Can you build a successful consumer brand without raising venture capital, quitting your job on day one, or chasing hypergrowth?

In this episode of the Growth Mavericks Podcast, Adam Callinan sits down with Ryan Dunlop, co-founder of Love Sweat Fitness, to explore how he and his wife Katie spent years building a loyal fitness community before ever launching products.

Ryan shares why keeping their full-time careers actually became a competitive advantage, how community became their greatest product-market fit, and why they intentionally avoided retail despite early opportunities from major retailers.

The conversation dives into bootstrapping, profitable growth, customer obsession, paid media, ecommerce strategy, and why founders should build businesses around the life they want—not someone else's definition of success.

Whether you're launching your first business, scaling an ecommerce brand, or wondering if venture capital is really the only path, this episode offers practical lessons from founders who chose patience over pressure and built a durable business that continues to grow.

Key Takeaways

Why you don't have to quit your job to become an entrepreneur.
Building a community before building products.
How Love Sweat Fitness turned trust into product-market fit.
Why saying no to retail accelerated long-term growth.
The power of bootstrapping versus raising venture capital.
Creating profitable paid media through authentic storytelling.
Why founders should focus on customer problems—not products.
Lessons from building alongside a spouse.
The importance of patience and long-term thinking.
Designing a business around your desired lifestyle—not hype.

Chapters

00:00 Why entrepreneurship doesn't require quitting your job

01:40 Ryan's entrepreneurial upbringing

04:30 Lessons from PepsiCo and corporate America

08:30 Building Love Sweat Fitness

13:40 Why community creates product-market fit

18:20 Finally cracking paid media

21:20 Managing criticism while building a public brand

28:00 Six years before going full-time

32:00 Bootstrapping vs. venture capital

39:00 Community-driven product development

41:30 Entrepreneurship, fitness and mindset

43:20 Final thoughts

Explore:

Love Sweat Fitness
https://lovesweatfitness.com

Ryan Dunlop
https://www.instagram.com/ryandunlop/

Growth Mavericks Podcast
https://www.growthmaverickspodcast.com

Pentane
https://www.pentane.com

Creators and Guests

Host

Adam Callinan

Adam Callinan is the founder of Pentane, a financial and advertising command center that empowers brands to drive predictable revenue and intentional profit. Previously, Adam co-founded BottleKeeper, a bootstrapped consumer brand that scaled to $8M in sales within three years – without employees – and was later acquired in 2021 as an eight-figure business with a team of four, marking Adam's second successful exit.

What is Growth Mavericks?

This podcast dives deep into the tactical moves that drive business success, as well as the mental and physical resilience required to sustain it.

Hosted by Adam Callinan, a seasoned entrepreneur with multiple exits, an avid outdoorsman, and an family man with crystal-clear priorities, each episode unpacks real-world challenges, actionable insights, and the mental and physical disciplines that fuel long-term personal and professional growth.

Whether you’re scaling a startup or refining your mindset, disrupting your default is how business and life strike a balance.

Adam Callinan (00:00)
Today we're to talk about why building a real business does not require quitting your job, raising a pile of money, and forcing growth before you're ready. Sometimes it can take six years of nights, weekends, and working on vacations to build enough trust or enough community or enough momentum to finally get into a position where you can go all in. We're going to get into why community can be one of the strongest forms of product market fit.

Why some of the best products often come from listening instead of inventing?

And how Ryan and Katie finally made paid media profitable by taking the product out of the ad and focusing entirely on the customer's problem. We will also get into why saying no to retail can be the right growth strategy, something that I lived very personally at Bottle Keeper, why keeping your job can actually make you a more patient and creative founder,

And how to build a company around the life you want instead of someone else's entirely different definition of success. It's a conversation about trust, patience, ownership, community,

And choosing durable growth over hypergrowth. Our guest today is Ryan Dunlop. He is the co-founder of Love Sweat Fitness. I am Adam Callanan. This is Growth Mavericks.

Adam Callinan (01:40)
So you're in you're in Southern California. let's go back to your your origin story? Were you were you the entrepreneurial kid that was, you know, organizing the neighborhood kids selling rocks to to their parents?

Ryan Dunlop (01:51)
Yeah, you know, I mean, I think from a young age my whole personality was was rooted in, you know, how can I build things, how can I create a business? yeah, everything from lemonade stands to my parents would always send me in to negotiate price on, you know, we're purchasing some little thing or out on vacation. Hey, can Ryan, you go you go see if you can get the best price from them. So it was always just something that's in my blood. And my parents were both you know, entrepreneurs and business owners and

So just kind of something I grew up with and loved. But it wasn't actually the path that I took, you know, out of college. I I worked in CPG corporate America sales and marketing for a decade. And so actually went the a different route. But I think during that time it was abundantly clear to me that you know, I was meant to do something else and meant to be out on my own. I think I moved along well in the that environment until a point where, you know, it said, Hey, wait a second.

You're not the one making the decisions here. And I said, okay. Well I don't know if this is for me then. So yeah, it was kind of interesting path.

Adam Callinan (02:49)
What was the C P G world that you're operating in?

