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Starting a business is a collaborative effort, as Seth Frey, founder and president of Big Frey, discovered while navigating partnerships and industry changes in promotional products.
Seth's entrepreneurial journey began with family inspiration. Post-college, he and his brother established Granny's Goodies, offering exam survival kits to students.
Building on this experience, Seth later founded Big Frey Branded Goods & Swag Kits. He encourages fellow entrepreneurs to savor small victories and prioritize long-term objectives over short-term challenges.
This episode dives into Seth's lifelong entrepreneurial adventures, offering insights and lessons learned along the way.
***
About Seth & Big Frey Branded Goods & Swag Kits
Seth Frey is the visionary and chief innovator behind Big Frey Promotional Products, where his creative expertise and strategic acumen have set new standards in the branding world. Under his leadership, Big Frey has grown into a leading provider of distinctive promotional items, helping businesses make memorable impressions with every product.
***
About Seth & Big Frey Branded Goods & Swag Kits
Seth Frey is the visionary and chief innovator behind Big Frey Promotional Products, where his creative expertise and strategic acumen have set new standards in the branding world. Under his leadership, Big Frey has grown into a leading provider of distinctive promotional items, helping businesses make memorable impressions with every product.
Seth’s professional journey is rooted in a strong background in marketing and design. His commitment to transforming promotional items from simple giveaways into powerful brand tools reflects his dedication to excellence and innovation. This drive has positioned Big Frey as a trusted partner for businesses looking to enhance their brand reputation and presence.
Outside of the office, Seth balances his professional life with a rich personal life. A devoted family man, Seth and Karen - his greatest cheerleader of 27 years - are blessed with three wonderful daughters who keep their life vibrant and full of joy. Alongside his daughters, he has two energetic Labradors, whose playful antics and unconditional loyalty bring an extra layer of happiness to his family life. This blend of family dynamics and love for his dogs adds depth to Seth’s life, infusing his work with a sense of balance and fulfillment.
Seth is also an avid skier. He finds exhilaration on the slopes and draws inspiration from the precision and thrill of skiing. This passion mirrors his approach to business—where calculated strategy meets creativity.
With a strong commitment to both his professional and personal spheres, Seth Frey continues to drive Big Frey Promotional Products toward new heights, all while maintaining a solid dedication to his family, friends and zest for life.
To learn more about Big Frey, visit www.bigfrey.com
***
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To learn more about Big Frey, visit www.bigfrey.com
***
📧 If you or a founder you know would like to be a guest on In The Thick of It, email us at intro@founderstory.us
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Creators & Guests
What is In The Thick of It?
Join Scott Hollrah, founder of Venn Technology, as he takes you "In the Thick of It" with the real stories of founders who are actively navigating the challenges and triumphs of running their businesses. This podcast goes beyond the typical entrepreneurial success stories and delves into the messy, gritty, and sometimes chaotic world of building and growing a company. Get inspired, learn from the experiences of others, and gain insights into what it truly means to be in the thick of the entrepreneurial journey.
I think it's really important, whether it's a family
member or any partner, is to define roles.
There needs to be an opera grading agreement in place.
If this happens, who makes that sort of final decision?
If there's only two of you, somebody
ultimately has to make that decision.
Who's going to be the one responsible for sales?
Who's going to be the one responsible for operations?
You got to clearly define what those roles are.
Welcome to In The Thick of It.
I'm your host, Scott Hollrah.
No one can do it alone.
When starting a business, Seth Frey, founder
and president of Big Frey, learned many
lessons from navigating through partnerships and changes
in the promotional products industry.
Seth has his family to thank
for his earliest beginnings with entrepreneurship.
After college, he and his brother
started Granny's Goodies, a small business
selling exam survival kits to students.
With more business experience under his belt, he
launched Big Frey Branded Goods and Swag Kits.
Seth advises entrepreneurs to celebrate the small
wins and focus more on
goals rather than short term setbacks.
Tune in to hear more
of Seth's lifelong entrepreneurial journey.
Joining us today on in the thick of it is Seth Frey.
Based in the Chicago area, he's been in
business for a little over 20 years.
His firm is Big Frey and super excited to get into it.
Seth, let's start at the beginning. Where'd you grow up?
What were things like as a kid for you?
First of all, thanks so much for having me, Scott.
I love opportunities like this.
I really like to talk to
solid individuals that like yourself.
And so thanks again for the opportunity
to share what's been going on.
So I grew up outside of DC.
I didn't really want for much.
Mom and dad both work.
My father was an attorney and my mom, funny
enough, she actually was the entrepreneur in the world.
She started up a business a little bit later on
in life, I think, when I was in 7th grade.
But I grew up in the suburbs of DC, swam year round,
had a pretty normal life on the middle of three boys.
My older brother's handful of years older, but my
younger brother is eleven months younger than me.
I always tell him that you were the mistake
to make sure he understood exactly what's going on.
But I've got this amazing
relationship with my brothers.
It's developed my character and who I
am and I'm really grateful for that.
But yeah, so suppers were great.
Growing up was pretty awesome.
I call it sort of living in La la Land.
I know now how fortunate I was to grow
up in a place where the family dynamic was
solid, and that gave us real opportunity.
Even when I started the first iteration of
my business, it was in my folks basement.
How supportive they were.
My business.
Are you cool if I just jump right
into it, Scott tell you about that?
Why don't we give just a little taste, and then
we'll kind of work our way through your story?
I just started a business out of college
called Granny's goodies, which is converted into sort
of where I'm at right now.
And we can talk a little bit.
That was more of a care package business, but
there's some funny stories, which I'll share when we
get to that point of the conversation.
But growing up, it was just, there was a
lot of laughing, a lot of love, a lot
of support that I'm super grateful for.
And I really try to lean into that
experience with my own kids as well.
And as you mentioned, I live in the
suburbs of Chicago right now after going to
college at the University of Wisconsin. All right.
Like, academic wise, what kind of student were you?
Were you, like, super in the books, like, real
buttoned up, or were you a little bit more
free when it came to your studies?
Yeah, you know, I went to a smaller school.
My folks were pretty heavy on the academics.
They, you know, so from the standpoint of,
just make sure you get your work done.
So I was a pretty solid student.
I mean, I went national honor
society, that kind of stuff.
And academics were an important piece, but there was
always a huge balance with sports as well, and
getting involved in some community type stuff, as well
as certainly within school as well.
So I was certainly not a hellraiser.
I wasn't causing big amounts of problems.
But I think my older brother went to
public school, and he had some problems, and
he's a totally different individual than myself.
But my parents sort of pushed us in a
different direction, me and my younger brother, because of
the shenanigans that my older brother got involved with,
and so the experiences that he had.
So I think it was a very sort of.
