YouSaid · the spoken record

Spencer Jan

lines on the record: 69
first: 2023-08-14
most recent: 2023-08-14
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

“For me, I think luck is definitely a huge part of our outcome. And the paradox is, as I think about luck, it's something you can't control. You have to realize that it's a part while at the same time working as if it doesn't matter. I think it Helps you not pat yourself on the back too hard when things go right, while at the same time not getting too hard on yourself when things don't go right. Some things are just out of your control and luck is definitely one of them.”
2023-08-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Solo Stove: Spencer and Jeff Jan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I think fulfillment's the right word. And if that takes me down a road of starting something for whatever reason, then I'll never say never. And at this current stage in my life, the most impact I can make, I think, is with my family, is with my kids and making sure that they grow up with a father at home, with the support of parents until I finish that task. I don't think I'm super hungry right now to start something that would take me away from doing that.”
2023-08-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Solo Stove: Spencer and Jeff Jan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, other than we own some equity stake and we own shares of the public company. From an operation standpoint, we're totally out Feels great to see it. I mean, we don't do anything with a company and hardly hear from them these days.”
2023-08-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Solo Stove: Spencer and Jeff Jan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's correct. We didn't sell any stock at the IPO. That IPO was truly an IPO where new stock was issued. So it wasn't a liquidity event for us.”
2023-08-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Solo Stove: Spencer and Jeff Jan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, really, that's right. I mean, it was mind-blowing to me that, you know, from being in the low nine figures just over $100 million to now being well into the mid-9 figures on this next. Private equity exit, we would sell less shares than we did the first time, but the rewards were much greater the second time.”
2023-08-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Solo Stove: Spencer and Jeff Jan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, that's right. There was this new group that wanted to come in and buy a majority stake at a much higher valuation, well north of what we had just exited for a year ago.”
2023-08-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Solo Stove: Spencer and Jeff Jan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, we were ready to be out and to kind of move to a board seat as board advisors. Man, I was so stoked to get out and to get to a point where I don't have to go into the office. I mean, all of that stress I could now shut off and spend time the way I wanted to spend it. So we moved to board seats.”
2023-08-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Solo Stove: Spencer and Jeff Jan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, those offers came in, and John said here's what one company said. And I remember us just saying we got to entertain this.”
2023-08-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Solo Stove: Spencer and Jeff Jan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, most of it came unsolicited, but yeah, it started to come in and they started to get really attractive. But I remember Jeff and I explicitly telling John, stop entertaining all these inquiries because we'll get them when we're ready to get them and they'll be there when we run a process and put it on the market and have that competitive bidding process. Just grow the business. Don't worry about selling. But as those inquiries came in, they started to throw numbers at us that we didn't ask for. And those numbers started really big and just got bigger to a point where we couldn't turn it down and we couldn't say no.”
2023-08-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Solo Stove: Spencer and Jeff Jan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Pretty much that's how it went. But time freedom and financial freedom was all we had our sights on. And anything, any means to that end was acceptable by me. And if that meant, you know, quote unquote handing my baby over to somebody else, I was ready.”
2023-08-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Solo Stove: Spencer and Jeff Jan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, John was a guy who was Really and honestly, just to ask about how to build a sales team and chatting with him, it just felt like when he left, I kind of looked at Jeff and said, this is a guy that I think could run this thing. He's very sales oriented. And he was a very energetic guy, really likable guy. And I think it was a matter of weeks. And he was in there taking the bull by the horns. If anything, I felt like we probably let go too fast. We really just, we didn't just hand over the reins. We balled them up into a tight ball and threw it at his face.”
2023-08-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Solo Stove: Spencer and Jeff Jan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. And Jeff was the one. I remember him saying that, you know, the root problem isn't our people, it's us. And we need to find somebody to replace us. And so we did. We just started talking with everybody we knew.”
2023-08-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Solo Stove: Spencer and Jeff Jan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was an exercise of trial and error. And there was a lot more error happening in those early days. And I feel really bad to those early employees. You know, we gave it our best effort. And I openly apologize to those that had to suffer through my inexperience in being a leader. I wish I was the one that could rally the troops and care about every aspect of their personal lives and work wholeheartedly to make them a better person, but it just wasn't me. I was about doing and getting things done. The problem was I wasn't excited to get better at this. I was excited about the stuff that we used to do, product dealing with marketing strategies and grow the brand and what the brand means. Those were the things that were fun and exciting. We just didn't get to do them a lot in the latter times.”
2023-08-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Solo Stove: Spencer and Jeff Jan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, it's just that. We started putting out job postings. And one of the first girls we interviewed, we told her to meet us at the Starbucks. And we didn't even order anything. That's how cheap we were. We just sat outside at the little metal tables and met this young girl who was interviewing for a customer service position. And, you know, we would promise that we will have an office if when this position is filled. And that's how rough the start was.”