Ryan Dunlop (02:52)
Yeah, so I spent I spent about seven years working for PepsiCo in a variety of functions running operations for San Diego markets. I ran sales for, you know, high level convenience and drugstore chains. And then I worked for Denone Waters, so Evian water for about three years. in similar capacity, building out route to market and you know, just running that

that business from, you know, pretty much across the country, building that network of distributors and salesmen. And so yeah, very different than what I do now, but also very similar in a lot of ways because we take a lot of learnings from that and apply it to what we're doing on the supplement side.

Adam Callinan (03:32)
So you went from super entrepreneurial kid, grew up in a super entrepreneurial household to the biggest CPG like humanly possible. Pepsi.

Ryan Dunlop (03:39)
Yeah.

Yeah. And it it was good, you know, like it was good experience, but I think just living in that environment is so limiting, right? Like you you really can only do what's inside the bounds of the corporate shadow and and and the level of creativity there I think is is minimal and intentionally so. And so for me, I think that was something that just didn't fit with my personality. And you know, I think it was like at times it was welcomed.

It was like, wow, there's some different ideas coming here. We're we're kind of pushing the boundaries. It's exciting. And then you get too far with it, they say, Hold up one second. That's further than we we can't do that here. We don't do those things. And, you know, for me that was just too limiting. So you know, we always had I always had this idea in the back of my mind of, you know, what could we do? What could we do on our own? And it bugged me for a long time. and you get restless in those corporate environments, I think. But when you finally get out of it, it's it's pretty freeing.

Adam Callinan (04:33)
Yeah, going from decision by committee into the the wild world of entrepreneurship. You mentioned that there was a lot that you took from that experience into the entrepreneurial world. Can you what are some examples of of things that you learned there? Good or bad? I mean, a lot of stuff we learn is from scar tissue and pain.

Ryan Dunlop (04:49)
Definitely. I mean, I think on the good side, you know, just the relationships that I built across that category and and all of those, you know, retail outlets and how they operate and run business. I think that was one thing that's actually led us as a company at Love Swift Fitness to avoid retail, at least for the early part of our journey is you know, I saw the ins and outs of what goes on in a retail business, even at the level of a a PepsiCo.

and the struggles and the financial commitments and you know the some of the unreasonable things that are done you know between brands and distributors and retailers and so that that was actually really powerful for us to say, you know, on the day one that we launched Love So Fitness Nutrition, our supplement line, you know, we actually got a call from from Erwan and and they said, you know, we hey, we'd like to look at bringing you guys in. And to us that was so exciting. We said, my gosh, like

This is fantastic. Of course, of course we'll do this. But I was able to take a step back from my experience and say, hold on a second. Like there's a lot of expectations that come along with getting into retail. And if you don't do it right the first time, you know, you're setting yourself up for failure long term. And so that was good learning for me to be able to pump the brakes for us for a bit. We did, you know, go down the road with them a little, but eventually we said, you know what, it's not the right time for us to do this. And it still hasn't been the right time. not that it won't be someday, but

I think a lot of learnings that I had from my time at Pepsi and a and at Evian just led us to say, you know what, that's not gonna be the right decision because I know it can happen to a brand that that takes that on too early.

Adam Callinan (06:19)
Early on in in our bottle keeper days, I read an article, I don't remember where. I wish I did find it. That would be amazing. About GoPro. And their what I took from the article was their stance on entering retail was similar. And granted, it's you obviously GoPro physical products in an entirely different space than consumables and like the true classical CPG world. But their position was that they wanted to first

build entirely direct to consumer to be able to control and own the customer. And that by the time they went in to and they were bas they were telling the story in reverse, like they were already in Best Buy, which was their first major retail expansion. But the the point of that is by the time they went into Best Buy, it they had so much leverage over the consumer that they were effectively able to, you know, I'm sure they weren't maniacal about it, but like dictate the terms, dictate where it goes, dictate map pricing, dictate everything.

And we had and so I I executed from that experience the exact same thing at Bottle Keeper, similar to what you were talking about. We had a ton of customers come early on that wanted to sell it in their stores and we just told them no. And it's hard to say no to money. Like when you're early on and you need the money, it's really hard to say no, but it's so important to to keep the that focus, the guardrails on.

Ryan Dunlop (07:20)
It is. It is.

Yeah,

and and and we really think our compet competitive advantage is our relationship to the customer and how close we can stay to them, how much we can listen to them, and how we can develop that relationship. And I think the amount of things that we do to connect with our customers beyond just selling them a product is where we stand out. And so when we think about moving that into retail and customers finding us potentially for the first time.

not having that bridge built or not having a big enough infrastructure to eventually reach that retail customer. For us as a brand, like we don't think we can do everything that we want to in order to create an experience that's on brand for us and that feels like Love Swift Fitness. And so, you know, that's I think that's important. Exactly what you said is like, of course, we could go do it and and the money sounds great and the the visibility and it looks sexy to put it on LinkedIn and say, hey, we're in this store. But at the end of the day, like that's not

That's not what our business is built on and not who who we're focused on being. you know, we ultimately just want to produce great products for happy customers. And the best way we can do that we know is just going direct to them right now.

Adam Callinan (08:30)
So how did the concept for this brand come about?

Ryan Dunlop (08:33)
Yeah, so Love Swift Fitness originally started as a Instagram page. it was my wife Katie sharing her 45-pound weight loss journey. And she started to build a community of people that really just connected with her story back in 2014. And from there, we, you know, evolved those channels into a blog, into a YouTube channel, which is now our our biggest channel. And then the supplement line came out of YouTube. It was Katie would make morning routine videos.