That also helped me develop, I think, my social acumen by
being within a smaller school, a little more hand holding, because
going to a school where there was 40 kids in the
class, and then when it came time for college, I was
like, I want the antithesis of that.
And I look back and I think that we were
sort of stifled a little bit by living in a
smaller school, but it's probably better for our development.
So we didn't get involved in some of the shenanigans
because then I went off to college and went to
a massive university, and I couldn't get enough of that.
I was going to say, that's a big jump,
going from 40 students in your class to big,
big public school like University of Wisconsin.
Yeah, Madison's a special, special place.
And it was, yeah, I think it was.
I just needed to breathe, and I loved it.
I thought, I know sometimes a lot of my friends were
going, they're like, how could you go to that big school?
They went to much smaller institutions, and.
But for me, I just.
The more, the merrier, the more I got to meet people.
And that aligned a little bit
more so with my personality.
And I loved it there.
Well, that's not only a big jump to go from a
40 person class to University of Wisconsin, but, I mean, it's
not exactly right around the corner from Washington, DC.
It isn't like, what was the, and it's really cold.
What was the, what was the impetus
to go out to the midwest?
So my old man went to MIT, and my older
brother went to Pennilesse, was at the Wharton school there.
And so I saw some of the experiences
by going to visit him in Philadelphia.
He's four years older, and for a whole bunch
of reasons, I'm sure, had to do financially.
And dad wanted me to go to a
place that he had some familiarity with.
And also, I think, was a little bit less expensive.
And so when I had, one of my best
friends was there, I went to go visit her.
I had an aunt that had been before
medical school, had gone to Wisconsin for some
program that was a couple of years.
So my dad had some familiarity with there.
And obviously, it was a lot less
expensive than going to a private institution.
And so that sort of checked the box.
And when I got there to visit, it's funny you
say that about the cold, because I went to visit,
and it was 50 degrees, it was January.
People are running outside, the kids are out and about.
And I'm thinking to myself, it's not that cold.
I can handle this.
And fast forward.
I remember my freshman year.
It's blue skies, the same exact time of the year.
And I took one step out of
the dorm and turned right back around.
It was just ridiculous.
I mean, even there were times, I mean, when
you're going through it, everybody else, and you're young,
so everybody else is sort of enduring the frigidity.
But we would walk down Langdon.
Langdon street is like fraternity, sorority row would walk
down there, and at the end there's memorial union,
which sits on a lake and you'd walk through
the union to warm up before you started walking
up Bascom Hill, which is.
Have you seen pictures of Wisconsin?
That's sort of like the main shot
that they have of the university.
Abe Lincoln sits at the statue
at the top of Bascom Hill.
It's actually where I proposed to my
wife at the top of Bascom Hill.
She obviously went to Wisconsin, too, so.
But, yeah, so the cold had some familiarity with it,
and I wanted to also get away, and that allowed
me to check all those sort of boxes and.
But the badgers were terrible in
football when I went there.
I mean, literally, I think, won four
games in college in four years. In four years.
I mean, wow. Terrible.
Something like that.
But they have something in Wisconsin called fifth quarter
where the band goes out and starts playing all
these crazy songs and alma mater and dancing and
singing and, like, the students are going bananas.
So we would just go for fifth quarter
and have a whole bunch of fun.
And then my senior year, they brought in Barry
Alvarez, who has been like a God, and Madison
bringing them to Rose Bowls and whatnot.
And literally a couple years later, they went to
the Rose bowl after like 20 years, and now
they are just perennial football, I wouldn't say powerhouse.
They're pretty good.
They always seem to hang. They just.
My badgers just can't get over that
hunt to get a national title.
We were on the precipice in hoops a
few years ago, but we'll get there.
Well, when you're in the Big ten, you're.
You're going up against Michigan.
You're going up against the Ohio State. That's right.
That's a tough, you know, that's
a tough conference to be in. Yeah, yeah.
And now there's even more coming in USCs and the like.
So, anyway, don't get me started
on conference realignment and nil.
That's a whole other podcast.
But, man.
So outside of class, what were you into?
Or were you in a position where you just
kind of did class and hung with your friends?
Were you involved in things?
Did you have a job? Yeah.
So I did have a job.
So I, that was sort of
my first taste in entrepreneurialism.
I had an ice cream truck in college.
Me, myself, and a buddy, we were
trying to figure out something to do.
You bought an ice cream truck as a college student?
We did.
So we bought this ice cream truck and we saw
an ad in the paper because I'm 54 and there
were papers back then, ad in the paper and some
guy was like selling his ice cream business.
And so we're like, oh, that sounds interesting.
So it was basically a truck that was an
old post office truck and it had a freezer
inside and then a generator, talk about unsafe.
That was in this like metal basket off the front
of the vehicle that we put the generator in. Right.
So we had to make sure that we had distance
between us and the car in front of us.
We had a speaker playing, you
know, kids tunes and whatnot.
And we had a friend of ours who was
in the art school repaint the whole thing.
So it had like caricatures of us
on the side, amazing business, huge margins.
And it was great because no kid is
going to get ice cream before lunchtime.
So for college students, we could
be out late hanging out.
And I remember just waking up at 1130.
I'm like, oh, I got to go run the truck.
And we walk outside and we had, it was the
first opportunity to engage with vendors and making sure that
we are pricing things that the market could bear.
And we just drove around different parts of Madison,
Wisconsin and got a chance to really learn.
The people in Madison are just amazing.
Just that is middle America at its finest.
People sitting out on their porch and
their swings, hanging out at night and
buying ice cream and it was great.
I'm guessing that's a pretty seasonal business there.
Certainly. Yeah.
So I had that, that was certainly during the
summer times and then obviously coming up into a
little bit of the fall and then we would
store the truck and we ended up not selling
it but renting it to folks in subsequent summers.
And then ultimately the business sort of,
we were just done with the device.
The truck was dilapidated and it
just, we had enough with that.
But it was a cool experience and a lot of fun
and it was pretty successful to be able to support, you
know, the fun in college during the school year.
And I had, we made enough to be
able to do that, which was pretty neat.
I had some odd jobs.
Like I was a tour guide at one
point, Madison, which was fun to learn a
little bit about the history and share my.
And I was, I loved it there.
I mean, I've created.
My closest friends were from there.
We all live in this five mile radius now
and raised our kids together and it's all because
of that school and which is pretty awesome.
So I love that place.
I'm glad that now I'm growing in
DC and then we moved to Chicago.
I'm glad I'm close enough to be able to go visit. Yeah.
What did you study?
I have a b's in economics.
I had started my freshman year thinking I was going
to go down the path of being a doctor.
And I started taking those classes and
I was like, it is not clicking.
