The Long Game of Entrepreneurship: How Mark Windsor Built a Global Brand

Everyone talks about overnight success. Very few founders actually experience it.

In this episode of the Growth Mavericks Podcast, Adam Callinan sits down with Full Windsor founder and industrial designer Mark Windsor to discuss what building a successful consumer products company really looks like after more than 15 years.

Mark shares how a simple Kickstarter campaign for a folding bicycle mudguard evolved into a globally recognized outdoor cookware and camping gear brand. Along the way, he explains why almost every "breakthrough" founders chase rarely changes the business, why sustainable growth compounds over time, and how great customer service becomes your most effective marketing channel.

The conversation explores industrial design, manufacturing, Kickstarter, product development, sustainable materials, quality control, AI for entrepreneurs, customer experience, lifestyle businesses, and why freedom—not hypergrowth—became Mark's ultimate measure of success.

Whether you're launching a physical product, building an ecommerce company, or simply trying to stay in the game long enough to succeed, this episode is packed with practical lessons on entrepreneurship, patience, craftsmanship, and building a business that lasts. 

Key Takeaways

•  Why overnight success is largely a myth. 
•  How Full Windsor evolved from a bicycle accessory into a premium outdoor brand. 
•  Lessons learned from launching on Kickstarter. 
•  Why getting into major retailers rarely changes everything overnight. 
•  Manufacturing precision with sustainable materials. 
•  The importance of customer service as a competitive advantage. 
•  Turning product failures into lifelong customer loyalty. 
•  Using AI to eliminate administrative work without sacrificing authenticity. 
•  Building a lifestyle business instead of chasing hypergrowth. 
•  Why durability and consistency outperform viral success. 

Chapters

00:00 Why overnight success is a myth

01:15 Mark Windsor's design background

05:20 Launching Full Windsor on Kickstarter

08:00 Why "big breaks" rarely change everything

13:00 Designing sustainable outdoor products

17:00 Manufacturing challenges and quality control

22:00 Customer service as the best marketing strategy

29:00 AI, automation and running lean

36:00 Lifestyle business vs hypergrowth

41:00 Defining success on your own terms

46:00 Final thoughts

Explore: 

Full Windsor
https://fullwindsor.com

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.

Mark Windsor (00:04.511)
How's it going?

Adam Callinan (00:06.198)
What's up? How you doing?

Mark Windsor (00:07.715)
Yeah, not today.

Adam Callinan (00:11.81)
Where where are ya? We're in the

Mark Windsor (00:14.235)
in I've moved country I think since I spoke to you last. We're in Bristol now in the UK.

Adam Callinan (00:19.903)
All right. Jumping around.

Mark Windsor (00:22.253)
Yeah. So the whole family moved over.

Adam Callinan (00:27.246)
Amazing. epic. How's the how's the weather in Bristol, UK?

Mark Windsor (00:34.571)
All over the show. It's like actually bucking with rain and then it's sunshine and then it's it's just yeah. Spring.

Adam Callinan (00:44.514)
It's the same here, if it makes you feel any better. It's springtime dynamic insanity of weather. Can't can't make up its mind.

Mark Windsor (00:46.894)
Yeah.

Mark Windsor (00:52.771)
Yeah, I actually prefer it to just Forever Sunshine of LA.

Adam Callinan (00:58.828)
Yeah, I yeah. It's nice to have some some texture.

Adam Callinan (01:04.564)
Sweet. do you have any any questions or anything that's come up since last time we chatted?

Mark Windsor (01:12.68)
not really. Just been flagging away as usual.

Adam Callinan (01:13.474)
That's worth Yeah.

Awesome. Well, I mean we will when we're done, like when I sign off, I'll do the intro after and everything. Like when we're done when we sign off, don't hang up. We have to make sure that the videos upload. I don't know you've ever if you have a lot of riverside experience, but sometimes yes.

Mark Windsor (01:35.693)
Never used it. Never done a podcast before, so yeah.

Adam Callinan (01:40.015)
really? Heck yeah.

Mark Windsor (01:41.039)
I'm just just behind the scenes.

Adam Callinan (01:45.826)
That's awesome. yeah, I mean, as we talked last time, like this is just entirely a casual conversation stuff. stuff comes up. We'll find awesome rabbit holes to go down. but when we are done and I say, Hey, thanks so much, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and then I click stop dang up. So the Riverside app like is recording on your computer in case it breaks up and it's uploading into the system. And sometimes it

Mark Windsor (01:59.791)
Sounds good.

Mark Windsor (02:05.455)
All right.

Mark Windsor (02:10.157)
I say.

Adam Callinan (02:13.875)
it isn't fully uploaded when we're done. And if you hang up it like kills it and then you there's a way to recover it, but it's a pain in the butt. So my Montana Wi Fi is notoriously slow, even with Starlink. So I always I never am done on time, but I'm we'll be fine.

Mark Windsor (02:20.921)
Don't hang out, remember.

Mark Windsor (02:29.379)
Yeah, we're good.

Adam Callinan (02:32.717)
Sweet. So you've you've made a cross the pond migration to UK from LA recently.

Mark Windsor (02:40.557)
Yeah, so actually started the business in the UK. So it's not really we always ran that sort of as a dual business. It was always a UK based business and an American based business when I moved it over. so it's it we can operate globally, so it doesn't really matter where I am. There's the advantage of e commerce these days.

Adam Callinan (03:02.759)
Yeah, I mean that that thesis is one that I am very f in love with and familiar with. My last company, Bottle Keeper, was built exactly on that thesis. Run it from anywhere with internet. And we did that we did that really aggressively. so so totally get that. how

Let's talk about the brand and kind of your origin story with the brand.

Mark Windsor (03:29.049)
Yeah, so my whole my whole background's industrial design. So I studied industrial design and then I worked for a whole bunch of design companies in New Zealand before I moved to the UK. and then I got offered a job at actually at a architecture company and when I was in the UK. Then I worked for them for a while and then I worked for a bunch more. I worked for Herman Miller designing furniture and stuff, before I started for Windsor. And then yeah, just

Adam Callinan (03:29.133)
Where'd it come from?

Mark Windsor (03:57.711)
Kickstarter had just come about. and I had an idea for a product. I was cycling in to work it every day into the design office. And with London weather it's just forever changing. and it would I didn't really like having full rolled mudguards on my bike all the time that rattle around and so I just came up for an idea that you simply like an origami style mudguard that you can click on and off so you can put it on when it rains, and then if it doesn't rain for a few weeks you just

take it off. So that's where it began. and then we launched on Kickstar well, say we me, I launched on Kickstarter. So this is two thousand and eleven. And then w yeah back then I think it was we did about eight grand, but I didn't have no benchmark to do. And that was enough to do we were doing manufacturing locally. actually at a stationary supplier 'cause they did plastic sheets that they could distort and put fold lines and stuff in.

Yeah, and so it just kicked off like that. And then this is the really before the days of Spotify Shopify, sorry, and all that. And so we built a website, but the website was literally to send people to where to go. so we got into a few cycle shops to begin with, and it wasn't purchasing online, it was literally you come to the website, you get interested, then we send you to chain reaction cycles or cycle surgery or wherever we managed to get in to begin with.

And then yeah, so that's where it really started. And then just get so I've the whole thing when I started the brand it was always design first. because I see a lot of I saw a lot of brands that sort of that were very business oriented and I'm a designer, so I just wanted to keep it. Design was sort of the heart of everything we did. And then so then I got an idea for an outdoors product. it was just

It was called the Muncher. It was like a multi-use titanium sport because it did a lot of hiking and stuff and it was just a multi-use tool, multi-use utensil, I guess you call it, and titanium lightweight, so you just chuck it in your bag and it can do like about ten different things, but you just forget about it, and it's there when you need it. And then I got we moved into the outdoor industry, which we found a lot easier. By that point there was two of us, I think. and we found it a lot easier. There was just

Mark Windsor (06:24.172)
What happened in the cycle industry is there's lots of distributors and bigger brands and what they'd do is they'd just buy up in control spaces and if you didn't and then in the UK as well, it wasn't very controlled by these at the time it was two online retailers, Wiggle and Chain Reaction. this is in like two thousand and ten, I think, or so. And or two thousand eleven. And yeah, I found once we got in the outdoor industry, everyone was just much easier.

to deal with and no one everyone wanted to sort of give you a try rather than and the bike industry was a bit more restrictive who would, you know, help you out when you were first starting out.

Adam Callinan (07:05.55)
So you migrated out of the bike industry. I mean, I'm on the side I was digging around in here yesterday and today, and it's I don't I don't see any any foldable mud flaps left. So

Mark Windsor (07:16.756)
No, l long long gone. there was it there was another brand at the time. there was just two of us doing it. I think I can't remember which one came out first, but it was one of those ones we've we've just must have been designing at the same time. I think what was it called? It was called R Saver. Yeah, that was the one that came out at the same time. I think they've kept on going, but yeah, we've moved out of the bike industry a long time. We've still got some bike multi tools that we sell. but

Yeah, that was the next product before we go into the outdoor products.

Adam Callinan (07:48.687)
But you can definitely tell that you have a design first thesis because the products are are beautiful. They're they are like little it they're all individually these epic works of functional art. It's really, really cool. It's really cool to see. But there's an important like testament in there when you start companies for you know, you earlier super early stage or or pre-entrepreneurial entrepreneurs that what you think it's gonna become

versus what it starts at are often two entirely different things.

Mark Windsor (08:21.026)
Yeah, definitely. And you just need to begin and to find you tack and zig and zag and do whatever you need to keep going. But if you don't begin you don't ever know. And then the the where the path goes. Just yeah, just jump on the trail and then see where it goes and then adapt. And I like I said, I started in two thousand eleven, so technology has changed absolutely everything. where we were literally a B to B s brand to begin with, we only sold to wholesalers 'cause there wasn't even really

Adam Callinan (08:31.458)
That's yeah, the key piece just move.

Mark Windsor (08:50.798)
You know, there was some e-commerce but it was very limited. And then yeah, all the all the internet companies that started up at the time and Shopify kicked in and changed everything and you just sort of rolled the punches. And yeah, we had I think it was we got into we did outdoor retailer in two thousand and let me say sixteen.

And we got REI, they started stocking our products. And this is the the the Muncha, that multi use utensil. And yes we we thought everything was gonna change overnight by getting into them as well. And then we learned that lesson that yeah. But what you think is gonna change everything sometimes doesn't change that much at all. I don't know a lot of your listeners and stuff, a lot of people when they think they get pressed and they get in a big

press publication they think there's suddenly the orders are just gonna boom and stuff and we've we've had that before. We get into I don't know I think it was like men's health and things like this. We thought, no, this is gonna be a changing point. And then it's like you have a few you have a little bit of uptick and then kind of comes right back down very quickly. So you don't really actually know what's going to change the needle to it actually happens because you you can guess but that's definitely not

And you have these presumptions about what's gonna change it and then some I think I I've listened to quite a lot of your podcasts before and it's yeah, just the slow, hard grind that gets you there in the end. I don't know, we've never Yeah. And it's I don't know, it's the other thing as well, so many success stories, they do say, you know, we had this happen, X or Y happen. We we've just never had that experience where

Adam Callinan (10:23.374)
Yeah, we had the exact same experience. Yeah.

Mark Windsor (10:39.433)
anything's changed it remarkably. It's just like, huh, over time, huh? It's actually if we looked at what we did last year, we're do actually doing all right. W look what we did five years ago. we're actually doing pretty good. But yeah, if there's never been one of those huh moments where it's just suddenly boom.

Adam Callinan (10:56.962)
We had

Two of those and they and the second one was was a planned media thing. I mean, we had a lot of the exciting experience at Bottle Keeper. We, you where we we got men's health to do like a two page spread and we're like, this is it. I mean, we're done. Retired. And it did, you know, it did like effectively nothing that we could measure. It was cool. It was nice to have. We got to use it. It was I mean, we, you know, we framed it. That was cool, but that has met all.

Mark Windsor (11:14.049)
Yeah.

Mark Windsor (11:23.873)
Yeah. We've even had we've been approached by a couple of big brands now. I can't still under I can't really say NDAs with them, but like we thought that was gonna change things. twice it's happened now and we're still in conversations and so it's still ongoing. And so it's like I don't know, I think one of the conversations' been going for a year and a half now. It's like if it actually was to happen it would change things, but it's just yeah. Y you n you never know.

Adam Callinan (11:46.094)
She's

Adam Callinan (11:51.267)
There were yeah, and the the your point is really important and and that is what I get from that and what I think is really helpful for other operators, particularly those that are early earlier on, is that the things that you think are going to move them needle rarely do. It's the things that you don't expect that come out of left field that often are the ones that are like, whoa, what was that? And then we did we had one of those, and it was early on in the business, really in like the in the first.

Two years, year and a half, I guess, where Facebook launched their video ad platform. But that wasn't a thing we planned for. It wasn't a thing we knew. I didn't see that happen to go like, ooh, there's our ticket. It just we were in the right place at the right time. We had been in the game long enough to still be alive in the game when that thing happened. And that changed, that was a massive inflection point for us. That, you know, a ride that we got to to go on for a couple of years with with paid media and starting in 2014. But it wasn't a planned.

Thing. Like it was just luck. That part of it is luck. It was a lucky and timing. And I will say the only other caveat to the one piece of media that you can all but guarantee, I will just say guarantee you will get that sort of attention and inflection point is going on Shark Tank. But that is the only one. anything else, like maybe it does something, maybe it doesn't. I mean, we did Good Morning America a number of times, and that had a really big sales implication into it. It was expensive because you have to like sell your product at

half price and then pay half of what you get from that to the, you know, to the network or whatever. So it's like it was we used to use it once a year, maybe every other year to like get rid of old stuff that we didn't want anymore. We'd go into a sale on, you know, Good Money America. But exactly. A hundred percent.

Mark Windsor (13:29.325)
Yeah, and it's just like short term gains of one big spike and then it would drop down and then sometimes no big spike. Yeah, saying a bit more about that, the ones that have always sort of come about that have actually made usually change, have just come from talking to other founders and it's just like that backwards and forwards of have you tried this? Have you tried this? Have you tried this? Over and over again. And then you people swear by some things and then you try it. It's like, Well, it didn't work for us. And then

Adam Callinan (13:45.046)
Mm.

Mark Windsor (13:56.696)
They might be saying, I don't know, it sort of works. And then when you try it, I mean it's like, this actually really works with our brand. And you never know what that's gonna be, because you know, every brand's different. So 'cause some people, yeah, just say things are gonna this is this is the thing you need to do. And then with such certain D I mean you try it and you feel a bit disappointed 'cause it didn't work for you the same way, but then something else that doesn't really work for someone else can load for you. And with the

Adam Callinan (14:17.806)
Yeah.

Adam Callinan (14:21.548)
I think of it yeah, the more gems in there. Like I I think of businesses as a whole, and this fits really well within that as just a big giant puzzle. You're basically assembling a thousand piece puzzle. All the puzzle pieces aren't the same size, they're not all equally important. But that company that worked well, that puzzle piece fit well in their puzzle and it impacted their puzzle differently than than your puzzle or my puzzle, where are you know, we're putting together a different puzzle.

The pieces are are different. Maybe it works, maybe it kinda fits, maybe it doesn't fit at all.

Mark Windsor (14:48.652)
Yeah.

Mark Windsor (14:52.237)
Mm. And sometimes you can do the same puzzle over and over and you still get the same benefits and you just repeat the process. And then it might s slowly start to die down and then you need to move on to doing another puzzle.

Adam Callinan (14:58.35)
Totally.

Adam Callinan (15:04.044)
Absolutely. Yeah. So how do you coming from a a manufacturing standpoint, you know, we were making things that that had tight tolerances, but not like this. How do you make these like incredibly, you know, beautifully designed things, you know, d bowls and plates and cutlery and all these accessories and this stuff? How hard is this stuff to manufacture from a design tolerance standpoint?

Mark Windsor (15:33.797)
we make our cell life quite hard for ourselves. So one of the other for yeah, one of the other main things when I started with the brand was sustainability. And right from design school I remember reading this Cradle to Cradle by William McDowell. and it just it goes into he I think he was a partner with a chemist and it goes into the whole chemistry behind materials.

Adam Callinan (15:36.91)
That's kind of what I would think.

Mark Windsor (16:02.253)
So always wanted to use sustainable materials and sustainability is way overhyped these days because it can really be simplified. It's just like does this material have an ever never ending life cycle where it can just be reused over and over again? And there's really only one material that can do that, and that's metal. And it ha that's why it has this aftermarket value. So when you make metal products though, this is when the like when you're 'cause the

I used to design lots of products that had injection molds and things, and you're talking, you know, you can do whatever like we're we're from a design point, plastic's cheating. Plastic's such an amazing material from a designer's point of view, because it you can make it do anything. You can put it into any form, you can have point zero two of a tolerance, and it can just do anything. but you know, you're taking this thing, taking this or

oil, mixing up some other chemicals, putting out into the world and then ninety nine percent of the time it's just gonna be thrown into a hole in the ground and then does whatever it does in that hole, which no one really knows for a long time. So but metal, why people go around why there's always scrap metal dealers and stuff is why these people are like making their living collecting metal is it ha it holds its value, so it just goes right back if it's aluminium, if it's steel, titanium, whatever

Most metals. Some are that recyclable, but majority of them are. Anyway, long story short, that's why we make it so hard for ourselves because when you're doing these things that need tight tolerance, say for the bowls and plates that have these magnets in it, you're using them tolerances of the material. So it takes a lot of trial and error, but also a lot of when they're doing the checks afterwards, you have to basically design s

particular quality controls that make sure that everything's gonna align. yeah. But yeah, so we make h life hard for ourselves. So if we were to do a lot more plastic products like a lot of our competitors do, then and we can design weight much quicker as well, because when you're you know making these products out of more sustainable materials and especially like we've started using wood now and that chopping board behind that's even wood's got a mind of its own because it

Mark Windsor (18:24.8)
warps and it all depends on the yeah, you're you're not only designing for what it is at the manufacturing point of view, you're designing for what humidity someone's gonna be using it in. So you have these huge tolerances that you have to deal with. so but I think at the end of the day it's worth it just because it's if ever if no one cared then I think it would all just go to shit.

Adam Callinan (18:25.664)
It changes. Yeah.

Adam Callinan (18:51.884)
Yeah, no, I I I I agree with you there. And we, you know, from from a manufacturing perspective, looking at a lineup, for example, like the magnetic cutlery family and the the space in between the pieces to me just looks like such a nightmare. It's beautiful, but it looks like such a nightmare to manufacture or or to try to control from a quality control standpoint the manufacturing process and what what eventually ends up in the client's hand or the customer's hand.

Mark Windsor (19:22.144)
Yeah, and I was lucky to have some really good like my manufacturers. I've just I sort of cheated the system to begin with because I had all my manufacturing contacts from when I was working at other design agencies, even some Herman Miller contacts and things. but yeah, finding the right manufacturer is is everything really. and so yeah, I've been really lucky. quality controller. We actually did have our very first product did have a nightmare story though when I was t saying about the

mudguards that we made. so we were doing it in the UK to begin with and then just the quantities start we started to, you know, get some real sales and so we had to it just wasn't feasible anymore. so we we moved it to a factory in China. And I didn't even know this at the time. But so we got the first run and everything was looking good and then I just tried to stress it one way and then it just tore and I was like, what is going on here?

And I didn't even know this, so it was my fault as a designer not knowing this, but I didn't realise plastic had a grain. So plastic sheet has a grain going in a particular direction. And all the samples that we did to begin with went in one direction. And when they the production run, they flipped the sheet the other way for some reason. And then they ran the grain the other way and it just tore because we're using like fold lines to give it its rigidity and structure.

And they put the fold lines along the same direction as the grain. So just tear instead of folding. So so yeah, that was a a nightmare. That was like yeah, year one. it was still today we've been behind fifteen years and that was the the biggest shit moment when they all arrived.

Adam Callinan (21:04.29)
What it did you what did you do? Like did you ship to to customers and customers are like, what the heck is happening? Or did you just hold it all back?

Mark Windsor (21:11.804)
No, so we it was Kickstarter, so they arrived and we were telling people, you know, it's gonna be we're gonna be sending them out next week. And then I checked him and I was like, This we can't do anything with this. And then so but I was it was good because I went for an agency. So and it was relatively small for them, like we were, you know I I think we did like ten thousand units, but for them that was nothing for this agency. And they and it was polypropylene, the sheets.

Adam Callinan (21:22.254)
Can't do

Mark Windsor (21:41.024)
And it's all and we so so we literally just took it to a recycling plant and they recycled the whole thing. But yeah, like I don't know, a hundred box a couple hundred boxes or something and they had like a couple a hundred or a hundred and fifty in each box. But anyway, they did the whole production run again 'cause they actually I looked back at the drawings and one of their engineers did know there was a grain thing and they put on the drawing, grain needs to go this way. So it was like,

Yeah, if you get out get out of jail right there.

Adam Callinan (22:08.822)
That's good. So they technically did it wrong. Yeah. So what did you how long did it take to get the new product and what did you tell the customers?

Mark Windsor (22:17.739)
so there's that's the thing with Kickstarter is it's like if you're just com we were just brutally honest. We like tell them we told them I had showed a video exactly what like there was nothing held back. And you know, if you're just brutally honest with your customers, a lot of times everyone's sort of in the ride with it, you especially those early days of Kickstarter. and is and if you're just really showing that you're doing everything possibly can to get them the product that they paid for.

then, you know, if they w had to wait I think another two and a half, three months for us to get there's very little complaints. and we were just yeah, just up damn the whole way through the journey. So they sort of rode the wave with us. which I sort sort of still do to this very day, even though we haven't had quite that experience again. But just brutally honest and like yeah. I I think it really helps to be the I don't know, when you try to hide things then it's it's always going to come back to bite me.

Adam Callinan (23:17.11)
Yeah, it's amazing how the value of the truth and how that seems so odd. Like it seems like out of left field to just be just tell the truth. Like they'll get it. Some of them won't, and maybe need to give them their money back, and that's okay. We I mean we had we had a lot of those experiences. We had one in particular at the very beginning, probably year two in the company where we we launched the product in one shape, one size, one color, just stainless steel. It was like the model, you know, the forward, you can have it as long as it's black.

You can have any color you want as long as it's black. the we received the products. We did not test the paint at the factory because we were, I mean, that we were so back ordered, like we had basically pre-sold the entire inventory. And we had red and blue, and we got the products and had it tested at a laboratory. We just like picked a laboratory on the internet and it tested way over the lead paint limit. And we had our and these customers who've been waiting for this stuff for for months. I mean, it was thousands, like probably 5,000 units.

Mark Windsor (24:08.459)
Yeah, it's not what you want.

Adam Callinan (24:15.252)
And we hand stripped with our like Home Depot paint industrial paint thinner hand stripped five thousand thousands and thousands of units like in our garages with like elbow length rubber gloves on to strip down to stainless and get the paint off. And we were in the same thing.

Mark Windsor (24:32.531)
I've had that s I've heard that story so many times, where there's one little thing that needs to be changed with a product. So the founder will sit there with ten thousand of them in their garage and they'll sit and just remove that, add that, whatever they need to do. going back to the customer thing as well, is it's we've actually found over the years, which is quite counterintuitive, if you make a mistake, own up to it and make it right, you actually create

Adam Callinan (24:44.92)
Yeah.

Mark Windsor (25:00.573)
a custom of so much more loyalty than if you've never had if you just shipped it, it arrived fine, everything was great. It's like some of the most valuable customers and some of the like the best word to word mouth customers, which is such a good marketing channel, are the people that things went wrong and then you made it right. obviously it's really hard to do on scale, but and it becomes more and more difficult. But customer service is such an integral part of a brand.

Adam Callinan (25:02.669)
Hundred percent.

Adam Callinan (25:29.588)
Yeah, I mean we had the exact exact experience. Could not agree with that more. Taking advantage of the catastrophe is is an amazingly I mean, it's the right thing to do, let's be clear. Doing the right thing is the right thing to do, and it's really not that hard. Yeah. Yeah, it might not be the easy thing to do, but it is the right thing to do, and the and you are absolutely right. The reality is that's how you you take a customer that might be upset about something and make them like your

Mark Windsor (25:42.729)
Yeah. Yeah, and y you feel you feel good about it as well as it being beneficial.

Adam Callinan (25:59.299)
Best friend. Like you're yeah, you're absolutely your spokesperson for the business. And that can be, that doesn't need to be in like, you know, a whole inventory thing catastrophe. I mean, we looked at that just from a customer service standpoint. Every single time we I literally had this thing called the decree of holy shit. And it was written in like old English script, three paragraphs that that all it did was explain the experience that we wanted every customer that came through bottlekeeper to have. And that was we wanted them to leave that experience going, Holy shit, I can't believe that just happened. Everything.

Mark Windsor (25:59.596)
Spokesperson. Yeah.

Adam Callinan (26:27.692)
So you I mean you build it down like all the way down into the customer service level where the agent or whoever it is dealing with that person is trying to provide that experience. And you take these people that are pissed. Stuff that's like a lot of which is entirely out of your control. Like they've FedEx screwed up their shipment, but it's before Christmas. And the reality is like they don't have a gift to give to whoever they're trying to give it to. But you can you can make those people.

Mark Windsor (26:47.349)
Yeah. And there's this thing that we apply to anything, it's just like kill them with kindness because they can come in really hot and really aggressive. And if you just be at so pleasant, then it just diffuses the situation so quickly where I think in the very beginning when when I was just running it by myself, y they catch you at the wrong moment, you just like fire something back, that is not the way to do it.

Adam Callinan (26:54.573)
Yeah.

Adam Callinan (27:11.758)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you have yeah, you have to remember like one, you don't you have no idea what else is going on in other people's lives. But they also like customer service as a whole sucks. And they expect because they haven't experienced it yet to get from you what they get from everywhere else, which is awful. So they come in fired up because they that's what they think that it's going to take to get it done. And then you respond l like you actually care and show them something they didn't expect to see, and they will 180 in a heartbeat. And to your point, like then they become your spokesman.

Mark Windsor (27:18.922)
Yeah.

Mark Windsor (27:38.891)
Yeah. And it's quite it's quite crazy as well because when you were dealing with I don't know, say if you're dealing with Nike or something, you just r expect like a long delayed process and you know, it's just like jumping through hoops and filling out the forms and things. But then if you like actually get to talk to someone and then or or even it's just email and it's like one person, especially when you start out, it's just like yeah, it's so valuable compared to majority of our other interactions that they're having.

Especially when you explain who you are. Like I always I did the customer service for the first six years, seven years and it would just be like Mark founder. And they're like, Really? Yeah, I'm still doing it and just it's just me. So there's no alternative.

Adam Callinan (28:24.44)
We had a an automated I mean it was automated, but like it came from my email that went out to every customer and it was a super personal, like, thank you. We could not be doing this without you. You this is all for you, about you. It was short and succinct. If you have questions, comments, thoughts, anything, reply to this email and I will help you. And it and when they replied, it came back to me. And like at scale, you know, I was getting like hundreds of replies a day, but

And I but I set up systems to be able to respond back or deal with every single one of them. And that like blew people's minds to your to your point.

Mark Windsor (29:00.031)
Yeah, and then you're you're cutting down your meta ads and just letting people other people tell their friends about your product rather than relying purely on those other marketing channels. But yeah, very very hard to do at scale. But then you've got, you know, it's a good problem.

Adam Callinan (29:09.89)
Yeah. Absolutely.

Yeah. Yeah. It is a it is a good problem. You can figure out how to deal with, but it is hard to do at scale. So where do you where do you go from a product line standpoint from here? Are you doubling down into the camping essentials cookware or you do you expand outside of that? What are you doing?

Mark Windsor (29:20.031)
Yeah, exactly.

Mark Windsor (29:28.971)
Yeah.

Yeah, we're pretty we've found a home in camp kitchen. Like it it's there's literally hundreds of different directions to head. so what what we find is we usually what's worked best is if you bring out another product that complements one of your existing products, that really helps. that's what we're doing. We've got a few designs in the go over. It's you know, complementing, it's creating like a a things that you can bundle together and it just makes sense.

but yeah, there's just if you look at some of the big brands in our space, the snow peaks and all this, there's there's there's just hundreds of different directions we could head. So that's not really a problem. The problem is more me having the time to get back to designing. and trying to address that with everything I have at the moment. to because yeah, I'm doing admin and marketing ninety percent of the time. Where if I was to be designing ninety percent of the time

then it would be yeah d whole different story. So ever the concentration point at the moment is trying to actually get not what to design but how to get back the time to actually design and yeah grow also have bring in other industrial designers that can help me. we we've had that in the in the past just on a case by case basis, but create the make it more of a system where design is always a priority rather than

I can finally get back to it sort of thing.

Adam Callinan (31:02.988)
having a conversation a couple of days ago with with somebody that the crux of what we were talking about was the the downside. And I I think it's just in what inherent. It's like what comes with growth. As the CEO, you start the business in your case as a designer, you know, in my case, like I love the early the early stage grind of like solving all the puzzles and figuring the things out and putting the things together. But as you scale and grow, you end up

you know, in your case, maybe not doing the things that you love doing, like admin and marketing and not doing design. In my case, I ended up doing legal and patent and patent infringement and and also, you know, some admin and of these things that I really didn't they weren't enjoyable, which is a a big part of why we we eventually started saying yes to potential acquires in and exited that business. So in in what you're looking at now, and I will caveat that I would look at this probably different today with like AI, honestly. How are

Mark Windsor (31:54.071)
the l the last few months, yeah, I've definitely been going down that route.

Adam Callinan (31:58.241)
Yeah, how are you leaning into to that to try to offset some of that admin? At least the admin. I know the marketing is maybe a little bit different.

Mark Windsor (32:05.814)
just yeah, just looking at all the r role w what takes up the majority of my time. and then just looking at what has the least like that can just go on in the background that it's not gonna like customer service. You can do it to an extent but you still want that personal touch. So it's just like well but what can h I there there's a I was when I visited the doctor, probably about

Adam Callinan (32:25.976)
Yeah. Yeah.

Mark Windsor (32:34.994)
Two or three months ago, and I it was sort of a aha moment. It was they had a form and it was like, do you mind if we use AI within this appointment? And then it had a sort of explanation why they're doing it. It's like, with the help of AI, we can summarize AI can summarize your whole appointment, create your whole summary, and then the doctor, your GP, whoever you saw,

we'll go over it, check sure it's right, but it saves eighty percent of the time for them, but they're still signing it off. And I was like, that's what it's for. That like it's like that just means the doctor can see s you know, probably fifty percent more patients in a day. And it's like that's what you do. You y use it to do all the grunt work behind the scenes and then you like say for marketing or customer service, you have you it supports that person.

So you still have the first line or the contact points in place, but then you have the grunt work being done, you know, by AI in the background. So that's what I'm trying to do at the moment, set up systems where yeah, we still have the the contact that's needed and the personal touch where I don't know, you s you lose personality once you if you were to get it to e everything, but basically to do the grunt work in the background.

Adam Callinan (33:58.061)
Are you have you gone down the rabbit hole of some of the third party agent systems to overlay on top of an LLM like OpenClaw or Hermes Agent or any of those?

Mark Windsor (34:09.33)
Yeah, so open clause scares me a little bit 'cause I sort of did a deep dive into that and we just use co work at the moment. I'm not that tech savvy as well to use I think you need like a programming sort of background because the safety nets just get removed completely. so

Adam Callinan (34:25.408)
It depends where you it depends where you put it and what you give it access to. Really important.

Mark Windsor (34:29.352)
Yeah. Yeah. So I have, yeah, gone down the route of, you know, having a separate hard drive, having its own email account, having its everything associated. I f I found the best way to get my head round it was just like you're designing an employee. It's this like you're just like, okay, what would this employee be? Okay, they'd be a CMO. What skills would they have? This is this is the set of skills they would have. And then cr what tools do they need access to? and then also baby steps as well.

Adam Callinan (34:44.119)
You are.

Mark Windsor (34:59.326)
Like if there is an interaction with a customer or if it does need to send out a sample or something for the first while, get me to just be able to go, yes, that's okay. that's where at this stage we're at now. just basically hopefully over time the more tr it gets trained, then hopefully we can, you know, take the training rules off eventually. But yeah, it's I think it could all go wrong very quickly if you were too ambitious too fast.

Adam Callinan (35:28.738)
Yeah, I think the customer interaction thing would make me really, really nervous. I'm really aggressive on on the the agent side for the the managing and doing the blockling blocking and tackling stuff. And you can do and I've I've gone through the ecosystem of OpenClaw and then now into Hermes, which is just a better version of a similar kind of product that has a lot more controls in place, installed on a serve, you know, in like an Amazon EC2 instance server. And I'm not a developer.

Mark Windsor (35:33.662)
Yeah.

Adam Callinan (35:58.541)
be clear. So like, and I I'm able to set these things up. I just helped one of our pen tank clients do this the other day. And what you can do with that agentic system layered on top of an LLM like Chad GPT 5.5, which you can do OAuth into it, which means you're just using your account, not API tokens, which is important from a cost standpoint. what you can do is wild from a like just you basically get to like create a chief of staff that can do whatever you will let it.

And things that that you haven't even thought of that it can get really creative and how it solves problems. It's pretty wild.

Mark Windsor (36:34.718)
Yeah, it's scary. So I remember when I first tested it, when I gave it like the brand voice and everything. and then I send sent it an email and then I just said reply back to this email to see if it would do it automatically without me having to go into Claude and then say reply to this email. And it did. And it just the brand voice it came back with was just like I like I could have read that, but it was even more like

'Cause the whole thing, our brand voice is like casual, down to earth, sort of quite relaxed, sort of goes with the outdoor industry, a little bit of sense of humor in there. And yeah, it just came back and it was just like, This is a really funny person. It's but it's like, yeah, it's scary.

Adam Callinan (37:18.36)
Yeah. Yeah.

Adam Callinan (37:24.12)
So yeah, it is it is both exciting and terrifying at the same time. It's just complete dichotomy. It's both live in the same world.

Mark Windsor (37:30.12)
Yeah, especially no one knows exactly where it's going. Yeah. Yeah.

Adam Callinan (37:33.787)
I know, or what it's doing, or how it's doing it. so setting aside the impending AI zombie apocalypse, what do you do? or have you done? I mean, you've been operating this business for 15 years, effectively, right? Maybe a little over 15 years. What have you done to build kind of durability into yourself with these like ups and downs? And maybe in your case, since you've been doing it for a while, like how has it changed?

Mark Windsor (38:01.162)
I have quite a relaxed compared to a lot of other founders I talk to, I live quite a relaxed lifestyle. I've I can't even remember the a week where I did 40 hours of work a week. I don't know. I've I I started out and I was thinking, should this be a lifestyle business or should this be, you know, high growth? And it it's definitely become a lifestyle business. but it just means that I have

the energy to when I'm working to really be working. And I yeah, I I think maybe the first year I got a little bit burnt out, but after that I just realized what do I actually want? and it was it's all about the lifestyle. Like I realized very quickly like the number in my bank account wasn't very far down the priority list to compared to like I there was a f there was a day actually I can pin it back to I was going to see the manufacturer that was just outside of London on the train.

I was just sitting there and something was coming from the window and I'd just been I'd literally finished up at the child company Perm Mill that I was working for designing monitor arms and things. And I always hated that we had to be at our desk. Like it didn't really matter. Well, w in in the design area if we were down the workshop, but we had to be in that room from the from at time of nine till six or whatever it was.

It so you just had to be there. Even if there was like you had finished the project and there wasn't really much going on, you just had to be in that space. And then when I was on that train I was just like, I don't have to be anywhere right now. Like it it it's it was sort of like I've sort of walked out of the cage. And yeah, I can d and then that sort of the sense of the freedom of my time is just like this is worth every bit of the stress. so yeah, it's always been about

the lifestyle that running your own business. 'Cause yes, there's heaps of detriments to as well and stress can be one of But God, is it worth it?

Adam Callinan (40:02.52)
Having the priority and self-realization around what is important to you is is critical. And I think that's a huge thing that people have a tendency to miss. Like we have a tendency to just kind of look at the maybe partly because it's inherent in like everything that we read and see everywhere, is that it has to be high growth and it has to be some VC thing and it has to be some crazy outcome and it has to so we're sort of like as at least as Americans, like we're kind of

Ingrained in that from a reasonable young age.

Mark Windsor (40:34.503)
I actually noticed the shift in culture when I moved from the UK to the US, how just more prevalent it was. and just the the amount that people worked, like all my friends that were like working till like eight o'clock at night and like twelve hour days and that was just normal. I was like, Jeez, this is this is quite intense. but it was quite good 'cause I didn't need to change my lifestyle at all. And and then I've I've got a seven year old daughter now, it's just so good when she's got something going. I'm just like, Yeah, I can go along tour. Well, I need to be there at twelve noon, yeah.

Adam Callinan (40:40.822)
Really.

Mark Windsor (41:03.965)
Never.

Adam Callinan (41:04.876)
Yeah. And it in the like in the American culture with that, you tend to see, you know, people that come out of college and now like there's this insane theology of nine nine six where you work nine hours a day. Literally just like you just like work all the time and all you eat is meat and do squats and that's like your whole life. Which is just so ludicrous.

Mark Windsor (41:21.095)
Yeah. Yeah. And and it's this I don't know, the there's this badge of honor about like people say like, I'm just so busy. I'm so busy, I've got and it's like but it's saying it from like posit it's like a this is a good thing, that I'm so busy and it's just like wouldn't it be great to just be like, Yeah, I can I can I'm pretty chill. yeah, I got plenty of time.

Adam Callinan (41:26.691)
I know.

Adam Callinan (41:43.938)
Busy busy to me means out of control.

Mark Windsor (41:47.217)
Hmm. And a lot of time you think, busy doing what as well? Because you can be doing the wrong you can be doing the wrong thing and be really busy doing the wrong thing.

Adam Callinan (41:52.28)
Exactly.

Exactly. And that and that's kind of the point. Like the out of control j is is not that you're like wild and flailing around, although maybe you are. it's the that you just you don't you are not in control of your own.

Mark Windsor (42:08.233)
Hmm.

Adam Callinan (42:09.42)
And it takes time, I guess, to like realize that maybe as you know, as young as young Americans coming out of college are like, I gotta kill, I gotta crush, I gotta go, whatever. And then you go spend five years doing and you look back and you're like, Well, that sucked and I really don't have anything to show for it. So maybe I need to adjust that thesis.

Mark Windsor (42:22.099)
Yeah. Yeah. And I yeah, just how you spend your time. One one thing I'm I've become very good at over the years is just like deciding how I spend my time and just being very efficient with the time I spend doing something. that that's the skill set I sort of developed quite early on with running the business. It's like, yeah, I just need to be really efficient with my time. The more efficient with the time, the less I have to work. And the more

I think about what I need to spend my time on and like actually nail the thing that I'm actually meant to be doing, is worth, you know, ten times being really busy doing the wrong thing.

Adam Callinan (43:02.06)
Yeah, there's a to to turn that tactical, one of the things that that is important you get really good at, and I'm sure you're expert level at it at this point. And I have I have kids. I have a daughter that's actually seven as well. And a son, that's like two years younger, it's five, he's five. Is the skill of s of being comfortable saying no. And like it being okay. No is is a good thing.

Mark Windsor (43:30.429)
Yeah, and I I've I don't know if this is a good thing or a bad thing, but like some people's like calendar is so full. I don't actually have that much on. Like I look at my calendar most of the time it's like I actually probably don't say no to that many things as well. I don't know if it's just I think I th I told you this is like the first podcast I've ever done. Like I it's just like I'm very much behind the scenes and like

dunno, that's just the way it's always been. And there hasn't actually been you know, there's a there's a and it's quite surprising to people when they're like, when can you meet? I'm like, I don't know, whene whenever whenever suits you. My schedule, my schedule's quite open.

Adam Callinan (44:07.288)
Yeah, have of now. Yeah. Right.

Yeah. I mean, I'm I'm very similar. I I will say that as you know, as you do more things in the public, and I'm inherently a pretty private person, like I don't do the socials, I haven't in a very, very, very long time. but as you do thing, you know, like having been on Shark Tank and I've been interviewed in a bazillion magazines largely because of that and because of Bottle Keeper. And at one point I was writing for them, the more of that stuff you do, the more of that outreach you get of people trying to get your time. And I had to

I have grown to to be extremely good at saying gracefully saying no. And my decision making process comes down to very specifically comes down to that thing that I say that I say yes to. It better be good because it's taking that time away from my children. And that is my number one priority, is my family. So I that's like my decision making process. Doesn't mean I don't say yes, I do, but I am really, really, really careful of how and when I do say yes.

Mark Windsor (45:06.14)
Yeah, and I imagine it's quite hard when you like, the more I get shown on this, the more exposure, the you know, the more growth, the more the more, the more, the more, the more, the more. so that's why people wanna say yes to everything, 'cause they they don't know. but yeah.

Adam Callinan (45:16.28)
Well,

Adam Callinan (45:21.026)
Yeah, but back to like our beginning conversation, in most of those cases, they don't result in more growth and more revenue and more exposure. It just results in more time and more ask and more commitment.

Mark Windsor (45:26.096)
Yeah. That and that is true. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And the and the other thing is what you realise everyone's gonna promise you the world, to get you to do whatever it is that they're doing. Like I I was thinking about the other day, just the sheer amount of shit that comes into your emote, like obviously spam filters are do but just there's a lot sneaks through as well. It's just like

How many people actually go down the for them to keep doing this? Obviously it costs nothing to send it out to millions of people, but it's like how many people actually go down these whatever it is, whatever scheme that it is, whatever or even it it might be completely legitimate. It's just, you know, it's you can tell it's not gonna work for you once you've seen it a million times. But like how many people go down these like paths that are gonna get them nowhere, costs them money?

'Cause it's very hard. Like I always found it the hardest thing to know with business, like when you're summing up okay, say if it's a manufacturer or if it's an agency, it's like who do you go with? And that's why you know, word of mouth is always the best reference you can possibly get. But if you don't have word of mouth for a particular thing and you need to get it done, then you have to pick someone. And it's just like yeah, it it's always one of these things that come into my inbox, it's like w why would I go with you?

And then there'll be the occasional one where it's and it's going back to that personal thing where it's like they've written the perfect email and it's very personal and they've got all the right links and you can go see their portfolio and you can go these things and it's like, that one makes sense out of the hundred I've seen where I've just delete.

Adam Callinan (47:05.954)
Yeah. I think a lot of it obviously is clearly a numbers game where they send a million and one person says sure. But and I think that person that says sure gets the exact right email in the exact right time when they're dealing with that exact problem that this thing is claiming to fix and they haven't figured out how to do it themselves yet. And they they see up the possibility that this thing might be helpful for that. And that I think also only really works when they're super early on in business and they just haven't had enough.

of those things go through and and light on fire so they don't have the scar tissue built up to just appreciate that it's pretty much all garbage.

Mark Windsor (47:42.419)
Yeah, 'cause so many times the people that are really good at whatever service it is are not actually after clients that badly because, you know, they're already sort of nailing it. So it's like getting referred to them by someone that's already in their network is the best thing possible. But when you're starting out, you have to advertise. So it's like sometimes you get a you know, a drill come through.

Adam Callinan (47:52.568)
Hold the

Adam Callinan (48:02.958)
Absolutely.

Adam Callinan (48:07.458)
Yeah, no, you're absolutely right.

Mark Windsor (48:09.928)
Yeah, I remember we had that with our videographers, at the time. It was just like it was just the perfect email. We would I think it was we didn't we had just moved from UK to US and we didn't have any videographer to make a new video and literally I I was starting to hunt and then the email came through and it was just like so simple, so short, so personal and that's the thing. As soon as you see a long email, it's almost automatically delete. I never understand that why people Yeah.

Adam Callinan (48:34.722)
Yeah. I don't have time for that. Yeah. Yeah.

Mark Windsor (48:37.446)
And the subject lines, these generic subject lines, it's this weird thing 'cause you can go through a whole page of spam really quickly and then it'll suddenly pop out, that was actually written just for me.

Adam Callinan (48:49.784)
Yeah. Yeah, some of them get good. AI ch obviously is changing a lot of that stuff, but it's it's honestly that that makes it from my perspective even less effective because now I just don't believe anything was ever actually written by a human.

Mark Windsor (48:54.695)
yeah. Yeah.

Mark Windsor (49:02.278)
Yeah, no you just know you don't give it give anyone a chance 'cause you don't even know if it's a real person.

Adam Callinan (49:09.208)
Amazing. Well, how do you want people to find you if you spend any time yelling online? or full wins, or we'll put links and everything in the show notes.

Mark Windsor (49:21.2)
Yeah, just for Windsor dot com. It's pretty simple. Everything all social media, everything else links in there.

Adam Callinan (49:24.066)
That's easy.

I love it. I dig the simplicity. Amazing. Well, thank you, Mark, for your time and appreciating that we are on wildly different time zones right now. It's it's late in your day and early in mine. So thanks for hopping in here.

Mark Windsor (49:40.264)
Yeah, no, it's been been great. I might do a few more podcasts from you.

Adam Callinan (49:43.306)
Yeah man, we do we just unleash the beast?

Epic. Appreciate it. Thanks, Mark.

Mark Windsor (49:49.861)
Awesome. Thanks a lot, Ed. Much appreciated.