2023-08-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Solo Stove: Spencer and Jeff Jan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It never felt like there were big copycats we were afraid of all the way through when we sold the company and even through those early years. I think the key to it was nobody really understood how much we were selling. It was hard to gauge. And then the second part of it, it's a very difficult product to create because we had invested a lot into custom machinery with our manufacturers. And so the barrier to entry was much higher than any other MeToo product that somebody could go get.”
2023-08-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Solo Stove: Spencer and Jeff Jan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“How difficult it is and how hard it is to pitch them, and then you got to fly to Seattle and all of this. And after hearing it all, I said, you're right, that sounds horrible. I don't want to do that. We're going to stick to selling online. But during Kickstarter, when we were doing that, we were in our first little office, which was no bigger than a shoebox. And I remember Jeff, we saw that email come through from the REI buyer and he said he wanted to carry all of our products and we couldn't believe it. But that was the one thing that I remember getting really excited over. It just felt like validation for all the years of grinding trying to build a brand, trying to, you know, create something unique. I felt like getting into REI was a badge of honor.”
2023-08-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Solo Stove: Spencer and Jeff Jan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I like to think so. I don't know. You know, in the past we thought about reaching out to REI and talked to some guys who had sold into REI.”
2023-08-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Solo Stove: Spencer and Jeff Jan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Sure, a little bit. We just wanted to show a glimmer of hope That retail was an option because when you sell a company, you're selling hope and future and future growth.”
2023-08-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Solo Stove: Spencer and Jeff Jan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, in the early days, no. And I think a big part of that was, one, the Amazon Rush was starting, but it wasn't in full force. And then two, you know, we were really quiet about things. We did Kickstarter, and that was one of the concerns we had is if people see how much we sell, then there's more likelihood that people will want to copy. But at that point, product development needed to get going and we said, well, what's next? And that led us to creating bonfire, which was our first backyard fire pit. And the other point of it was if we could show demand for the product, perhaps we could get interest from retailers, well-known retailers who we know are always looking for new product, we thought this would be a great resume builder for us to approach a potential retailer like an REI who, if we could get in, that's yet another checkmark on the box of what we”
2023-08-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Solo Stove: Spencer and Jeff Jan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Pennies on the dollar is what we did. We really just said, here's the inventory, we'll give it to you for pennies on the dollar. We got introduced to some good guys in Houston who wanted to have a stab at e-commerce. And we said, hey, you know, this is an opportunity you can go with and run with and kind of get your feet wet. Here's take it for pennies on the dollar and let's just clean up our books.”
2023-08-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Solo Stove: Spencer and Jeff Jan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“When we realize what we needed to do was build solo, we focused in and we said, let's just focus on solo and let's just forget about Fox”
2023-08-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Solo Stove: Spencer and Jeff Jan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Delicious sticks office because we were like, well, they either come to me and Jeff's dinner table or we actually find some place to look presentable. And that's how far off we were from having a company that was sellable.”
2023-08-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Solo Stove: Spencer and Jeff Jan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right, which was hard for me to understand. You know, I thought businesses were all about making money. I thought businesses were all about being profitable. And what we had was something that made a lot of money and was really profitable. And I couldn't understand why this wasn't something that everybody was bounding down the door and wanting to buy. I have a liberal arts degree, so I never understood how M&A works. I didn't even understand the term until we started selling our company that that was the term you used. And I remember one of the investment bankers we met, we had to borrow an office to even have the meeting because we didn't even.”
2023-08-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Solo Stove: Spencer and Jeff Jan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I think at the time one of the bankers told us that we could probably get about $7 or $8 million from Solo. I think that was the number in my head, in my recollection, of carving out just solo on its own. That it was if you can build that out to be a real company, then that would be a really attractive company for someone to buy.”
2023-08-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Solo Stove: Spencer and Jeff Jan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's what we thought, right? Is like here's a brand, here's a great product, here's websites that we thought were amazing and we could tell the next person exactly what we're doing, what buttons to push and how to drive traffic and what to. And we thought that was a very sellable asset.”
2023-08-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Solo Stove: Spencer and Jeff Jan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, profits, I remember between everything we were selling, I think it was a few million bucks of profits every year. So we started talking with people and said, here's our numbers, here's what we're doing, and here's how profitable it isn't in a great business. Like, are there buyers out there for this? And really, the feedback was, is like, yeah, we could find one. They're not going to be, it's not going to be a great outcome. And really your business isn't a business because it's just you two working out of your homes.”