And so after, so you'd mentioned before,
I'd done pretty well in school.
And then when I got freshman year and I bust
in my behind to do well, and it just was
not clicking, I was like, this is not for me.
I need to accept that.
And so I started to pivot a little
bit more so towards the business school at
the time wasn't really that impressive.
And so, for me, I decided to sort of go down
the economic route where I could learn about a lot of
different things in sort of that world, finance and whatnot.
But funny enough, my favorite class was the last
class that I took in college, a marketing class,
and it was taught by a graduate assistant.
And she was.
It opened my eyes to product and pricing
and all the promotions and placement and all
the four p's and all these things. The four p's.
That's right.
All these sort of cool things. And she.
The way that she taught the class, I mean, I
remember this one particular class around Teddy Grahams, and she
just talked about the production of the Teddy Grahams and
the belly button and all the different flavors.
Just all that had come around to that.
And that really got me excited around the marketing side
of things, and it continues to do that now.
And she actually sat on our board of
advisors when we got the business started.
My brother and I started Granny's
goodies a couple years after graduation.
So we were just trying to put together this board
of advisors that would do things for us for free
because they appreciated the effort of the entrepreneur.
And that helped out a ton, leaning into that
network to create a board of advisors for us.
Trey, when you made the shift from, I guess, the pre
med route to economics, did you have a clear sense for
what you wanted to do when you got out?
Or was it like, hey, I'm just going to make
this pivot and I'll figure it out as I go?
Probably more the latter.
I knew I liked the business and the business
side of things, and then that was further exemplified
with the business with the ice cream truck.
I was like, okay, this makes a whole lot of sense.
And I really like the selling side of things.
I certainly did not.
Still don't love the operational side of things.
It's just not my area of expertise as entrepreneurs, though,
as, you know, you need to know it all or
hire people that are better at it than we are.
And so I wasn't really sure what
I wanted to do after graduating.
I knew I wanted to ski, so I went
out to Colorado and skied for the season.
My folks were not happy about that. So is life.
And was out there for the season teaching skiing
and just trying to get, I think, some of
that out of my system, and then came back
and waited tables for a little bit.
I got a job working for, interestingly enough,
kind of going back to that board of
advisors for family friends, but I didn't get
the job through this family friend, actually.
He walked in.
This company was like a commercial security company,
so keypads and key cards to get into
office buildings and that sort of thing.
Access control and security systems.
He walked into my cubicle and was like, I can't
believe that you got this job, and you know me.
And so I was just.
I knew the name, and I just went through
the normal route to get the job and was
there for about ten months, eleven months.
And the way that they went about
their business sales to their existing clients
wasn't a real important piece to them.
But I love that part of the job.
Trying to sell them clothes on that.
And I went to leadership and said, hey, I'd love to
sort of spearhead this sort of element of the business.
I think you're missing out on a revenue stream here.
And they're like, hey, listen, that's not
really what we're trying to accomplish.
If they want this enhancement, then we're here
to help, but we're not here to sell.
Well, they changed that a couple years later.
But at that point, I just realized my brother had been
wanting to expand an existing business, and I decided that at
that point, maybe I should go do it for myself.
And that's sort of where I got
started with my brother early on.
The fact that you got that job and you knew
the guy and you didn't go through him, he found
out you worked there after you had started.
Man, what a testament to you.
And, like, you didn't need that.
Like, they hired you for you, not for him. That's huge.
That's huge. I agree.
But I'll tell you this, Scott, I would
tell my kids, go to the contact, right.
100%.
I don't know if that's.
Yeah, I mean, I hear you, and thanks for that.
But I think we're in a world now
that with LinkedIn and with relationships, like, lean
into those because folks want to. They want to help.
And I think that was the point of Gene
ended up sitting on our board as an advisor.
When we got started, he and his right hand,
along the lines with some other folks, sort of
sat on this board of advisors, which was really
helpful to get things going, but, yeah.
So the ice cream business
was your first entrepreneurial venture.
Did a little work for someone else for a little bit.
Talk to me about Granny's goodies.
Is that what came immediately
after Granny's goodies got started?
Basically, in my parents basement.
It was sort of the second iteration of a
business that my younger brother had started at Wisconsin.
Wisconsin is an interesting place at the
time because it was a public institution.
You could buy the names and
addresses of the student body.
You can't do that now, but you could buy them
at the time until he would send out mailings to
parents to see if they wanted these final exam bags
that he was selling that were called Granny's goodies.
My grandmother, this woman, grew up in New
England and was very prim and proper.
So it's ironic.
We called her granny, but we
named the business after her.
And so when I finished up at this one
entity, then Josh said, hey, why don't we create
a little, much more robust entity with Granny's goodies?
And we got my grandmother on
television, and we got our, like.
We leaned into the PR side of things as
much as we could, and we had this adorable,
like, little lady that was marketing for us.
Anything that we could do to try
to create eyeballs for the business.
And the Internet was just at its infancy.
This was 92, 93, and 94 ish time.
So we were just getting started with that.
Most of it was snail mail and 800 numbers.
And the business, I mean, it took time.
It took time to create awareness.
We tried to going the route of
selling these exam survival kits, these boxes
of blow pops, gummy bears, candy bars.
Those were the granny's goodies.
And we had different versions of those.
We had gone and sold those directly to mom and dad.
And that was a tough process for a litany of reasons.
A, to market to them.
B, to process onesies and twosies. It just.
It was challenging.
It wasn't really creating the kind
of critical mass that we needed.
And then we ultimately started selling to student governments
and helping them raise money through the sale of
care packages so they could market to the student
body or to the parents at all different institutions.
And we would do this as a fundraiser for them.
So we started doing that.
But they were in school, they
weren't there to work for us.
So it became challenging operationally
to do some of that. Scott.
And then there was an article written about us
in the Washington Post and a law firm called
up and said, hey, I read about you guys.
I've got these interns that are going
to be working for me this summer.
Can I send them a granny's goodies?
And that totally pivoted our offering away from the
fundraising model more into working with the corporations.
And my brother and I, we were in business
together up until about 2000 when my wife and
I had our first child and moved to Chicago
from DC, which is where she's from.
And it was really challenging
the partnership that we had.
I mean, we were buttonheads.
We weren't making enough money
to ruin our personal relationship.
So we were working in a couple of markets at the time.
So he sort of took one, I took the other.
We sort of rebranded me as big
Fry and him as another entity.
We took those markets and that's sort of the area for
the last 20 years that I've really had sort of leaned
into is helping companies build their brand on campuses.
So hiring, you know, the process that they go through
to hire kids from the career fair phase to come
work for them for the summer, that sort of ties
into that law firm working through the summertime.
So we do that not so much in the legal
space, but more so in the Fortune 1000 space.
That is sort of been the point.
We really sort of mastered that piece.
The challenge that we had had as a small
business was that there's a lot of companies that
sell swag, hats, mugs, t shirt, pens and pads.
And so if we're going in and selling to a Fortune
100 company, if we do enough business, what was happening?
Is that the guy, our competitor, that
had that marketing relationship be like, hey,
hey, you're in a contract with us.
You can't work with those guys anymore.
Sometimes we had a good advocate.
They would carve us out and say, hey, well, we're
going to work with these guys because you all don't.
Your vendor doesn't do a good job for us.
Other times we've been pushed out for the last.
Me and my team have gotten to a point where we
really did some good job of qualifying, making sure can you
buy from us before we start getting excited about opportunity, we
need to do a good job in qualifying.
That's an evolving process for us
as the business has grown.
Take a step back.
When it first got started, we were just trying to grab
all the kind of business that we want we could, right?
I mean, we wanted to stay afloat.
But we kept on running into these problems.
But I would say six out of ten times we were able
to continue to work with the entity that we were pitching.
Now we've gotten to the point, and I'm so grateful
that the business has grown to the point where we
can be choosy about who we partner with.
And we ask these questions so
that there's no expectation gap.
And also that my team doesn't waste time
giving lots of creative ideas because we invest
a lot of time and resources, real dollars,
in running focus groups to be experts understanding
what the kid in college is looking for.
When they go to a career fair, what
are they going to take and hold onto?
We study that we invest in focus groups,
we write reports and white papers and the
like, so that when we're pitching a prospect,
we know what that audience is looking for.
But we're not going to give away the
secret sauce unless you're ready to engage.
And we've got some, we made some changes to make
sure that we don't give away the secret sauce.
A and B, if they're not willing to invest
this prospect, then they should go find somebody else
that they can get these ideas from.
I mean, we've just unfortunately been burned and
entrepreneurs get excited about opportunities and sometimes blinded
by those opportunities and need to be careful.
That's just an experience share for some of
the folks that are listening in, I want
to make sure that I share that.
So it sounds like I'm going to
guess that most people in the promotional
item space, they're kind of order takers.
Like, hey, give me 1000 pins with my logo on
it, give me a couple hundred of this or that.
But it sounds like you guys
take a very consultative approach.
And it's not just, hey, how many t shirts do you need?
Is that a fair way to describe it?
I describe it as we don't sell transactionally.
It's more programmatic.
So I share a picture of a pen and I'm
like, okay, if you're looking for this pen for cheaper,
there's so many companies that you can work with.
But if you want to know if this is the pen
that's going to work on campus or, you know, amongst your
trade show efforts, that's going to be impactful, that's not going
to be thrown in the trash, we're your guy.
To know when to use this pen, at
what pen, at what point in your process.
That's sort of the programmatic side of things.
That's how we've differentiated ourselves so that buyers
can say to their leaders, or procurement, hey,
we need to work with these guys.
But sometimes procurement gets involved, and they
say, we're looking for the cheapest thing
because these guys can get it.
I mean, this happens to this day as well.
We made some pretty material changes this past summer about
how we partner with, how we engage with prospects to
make sure that we don't give away our ideas.
And if they want to partner with us, then they
have to make an investment with us as well.
Going back, just kind of
stitching the timeline back together.
So after school, you did move back to DC, and did
you say that your wife is from that area as well? So.
My wife's from the suburbs of Chicago.
She came to DC to work on Capitol Hill.
She worked for a congressman from Florida for a
few years and for a large consulting firm.
And then we sort of reconnected, got
married, had our first of three daughters.
And then, like I said, so me and
my brother were butting heads a little bit.
And so I was like, you know what?
I want to move to the midwest.
It's just way more my temperament.
And I wanted that opportunity.
And so Karen wanted to get closer to
home, and her folks were there, and all
my buddies were there from Madison.
And so I started to sort of be this sales entity.
And it's funny, we wanted to create a compensation
scenario that would be fair for me and my
brother to compensate him operationally for the work that
he was doing sort of running the business.
And then my compensation came
purely from my sales efforts.
And what ended up happening was that I started to take
off with the sales, and he was spending so much time
managing the operation, which is what he hated to do.
It just didn't provide the he needed to
sell to for the business to be successful.
And so we just decided, hey, this
is causing friction between us personally.
And we just decided to separate the entities.
And we had gotten an SBA loan, which
helped us get going, which was awesome.
And we sold a little less.
We just sort of split that in half
and found banks that were in each of
our locations that would absorb those sort of
outstanding notes, which weren't anything super crazy.
And I remember that SBA loan sitting in there with
this bank when we first got started, and I was
like, what percentage of these loans do people default on?
About 90%.
You are kidding me.
Yeah, it was at the time was massive.
The number of defaults.
The program now is certainly different than it was in
the early nineties, but nonetheless, we didn't default we paid
it off, and so I felt really good about that.
We have so many amazing resources
to start businesses in this country.
We are so lucky.
I see what's going on in the rest of the world. It is.
My God, this is where you want to start a business.
It truly is the land of opportunity.
It truly is.
If you have the drive, the desire, the idea,
and it has to be a good idea.
The system is set up to support you. That's right.
That's right.
I actually, I'm sure it's similar.
I mean, I know this exists all over the
country, but there's a program at our local high
school called Incubator, and it's juniors in high school
that get an opportunity to start up a business.
They come with the idea and then
all the different iterations of the business.
And so I'm a mentor, along with a bunch
of other folks, you know, in this class and
been doing it for a bunch of years.
And it's, it makes me realize, to
your point, how much opportunity is available.
And I tell the kids, just because somebody
already has come up with the idea doesn't
mean they've got a monopoly on it.
You could be better at manufacturing that
particular item or that service offering.
That's the great thing about this.
Just find your niche like we have in
that sort of talent acquisition area, because there's
lots of folks that sell a promotional swag.
I think we all just need to find the
area that we're experts and can articulate that offering.
You bring up a good point.
Just because somebody has done this thing doesn't
mean that there's not room in the market
for somebody else to come in.
And this was at a much, much, much greater scale.
But Apple.
Apple, they weren't the first with an
mp3 player, but they did it better.
They weren't the first with a smartphone.
We had the Palm trios and the
blackberries and all that, but, man, they
revolutionized the world with the iPhone.
I remember tablet computers, PCs, these big toughbooks,
or whatever they called them, they sucked.
But the tablets had been around forever, and
Apple comes out and they just did it.
I think youre absolutely right.
Theres definitely room for people to build
on other concepts and make it better.
I want to go back to you and
your brother kind of making that split.
So grannys goodies, I guess that name,
that brand died at that point.
Is that fair?
So when we split, so wed established all these
supplier relationships because my business were a distributor of
a half a million products create these relationships, and
when me and the brother split.
He went off to, while he was working in
the same industry, he found a strategic partner that
could do some of the operational things for him
that he didn't, so he could focus on selling.
So he didn't really need those vendor relationships.
So for me, I was like, well, I don't want to do that.
I want to run my own book.
And I ended up creating a
corporation called Granny's Goodies of Illinois.
And I dba big fry doing business as big Fry so
that I could go to those vendors and just say, hey,
I've just send the bills to this new address.
So I didn't lose my
credit relationships with those entities.
And at the time, they didn't really care.
So Granny's goodies. Yes.
No one goes to market as Granny's goodies
anymore, but it's actually the, you know, the
name of the corporation, the legal name. The legal name.
That's right. Yeah.
And in terms of your brother's business, are
you selling the same things today and selling
to the same type of buyer?
Like, do you guys compete?
Fair question.
Totally different buyers.
He, after 20 years, ultimately came back to sort
of running his business the way that I've been
running my business, sort of running their own book
and AR, AP Banks and all that stuff, because
there's don't have to give a margin.
But after we had about a year of, took a
little bit of time for us to be able.
First we had to focus on being brothers because
it was a rough break over about six months.
And then we went on this golf trip
and it re engaged us, which was awesome.
So now we talk about business all the time.
We share ideas, talk about issues related
to all different areas of the business.
And as entrepreneurs, like our personal lives,
are interwoven into our businesses, just how
we go about our days.
I mean, I was on vacation
and don't really have vacation.
I'm not really off the grid,
just making sure things are moving.
I made one of my goals this year.
If I wanted to get off the grid, I could.
And so now it's a little bit more on me.
Like, we've built up the team.
I've got this amazing team that's now able
to focus on all elements of the business
so I don't have to be around.
I'm so grateful for that.
So I guess that's really more on me, but yeah.
So it took a little bit of time for us.
Now we talk about everything.
I can't say that we do business together,
and I learned a lot from that.
Sometimes entrepreneurs, we get blinded,
as I mentioned, like opportunity. Right.
And I've had other businesses in the same time
that I've done things with big Fry and I've
just realized that I'm bad at partnerships when I
just don't play well with others.
And sandbox, it's just, I've tried and it just always
seems to go in the wrong direction and I don't
know I'm gonna if it's obviously that's me.
And so now I'm just like, okay, like, you
play over there and I'll play over here.
And nothing that led to like anything crazy upsetting.
But sometimes I guess my point is, is I
didn't do a good job vetting the partnerships and
crossing the t's and dotting the I's legally.
And when things going sideways, if you
don't have operating agreements in place and
partnership agreements, then things can fall apart.
And so there was a little bit of that.
But now my relationship with Josh is awesome
and I love talking to him about business
because he thinks the way that I do.
But it's another perspective and he
only looks out for me.
He doesn't want anything but for me
to be successful and vice versa.
When he comes to me with an idea or
a challenge, I can be honest with him and
say, dude, think about what you just said.
Other people may not say that you can be a little bit
more blunt with, at least I can be with my siblings.
Is he still back east?
He's in DC.
Still in DC doing his thing.
He's got a great business going
and there's lots of opportunity.
The business and the swag space is massive and sort
of to your point, some people are order takers and
they go out and they can get you 1000 pens
and they don't really care about price point.
They're just looking to make their margin.
And for me, I try to do things a little bit more where
we can provide real ROI for our clients and we've got some models
to be able to do that sort of thing as well.
So I just happen to sell swag.
I like all the other stuff around it. Right.
Thats where we make the money, Preston. All right.
Kind of drilling down on this
topic of doing business with family.
You said something a minute ago thats important.
So im going to recap that first.
So you said you know yourself well enough to know that
having a business partner is not a good fit for you.
Take that out of the equation.
What advice would you give to someone who is
looking at going into business with a family member.
Okay.
Well, I think it's really important whether it's, well,
family member or any partner is to define roles.
There needs to be an opera grading agreement in place.
If this happens, who makes that sort of final decision?
If there's only two of you, somebody
ultimately has to make that decision.
Who's going to be the one responsible for sales?
Who's going to be the one responsible for operations?
You got to clearly define what those roles
are and make sure that there's going to
be a little ebb and flow either way.
I mean, that's just the way it is.
You're going to lean on each other, and that's
a huge benefit to having a partner, is that
there's somebody there that's as passionate as you are.
It's got to be equal.
Investments got to be parallel.
What that relationship looks like.
If you have 75% ownership in the business, then
you're on the hook for 75% of it.
You get 75% of the profits. Great.
If the business is going the other direction
and there's $100,000 that you got to make
up your responsibility for 75,000 of them. Right.
I think that needs to be clearly defined.
That's really important in any sort of partnership
because people get all excited and things are.
When things are going great, awesome.
It's just things could be going great,
and then someone could become very.
I use the term khazarily, like piggish.
They just try to take and take and take and take.
You just need to make sure that how
you have those sort of things defined.
I remember just watching that movie with Facebook and
what went on there with shares and those behaviors.
And when there's lots of money at stake, people become very
different when there's a lot of money at stake or even
when there's a little bit of money at stake.
So I think that's a really important piece.
That operating agreement is essential because sometimes if you
can't get through that, then you're going to have
a problem moving forward in the relationship.
So that's, I think, probably the key thing, certainly
making sure that you've created a financial plan with
projections, that you understand what operationally that looks like,
what the marketing plan looks like, and all these
things, whether it's a small business or a massive
business, it's just they all have the same basic
elements to it.
My first sort of advisor, the guy that I worked
for who said, I can't believe you got the job
without asking me when I told him I was leaving.
He sat me down and he's like,
you're going to learn about balance sheets.
You're going to learn about p and L and all that stuff.
And he made a little diagram for me and he's like,
there's the goes into and there's the goes out of.
That's how a business operates.
You need to have more money coming
in that's good and going out.
And if you keep with that sort of model, you're
always going to be headed in the right direction and
you got to be willing to make investments and your
partner needs to be aware of that.
And that investment needs to be made at
certain points based on whatever your plans are.
The other thing is have regular quarterly meetings so you
can talk about, hey, this is how we're progressing.
I think it's really important to
put together like key performance indicators.
Like what are those things that are really,
we're going to be focusing on from a
marketing perspective, from a revenue perspective?
I had an uncle who was a successful guy and he's
like, you plan your work and then you work your plan.
And that element, I think is really important that folks
look at again in the partnership model, if you're going
to be a sole proprietor, if you just need to.
I think entrepreneurs, and sometimes I
get stuck in this too.
Like I need to take a step back.
How are we doing?
But the other thing is to be, is to
appreciate and have gratitude for the successes as well.
We get so caught up in the stuff and
it's like, wow, I'm able to support my family.
I'm able to support people that are
working for me and their families.
I get so much from that
because I think that's really important.
Like what you said about celebrating the wins, even
the small ones, because I don't know about you,
but I find myself getting lost in the losses.
Losses isn't really the right word, but this is
full of so many ups and downs and I
tend to, I tend to dwell on the downside.
And you've really got to celebrate those little wins.
Even if they're small, you've got to celebrate them.
I agree with that.
Yeah, we're tough on ourselves as entrepreneurs.
We work hard, we're passionate about
the things that we do.
And small business owners, unlike for me, I go
and sell to these large entities and if they
don't accept our bid and they hire some other
entity, like, that's no sweat for them.
They're looking for the numbers.
But like, if you don't accept our job that's
impacting my team and where our successes lie.
So I take that to heart.
Like, what do you mean where?
So I'm always asking, hey, where did we fall short?
Sometimes it's, hey, Seth, it's a price thing.
Typically, it's, I've got an
existing relationship, you know?
And I think the important thing to what you
said, scott and I try to work really hard
at this, is when we don't win.
There are so many things that we don't know that tied
into that decision making that could have nothing to do with
the bid that we put on paper and the pitch that
we gave it could be they decided to pull the budget,
the CEO knows somebody else, or they already took care of
it, and we didn't know nothing.
That was our fault.
And so as for me and my business,
when things don't go the right direction, like,
okay, where's the next one coming from?
Like, the machine has always got to be moving forward.
And to me, it's, how do we get to the finish line?
We're in the middle of a job and something goes awry.
Okay, we gotta fix this.
Let's get this to the finish line.
It's not about finger pointing
and who made the mistake.
Certainly we're gonna raise our hand and accept that.
But the customer, yeah, they want to
hear that, but then they're gonna want
to know what's corrective action look like.
And so for me, I'm just constantly, whether that's a sale,
whether that's a problem, how do we get to the finish
line in a way that's going to make everybody happy?
Because I just.
I don't want to be right all the time.
I just want to be happy. Right. Seriously.
That's why a lot of times when I'm sitting
in meetings and something's gone awry, like, I don't.
I'm like, so tell me what's going through your mind?
Where did we fall short? Okay. Because people just.
Sometimes they need a vent.
And that's the other thing.
I'm like, I just keep my mouth shut
because sometimes they give you the answer.
You are spot on.
Sometimes people just need to vent.
And I can't tell you how many conversations I've gone
into over the years, and I've learned the hard way.
I've gone into conversations with a client that
I knew were going to be difficult conversations.
And I've kind of got my ammo to go back and,
okay, I hear you telling me that I did this, but,
you know, what about this this this that you did?
And, man, I found that if I will just shut
up and listen and empathize, it's not 100% of the
time, but more often than not, if you just listen
and empathize, it completely changes the tone of the conversation
and the direction that things end up going.
Absolutely empathy.
When Covid kicked in and everybody was at
home, my business, which was really built around
events, I mean, I just saw it going,
obviously in the very wrong direction.
And in 2008 and nine, when Lehman brothers fell
and we had that debacle with real estate and
whatnot, I was, like, in the fetal position.
What am I going to do?
But this time around, I was like,
okay, I'm not going to do that.
And what I did was I set up calls with
my largest clients, and I just sat down and said,
hey, what's it like over at your house?
I got my three daughters that are
here, two that are home from college.
We're, like, doing this. We have game night.
Like, what's it like over there?
And the more I engage with them on a
personal level, and, like, so what's it like?
What do you got going on over there?
What sort of challenges are happening?
It literally sparked a whole
new direction of my business.
And funny enough, going from just, like, selling the swag
to going back to the granny's goodies days with these
boxes that we now sell, these swag kits that are
used for all different types of engagement strategies, whether it's
a new client that comes on board.
Our boxes are all branded for my client with the
name of the recipient that's getting the gift in blaze.
But, like, all these things only came
about because I was having these conversations
empathetically and just trying to listen.
And they told me, we've
got everybody's working from home.
How am I going to get them their materials that they
normally can just walk into the closet and grab pens?
And it started with office products and
then led to, okay, now I've got
these thousand interns that are at home.
We're doing these remote programs.
How do we creatively stay engaged with them?
And I'm literally listening to them like, oh, my God.
I've got this solution that we continue to sell these
care packages over the last 20 years, but just as
one of a gazillion different products that we had now,
this vessel was able to be delivered globally, and we've
been able to do some pretty neat things with them
and just expanded upon that.
And that all came about because I got my
mouth shut and just tell me how you're feeling.
And sometimes we've got to eat the
sandwich when we make a mistake.
But they'll tell you, you know, they want, who knows?
They could be getting pressure from the higher ups.
And when we make mistakes, like it is what it is,
like, what are we going to do to make it better?
Yeah, without a doubt. All right.
Something that has struck me.
You're a small business, medium sized business.
I think that's fair to say. Right.
But you said earlier, like, you're
selling to the Fortune 1000.
What kind of hoops do you have to jump
through be able to sell into these large.
I imagine they're pretty much
all publicly traded companies.
Like from a compliance standpoint, like we've got
a handful of larger customers and man, about
once a year with some of them.
I get this survey and they want to
know what we're doing about this and that.
And a lot of it's pretty easy stuff to deal with.
We've had a couple that have come through.
I'm like, you know what?
We don't want the business that bad.
We're not going to deal with this.
What's that like for you?
I think it echoes some of the things you're
talking about for us as we've started to get
more involved where I don't want to just relinquish
the business to the preferred vendor that's in place.
Like I said, we sort of qualify now earlier
on, and now there's a master services agreement that
comes from the entity, statements of work, which are
just quotes that sort of the terms are rely
upon whatever that master services agreement are in place.
So when we establish a relationship that typically
is going on, there's a legal entity.
Again, I'm not going to go through that
exercise unless I know that there's some opportunity
on the backside like you had mentioned.
And then for us, we establish some.
Just because a large company sends me a
master service agreement which is boilerplate for them,
they could be working with vendors that are
a thousand times the size of us. Right.
It's the same agreement.
So they recognize, they being the client, that
we're going to go and we're going to
mark up that master services agreement.
I'm not going to acquiesce to their terms.
And if it doesn't work out, then it doesn't work out.
That's sort of where the business is at.
Like you had mentioned, Scott, like, the juice
ain't worth the squeeze, if you will, and
that's starting to serve us better.
I've never realized.
I certainly have learned instead of me
going and hiring an attorney, I feel
like I'm the in house attorney now.
I'm, like, reading these terms and marking things up.
And if there's some things that are even
a little bit more delicate, then we'll get
legal support to help out with that.
I had gone through the exercise for the
first couple of those and realized the areas
where they're willing to negotiate and whether or
not and what to look for in that.
Again, I think as entrepreneurs, the more experiences we
have, good and bad, and this is one of
them, that's sort of how we grow.
So the master services agreement, and then there's a
whole element for us now because we do lots
of transactions that go through a buying platform.
Ariba is a popular name for one.
So we'll get.
What's that Cupa like?
Yeah, there's a bunch of them. Yeah, tungsten.
So our clients require us to engage in that capacity.
And then there's, you know, there's some basic insurance
rules that, you know, that we need to make
sure that we have gotten tied in.
Again, this is all sort of part of the
master services agreement, but these are welcoming opportunities.
Now, before three years ago, I was on the
side of like, oh, I don't want to make
too much noise, because if it comes to the
master service agreement, I can't service this enterprise.
But over the last few years, we've created full
programs across 500 to 25,000 employees with account managers.
We know how to do it just like our biggest
competitors know how to do it, and we're more nimble
and so, but we're evolving and we make mistakes and
we, you know, I'm at the point with the businesses
where, which is annoying, personally, where I'm investing.
It's not trickling down to Seth, right.
Because the investment's going within the walls
of the business, and we're spending more
marketing or spending more here.
I'm like, I'm doing all this work.
Like, where's the benefit for me?
But that's just so short sighted right now.
And I recognize that my ego is
screaming, saying, hey, me, me, me.
And so I've actually got, I'm in a, like
a peer to peer sort of entrepreneurial group and
sit down with these guys and gals and they're
like, this is exactly where you need to be.
This is exactly what goes on.
Like, businesses go up and the owner,
whatever, doesn't reap the immediate rewards yet.
But then it's going to come into play.
And so it all kind of goes back to
like, let's just get to the finish line.
Like, I'm doing fine.
My family's healthy.
We get to go do fun things.
We get to go out to dinner
and all that kind of fun stuff.
So I'm so grateful for that.
But those are just things that we're going through right now
that I hadn't before to become more of a CEO and
less of the, like, guy selling and the guy, like, now
I'm just like, there's too many questions coming to me.
Like, managers.
You guys answer those questions, and I don't want to deal
with, I gotta be out or I'm gonna, you know, I
need to go to the doctor or whatever it may be.
I mean, those are important elements, certainly.
I want to just try to move the ship, and
I can't do that until I've got better people at
it around me at those areas to just help them
manage it, but help establish the rules.
And I, like I said, we're sort
of evolving as well, so it's cool.
I got more passion now for the business
than I ever have, which is fun.
I want to talk a little bit more about family.
You were already in business with your brother at
Granny's goodies when you got married, is that right?
That's right.
And what kind of conversations did you
and your wife have about the entrepreneurial
life, the risk that comes with it?
Was that even, was it a factor?
Was it a conversation at all, or
was it just kind of like.
No, she just kind of accepted it and knew
what she was getting into when y'all got married.
Good question.
So Karen's father, who served in world war two and
was a teacher in the Chicago public school system during
the summers, he and his brother started a day camp,
and then they grew this camp, and they bought some
property out in the suburbs, and they stopped teaching because
they really grew this day camp in a big way.
And so Karen grew up in this entrepreneurial lifestyle, couldn't
go away during certain times of the year because I
was recruiting for camp and that sort of thing.
So for her when I don't think it was
a shock to the system, and she's been my
biggest fan, and that was a really important piece.
So I don't.
In reflection on that, there wasn't any
sort of issue, although I remember having.
She reminds me of the time that I told her that,
yeah, we were going to go see the Grateful Dead perform,
and you just told me, oh, I quit my job and
I'm going to go start my own business.
It was like, I mean, I think
when you're, for me, I'm young.
I was young at the time, 22.
I was like, I'm just going to do it.
You know, my parents are being supportive of it.
Karen wasn't like, completely out of line with it.
I mean, it wasn't draining
her financially in any regards.
But as the business started, you know, as our relationship
solidified, and this was before we got married, I.
But then we got married and you have kids,
and I think that's what led to me and
my brother splitting was because we just had so
different financial goals at that familial obligations.
He wasn't married.
I had a kid on the way, and we
needed to be able to support that family.
And that sort of ultimately led
to that version not working out.
What are the sort of things that keep you up at
night these days and have those things changed over time?
I'm working really hard at managing some
of those character defects that I have.
I've got this.
And I think as a child, my parents,
who are super loving and always supported us,
didn't really talk to us about finances.
And so there was, it's not a fair thing to say,
but for me, there was a level of trauma there.
So that when I had to start figuring things
out with Karen, I didn't know where to turn.
I just didn't, I didn't know.
And that brought a lot of fear.
And so now when I wake up in the
morning with these financial insecurities, which are totally unsubstantiated,
and I know that that's just my ego and
those fears that stem from growing up.
And I've got friends and colleagues that are like, dude,
look at the numbers, look at the reality of things.
But I just wake up in that capacity.
I don't know if it's like getting older, I
don't know because I have three daughters and I
want to make sure that they're okay.
And the way I grew up and whatever, maybe
I think about that, I wake up in the
morning, like, did I do the right thing?
Could I have sold this person?
What about these guys?
Like, we have so many clients that I want to.
My natural instinct is like,
gobble, gobble, gobble, gobble.
As much as I can, Im in service as much I can.
I dont want to lose out because I didnt
put the right system in place to stay engaged.
But the reality of it is that buyers
move on, peoples change, regimes change, within organizations,
and I can only control my action, which
is pick up the phone, Orlando, sending a
note and engaging empathetically and hopefully that those
opportunities present themselves and do good work.
And so those are some of the things that keep
me up and certainly making sure that my team's okay.
Just hear about some awful experiences that some
of my friends have in their work environment,
and I'm like, I do not want that.
I want people to come to work and be excited.
And I hear about that from them,
like, oh, I love this job.
This is the best job I've had, and
I have a lot of pride around that.
So that's way more important than
the money, at least for me. Absolutely. Money will come.
Absolutely.
You talked about going through the
financial crisis in zero eight.
The pandemic, I think, is still fresh for most of us.
Have there been some other oh, crap
kind of moments along the way? Yeah.
I mean, recently losing some big clients, which had nothing
at all to do with what we do, how we
do it, just some regime change and some, when we
start doing more work with folks, then in my world,
procurement gets involved and they care less about the service,
and they only care about the price.
That's their job.
And that commoditizes our offering.
They don't see that.
And if I don't have the right advocate within an
organization to share why they want to work with us.
We had a couple of those happen.
We've had some clients file for bankruptcy
after we've delivered a bunch of goods. That sucks.
And left you holding the bag, I assume.
Left is holding the bag. Yeah.
And we've done a bunch of work with them, and
now we're, like, on the hook, and it sucks.
So this has been, like, this year
in particular has been one where, like,
we're evolving, but we're running in.
We've had, like, this year, like, just bring it on.
Bring it all on now, right?
So that, and we learn, like, the
goods, experiences, the bads, like, we're qualifying
better, we're making better choices.
The team is learning, they're
collaborating in a better way.
So sometimes business, I think I've had the fortune
that we've had good years and we've had not
so good years, but all in all, we sort
of, like, are creeping up, and that's a testament
to the team and listening and learning.
But, yeah, I mean, we lose clients, it happens.
So I'm trying to look at it as though,
and this happens, Scott, but it goes back.
Like, I want it all.
Why they leave us and I find out it had
nothing to do with you, it still ticks me off.
It's a double edged sword.
We've obviously lost customers over the years, and the
overwhelming majority of the time it's because, hey, they
were acquired by this other organization or they're just
changing the systems that they're working on and this
thing that we supply them with to move their
data between the systems.
Well, now there's different systems and we
don't really work on those systems.
And on one hand, it's like, man, I worked hard
to get that business and I didn't lose it through
any fault of my own, and it sucks.
But on the one hand, I would almost
rather have done something to lose the business,
something that I can learn from and correct.
But, like, these are things that I can't control.
I can't control that you got acquired.
I can't control that you chose to
implement a new ERp or whatever. So, right.
I think when you're in business long enough,
we can focus on those sort of things.
And what I'm trying to do now is, okay, now
I got more bandwidth, now I can go after these
other opportunities because I'm a true believer that if you
do good work, it will come back to you.
And again, for me, I'm trying so hard not
to focus on how do we do this week?
How do we do this month, how do we do this quarter?
More of like, are we getting to the end game?
Are we headed in the right direction?
So maybe we're going to go like this, but
we're ultimately going to get up here, right?
That's sometimes hard to swallow, but if it
gets us there, you know, then we want
one of my advisors, like, you've already won.
You've got this beautiful family, everybody's healthy.
You get a chance to do.
I love to ski.
You get a chance to go ski and you've got
a business that keeps running like you've already won.
You hear about there's this grasses greener syndrome, I
think, that we're all trying to get toward.
I remember I wouldn't want to read the Wall
Street Journal because I'm not that guy, right?
It was just my ego is screaming now.
It's like, all right, that's awesome.
I want all entrepreneurs to be super successful so that,
you know, they can reach whatever their dream is.
Because for me, like, I'm so blessed.
I'm so blessed with where I'm at with my family,
most importantly, and I can do those sort of things.
And I got good kids, and they're engaging,
and I wish they would take over the
business, but they're not there yet. I'm not ready.
Daddy, that really.
You talk about that comparison and, you know,
didn't want to look at the Wall Street
Journal because you weren't that guy.
And, man, I've talked about this before a
number of times, but I struggle with comparison.
And I've got friends I went to school
with, people who have been crazy, crazy successful,
and, you know, financially, they've achieved way more
than I will ever achieve.
They've risen to all kinds of great positions.
They've built all kinds of great companies.
And on one hand, I'm like, oh, geez, I want that.
But then again, I think about, like, what
they had to go through to get that
or what they're living with today.
And I'm like, I don't really want that after all.
I'm actually just fine right where I'm at.
I'm getting to do things my way. There you go.
My path is not their path, and that's okay. I'm happy.
And so comparison is an ugly thing that we
all, I think, get trapped in at some point. We do.
All right.
What is the hottest item in the swag game today?
So we run all these focus groups.
And for me, what's amazing about
this generation is they are so
technologically savvy, so we're constantly fighting.
Here, I'll show you my favorite item.
This is sort of latest regret.
So, this.
It looks like you're sort of standard, you know, stylus
pen, but you open up the top, and it shows
this piece that cleans out your airpods, right?
And then this little piece right here cleans
the entry point to your phone right there.
And then you can actually pull out the
whole piece and get it out here.
And this cleans inside the case of the airpod. Oh, wow.
Right?
So it's, like, multifunctioning for the students.
They just love it.
And, you know, for me, it's inexpensive, and
it's, you know, that sort of thing.
So this.
Lots of, you know, retail branded drinkware.
But for us, you know, our biggest seller are these
swag hits, because it puts a collection of things.
It's like a way for our clients to engage
with whatever audience they're looking to engage with.
And there's a personalized element to it.
And that's where I think our society
is, is to provide personal experiences. Right.
How much more can we do that?
And so we've sort of been able to do some of
that and we continue to evolve that element of the business
but that's giving us opportunities to get in the door.
And as it relates to entrepreneurs that are trying
to get their businesses started it's what can you
do to so somebody pays attention to what you're
doing and be resilient and diligent about your, you
know, your offering and your action.
And for me I was listening and I remember that
aha moment with the kits and now I'm having calls
of people that are there oh my peer got this.
Can you tell me a little
bit about that sort of program?
So that referral base is way more beneficial to us than
some of the marketing that we've tried in the past.
There you go.
Well Seth you've been at this for over 20 years now.
You've been through a lot.
You've ridden the ups and downs.
What's next?
My goal is to spend a month in Colorado so
that I can do that sort of skiing thing so
I really want to continue to build my business to
the point point where my particular business where it's at
we're starting to tie in some technology to our internal
operation so I don't know where that can go. I'm 54.
Some folks at this stage are starting to think about how
they can get out but I'm looking to get in.
I'm like what can we do that can be more engaging?
I mean we're sort of like I said we just we've
crossed over this precipice to now be able to offer what
the big boys can offer so that's really exciting.
I used to be fearful of that I used to be
able to sell it but not be able to deliver it
now we can deliver it so that's really exciting so for
us it's continue to engage so one of the things that
for us is and I've got a couple of sales folks
that are doing it so our kits typically up to this
point have been all corporate in that element but what we're
starting to do is to sell it to higher education so
when a student gets Akin high school gets into the University
of X they'll get a personalized kit filled with like a
pennant and a lanyard and something pertaining to the school to
help close the sale so to speak to convert from admissions
into enrollment and there's about to be a huge population drop
off so the school is gonna become really competitive and these
kits are so we're starting to get into that world which
brings a whole different level around licensing and things along those
lines that we're learning about.
But that's what's next.
That's where we're at.
Well, Seth, thanks so much for sharing your story.
Appreciate the time. That's for sure. It was fun.
That was Seth Fry, founder and president* of Big Frey.
To learn more, visit bigfrey.com
That's f r e y
If you or a founder you know would like to be a
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