Very consistently. And every video, she would be mixing a blend that she put together. She'd go to Whole Foods and she'd buy, you know, eight different ingredients, all these adaptogens and superfoods, and she'd mix them into her coffee. So every time we'd post that video, all of our community would comment saying, Hey, what's in your coffee? Like, I need to know. What are you, what are you putting in there? And she'd say, you know what? It's just, it's too much. Like, I can't line all this out for you. And honestly, it's too expensive. Like, you don't want to go do this. It's just, I'm a weird, I'm I'm weird. This is a me thing.

And we we would still get people every single time saying, No, no, no, no, we wanna, we wanna know. And eventually that led Katie and I to start saying, Hey, you know what? Like maybe we could put this together into a product. Is that possible? And about that time, our manufacturer who we still work with today reached out to us cold and just said, Hey, have guys ever thought about starting a product line? And we said, you know what? Yeah, actually we have. let's let's talk about this. And so, you know, we always like to

Think of our line as being born from our community's request from day one. And that's still how we develop products today is, you know, Katie looks for solutions to common problems that women have. And she starts to solve them hersel, herself in a way that's different than just what's on the market right now. We don't we don't like me too products. We like things that are interesting and different. And and so yeah, so that's how the first product was born, and that's how we still develop products to to twenty twenty six.

Adam Callinan (10:17)
There's something really incredible in here. There's a lot of things really incredible in here. The first is that note to listener, nothing happens overnight. We're talking a decade more, so we're gonna spend some time on that. But the other is is the building the community first. I think ninety-eight percent of the time. I totally just made that number up to be clear. People come up with a product that solves their own problem.

Ryan Dunlop (10:26)
Yeah.

Fe it feels right. I know where you're going.

Adam Callinan (10:42)
And they think, well, other people must have the same problem. And they probably do. And then they test it and they go and they like go to the world and say, Great, I just spent 10,000 or 100,000 or whatever it is on this product. And now I have a company. Buy it. And there's nobody there because they don't have the community. There is something so incredible and invaluable about having and building the community first.

Was that the was there at any point in the early on in the community, was that part of the intent that eventually will get into a thing that is physical, into a product that is physic physical, or did it just really or happen organically like?

Ryan Dunlop (11:13)
I'd love to say that Katie and I were that strategic, but no, we really at that point, she just enjoyed connecting with women who were sharing an experience she went through and wanted to build a community. Instagram was still relatively new at this point. And so for us, it was like, Hey, how can we just share your experience and see if other people want to connect on it? And from there, once we started to see the response, which was pretty big, pretty fast, then we you know, we had to start putting together things for them. But

Those things ended up being, you know, free fitness challenges for a number of years that there was no revenue coming in from anything. Katie and I were both working other jobs at this time still. You know, she was doing reading intervention. and I was, you know, working in the the CBG world. And so these these products that we eventually ended up creating, I think that just built over time. And we said, even once we realized this was a business and we started creating things like ebooks that we eventually sold.

As some of our first products, when we built our mobile app, which you know ended up coming out before the supplement line, all those things came just because we had a community of people that were looking for somebody they trust to give them products that they felt good about. And I think that's like a big responsibility. We take that as like something really, really important that's not that's not given, it's it's earned over time. And so, yeah, I think that look, whether you have a product in mind that you want to build or

you just have a story that you want to share. I think building that community of people around you first to see if there's that like to us, that's product market fit. Is do you have a community of people that connect with you, especially today? that is the product market fit that we're looking for beyond can we come up with the most innovative product nobody's ever heard of? That's hard to do. If you if you got that, you know, kudos to you. I think that's that's incredible. and maybe that doesn't require quite as much, but I think for most people,

They want to connect with people. They want to buy from people. And for us, like that, we really believe in that we want to be a place where women can come and feel like all of their needs when it comes to wellness, nutrition, fitness, can be taken care of in one spot. And they have one, you know, singular person or a company that they trust to help them with that. And that's our mission. That's our charge. And so yeah, we we really believe in community building still to this day. And we can talk about it, but there's a number of things we do.

to connect with our community from town halls on Zoom where we have hundreds of women join us and we just get their feedback. We just listen. We just wanna know what they want, what they like, what they don't like. We still do that stuff today because it's as important as it was back in twenty fourteen.

Adam Callinan (13:41)
If you were to start today knowing what you know about community building, and I'll I'll caveat with taking into account that the value of a community today, I believe is 10x, maybe it's a hundred X the value of a community a decade ago because of AI. And we can spend some time on that. But how would you if you wanted to build an outdoor community?

You were selling an outdoor camping product and you wanted to build a community in and around the the outdoors as an example. Like how would you go and start to execute that?

Ryan Dunlop (14:09)
Think to what you said a minute ago is where I'd start is a lot of people think of that as okay, I have this outdoor product, so then I'm going to share this outdoor product, and people who are like-minded, who are interested in this product, then will gravitate to me. But I think what happens is when you do that, nobody gravitates towards you because they see products all day. You know, you scroll on Instagram or TikTok, and every fourth thing is an ad. People don't want to be sold to in that way anymore. And so

For us, I think is a interesting parallel to your question. You know, for years, when since we started the supplement line back in 2021, we tried to run paid media advertising on Meta and Google and TikTok. And it never worked. And agencies were were flabbergasted. They couldn't understand it. They say, You guys have such a great social following. How, how is this not working? I got understand how we can't get this done for you guys. And we'd say, we don't know either. Hey, we'd love for you you're the ones that's supposed to figure it out. But we actually took over paid media this year.

Started running it ourselves. And we made one important change. And that important change was the creative itself does not show the product at all. We talk about the pain points that people are experiencing that the product eventually solves, but we don't even show the product. And the product is talked about in the caption. And for the first time ever for this year in 2026, we're running profitable paid media. And I really believe that that comes from talking about the

problems people are having, the pain points that they're experiencing and relating to them and understanding their struggle. And I think so for someone building what you're talking about, I'd start the same way, but I just start on organic. And we're seeing great success with this across Facebook, Instagram, TikTok is we do the same thing. You know, we focus on what are you struggling with? And how can we relate to that and talk about our experience with it. And Katie can demonstrate that for you and show you her story. And so I'd start there.

is is posting about those things, not worrying about the product. If you have the product, that's great. Put it in your bio. People will find it once they trust that that you're somebody that understands what they're going through. And I think if you start that way, you just end up building a group of people that, you know, really believe in you and what you're doing and for good reason. Because you're willing to talk about it without having to sell them. And I think that speaks volume for for a lot of people.

Adam Callinan (16:13)
There's always gonna be a challenge, and anybody that owns an agency, I'm sorry in advance for what I'm about to say, in using third-party paid media agencies because they can't what the story that you just told is very n a lot of it is very atypical, but the part about taking it over yourself and figuring out how to do it better is very typical. And I hear it a lot from from our penting clients and I see it like in action. The reality is nobody is ever gonna think about it the way that you think about it.

Nobody's ever gonna put in the time and be laying awake in bed in the middle of the night thinking about that thing and iterat iterating through ideas. Not that that's healthy. The the way that you, the the founder operator are going to think about it. And you know, making the tweak to that ad campaign type, you know, the the creative or whatever is just it's a thing that you can iterate through so much faster.

And I'm not, you I I'm not some agencies are incredible, some are terrible. They're like doctors and lawyers and accountants. Some are great, some are terrible. but nobody's ever gonna think about it like you.

Ryan Dunlop (17:06)
Yes. Yes.

No, you're right. And I mean, I think anyone that's that runs a business can relate to the you know, to the moments at, you know, eleven, twelve at night where you get into bed, you put your phone down on the side table, then you think of something and you pick it up and you have that, you know, bright screen just staring at you, you to just send an email to yourself. You're right. I mean, that's just that's just part of it. And that's what we found as well, is like it's it's not to the fault of any of those people because so many brands run creative

completely opposite way to how we're running it right now. And it works for them, I'm sure. But for a brand like us who needs to compete in a different way, it just doesn't. And so, but I think it takes, it takes you as the founder to figure that out. And you know, we always thought, hey, we're involved with these agencies, we're hand in hand with them, but that's not enough. Like we it needs to be on us. It needs to be our responsibility to solve it. And and that's, you know, kind of the the mission Katie and I took on this year is like we have to figure this out.

to help us scale. And we're we're blessed, right? Because we've created a brand that has scaled organically through organic social and through you know, email and SMS. And it hasn't need hasn't needed paid media up until this point. And so yeah, we feel really fortunate for that. But of course we want that lever to be able to pull and to reach more people. And so it was great to be able to solve that problem.

Adam Callinan (18:22)
Yeah, adding fuel to the fire is the name of the game. Right. And that's what you're doing, right? You've already built the fire. Now you just pour more fuel on the fire. But but the the the difficulty with the agency component is that they don't feel your pain. If you lose money on those ads, it does not impact them. You may not like them, you may leave at some point, but the reality is they don't lose money by doing it. So it's there's this really odd like upside down incentive structure in that relationship that is that makes it really tricky.

Ryan Dunlop (18:28)
Hundred percent.

Yeah.

Yeah, incentives aren't aren't totally aligned. I mean, even when it's a percentage of spend, they're still not fully aligned. There's no there's no downside risk for them, but there's all the downside risk. Yeah.

Adam Callinan (18:55)
No, I th I think that's like the worst alignment. That's the most misaligned

thing can be. They spend more, they make more you know, you want them to make as much on as little spend as possible. They want to spend as much as possible. Like they're you could not be more oppositely aligned.

Ryan Dunlop (19:06)
Yeah.

Absolutely. So yeah, I think for us it's like, you know, we work with some of the best agencies out there for this, but at the end of the day, it just takes it takes the the people that know the business best and they're closest to the customer because I think that's what we decided to do is we decided to say, hey, let's just listen and and use like let's do something crazy here. Let's try to use the stuff that works for us on organic versus listening to people that say, let's let's produce a studio ad for you that looks like it's meant to be on television.

Which by the way costs a lot of money and goes takes a lot of time and all of those things. And especially in a world of AI today, which you know we use for plenty of things in the business, and it's supercharged what we're able to do, and and we love it for that. But in that world, people want to connect again with people. And so when they see Katie in the capacity that we put out on pay media as hey, it's just a person that's been through the things that I'm going through, that really connects, that really resonates. And I think, especially for someone so

So vulnerable as your health and your nutrition, your fitness, these are very like personal things. Yeah, we we have to think about it differently, how to connect with those people.

Adam Callinan (20:10)
Yeah, this is something Gary Vanderchuck talks about a lot in in today's version of paid media. And I guess we were kind of accidentally doing this just because I was trying to do it with no employees at Bottle Keeper for such a long time. We're like everything we were doing, we were shooting on iPhones and like shitty little cameras. We weren't massively overproducing crazy stuff. And even when we were up eight, you know, like reasonably big eight-figure business, we were still shooting everything. Like that was just the theme. It needed to feel like some dude shot it on his.

iPhone and hook this thing online. And so in today, like creating that super authentic content and finding the things that go viral organically and just putting money behind them. Like that's an amazing paid ad strategy.

Ryan Dunlop (20:46)
Yeah.

Absolutely. I mean, we test we test, you know, virtually everything on Facebook and Instagram first. We use trial reels on Instagram as a great testing point because you know we can serve it to our audience that knows Katie already on Instagram and their response is gonna be different than a cold audience that that doesn't know us. But trial reels has been a really cool unlock for us, both in that we, you know, send those out on Instagram, but then they cross post to Facebook in a similar capacity. And that gives us really great

insights for paid media. So I think for anyone looking to test paid media, if you're not using trial reels on Instagram as a way to test for free, I think that's a that's a big opportunity right there.

Adam Callinan (21:24)
How do you deal with the downside of being known or the downside of community? And I'm a private person, which is honestly why doing a podcast is is like me being out in the open. I don't really use social media, I haven't for a very long time. And I swear, when like someone leaves a negative comment on YouTube and I accidentally see it, it like ruins my day. How do you like create the structure? I mean, you've built this whole community.

like epic community thing. Like how do you or does she manage that or deal with that?

Ryan Dunlop (23:15)
Yeah, it it's not easy. I mean, I I feel what you're saying a hundred percent, because those comments, you know, people look, I think what we've learned is people leave them and they I think they honestly most of the time believe that the creator of the content will never even read it, that they don't even pay attention to and they don't even look at it. And so I think whether they know that to be true or not, they say what they say with that in their mind. And that allows people to be

exceptionally cruel and unkind in a lot of ways. And so for us, as as a small team still that reads every comment, we respond to every DM, we respond to every email, you know, we see it all. We see every bit of it. And so I think it's easy on one side to say, you know, you build thick skin. I mean, I guess, sure. But but I think that's just like the nice thing to say. At the end of the day, we're still humans and it doesn't feel good, you know, but I think that

We try to do whatever we can to see it as feedback if if feedback is there. If it's not there, then you know we just dismiss that as that's somebody who is you know is in a worse off place in life than we are. And this is their outlet to let it out. And you just chalk it up to that. I think that's probably a more healthy way to look at it. But but yeah, it does happen and and it even happens inside, you know, our our actual community of people that that do love the brand. I mean, we I think have had points in time where

Because that relationship with Katie is so deep and so real and so honest, you know, we've had a lot of people that have felt like they want to you know, provide feedback on the direction for the brand and where we should go and what we should do. And like I said, our top priority is to listen to that. But sometimes it's, you know, we don't think it's the right direction. And and and that's hard, right? That's a hard conversation to have because we went from a brand

I think that's the the one thing that gets left out a lot is like when you build community with no product and you transition to a product, there's inevitably going to be people that were with you during the time where you weren't selling anything at all and you were giving literally everything away for free who really resent that transfer. And I think we get that. Like we understand that that's that's real. But but also like that it wasn't our whole entire business at that time, and now it is. And so

You know, we also have to make a living and we have to build this business in a way that we want to build it. But that was a hard time because we went from, you know, like I said, free fitness challenges to, well, now you gotta subscribe to our app to do the challenge. And we took a lot of heat for that and it and it wasn't fun because those are people we cared about in our community. But but I think we've, you know, learned how to work through those issues and we just try to take everything, you know, on its face. If it's good feedback, we'll process it internally, we'll work through it, we'll figure out how we get better.

And if it's just mean spirited commentary, then you just have to say, you know, this person's in a in a tough space and we just leave it alone.

Adam Callinan (25:58)
In that circumstance where you you went from the, you know, effectively entirely free platform and started moving into a paid model, did you see those detractors or the people that push back on that? Did you overall did you see them leave, like turn and leave, or did you see some reasonable percent of them actually move into the new model and if and at some point get comfortable with that?

Ryan Dunlop (26:17)
Yeah, I mean we we saw split, which was really interesting. And it it was a it was a tough time for us, I think, as the business owners, but more just more importantly, we felt like as just fellow members of this community that we had built. But we saw like a very distinct split of people that were absolutely supportive and were like, hey, you guys deliver a ton of value across all channels every single day. and this product's optional. I don't have to do it. But if I want to, I'd love to support you guys. And and I think that was like probably

90% of the community. And that was great to see. But there was a 10% that were very loud, very loud. And and so, you know, I think for a while we tried to figure out, hey, how do we how do we fix this for them and how do we make it better and how do we give them what they want? And I think that last part was really the where we realized well, there's just no way to do that. There's just some people that want something different. And if that's what they want, then you know, then maybe we we outgrew them or they outgrew us, one or the other, right? and that's okay.

And there's other people that probably deliver what they want online somewhere. And that's a great thing about the internet and social media is like there's something for everyone anywhere. And so yeah, that was a hard moment for us, but I think we just really had to to let go of some of those people at that point. And the ones that that were on the other side of it, so many of them are still with us today. We actually celebrated our the fifth birthday of the supplement line this past weekend. And the amount of emails that we got back and stories of women that

have been with us from day one was incredible. You know, they remember things that we've forgot ourselves that are just such fun moments. And so I think when you see that, it's it's reassuring that, you know, look, if you, if you do the right thing in providing value to people on top of selling them a product, then I think that's well recognized, it's noted and remembered and people stick with you for a really long time.

Adam Callinan (27:57)
Going back, you know, going back to our early commentary around the amount of time that it has taken to get to this point, which is wildly overlooked as you know, it just as humans and particularly Americans, the headlines that we read everywhere are all about overnight successes, all of which are garbage. I mean, let's be clear. The headlines are being written by media entities that make their money because you click on those things. So set that aside. But it's, you know, you

Ryan Dunlop (28:14)
Yes, yes.

Adam Callinan (28:21)
You don't enough, often enough outside of on this podcast and a handful of others, hear about like the actual what it took to get to the, you know, what the thing is today. So if we go back, this started in about 2014 was the community when Katie got moving. How long from then was it until you were both working on this full time?

Ryan Dunlop (28:34)
Yeah. Yep.

Yeah. So right, started a social media in twenty fourteen and we started selling products not probably not until two years after that. So I think twenty sixteen or twenty seventeen was when we first released some of our ebooks, so meal plans and recipe books. But but those were small, you know, that wasn't enough to to run a business. That was just kind of testing like are we delivering stuff that people actually want here?

And then it wasn't until 2019 that we released our mobile app, which was it's called Move by Love Swift Fitness. And, you know, that was from Katie was doing YouTube workout videos and they were just so popular and so loved. And people said, How how can I get more of this or how can I make it my workout program? And we said, Okay, we gotta, we gotta make an app. But that was, you know, five years after we started the community. And even then we did we weren't full time on the business at that point.

And so it wasn't until right basically right before COVID hit where you know we had at that point, I had left Evian at that time and made the decision to to go full time into this. And Katie had left her job. And so at that point we you know, not until about 2020. So, you know, six years later, this became a full-time job for us. And you know, we were still able to do a lot of great things with it.

nights and weekends and you know taking that time of you know I take vacation for a week and we'd just be working on Love So Fitness the whole time, you know, out somewhere on a on a trip. And that always seemed funny to us, but it just felt right. but yeah, I mean I not not until about six years later did we actually make this full time. And then we didn't launch the supplement line until another year or two after that, which is, you know, now really our our core business and our main focus. So you know that that's kind of the the trajectory and it does it takes such a long time.

We always talk about this. You see so much on on social of like you said, overnight successes or these companies selling for thirty, forty, you know, million dollars or billion dollars or whatever it is. And you say, my gosh, like why am I not there? And I think we always try to put in perspective, like when you're seeing that, it's either one, like you said, somewhat of a fabricated story or embellished. But two, more often, you're talking about the point one percent of companies that do that thing.

And you've obviously had some success yourself. And so there are people that that get to that that that high point in the mountain, but certainly there's so many successful brands that are at different points. And you know, just because you're not there doesn't mean you haven't succeeded. And just because you're not there in year one or year five, you know, we feel grateful to be a business that's been around in in our supplement side for five years. You know, most businesses don't make it too.

So I think if you if you're a business that's kind of crossing that threshold, I'd say that's just as big of an accomplishment as as anything.

Adam Callinan (31:20)
When you go into business, there are a lot of different paths you can take. And depending on the path you take, can have a tendency to not dictate because none of it can be dictated. It's all made up as we go. But like the businesses that that you hear about those over the overnight success, one, they're never overnight successes. They always take years. Even the point one percent that you're talking about, they still take years to develop. But what happens in those companies?

The tremendous majority of the time is they go out and they raise a bazillion dollars in venture capital. And that gives them the ability to take that venture capital and build systems and structure and invest insane amounts of money in driving revenue that doesn't make money. It's not profitable. That's why they have to keep raising money. The result of which, yeah, the result of which is at the end of it, yo, we're going there. At the end of it, the founders sell the company for 200 million dollars.

Ryan Dunlop (32:01)
I love I'm loving this podcast. Adam, I didn't know we were gonna go here. I love it.

Adam Callinan (32:10)
And they own three percent of it. So they made six million dollars. Now I'm not saying six million dollars isn't a lot of money, it is a lot of money. There's a life-altering amount of money for 99.9% of people. But what they had to do to make that outcome happen, working for effectively another entity, because you don't get to own it, you don't get to control it when you raise money like that. You is just a different game. And if you want to play that game, like more power to you.

Ryan Dunlop (32:27)
Mm-mm. No.

Adam Callinan (32:34)
There's there's there's no judgment on that. Like we all get to choose our own paths. That's not the path that I ever wanted to take. It's not the path I'm taking now. It's not the path we took at Bottle Keeper. and those are just choices. Like we all get to make the choices. But we just have to be really clear that selling a company for twenty million dollars when you own a hundred percent of it, and you got to go on vacation and enjoy time with your kids, it took a decade to do, but like you still had a life is just sounds so much better to me than than the other version where

You end up owning twenty percent of it and you have to sell it for a hundred million dollars and it's just a completely different situation.

Ryan Dunlop (33:05)
Absolutely. And I think, you know, our story on that is Katie and I we own 100% of Love So Fitness. And we started Love So Fitness with whatever the amount of money that was required to open a bank account, which I think was maybe $500. And so, you know, that's that's what we started the brand with. And that's not to say there's not like to your point, there's not other ways to do it.

But we are so glad we've done it that way. And certainly we've invested our money into the brand numerous times over the course of its life to you know expand and to grow and do all of those things. But I think that, yeah, to your point, I think that there is this perception out there in the entrepreneurship world where that is the path that everyone should take. And we fell into that for a while, you know, right around when we were launching the supplement line, we scaled up our team.

to you know a a much bigger size than we are today and still not a big size, but we we added about 10 people to our team. We were hiring, you know, director level roles and doing all these things because we saw those companies out there and we said, you know what? That's gotta be the way. Like that's gotta be how we go get this. And and I think what we found was for us it was actually just a different path. Like our business required different things. And it requires Katie and I to do what we do and to do it really, really well and to find the right support team

to to you know facilitate that, but doesn't necessarily require like a big corporate structure and we don't need to have a bunch of big meetings every day and we don't need to put together decks and we don't need to go out and pitch, you know, investors. that's just not what worked for us. And that's not the life that we wanted to to build this around. And so I think that that's always an important conversation that any business owner should have with themselves or with their their co-founders is like, what kind of life do we want to

to live from a day to day basis around this company. and then and then I think that dictates where you go and how you either raise money or don't, and bootstrap it or don't. But it's an important thing because I think a lot of people don't think about that or don't ask that question enough. And they just assume like, I gotta do what I hear out there. And I think that can be pretty detrimental to to some businesses.

Adam Callinan (35:06)
Yeah, 100% agree. And one of the things that you hear out there is that you have the idea and you have the thing and you make a little bit of traction. Then you have to quit everything that you're doing and go a hundred percent into it, which is so dangerous. And this is the perfect example of of how you and Katie did the opposite of that. You kept your jobs, like you kept income from other companies for six years.

Ryan Dunlop (35:26)
Yeah.

Adam Callinan (35:27)
While this thing was allowed to develop organically, which is which is where the power and the value is in the thing today, is that organic audience?

Ryan Dunlop (35:34)
Yeah. And

it's and it's a level of patience, you know, and I think that that having that income allows you some patience. And I think that's what people undersell with that is like it's sexy to say, if you believe in it, quit everything and go all in. Otherwise, I don't know that you believe in it. well that that makes for good clicks on social media, but like in life, it doesn't really work.

And I I'm a big believer in this. I've said this a lot, is like I I'm not a believer in quit everything and and just go all in on the company. I think that the stronger companies can actually evolve over time and build with you while you're doing something else. And you there's nothing wrong with de-risking that a little bit. Like you you should de-risk that because you're talking about your life, right? and so yeah, I think for us, like we we love that process of doing it. I think it actually

Proves out commitment to the business more than if you quit everything. Because if you quit everything, it's really hard to then quit the new thing you just started. But if you don't quit everything, if you do your other job, if you have a safety net, it's really easy to quit the thing you're starting. You can do that anytime because you have a safety net. You can go back to your job. So hey, if the brand you started is not working out, like that's okay. You still have your other stuff. But

If you really believe in it, if it's really gonna work, well then you're not gonna quit that thing while you still have these other jobs. And so I think it's actually like a reverse pro proving ground for are you really invested in this? Because if you force yourself into it, you're gonna have to be invested. If it's something that you're building on the side, you'll be invested if it's good enough and if you care enough about it. That's just how we think about it.

Adam Callinan (37:08)
And as entrepreneurs, you our job. So for anyone out there listening that's thinking of becoming an entrepreneur, this is the way that you have to adjust your brain to think. Our job is to create what's called asymmetric risk. And if you think about this, I'm a visual person. So if you think about this on a scale, we have a balanced scale. In one hand on the right, you have risk, and on the other hand, you have profit or upside, money. We want to.

Maximize the upside, maximize the profit or income potential and minimize the risk. So we need it's asymmetric, meaning it's not balanced, it's not symmetrical. At the beginning, like that, you have upside, but you also have massive amounts of risk at the beginning. So that time and allowing that thing to mature naturally and not have to force a square peg into a round hole gives you the ability to bring that risk down and make that that situation more asymmetric. Does that make sense?

Like that's all of your decision making as you get into the business revolves around trying to mitigate the risk, minimize the downside and maximize the upside. And at the beginning, there's no way to minimize the downside outside of keeping an income stream. So you can let the thing watch your

Ryan Dunlop (38:12)
Yeah.

Yeah. And and I think it allows you to be more creative. You know, I think some people find maybe creativity and and motivation in desperation, but I actually find it, you know, more in the peaceful time, in the time we step away from everything. You know, Katie and I make it a point to take time away just to go work on the business outside of our house, outside of our office, outside of normal operations. We we'll go take a few days and we'll just go somewhere else. Doesn't matter where.

can be somewhere local, can be can be somewhere on a trip, and we'll go and we'll spend that time the full time. you know, people probably see it on Instagram and they think it's like, they're on a vacation. That's nice, but we're just working the whole time. And we go and do it because when we get out of the environment and we're in the peaceful time, we really find that we can, we can stretch our ideas and we can get some fresh perspective. And you need that. So I think, yeah, like to your point, when you have that really, really high risk pressure,

It makes it challenging to to think clearly.

Adam Callinan (39:08)
Yeah. And the reality is you're gonna have that too. I mean, you're gonna have the high risk pressure. It just comes with the territory, but you know, let's not build it into the underlying foundation. So how do you, you know, it sounds like part of it is is maybe travel and getting out of your environment. How do you and Katie

Ryan Dunlop (39:18)
Yeah.

Adam Callinan (39:26)
structure your lives or what are some of the things that you do to to deal with these wild ups and downs? I mean again you you mentioned like getting out of the situation, which I think is brilliant. That's a r always a good idea. Just sort of separate from it. What else do you have you learned to to build and do over the years of doing this?

Ryan Dunlop (39:42)
Think what a little bit to what I was saying earlier is, you know, we try to come back to the things that started the brand often. And that for us is what helps us move things along better than anything. So, you know, I think you get into this mode of I have to continue pressing in all the ways that I know how as a business operator. And it's really easy to forget about where you started.

what got this going. And for us, that was our community. For us, that was connecting directly with women and asking them what they need, what they're struggling with, how things are going. And so we take that time. You know, we take that time to do, like I said, we do these quarterly community town halls where we invite our customers, both customers that have ordered from us a ton, that have hundreds of orders with us, to specifically people that just ordered for the first time, that have only ordered one time with us. And we invite them to come.

And and get on Zoom with us and we just get their feedback and we tell we should we give them a peek under the hood, show them what's coming up, what ideas we have, what we'd like to do. And sometimes they love it and we're like, great, let's move this, let's let's move on this, let's go. And other times they don't say anything, they're silent and they're like we're like, uh-oh, okay, we missed one here. And I think just doing that and getting back to the roots of of of what got this brand going gives us such great perspective to you know to get out of that that

hamster wheel sometimes that we get our minds on and you know we love doing that. But I think without that, you can get really lost in the sauce. And and and it happens to us all the time. And oftentimes we'll just kind of snap out of it and say, Wait, we need we need one of these sessions. We need to get with our community or we need to get on a call with somebody and and just talk to a customer. and we and we love doing that. I think it's important.

Adam Callinan (41:23)
How does fitness play a role? I mean, you're a fitness company. So is it the kind of thing where like you hate fitness because you have to do it all the time for work? How does that how does that fit in there?

Ryan Dunlop (41:31)
No, I mean I think yeah, it's it's part of our life. And I think that's a that's a great one as well is you know, Katie and I take the time, both because for both of us it's it's our job that we we want to show up and be, you know, the healthiest, fittest versions of ourselves to represent that for our community. I think that's important. So we put in that time to to go do our workouts and to, you know, get that time walking our steps. Like we do that every single day. Like we have to live the life that we suggest other people should live.

And so I think that's essential. That also happens to be a great release and a great mind focus time for us. Like I think the the upside of that is like you get to go get your workout in. The downside is I always tell Katie my workouts take infinitely longer than they should because I'm constantly getting ideas while I'm working out and I'm writing them down on my phone or I'm sending them to her. And so, you know, you kind of you kind of get the best and worst of both worlds there. But no, I mean that's a huge part for us. And I think for me, I was somebody who.

really focused in on my work a lot. And although we ran a fitness business for many years before, I always just felt like, well, if I ate clean and I kinda w stayed active, like that was probably fine. And and about two years ago I realized I was actually very, very overweight. And luckily my my wife and my co founder was nice enough to to not have it bug her and and she she never really mentioned it. But when I realized that, you know, I went on a journey myself, just like most of the people in our community and

lost 45 pounds myself and you know kind of mirrored Katie's story, which was pretty cool. And and so yeah, really refound that passion and that focus on on fitness and nutrition. And I think whether you run a health and fitness business or not, doing that allows me to be a better operator in the business, allows me to be a more clear-minded founder. and I think it's just it's essential. you know, it's something that really is a release, but is also a great time to

to think about your business more because it it blocks out everything and you just get to zone in on something and I think that's a good thing.

Adam Callinan (43:21)
Agree with that. Ryan, where do you want people to find you? We'll put links in the show notes for lovesweatfitness dot com. Where else are you screaming and yelling?

Ryan Dunlop (43:29)
Yeah, absolutely. I mean so they can find all things Love So Fitness on Lovesto Fitness dot com. We're on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, anywhere you find social media, we're there. And then you can find me personally at Ryan Dunlop on Instagram. I share my personal fitness story, the ins and outs of entrepreneurship and running this business and and everything else you'd want to see in between. So yeah, you can find me on Instagram.

Adam Callinan (43:51)
Exceptional. We will make sure links are in there. Thanks a ton for coming today, Ryan, and sharing the story. It's an epic story. The community thing is just I'm gonna be thinking about that.

Ryan Dunlop (44:00)
Absolutely. Thanks for having me.