2023-08-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Solo Stove: Spencer and Jeff Jan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Revenue at that time, I think Think was, I mean, between Fox and Solo, I was probably close to about, I want to say like seven ish million bucks, Jeff. Is that, do you think that's about right”
2023-08-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Solo Stove: Spencer and Jeff Jan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Really just talking about it with Jeff, and I remember him saying that, you know, if we're going to sell this thing, then we should maximize the outcome. But that's what we decided to do is sell the company. So we found some brokers. We had a friend in this area in the DFW area who had sold a company before, and he introduced us to an investment banker, and we found some other investment bankers through some other friends. And we just started talking to them saying, this is our business.”
2023-08-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Solo Stove: Spencer and Jeff Jan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, that was those two decisions, right? It's either let's get rid of this thing and maybe start again and keep it small and manageable from, you know, we had learned a lot of things. So it's not like we were starting from zero. We would just start another company and make it even better and more efficient. Or we hire people and get in office. And I remember”
2023-08-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Solo Stove: Spencer and Jeff Jan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I personally just had a bad experience with managing teams. I just felt like I went through 2008 having to lay off my entire team in a very short period of time. And going through that, I felt like I wasn't a great leader. I felt like I wasn't the type of person that was skilled at building teams. And I don't know if that's a narrative I just told myself.”
2023-08-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Solo Stove: Spencer and Jeff Jan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Service emails. Guys on solo stove would, they love the product so much. I mean, we didn't take phone calls early on because we tried it once. And people would just call in wanting to talk about camping and hiking. I was like, you know, old timers that had nothing better to do. And they were great, but you'd get on these calls for 30 minutes and realize like this can't happen. We got to just switch customer service to an email only. And for me, it was, it became way too much. And I just didn't want it anymore. I mean, there were times where I was like, the money's good, but, you know, this isn't worth it. And now we were approaching that point. You know, this is probably about 2016 where we have to say if we want to keep growing, we have to hire people and we never wanted to do that.”
2023-08-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Solo Stove: Spencer and Jeff Jan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Some days it felt like that. There were days, Mondays, that we would go fishing and realize that everybody else is going to work and we're going to the lake. And that felt great. But those days became very few and far between as the business continued to grow. And that quote-unquote lifestyle business was fading quickly. Everything between supply chain and fulfillment and customer service we were doing every customer service email, it was just a lot”
2023-08-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Solo Stove: Spencer and Jeff Jan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's right. Yeah. And we would do as much customization as we could to make our own unique styles or bags or sizes or whatever it was. But I mean, Millions and millions of dollars of Fox stuff. I mean, we probably all together by the time we got to about 2016, I mean, just with those two brands, we were probably doing like three, four million dollars with.”
2023-08-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Solo Stove: Spencer and Jeff Jan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Guy, just to add more flavor into this, we had started yet another brand as we were doing solo called Fox Outfitters. And Fox Outfitters was a lot of products, but they were in the camping space. So like camping mats, hammocks, stainless steel drinking cups and microfiber towels.”
2023-08-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Solo Stove: Spencer and Jeff Jan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, yeah. No, cash flow was good. It was profitable. We didn't pay ourselves anything in those first years because all the money went back into buying more inventory. Yeah, we did Kickstarter and Jeff's backyard with our kids, their feet, so you can see kicking around in that video. But yeah, that was our first foray into Kickstarter, and we did all right, and we were pleased with the results. But once Kickstarter's over, it's back to building our website and selling on Amazon.”
2023-08-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Solo Stove: Spencer and Jeff Jan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He was upset. He felt like I had talents that maybe I didn't share with him. Which I think is understandable, but then, you know, after a night's night of sleep, you know, the next day was a different tone and it was, you know, a more tone of, you know, you betrayed me. And this was, you know, we were supposed to build this together. And in my mind, I was like, this is what I was building with my brother. This was never going to be something that, yeah. You know, we were going to create and then bring every, you know, bring him on board. It was just me and Jeff's side gig that ended up blowing up.”
2023-08-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Solo Stove: Spencer and Jeff Jan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“If it's not going to be a big issue, and the problem was the bigger it got, the more I was afraid to bring it up to the guy I was working for because now it is an issue”
2023-08-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Solo Stove: Spencer and Jeff Jan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I think for me, it was just being overwhelmed with everything. It's just, we had this, I had this idea of this four-hour work week. That's why we set out to do this. And as things became too much, performance in my day job kind of slipped. It was a situation where I had a tough conversation with my boss. I called on my business partner. I gained some equity in that company I was working for. And that was a tough conversation. I mean, even now it's hard to articulate all the feelings that went into figuring that out and the misunderstandings and what I should have done maybe. But I never thought any of this would really amount to much. I thought it would be a great side hustle and why talk about it. Yeah.”
2023-08-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Solo Stove: Spencer and Jeff Jan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it was quick and fast. It was more than we expected. A first year was about half a million dollars, but In the first year of putting it out there”
2023-08-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Solo Stove: Spencer and Jeff Jan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't know if we did a lot of blogging in the early days for it. We actually spent a lot of time on making the site look beautiful and evoking emotions being in the outdoors and camping is a very emotional exercise and we really wanted to lean into that. We eventually got to the point of buying banners, ads on different sites that we thought were useful. So eventually then putting it on Amazon, which was another source of traffic and revenue. Everything we could think of to bring people to our website.”
2023-08-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Solo Stove: Spencer and Jeff Jan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, we literally just sat around thinking of names and really just at the same time searching for what domains were available that we could get. And we had gotten to the point of realizing that a long name, a long drawn-out name like ChinaBusinessTraveler.com is very hard to remember and to type in. And so we always wanted something really short and something that spoke to what we were doing. And we really thought it's the only stove you need if you're backpacking or camping. And it's great for one person. It's kind of a single person size. And so solo kind of clicked on all corners for us.”
2023-08-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Solo Stove: Spencer and Jeff Jan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Was to get the tooling paid for. It was all we were willing to put at it because we didn't know, guy, if this was going to work or not.”
2023-08-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Solo Stove: Spencer and Jeff Jan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it performed and was beautiful. I mean, a flame when it burns using the double wall design that we had in the stove, it's mesmerizing. It looks like there's jets shooting out the side of the stove. And for anybody who uses it for the first time or sees it is just kind of taken back and is like, what is going on right now? I've never seen a flame burn like that. And that's the feeling that we got when we burned this. we thought this is going to be this is going to be awesome people are going to love this”
2023-08-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Solo Stove: Spencer and Jeff Jan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Way, can you bend it this way? And perhaps I don't know what else he saw on us, but he was willing to say, hey, let's try this.”
2023-08-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Solo Stove: Spencer and Jeff Jan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's like finding a dance partner, is you really need somebody to match your level, match your size, match your stride, match your ambition. And so finding that was really just an exercise of meeting a lot of different factories, talking with them, understanding the machinery, getting my dumb questions out at the front so that when I met the next guy, it was a little bit more able to speak the lingo of different machinery needed and different welding techniques and all these different things that were needed to find that right partner. But I found a guy who was making coffee percolators for Europe. He was an engineer by trade and was very curious about what we were trying to do. And it was a puzzle for him that he became pretty obsessed on how do I make this thing if I have to make this from scratch, right? How do I bend the metal?”
2023-08-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Solo Stove: Spencer and Jeff Jan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, that's a good thought. I mean, I think one of the ideas as our evolution of thinking changed as to what was a good product, it needed to be unique. And if we were able to buy it off the shelf at some manufacturer and they're selling it to other people as well, it would be just as easy for the next guy to buy it. But no manufacturer was making this. And so for somebody, you know, if you understand how manufacturing works, nobody wants to help a little startup. And we didn't even consider ourselves that because we were like, well, we'd buy $5,000 worth of this product. Well, the tooling and dyes and everything that you need to set this product up to even try to make is more than that. Why would a manufacturer take a risk on us?”
2023-08-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Solo Stove: Spencer and Jeff Jan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, Jeff was right that time when we were playing around, we were literally getting cans out of the pantry and going buying different size cans and putting cans and cans and seeing what worked. And it is somewhat complex. It took us a while to find a supplier that was willing to work with us. And we actually shelved the idea for a year or so because it was so difficult. It was far more difficult than anything we had done up to that point.”
2023-08-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Solo Stove: Spencer and Jeff Jan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I could be able to mass manufacture these. And then with our e-commerce abilities and with our understanding of digital marketing, we could have another portfolio brand that would bring in $100,000 and be another drop in the bucket for our path towards financial freedom and the four-hour work week. I mean, the thought process wasn't complicated. It was just what's next? This looks good. Let's iterate. Let's design.”
2023-08-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Solo Stove: Spencer and Jeff Jan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That was the beauty of when we looked at YouTube and saw how people were DIYing and when we were playing with cans and cans, we realized that the airflow, how it works, just naturally makes it easier for fires to light. I mean, it's not rocket science. Fires need oxygen. And so the more oxygen you give it from different areas from underneath it, fires take a lot faster. And then it being contained within the camping stove, it's protected from wind. And then you add on the ring that sits on top, which supports the pot that's put on top. That kind of creates an added extra windshield as well. And so it naturally was easier to start fires. But we weren't thinking like we're going to revolutionize this category with something brand new. It was just, can we make a slightly better mousetrap? Right. And with my experience on the China side.”
2023-08-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Solo Stove: Spencer and Jeff Jan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it was really just what else can we sell? If we could create a site that sold $100,000 and we repeat those little niche sites 10 times, well, that's a million dollars. And for me, who was making $40,000, $45,000 a year, that's a big deal. And Jeff was probably in a similar boat”
2023-08-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Solo Stove: Spencer and Jeff Jan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT