trampoline looking thing. ask people if they wanted to play. And yeah.”
2023-06-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spikeball: Chris Ruder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We somehow need to reconcile that. And eventually, everybody was on board, and I thankfully hit all three years of the sales numbers. It wound up working out for everybody.”
2023-06-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spikeball: Chris Ruder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We want to be involved. We're pumped that we invested. But the day-to-day work isn't really of interest. So we came up with a plan that said, okay, guys, I'm going to essentially going to do all the work, but I need to somehow be compensated for that. But the company really doesn't have any money to pay me. So I came up with, I think it was like a three-year plan where if I hit certain sales numbers, I would earn stock from them. If I didn't hit the number, then I don't get anything. And some of the guys were cool with that, some were not. But, you know, I spoke with a couple of them and I'm like, guys, look, I'm not trying to be greedy here. But if I'm staying up till two in the morning working and you're asleep in bed or going to a movie or hanging out with friends, then there needs to be.”
2023-06-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spikeball: Chris Ruder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, that was never very clear in hindsight. So we did a conference call, I believe, every other week. And on that conference call, each person would sort of identify what work they were going to do during those next two weeks. And I remember at times it felt like my role would kind of be like, you know, just nagging, just like, hey, this work didn't get done. What's going on? And like, it got fairly frustrating. And I remember talking to my brother a month or two later. And he said something along the lines of Chris. I think what we're learning is most of us, I think, want to be silent partners.”
2023-06-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spikeball: Chris Ruder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT