Freedom Entrepreneurship: Building a Brand That Gives You More Than Just Revenue With Eric Bandholz

Eric Bandholz is the Founder and CEO of Beardbrand, a men’s beard care company. He started Beardbrand after leaving a corporate role to pursue his passion for men’s grooming and beard care. Eric is also the host of Practical Ecommerce’s podcast Ecommerce Conversations, in which he interviews startup founders and founders of brands valued at $100 million.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

[2:20] How Eric Bandholz became a globally recognized brand owner
[4:51] The backstory of Beardbrand
[11:44] Eric’s secret to garnering over one million views on YouTube
[15:45] Eric talks about his brand’s operational and performance challenges
[22:00] How Eric developed perseverance
[27:22] Why storytelling is essential for brand growth
[34:31] A process for writing compelling brand stories
[38:39] What is Eric’s goal in building his brand?
[47:32] Eric shares his expertise in DTCX
[52:22] How Eric’s upbringing shaped his professional success — and how he lost $32,000 on YouTube
[1:06:15] A peek into Eric’s personal life — from family to wellness

In this episode…

What does it take to be recognized by strangers on the street for your brand? You don’t have to compete with big-name brands to get widespread recognition; you just have to relate to your customers. How can you scale your brand’s reach while honing your entrepreneurial skills?

While traveling, Eric Bandholz is often recognized as the charismatic face of his brand. He attributes this acknowledgment to his natural storytelling abilities and maintains that this factor sets independent brands apart from large retailers like Amazon, which doesn’t connect with consumers authentically. Eric doesn’t invest in paid ads and instead recommends creating organic content that showcases a distinctive brand personality. Developing this personality may also involve giving your products unique and memorable names that capture consumers’ attention and entice them to purchase from you.

In the latest episode of the Up Arrow Podcast, Eric Bandholz, the Founder and CEO of Beardbrand, joins William Harris for a discussion about charismatic leadership and brand storytelling. Eric explains the importance of persevering during tough times, how to identify a work-life balance that aligns with your core values, and his presence on DTCX.

Resources mentioned in this episode

Quotable Moments

"If you want to stand out as an independent brand, you have to do the things that Amazon can’t do, and storytelling is going to be one of those."
"Nothing is permanent, which means all the good things are not permanent, and the bad days are also not permanent."
"I’m willing to suffer longer to be able to see the outcome for what I want."
"The challenge is if you’re on DTCX, who do you believe? Do you believe Andrew or Josh? It goes back to what I said earlier, you have to follow people who align with you."
"I enjoy working on the business, but it's not going to grow without me, and that's okay.

Action Steps

Cultivate resilience: This equips you with the mental fortitude necessary to weather the inevitable ups and downs of entrepreneurship.
Harness the power of storytelling: Effective storytelling creates a connection with your audience, leading to enhanced engagement and customer retention.
Prioritize personal values over blind growth: Aligning growth strategies with your values fosters sustainable business practices and ensures personal and professional satisfaction.
Embrace both wins and losses: Transparently sharing and reflecting on both successes and failures fosters a balanced perspective and encourages community support.
Focus on health and wellness: A commitment to personal health ensures you have the energy and vitality to tackle business challenges and enjoy an active, fulfilled life.

Sponsor for this episode

This episode is brought to you by Elumynt. Elumynt is a performance-driven e-commerce marketing agency focused on finding the best opportunities for you to grow and scale your business.

Our paid search, social, and programmatic services have proven to increase traffic and ROAS, allowing you to make more money efficiently.

To learn more, visit www.elumynt.com.

Episode Transcript

Intro 0:00

Music. Welcome to the Up Arrow Podcast with William Harris, featuring top business leaders sharing strategies and resources to get to the next level. Now let's get started with the show. Hey everyone.

William Harris 0:16

I'm William Harris. I'm the founder and CEO of Elumynt and the host of the Up Arrow Podcast, where I feature the best minds in e-commerce help you scale from 10 million to 100 million and beyond. As you up arrow your business and your personal life, I'm excited about the guests that I have today. Eric Bandholz. Eric is the charismatic founder and CEO of Beardbrand, a men's grooming company that has revolutionized the beard care industry. Originally from Austin, Texas, Eric started Beardbrand after leaving a corporate job to pursue his passion for beards and grooming, known for his infectious enthusiasm and dedication to helping men feel confident in their own skin. Eric is a true trailblazer in the world of men's grooming. Eric, I'm excited to have you here.

Eric Bandholz 0:52

What is going on?

William Harris 0:55

I love it. Yeah, that's the enthusiasm right there.

Eric Bandholz 0:59

Yeah, bring the energy, man, we're gonna have some fun today. Yeah, and

William Harris 1:03

I need, I want to give a shout out to Braxton Manley as well, CEO of Braxley bands. He is the one. He's former guest here on the Up Arrow Podcast, but he's the one who put us in touch and said that we should do this thing together. So thank you. You see

Eric Bandholz 1:14

that this is a Braxton company. He came by my office. So nice, good friend of mine. Yeah, I've known him for a number of years. Great guy,

William Harris 1:21

very cool. I love that. Before we dive all the way in, I want to make sure that I do announce our sponsor. This episode is brought to you by Elumynt. Elumynt is an award winning advertising agency optimizing e-commerce campaigns around profit. In fact, we've helped 13 of our customers get acquired, with the largest one selling for nearly 800,000,001 that I appealed recently. You can learn more on our website@Elumynt.com, which is spelled E, l, u, m, y, N, t.com. That said, I want to start about you've, you've reached the level every, every founder hopes to reach the level where somebody maybe recognizes them on the street, right? And I've spoken at different events and like within the industry, maybe some people know who I am, but it's just walking down the street. People don't, but you had some encounters recently where you've reached that level of notoriety, but not necessarily from the people that you would like it, from who noticed you and recognized you as you were out and about.

Eric Bandholz 2:20

Yeah, you know, it's kind of funny. The the most frequent times I get noticed seems to be when I'm traveling like it's happened multiple times. I've been recognized in Valparaiso, Chile. I've been recognized on the plane, but this most recent trip to Denmark, I got recognized four times over the course of five weeks, which is an extreme anomaly for me, like maybe it happens once a year, a couple times a year, and the first time was from a TSA agent, and then the second time was a fan in Europe, and then the third Time was a customs agent in the Netherlands, and then the fourth time was a customs agent in America. So three out of four of them are like, G Man, and I'm kind of, like, an anti government kind of guy. And I'm like, Am I on some kind of list here? Like, do I need to, like, worry about the things that I'm saying publicly? Are they going to come after me? You know, that's funny,

William Harris 3:20

I was on the no fly list for a while. No way, really, yeah, but here's the reason why my name, William Harris is apparently a very, very common name. I used to live on the same block as another William Harris, and we get our mail all the way switched up. And so somebody named William Harris did something that they weren't supposed to do. And I just remember showing up to the airport the one time. They're like, yeah, you're on the fly list. And the fly list. And I was like, What did I do? What's going on so you couldn't fly? Like, yeah, I don't think I could fly that time, but I think it was very, very quickly cleared up. It wasn't for a long time, man, I'm trying to remember what was going on in life at this time. And I believe I was doing a lot of flying. I was at a I was at a company where I was doing like, four trade shows a month, and so it's like, every week I was flying somewhere. So I want to say that it was, it was cleared up within like a day or two, or something like that. I don't remember how I got it cleared up. I think I had to talk to somebody down at like, the where you get your passports and stuff done, and they got it fixed up for me. They're like, yeah, it's not you. It's some other. William Harris, I've been pulled over and thought of that. There's, there's somebody told me that they had a warrant out for my arrest as well. Yeah, man, yeah. They were like, it's the wrong William Harris, it's not you so. But okay, so I want to talk about beer brand

Eric Bandholz 4:32

for president, right? I see that Harris everywhere. That's, that's me. Yep, congratulations, yeah, thank

William Harris 4:39

you. I do want to talk about beer brand, though. Like, as far as, why did you start it? I always love getting the backstory of what made somebody say. This is something I'm passionate enough to go full time and just make my thing. Yeah,

Eric Bandholz 4:51

Beardbrand is it's funny you use the word passion. Like Beardbrand, to a certain extent, is an extension of who I am as a. Person. So it represents a lot of my passions in life. And I used to be a financial advisor at a mega bank, and hated working there. There's just like expectations to look and act a certain way which are not me. You know, it's fine if you're that kind of person, but suit and tie shaped face, you know, just classic Americana look. And I always envisioned myself having some kind of facial hair, whether it be short or long. I've wanted to have facial hair, and that was kind of frowned upon in the corporate environment back, you know, in the well, I mean, like all my career up to that point. So I quit working there. I grew my beard out. I actually tried starting a couple of other businesses. And in this journey, I was called, you know, ZZ Top or Duck Dynasty or Grizzly Adams. And those are mega cool dudes, but these hands are made for keyboards. They weren't quite made for axes and whatnot. And I ended up attending a beard competition where I started to meet other guys who were similar to me, other entrepreneurs, you know, like ministers at churches, doctors, lawyers, like people who didn't fit the traditional stereotype of a bearded individual, especially back then, you know, 12 years ago, 13 years ago. And what I wanted to do was really, tonight, unite this community of bearded guys and help give them the support they needed and the confidence they needed to to not just rock the their facial hair, but to love the man looking back at them in the mirror. So beard brands always had this take that's like, obviously we love beards. We're pro beard, but what we care more is that the person you look at in the mirror loves you back. And if that means no beard, we support that as well. Again, we got our biases. Beards are great, but we're not going to like, you know, you're not dead to us if you choose this shape. So I think that in our space, there's certainly this, like, hyper masculinity trope that comes through, like, if you don't have a beard you got, or if your dad doesn't have a beard, you got two moms, and kind of like these jokes that have persisted, and we just don't agree with that. So there's, there's a lot of intentional and purposeful decisions that we make in marketing that fall in line with, you know, our beliefs, and I think that's kind of helped us stand out in the marketplace, the crowded marketplace. I

William Harris 7:32

think that's great. Your beard definitely looks great. You've got your you've got me beat by a pretty good margin there. I don't grow mine out long enough. I don't, I don't use anything on it. I don't my wife, probably, yeah, am I at the point where I should?

Eric Bandholz 7:45

Yeah, yeah. I mean, absolutely. Like, I mean, I'm a big believer in skincare in general, so, like, there's no point that you shouldn't be caring for your skins. It's your biggest organ and the most visible one, and it's the thing is, like our number one seller is our utility oil, the name we call utility oil, because obviously it works great for your beard, but it works more than just your beard. It works for your skin and the skin. Having healthy skin helps have a healthy beard, and then having healthy skin also helps you age better and look younger over time. And it's simple. It's like, you know, a couple of pumps, and then, like, two seconds of work and you got the product on your face. It's good 24 hours. So, you know, we we take the stance of men's grooming, how I think men tend to do things versus how women tend to do things. My wife, she's got, like, a 12 step skincare routine. I'm like, I ain't got time for that. Like, just one product. It does like, 95% of what her, all of her products does. And it's like, super quick, super easy. So we've got a utility, oil, utility, wash, utility softener, utility bomb, and kind of have leaned into that utility function with our products, where you have a beard, you don't have a beard, you have a product that you know maybe you grew your beard out and you want to use it as a beard oil, but now that you shaved your beard, you're not left with a product that you no longer can't use, because You can still use it on your your face as a skincare or on your tattoos as a tattoo, balm or oil. If you have dry hair, it's great for being able to help control your hair. So, you know, we've we try to do things like, really, like catered intently towards our customers and and to men, whereas, especially on the bigger side of things, like clinic, you know, clinic for men is basically like women's product that they repackage for men, and it doesn't really, wasn't really created from the ground up for men. It was just an afterthought for men. So, yeah, I don't know you get me on rants talking about my product. I could probably talk. For another hour. So I

William Harris 10:00

like the utility aspect of it. Though it's like the Swiss Army knife of it, and it reminds me of a meme that I saw one time, right where it's like, shows, like, all of all of this, wife's skincare, hair care product, whatever. Then it shows the guy, and he's got, like a nine in one. And it was like, for hair, body, dog, car, dishes, it's like everything, you just do it all with one, one product. But

Eric Bandholz 10:23

I mean, like, you know, like, let's be real. You know, from my perspective, there's very few things that you can kind of tweak. Like, I not only is this our marketing position, but it's what I believe, too, like, it's a moisturizer, you know, like, what is the intent of the product, to moisturize, to soften the product? Like, there's a lot of, there's a lot of marketing fluff out there, and good for, you know, these, these brands out there who have understood that women desire, that that type of products, and they can sell their products, so I'm not crapping on them, you know. But

William Harris 11:06

so there's a lot of wins. You've got the win now of being recognized by multiple TSA agents, customs agents, etc, but you've also got wins within YouTube, which is one of the ones that I wanted to talk to you about a little bit, because I feel like there's a lot of wins that we could talk about from a revenue perspective. But when somebody talks about they've they've crushed or unlocked some secrets to content that one gets me probably the most excited. You've got multiple videos now that have hit over a million views organically on YouTube. What's your secret?

Eric Bandholz 11:44

Being able to suffer longer than most people, sure, honestly, like, it's really, really, really hard. Like YouTube, creating content on YouTube is incredibly hard, and it takes a lot of suffering, like a lot of creating videos that you put your heart and soul into and then no one watches. Yeah, and you know, you're a content creator as well. So you know what it's like to and you do a lot more work for for your podcast and my podcast, but it's like prep calls and screening candidates and asking candidates and then spending hours with them, and then you post it. And you know, if you only get a third of the amount of people who normally listen to it, it can be demotivating for most people, they give up. They frankly, give up. Whereas we're willing to learn from everything that we post, and willing to try new things and test new things, and then suffer longer than most people. I think that's one of my attributes that I have in life that allows me to eventually find success.

William Harris 12:46

Yeah, that's a very stoic mindset, almost too What if you had to nail down one or two things that you think underlines the ones that have gone viral, the ones that have gotten millions of views. Why do you think that those ones did well compared to some of the other ones?

Eric Bandholz 13:07

We produce content that's never been seen before. So the best way to find success on YouTube, or really, probably any social media platform, is to produce content that is incredibly novel and remarkably interesting. And if you do that, you will find success. I think that the challenge is a lot of people are lazy, or they don't have enough experience to know whether or not something is novel or not. So if you you're like, oh, here are the five, five tips on how to make money on Shopify, you know, go to Alibaba and find a product reload, you know, like no one's gonna watch. Everybody. Yeah, everyone said that. Everyone said that. So where is the novelty in the content that you're producing that is going to resonate with its intended audience? And then you've got to have, like, a large enough audience. So if you're producing something for like, a very niche market, don't expect to get 10s of millions of views or millions of views, you know. So you know, it's actually a blessing and a curse. If you chase the views and want to get big numbers, then you may actually start producing content outside of your core expertise, and then it's like, why are you doing it? Because these aren't your customers. They're not buying products from you. You're just going after ego. So to a certain degree, maybe it does make sense to have content that doesn't get a lot of views, because you're really connecting and resonating with a very hyper specific niche, and those are going to be your customers. So who the hell cares if you've, you've got your customers, and then a bunch of people who just want to be entertained? Yeah? Yeah,

William Harris 14:51

that's a very good point. There's a lot of truth to having content that is very dialed in. And there's, there's definitely a give and take there. I usually like that target approach. Where you've got, and not necessarily target the company, but like, an actual Bullseye where you've got, you know, the center there, and that's the people that you actually really want to reach, because they're going to be your customers and and that's where the bulk of your content should be, and you've got some stuff that is spread out a little bit further because you're just trying to, like, pull other people in that might have things that are adjacent to what you're trying to get across, and they may become customers in the future, and you just want to kind of get them into the funnel a little

Eric Bandholz 15:27

bit. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely agree with that.

William Harris 15:30

So aside from wins, though, it's not always been Rosie, you've run into some obstacles, as every business owner does. What are some of the things that you've run into that you've found to be challenges that you have to push through.

Eric Bandholz 15:45

Yeah, I mean, these past couple years have been incredibly challenging. You just mentioned target. We sold our products in target for a number of years, probably about five years. I think from 2017 is maybe when they placed the first po so we got in there in 2018 through, 2022 2023 as they cleared out their inventory and losing that account made up a fairly large portion of our DNL. And combine that with our online marketing not hitting on all gears, operational challenges with our products, our products not performing to our expectations and standards, and, you know, just a couple of hiccups here and there, like getting sued, having a coupon leak, 100% off coupon leak, I

William Harris 16:44

should, jeez, yeah, that's brutal. You

Eric Bandholz 16:47

know, there's just, like, a series of of issues that all kind of compounded in last year and has continued this year. But basically what that's happened to us is like, you know, our our business, has dramatically constricted in size. And scaling up a business is really challenging and really hard, especially managing from a cash flow perspective. But scaling down a business, I found, is probably even harder because your cash flow also tightens up, but you have a lot of fixed liabilities that you can't easily part with. For instance, you know, when we sign the lease in this office here, we're doing such a volume that is like, Okay, well, even if we have to eat the cost of the office, not a big deal. Well, we didn't think like, well, what if the business gets cut in half? Like, now that the business is cut on half is basically a pretty big burden to the business to have this kind of lease, especially now that we're work remote, and it's like, basically, you know, four, 5000 square feet of space for me to use as a an office in a podcast studio. And then we've had some other kind of like, just like things that were built, you know, the company was built for a company that's twice the size than it is. So it's just really hard to operate a business when you have all these, I want to call them barnuckles, but basically like that. So we're driving our boat with a bunch of barnacles slowing things down. Yeah,

William Harris 18:22

I think the thing that I appreciate about that is remembering that it's inevitable these things are going to happen, and you don't necessarily know which ones they are, but you're going to run into some obstacles and some that are pretty significant in any business, in any endeavor, not just business, anything that you decide that you want to do in life. We were talking a little bit before about, you know, the daily stoic. And one of the things that I appreciate that was in there was if you go into it knowing that something's going to happen down the path, you're not you're not necessarily frustrated by it. You're like, okay, great, that's here. How do we address it? But if you think that it's just not going to happen, it becomes much more frustrating. And you almost can't think about how to solve it, because you're just too frustrated with it being there. We know that these things are inevitable. Hopefully that gives us the ability to think through these a little bit more strategically.

Eric Bandholz 19:12

Yeah, nothing, nothing is permanent, you know? So that means both everything, all the good things, are not permanent, and the bad things, the bad days are also not permanent. So when you think about, like, you know our relationship with target, you know eventually that was going to end. But like, the challenging days, like they will also end too. So when you recognize, I think one of the challenges entrepreneurs tend to have is we always want more, like we're never content with the status the current status. So what we have to do is remind ourselves, regularly and constantly that because nothing is permanent, to take status of where we're at today and appreciate all the great. Things like, 15 years ago, Eric Bandholz would be killing, dying to be in my my situation. Now, sure, I've done amazing things. I have my health. I have my my family has their health. You know, like, how much is that worth? That is worth millions of dollars to be simply alive and existing and healthy. So I have, like so much gratitude for a lot of things, and yes, my business isn't where I want it to be, and maybe some relationships aren't where I want it to be, but I'm able to work on those, then I'm able to fight through and like I said earlier, I'm willing to suffer longer to be able to see the outcome for what I want, and then we'll get it good, and then we'll, you know, I don't know if you know the hero's journey as well, but it's a never ending cycle. You know, it's like you, you do. You embark on an adventure you you face adversity you've never faced before. You get a mentor to help you along the way, you get in the pit of despair, and then you find a way out of it, and then that becomes the new normal. And then once you're establishing that new normal, then you go and you seek that adventure again. And that's how we level up and grow as individuals. Is embarking on this hero's journey.

William Harris 21:20

So you've had successes. You've had obstacles. All of that aside, you have built a business that is unquestionably successful. Like you said 15 years ago, Eric would be very excited to be in the spot that you are. You attributed a part of this to being, let's say perseverance. If I was going to say, like, what are the other tactics or things that help you to be successful, perseverance? How did you develop this perseverance? Is this something that you were just born with? Is it something that you think you were raised with? Is it something that you've intentionally developed?

Eric Bandholz 22:00

I think I would like to attribute a lot of these traits to my upbringing and my parents. You know, being the youngest of the third child, or excuse me, the youngest of three children, my priorities were not always top priorities. So, you know, being humble enough to wait my turn sure, you know, is good. And then also, I grew up in a household that valued athletics, so sport was a big part of my life. And in sport, there is an incredible amount of suffering, you know, whether it be the training or putting your heart and soul in the line for a game and then losing that game and then being able to grow from those losses. And so I think that certainly played a big part in my life, that where I don't feel much entitlement to things in life. I feel like I have to earn everything, and I want to earn everything. I want to be independent, and I don't want to depend on others, you know. But also, like my brother and my sister, they grow up in a very similar environment, and they see the world slightly different, and have perceived or pursued other, other career pathways. However, I still think we all genuinely put in the work, you know, like, I think bandhol says, put in the work. We have a tagline with my children that that we say is banhos, is never give up. Uh, which kind of like, I want to set the tone with my daughter and my son. That you know, if you want to carry the last name, one of the things that means to be a band holds is that you're just not going to give up, like you are going to persevere. Things will be hard. But you will, you will do. You will accomplish great things. So I

William Harris 24:07

love it. It's like the rocky story, and it reminds me of semi cynic, I think, what is the infinite game, or something along those lines, but it's, it's just that idea that you you only lose if you stop, if you keep going, then there's that opportunity to climb out of the pit of despair, or whatever that you talked about as well, but when you stop, that's when you're done. Yeah, I

Eric Bandholz 24:27

mean, and I know it's like, it's easy to say, like, never give up. It's easy to say, work on things forever. But I think to a certain degree, there is like, what are you stopping? Like, what is the big vision in your life? Is the vision to, you know, like, make this product work? Like, let's say we've got a beard come, and let's say this beard come is not hitting the numbers. It's costing us a bunch of money. You know, the the market is clearly not. Excited about it. If I discontinue this product, does that mean I've given up on the product? No, because the goal is not about the product. The product is one of the things in the pathway. So it's not about never give up, give up on anything, but it's, you know, what are the core things that you're trying to do in life. I'm trying to build a life of independence. So if I'm like, Ah, you know, business is too hard. I don't like, you know, doing payroll. I don't like doing my bookkeeping and accounting and all that, I'm going to go back and just work for the man that would be giving up, but launching new products, or trying different channels, or trying different marketing avenues, those are not giving up, or even, like, completely, like, even shutting down the business if I need to, and starting a different business, like that is not giving up. So it's kind of understanding what giving up is to you. And like, what is your purpose in life, what is the thing that you must never give up on like my marriage. I cannot give up on my marriage like that. Is a commitment that I've made to my wife until I die, and it is there are days that are incredibly challenging where we're not on the same page, that maybe it would be easier to just hang up the cleats, but that's not what I said in my mind, and I will not give up on it. So, like, that's a commitment that I've made, and hopefully my wife, and so far, you know, she's made that same commitment, and we've had some hard times that we've gotten through, but that is one of those never give ups to me. You know, in the children too. You know, like, never give up my children, even though they can be pain in the fights. Sure, absolutely,

William Harris 26:48

I appreciate that clarification about, like, what are the things? What? What clarifies giving up versus not? One of the other things that you had mentioned to me about what's helped you to be successful is storytelling, and I really appreciated that answer, because when I think about storytelling in let's just say, in business, but even outside of business, storytelling is almost central to the human identity. Why? Why do you attribute storytelling as being one of the things that has really helped you to be successful.

Eric Bandholz 27:22

I think there's a lot of ways to build a business, which is great for those listening. I encourage to encourage you to think about how is, if you're listening to podcasts, how is the guests talking about how they solve problems, how they see the world, and then recognize, like, if this person sees the world similarly to me, then their advice is probably going to be more applicable. But if they tackle the world in different ways, then it doesn't mean you can't be successful, or, you know, even integrate those things, but it's probably not going to be for the better to go that pathway. So storytelling, like here, like I talked about, this is a beard comb. It's got a cool pattern on it. But, you know, to anyone, this is just another comb out there. So we change these patterns on the regular, but each pattern gets a name. So the name of this beard comb is jello salad. So we think about like, what does the pattern kind of represent? And then how can we like, think about creative ways to tie life experiences to a product. So someone who you know, maybe they have fond memories of Christmas and running into their aunt or their uncle, and they always made jell o salad, and now they have the the product that you know has that connection, and we do that with, you know, this one is, is less important to have a story for, but for our fragrances, we have old money and bold fortune and a tree Ranger where it's like, how do you smell a fragrance like, I can tell you it's got Cedarwood in it and pine in it, and eucalyptus and, you know, lavender or whatever. But when you hear those words, like, very rarely are you going to understand because maybe you smelled another fragrance that has sandalwood in it, and you think that it's going to smell like that. But then when you get it, of course, my interpretation and how I blend together those ingredients are going to be completely different. So what I like to do is like, I like to take you to a place that this fragrance reminds me of, so that you can visualize this fragrance. So for instance, old money. I grew up in the South, and my parents used to take me to Biltmore Estate, which is like the biggest private castle in America. And I remember vividly as a kid walking through to the game room. They had a, it's not a billiards table, but it's like the old school billiards table, or the British one snooker table or something like that. I don't know they had cut me. They had, like, wood paneling. They had these, these giant velvet, um. Curtains. And, you know, those curtains can get, like, almost like a musty, kind of like peppery note to it. And then, like, you know, like the the crystal with the bourbon, the leather chairs, the cigars, like I wanted, all of that in the fragrance. And that is, that is old money to the tea. Like, when you smell old money, you are walking into that Biltmore Estate in the game room, and we've been able to bottle that up. And we've done that with bold fortune. We've done that with you know, true Rangers like being out. If you're a force, a forester, you're fighting fires, and it's just been a temple smoke is another great one, where it's the incense from, you know, East Asian temples, is the smoke that fills the room in these temples, and it's got a very kind of like incense inspired fragrance. So to me, like, when I can tell those stories to the intended audience, like they get it, they're like, Oh, yeah. Like, I want to smell like that. I can picture I don't want to smell like that. Yeah, yeah. And when they get it, you know, they're going to feel those notes and you know to me, like, I'm never going to be inspired to buy a blend of ivy and pine and eucalyptus, because you're like, okay, whatever. But if I can get behind, like this vision of what I want to be as a man, then I find it much more compelling, and I just enjoy it like I enjoy telling stories I've got, I've got a one of my as a quote, unquote entrepreneur ideas guy, like, one of my side quests is this really, like comic book story that I want to tell, that I've kind of like started to write out the outline. And I just think the future of commerce, as you see the commoditization of products on Amazon is like, if you want to stand out as an independent brand, you have to do the things that Amazon can't do, and storytelling is going to be one of those 100%

William Harris 32:03

I look forward to reading beard man took it. Took a shot at the name of the comic. There no,

Eric Bandholz 32:11

it's a it's more along the lines. It's a dystopian or not utopian, not dystopian, just futuristic. Take. Similar to like Blade Runner, but more around humanity's ability to build amongst adversity. So it's like a inspire, I want to say inspiring, but a realistic look at what humans do and what humans do well, which is build. I don't think humans tear down. There are certainly moments that humans tear down, but the most of what we do is build and create.

William Harris 32:49

I'm excited to hear that. It reminds me of a quote that one of my teachers used to say would have been, I think my freshman year, the uncreated, creative Creator created me to be creative. That's good. I

Eric Bandholz 33:01

don't know how you remember that.

William Harris 33:03

It's like, Yeah, well, I mean, it impacted me, right? I consider myself to be creative, so I liked that. But stories, you were talking about stories, and how that almost transports you. And as soon as you did tell the story there, I did feel like I was in that room, and it did make me feel a certain way, and it did convey to me much more about what I can expect that to smell like than just describing things. It's like, Bergamo. I'm like, I don't know what it smells like, right? Or whatever. I don't know. But stories are, they're, they're more than that. Like I said, I really appreciate you bringing this up, because when I think about just human nature and stories. We have told stories for 1000s of years. It's how we've passed on. Most of the knowledge that we have in human history was through stories. So I think there's just something powerful about the way that a story can move you to understand something and then ideally move you to act. And I think that's the key that you had here. It improved somebody's understanding. And you would think, just explain the ingredients. That's all you need. Just explain the ingredients. But it doesn't it doesn't help you to understand it. It does help you to move and I see a lot of people do this in their advertising or on their landing pages, where they've got a really great list of features that doesn't move somebody, it doesn't help them to understand it. And so I think that call out is good. Do you do you have a process for how you go up writing this? Or is this something that it's like, you're just really good at writing stories and so you do it, versus having a process for this?

Eric Bandholz 34:31

Yeah. I mean, I'm like, inherently, my mind doesn't stop so, like, I and it goes down a lot of different pathways, and then I get, I get the visions that will come in randomly, and I'll kind of, like, think through them, and like, you know, it'll all start with just like, kind of an idea. We used to have a fragrance called Four vices, and it was the beersman's favorite vice. So it was a blend of cannabis, coffee, tobacco and hops, and a really cool story there, or one of my favorite, like, one of our most requested products to bring back that we canceled. And I think I was just thinking like, I think it started off as like, five vices, and then from there, I started, like, researching, like, what are the vices that I could throw in there? And I think I wanted to put bacon in there from the early days, but the bacon fragrance was kind of weird. So, you know, being able to, you know, just like, think through a little nugget. And then, just like, take it a little bit further and a little bit further. And just like, you know, so you start with a circle. I have this idea for a circle, and then, like, I want to add lines here and there, and then then you have the sign, and then from the sun, you have the landscape and whatever. So it's like, you kind of fill in the details as you start with that, that little nugget. And sometimes it's like a crap, the crap story, you know, like, where's the crap product, or whatever. So I really just thoroughly enjoy being lost in my my thoughts, and being able to

William Harris 36:14

have you, like, have you ever AB tested it? Have you ever AB tested a landing page where you just put it up there without the story and then, and then, and then the same product with the story to see if it

Eric Bandholz 36:24

made a difference. No, no, I mean, and I think, like, to be fair, like, our ability to, you know, like, make sure our customer consumes a story like, sees it, I think has opportunity to improve. Like, I don't know if you go to our website sure if you'll find it. You might have to go to our fragrances page to be able to see it, or you might have to like, the nice thing about YouTube is that we get to create these content in the long form video, and I can spend a minute or two minutes talking about the story behind the fragrance, and that's where a lot of people will understand it and get it so another advantage of being able to create long form content is being able to put the time and energy into something that they're just not going to get from a landing page like I think landing pages are the last resort to convert someone like you have to convert someone before they even see a landing page. And that happens for us, primarily through organic content, but it can happen through ads, or it can happen through like influencers telling that story. So there's a lot of different ways of doing that. But if, if you wait until your landing page to tell that story, is going to be very hard to to convert them, I think,

William Harris 37:53

yeah, yeah, that's fair. Um, one of the things that I like talking about is the philosophy of growth. And you know, things that are either helpful or detrimental to growth. And Braxton was the first one who called this out, that I really appreciated on his episode of, what if the goal is not to grow to 100 million? What if the goal is to grow several brands to 10 million instead, or something along those lines, right? And you took this even then, a little bit of a different approach too, um, which is you're not growth is still a part of what you're doing, but the reason why you're growing a brand is different than what I've heard from a lot of other people. What is your goal in building a brand? Yeah, so

Eric Bandholz 38:39

for me, there's been a lot of going back to what we were saying earlier, a lot of intentionality and purpose behind the things that we do and why we do, and that includes the very foundation of why the company exists. And it comes down to our core values. Our core values are freedom, hunger and trust. So when you think about freedom, the reason the business exists is because I want to have a life that allows me to do the things that I want to do with, the people who I want to do them with when I want to do them, that is freedom to me hunger like I find enjoyment from doing hard things, from going on these heroes journeys, I find internal satisfaction from doing more. So the growth comes from an innate desire to simply grow, and then trust is, you know, how I view the world, and you may remember, like, like, again, how I was talking about this story I was writing is like, I believe humanity is good. I believe that, you know, 99.7% of humans are amazing people. There are the 3.3% that are psychopaths and sociopaths. They do exist. Let's be real. But the majority. Humanity is amazing. They're good, and it's built on this framework of trust. So I believe in, you know, like doing good things and and trusting that good things will happen to me. I believe in doing like handshake deals rather than like contract heavy deals. I believe in like being a man of my word and working with people who are people of their words, but it goes back to like, when, when you have this mindset, then you have to think about, like, what is the difference between a business doing 1 million and 5 million? There's probably a fair amount, you know, $1 million business, maybe you're making, you know $40,000 a year in profit. If you pull all that out, the business isn't going to be able to survive. You 5x that. And then now the business is making 200,000 you can pay yourself 100,000 and put 100,000 for the company to grow and be sustainable. You double that again, and the business is making 400,000 and then now you're pulling out 200,000 now, at 200,000 in my opinion, you're gonna have everything covered. Your food's covered. Your house is covered. Your vacations are covered. Your children's school is covered. So from 200,000 and up, everything is just nicer schools, nicer cars, yeah, nicer houses, nicer hotels when you travel. And I don't know if adding all the things that it takes to go from, let's say, a 10 million to a 20 million, so you double your income again, then all of a sudden, like, now I've got more employees, I've got more lawsuits, I've got more you know, like, I've lost more privacy out because I'm getting recognized more. I'm getting interrupted more, you know, like there becomes a point of diminishing returns where more is not achieving the goal of what I want, which is like freedom. So how can I be free if all of a sudden I start to get tied to the business? So then it becomes like, how do I build a business that grows on its own so that I maintain my freedom, and the business continues growing, and unfortunately, I haven't figured that one out yet. Sure, I'm not, I'm not the smartest of learners, so I know there's some other people who have but, but that that is like my benchmark. So I've gotten it to a great point where I am involved in the business, and I enjoy working on the business, but it's not going to grow without me, and that's okay, because I enjoy working on the business, but

Eric Bandholz 42:50

there's a level of freedom, yeah, yeah, but yeah, so I'm not willing to grow the business in a way that requires full consumption from my soul into the business to get it to that next level. Like, I'm just not willing to, you know, skip out my my kids, school events and, you know, like work until 8pm at night. And, you know, like, there's just certain things I'm not willing to do because I want to maintain that freedom.

William Harris 43:22

There's a, I don't know who said it, but there's a saying that I like that's something along the lines of, everything you own owns a piece of you. And I love that saying because, to your point, you know, the business owns a piece of you, the house owns a piece of you. Every single one of those things in the more that you get of those potentially just owns more of you as well. And so there's more demand on you, potentially less freedom in a lot of those areas. And nice, what book is this from? Oh, I can't see it. It's a little blurry for me right now. Oh, man, oh, this is yours. This

Eric Bandholz 44:02

is my book. That's the chapter in my book. Is the things you own. They own you. And I literally say that I talk about the experience of the house. You get a bigger house, you have to buy more furniture, you get a bigger mortgage. Now all of a sudden, like You're not the boss of the house. The house is the boss of you, and it is telling you what you can and can't do you can't quit that job anymore because you have to serve that house. So I absolutely agree with that, man, I'm just echoing what you said. So it's I love that.

William Harris 44:29

Okay, so I like that. I'm glad that you brought up your book, speaking of books, when I asked if you had, if you're a big book reader, you said there were two books that you almost read, but you're mentioned in them. What are the books that you were mentioned in, and what did they have to say about you? Yeah,

Eric Bandholz 44:45

so Noah Kagan, the million dollar weekend, I think, is his book, and it's the green one, right? Yeah. It's like a neon green I actually gave it to one of my friends who hasn't returned it back to me. But. Noah. I bought Noah's, you know, first edition on Amazon, and nice. And then Steve Chu has a family first entrepreneur. And I've known those guys for, you know, eight plus years, or something like that. And they quoted me in there as, you know, a Beardbrand as an example or something, or what I'm doing with Beardbrand as an example. So I'm flattered to be included in the book, and it's just like one little like line and like, you know, 40,000 word book or something. But I'll take all the the notoriety I can get for that. So it's, it's sure very flattering to be mentioned by people who I admire very highly. Noah and Steve are great guys.

William Harris 45:47

Those must be on some TSA reading lists. Yeah, maybe both of those are great guys, Noah. I remember when Noah launched that book, he was the only one that I've ever seen do this, like the neon green thing, where his AB test of doing his cover, he basically wanted to see looking at his his bookshelf, what color stood out? Like, what color just wasn't represented that much? And it's, he was like, oh, neon green. I was like, that's a genius move. It happened to be his color already, anyways, basically, just so we're on the same page, like he already was, like, Green was his thing. But it worked out really well too. That that stuck out, yeah?

Eric Bandholz 46:29

And, I mean, James clear, his cover is white, and he sold like a gazillion, but well, so at the end of the day, the cover might help. But what do they say? It's not the cover, it's the content. Yeah, yeah. Can't judge a book by its cover. Can't judge a book by its cover. That's the same, yeah, but it's a great book. Hey, not to say his isn't a great books. One

William Harris 46:49

of the other things then that I wanted to talk to you about was just DTC, Twitter. I love getting to talk to people who actually have a presence there in Matt bertulli was the last one I had on that, really, I would say, has a presence within the DTC Twitter space. And there was a tweet that you, you put out there that I really appreciated, um, because there are pros and cons to DTC Twitter, but you put out a tweet, there about three different tweets that happen to be in your feed simultaneously that you're like, This is one of the problems with just CDC Twitter in general. What was this tweet about? Yeah, so

Eric Bandholz 47:23

it was around buying ads. I think the first tweet I saw was from Andrew Ferris, and Andrew Ferris was effectively calling out agencies who blow tons of money on creative that didn't perform. They're like, Oh, it's testing. It's okay that we did that, insinuating that building AD AD strategy based on cost caps, or just like limits, is the way to go. And then the tweet right below that is Josh Durham, and he's just talking about how cost caps are effectively like a bad strategy. I forget specifically what he said. And then below that was a Raba with, is it ferment? A ferment? Yep, ferment commerce, formerly of tripper whale, and he just had some kind of like crap posting meme with my McConaughey and Leo, Garcia Leo, Garcia Leo, DiCaprio. DiCaprio in The Wolf of Wall Street movie. I forget what it was, but it's something around, like buying ads. And I'm like, this, is it like two people with a disagreement, and then, like, it's like that meme of the guy smoking the weed watching the two girls fight. I don't know if you know that, but that's what it felt like. It was like these two people, and they weren't even engaged, and it was just like, naturally showed up in my feed that way. And I think that the challenge is, if you're on DTCX, that Who do you believe? Do you believe? Andrew or Josh, and it goes down to what I said earlier in this podcast, is like you have to follow people who align with you and align with how they see the world, because they've been able to solve things the way that you're likely to solve things. So the reality is, both of them are correct. Andrew and Josh can completely, can effectively both build great campaigns that will make companies a lot of money, but you have to trust those processes. So if you don't agree with how they view the world, then you're going to have a lot of conflict. You're going to waste a lot of money, then you're going to quit. So think about the philosophy of of who you partner up with, not just from like an agency standpoint, but from an employee standpoint, from a manufacturing standpoint, align with people who see the world the same way that you do. Yeah,

William Harris 49:53

culture fit is huge. I think the thing that I appreciated about what you said, about both of them being correct, that I really like. Is, I've always said that the whole reason why one of those strategies works is because everybody isn't doing that strategy and somebody else is doing the other one, similar to basketball as my sport. But it's like, if you're running a man defense or a zone defense or whatever defense you're running, it works because of the offense that the other team is is currently doing, but if they change up their offense, you have to change up your defense to be able to work with that way. Same thing is true in chess, which I really like right where it's like, somebody has, you know, d1, and then somebody has, you know, e1, or whatever. It's like, whatever you're doing there, your your, your strategy is effective because of the fact that not everybody is doing it, and as soon as everybody does the same thing, if everybody did cost caps, it would completely break the algorithm. It would no longer be able to function. It wouldn't be effective for anybody.

Eric Bandholz 50:52

Then, yeah, I mean, so it's, I don't know, not to get an iOS out there, but you know, like you've, you just got to put in the work, figure out what works for you, and make adjustments as things are or are not working.

William Harris 51:07

Yeah, one of the other things you and I were talking about on you called it DTCX, which is correct. I still say Twitter, and I probably will forever, because I'm old now, you know I, you

Eric Bandholz 51:19

know what I did? I created a short code where I press xx twice on my keyboard and then it does the little X symbol, which I don't know what the character is, but it's got those two lines across, yeah? So I like that. That's how much I use x. That's

William Harris 51:38

well, yeah, that's good. So the the thing that I was thinking about with that, that we were talking about, is, should you post like, screenshot wins or not, and there's so much contention about whether you should or shouldn't. What's your thought?

Eric Bandholz 51:52

Yeah, I mean, do whatever the hell you want. I mean, at the end of the day, we're going to be dead, and no one's going to give a crap about you, and you're like your grandkids might know you, but your grand great grandkids aren't. So I want to worry about it. But that being said, I'm I love screenshots, because they eyed me up to show me what's possible. And I also view people in the DTC community, to a certain degree as friends. So I love to see it when my friends are winning. So it gets me happy and excited that being said, if all I'm ever seeing is everybody win and my business is a pile of turd, then it's like, what the heck is wrong with me? You know? So hopefully I'm in a position where I'm winning as well, and then we're all high fiving. But the reality is, it's never going to be the situation where everyone's winning all the time. So it does help to have both sides of things where people are sharing their wins but also sharing their losses, so that you know other operators know that they're they're not alone in their struggles or their wins,

William Harris 53:03

well said, and that's exactly how I feel, too. We need both. And this is true for almost everything in life. I feel like anytime that you decide that there's only one thing that needs to happen, you're usually gonna end up ruining whatever it is you're trying to do. Because I feel the same way seeing somebody else's win, to me, is motivational. I'm like, Oh, wow. Like, okay, there's something new that I can do, something new, that I could try, something new that I can unlock, and I get excited about it. But to your point, there are some times where it's like, you see win after win after win after win and there's no losses, and you're like, am I the only one that's not succeeding right now? And that could be a very frustrating feeling, too. And so you need both, but the same time, if you see only what's wrong and in the complaints and that you're just like, man, yeah. Like, miserable, yeah.

Eric Bandholz 53:51

You don't want to become both. Like, that's the worst I can't see in cynics. I

William Harris 53:56

want to transition into getting to know you a little bit better. Like, who is Eric Bandholz, what about your childhood do you think has impacted you to be who you are? And you've talked about a little bit being the youngest, but why do you think that you are the one who's being able to be the CEO of a successful brand? I think I'm

Eric Bandholz 54:22

that's a good question, because my daughter's school has a yearly question that they ask their students, and this year, the question is, do you think that beliefs shape experiences, or do you think that experiences shape beliefs. And it kind of gets down to the question of, can you learn to be a excellent CEO, or kind of, is that innate to you? And I kind of fall in line, the line of thought that the beliefs should. The experiences like, who you are at the core is never going to be changing. There may be experiences that help you on that pathway to, like, solidify your beliefs as you learn and grow, but like, you're not going to change who you are. So to a certain degree, I do feel innately like entrepreneurial, like I remember as a child wanting to start businesses, and no one ever told me to start a business. Was just like, oh, let's do some do something like this and sell it. And I had friends I always wanted to, like, start a band, you know. So I think, like, I've always had, like, this desire to create something new. So I feel fortunate that, you know, my father was a plant manager, so I grew up in an environment that was a business environment. My mom was a stay at home mom, so she had the capacity to, you know, attend to our needs. My grandmother and grandfather, they had a tavern growing up that was on my mom's side and then on my dad's side. My grandfather was a landlord. He had some real estate properties, and he was an immigrant too, so you kind of had that immigrant mentality. And then, like, even further generations, back during Prohibition, on my mom's side, they had a candy store that was slinging some booze. So there's a little bit of like, rebel in me, like this, a little bit of like willingness to not just do what society expects. So I think, like, you know, kind of like my ancestors, DNA has been passed on to me and represents in different factions. Of course, like you go back, you know, who is that? So, like my parents are two, plus their grandparent, their parents, that would be six total people, and then plus their grandparents. And then you're, you're at 816, 2020, 22 people have, you know, four generations back have an effect on me. So of course, like me and my siblings would be slightly different as we get little pieces of of each, each of those generations. And so I think, you know, like the beauty, and I guess it's nature. I'm kind of a nature guy. It's just who I am, sure,

William Harris 57:35

sure, no, that's good. I like that. I understand that there are other endeavors that you've pursued. You've done a lot of you've had a lot of success with YouTube, with your Beardbrand channel. There was another YouTube channel that didn't turn out quite the way it was, or maybe it wasn't a YouTube channel, but there was something you did with a YouTuber that didn't turn out. I think you said you lost like $32,000 together, or something. What happened there?

Eric Bandholz 58:01

Yeah, so my buddy Aaron Marino, he's got a YouTube channel called Alpha am consulting. We've become friends through the YouTube space, and him and I are like minded people. We see the world pretty similarly, and we enjoy business. We enjoy talking about business we enjoy, like mentorship. So Aaron and I, along with actually two other content creators, Antonio and Ryan, we created a business called area. So Aaron Ryan, Eric and Antonio, area, nice, six to seven. So six figures is seven figures, and the goal was to effectively build like an investment company where we would help mentor people by investing in their companies and help them, you know, effectively take what's in our brains and put it in their brains to help them so well, finding the businesses was really tough, and A lot of businesses, like didn't check our boxes, and then we ended up finding one great person who we respect and liked his business, and then we invested in that business. But it just like, over time, it didn't seem like we were bringing the value that we could be bringing, and it's taken up a lot of time. And, you know, we had concerns that it wasn't going to be the right fit down the road, long term, and basically sold back our shares for $1 and kind of moved on and had a learning lesson, I guess I'm not a good investor, is, is what? I think the the learn lesson is there it,

William Harris 59:47

but it goes back to what you said earlier, about whether stopping one thing is quitting or whether it's still pursuing the same goal. And so the goal was freedom, and this was not. Dividing ultimately what it needed to for that to be the right thing.

Eric Bandholz 1:00:04

Yeah. I mean, I would say the goal wasn't really freedom. I think that the goal was among the lines of doing what we want to do, when we want to do with who we want to do. And, yeah, I think the challenge was, like, we are ending up not doing the things that we wanted to do, you know, like, Oh my God, dude. Like, we filed the company wrong. It was supposed to be like an S corp, and we filed it as a C Corp or something, and then now we got, like, 1000s of dollars of penalties with the IRS, and it's just like, filling out all this. It's like, what are we doing? Like, like, we can, we can help people out without going through all this headache. Like I can just get on a call and provide mentorship, or I can hop on a podcast, like, this is how I so I haven't given up that. Like, I still love mentorship. I love helping out. I have my podcast so, like, I'm still doing it, I just don't need all the legal headache stuff that I don't enjoy. So, yeah, it was less about the freedom and more about like, I enjoy mentorship. I love business, so it's still a big part of my life.

William Harris 1:01:09

I like that. What about, are there any quotes that you live by that you're like, This is a quote that I think is important for keeping me sane or

Eric Bandholz 1:01:19

whatever. Yeah, of course. I mean, like you're throwing softballs here. Yeah, you know what's coming. But for anyone, yeah, this is a, this is a frame drawing that we have, if you can't read this. It says haters are going to hate. And I just absolutely, like, I love this guy. He's just, like, walking his walk, you know, thinking his thing, like, if it's an, actually an animated GIF that goes back on the internet, like, a number of years. Oh, and they the company. These are things.com you know, produced these a number of years ago. And I actually have, like, a little lenticular printed card where I can turn it, and then it has him, you know, walking, and he's just kind of doing this really cool strategy, not walk like that. Sometimes it's just like, you know, what? Just kind of like, or get the hair, you know, it's just like, get it going wild. It's just like, who the hell cares? Because I'm gonna, I'm gonna sound like a broken record. But it is true. It's like, in two generations, no one's gonna even know who the hell you are for 99.99% of people in the world. And if you're not in the present doing the things that you love to do. Why the Why the hell do you even exist like you have such a limited time on this planet and to to waste any of this precious time on things that are not bringing you towards your goal or bringing you joy, you need to absolutely stop immediately, because before you know it, like the sick thing about getting older is you age even faster, right? So, like, one year when you go from age one to two, is half your life, but when you go from 89 to to 90, like that's going to be relatively a blink of eye. And so as you get older, you only get older faster through your own perception, and life is short, so the quicker you learn that and realize that it allows you to focus on the things that you really should be doing. Did you see that somebody

William Harris 1:03:36

put I don't remember who it was, but basically showed like this chart, I think I'm going, am I going up into the right or to the left? To you?

Eric Bandholz 1:03:43

I mean, I see that to the up and to the right. Okay, yeah. So

William Harris 1:03:47

I think I'm going the right track, so up into the right. But like, the chart whichever direction my hand is going, well, just imagine that it's going up to the right. But it shows that, what is the perception of half of your life based on, like, the way that you perceive time is, like, 21 years old, you're like, oh, that's brutal, because I do see that where it's like, every year, every summer, gets faster and faster and faster. And what you said reminds me of a verse at Ecclesiastes that talks about that, which is essentially saying, we're all going to be in the ground and two generations from now, even most of your the people who would probably would care about you the most, like, your descendants, won't barely even remember who you were or anything, let alone whatever beef you had with somebody, or somebody's beef they had with you, like, or what they said about you on x, right? Like, any of these things, like, it won't matter at all, yeah,

Eric Bandholz 1:04:40

and I know I know my grandparents story, but I don't know their parents story at all. Like, I have no idea. And like, it pains me because, like, I'm one of those guys that does, like, I'm on 23andme and I've gone to to where my grandfather has, you know, where he. Was born in Germany, and I visited that and I visited, you know, like, my fifth cousins, or whatever, in Germany, and but I still don't know them, like, I don't even know where they're buried, like I know very little about them. And, yeah, that's going to be true of of my great grandkids, unfortunately, unless, like, unless I become a Rockefeller or something where they can, you know, Robert E Lee, again, battle like kill a bunch of people, but, yeah, it's not my goal in life. Very unlikely. What about I could build a giant Pyramid in Egypt or something? Yeah, yeah,

William Harris 1:05:40

right, exactly. Even still, I don't even know if, do we officially know? I don't remember. I'm not that good at, like, my Egypt history. Do we even know who officially built the pyramids? I don't think we know. I

Eric Bandholz 1:05:49

think, no, I think they know.

William Harris 1:05:51

Do they Okay? Well, there we go. I don't know. So I don't know, like, I

Eric Bandholz 1:05:55

think I remember they know who. Okay, is responsible. So

William Harris 1:05:59

what about your personal life? I like getting into knowing, like, what are things that you're trying to intentionally improve in your personal life? So outside of business, like, there are metrics that we're trying to do. What about, like, just you relationships, health?

Eric Bandholz 1:06:15

Yeah, so I'm married with two kids, 43 years old. Obviously, I talked about it before. You know, maintaining a great marriage with my wife is important and also very challenging. We, especially these past four years, I'm, you know, I'm a I'm a libertarian, she's a liberal. And, you know, especially during the whole lockdowns and vaccination and stuff like that, where you were at polar ends of everything. So like the friction that came along with that has been challenging. You know, I want to be the best parent that I can to my my children. I find that very challenging because it's similar to that DTC story, where you're getting two experts telling you two different things that are completely opposite. So how do you know which is right? And then it goes back to, like my relationship with my wife, like my I think this might be more of a masculine versus feminine style of parenting, but like mine is more like let them get injured, let them get hurt, let them fall and break some bones. That's how they're going to learn. And then hers is more like, how do we support them, and how do we make sure they're doing things? And mine's like, Hey, man, you got to run. You got to run like, you have this goal. You got to do it. It's going to suck. You're going to suffer. You're not going to like it. And then her take is more like, oh, you know, are we like, damaging her forever, because now she's got a negative association with running and the trauma, I don't know. Like, I just two different styles of parenting, so we have to figure out and both are right. Like, it goes back, you know, like both, both have truth to it. So, like, just figuring out, I think it's actually, I think it's probably good that we both have differing views, because it allows our children to experience both. So parenting and becoming the best parent that I can is important to me. And then fitness like I want to live, not not only do I want to live a long life, I want to live an active life. So I think there's people who can live a very long time, but they're bedridden or, you know, like they're not able to move, they're not able to travel. I want to be able to be active. You know, through my 70s and into my 80s, where, like, I'm entirely independent, autonomous. I don't need support. I'm there for my grandkids. If I have grandkids, and I'm able to pick them up and babysit them and support them, is something important to me, and the only way you can do that is by being by caring for your body and your 40s. So it's like a never ending thing. So lifting weights and rowing are two ways that I maintain fitness, and then eating, well is again, eating is another one of those things where everyone's got an opinion, and I'm just trying to figure out how to do it the best way.

William Harris 1:09:07

Yeah, for sure, there's a lot that you said there on the marriage side. I completely agree with you prioritizing that that is potentially the biggest relationship that any person experiences in life. And so if there's any friction there, I think that that is affecting everything else in life, right? And so that's a very important one, to make sure that you're you're intentional about I really appreciate the duality of the masculine and feminine energies within raising kids, and how difficult that is, but how both are necessary in their different constructs. But I always, again, maybe being the dad in this, I always really appreciate a quote from Alex hermosi where he talks about something, it's like, we want our kids to be strong. We don't want them to go through things that make them strong. We want them to be patient, but we don't want them to go through things. That make them patient, like, we want these characteristics, but we're not willing to let them go through the pain of developing those characteristics. And so again, maybe, maybe that's just the dad and me, but I really he doesn't have kids, right?

Eric Bandholz 1:10:11

I don't know. I don't think he does, but it's so it's easy to it's easy to say, you know, those are the things totally not to say, like, you can't have great advice from people who don't have kids, but, and there's good lessons in that too, but you know, it is. It comes down to like, I you have a hard day at work. You gotta fight it with your wife, and the kid wants to watch screens, but you don't want them to watch screens, but they're about to freak out and yell and scream. It's like, well, you know, like,

William Harris 1:10:42

yeah,

Eric Bandholz 1:10:43

I don't judge. I don't judge. Totally agree, yeah. Like, I get it.

William Harris 1:10:49

You You mentioned working out in in diet or whatever, like, you know what you're eating. And we'll both go ahead and just put a disclaimer out here that neither one of us are nutritionists or physicians or anything along those lines. But what is your routine? What are you currently doing that you think is at least likely leading you towards the path of success there?

Eric Bandholz 1:11:12

I mean, if I could summarize my recommendations for healthy diets, it would be like real foods a way to help you do that, I think, is to avoid seed oils. So seed oils are a highly processed unsaturated fat that has gotten a lot of negative things. I think you can eat seed oils and it'll be fine. I don't think it's the end of the world, but I do think like the strategy of avoiding seed oils forces you to produce real food, and then when you eat real food, you're going to be getting more nutrient if you can, if it's in your budget, try to eat organic food that hasn't been sprayed with pesticides, herbicides, that has been shown to show some issues. But you know, like, I'm a big like fruits, vegetables, I can tell you specifically what I eat every day, which is a bowl of yogurt with honey four eggs that have been steamed or scrambled eggs. Usually I'll eat about a pound of ground beef with a little bit of salt on it. And then for dinner, whatever my wife prepares for for dinner, which can be like a rice and, you know, meat meal, or we'll eat a lot of like salmon, pre prepared salmon from HEB. And then I'll sprinkle in some momentum, which is a longevity shake. It has all the micronutrients that you're going to need to extend your life. So momentumlabs.com, it's an all in one shake with some protein in it. And then on days at a lift, I'll do like an additional protein shake as well. So the goal is to get it's hard for me, because I don't eat too much food, but trying to get that, you know, point eight to one gram of protein per day per body weight. Yeah, it's

William Harris 1:13:03

hard. It is hard to get one gram of protein per day, or per pound per day. That is a I go through weeks that I do. I try to cycle on, typically from intermittent fasting and then switching to basically eating every two hours, right? And that every two hours is me trying to get to that my protein goals. I think that's interesting, though, that you called out, you know, even just like real food, one of the things that I appreciate is, in celery, like in any real food item, there are 1000s of chemicals, not not chemicals that you would think of as bad things, but just like compounds, right? That that exist, that many of them don't even have names. And I remember reading an article about apigenin, which is in celery. Now, when you think of celery, you think of it as mostly being devoid of all macronutrients. There's like nothing there. It has this thing called apigenin. And abogen, and apparently has the ability to target cancer cells and cause them to explode, to self destruct. And when you think about that, that's in celery, but think about all of the other things that are in all of these real foods that you're missing out on, if you're only looking at macros, or you're looking at the nutrition label of those chips that maybe have some things in them that you need, but a lot of things in them that you don't need.

Eric Bandholz 1:14:27

Yeah, and, like, I've had this, I guess there's like an eating disorder where you effectively obsess over everything you like, you know, like, if you avoid, let's say you avoid pork or whatever, and then, like, you see pork on your meal, just almost like, it's not quite anorexia, but there's a name for it. I don't know the name i i could probably go that route. And I feel like if I was a bodybuilder or something like that, you'd almost have to be that way. Yeah, but I don't want to, like, I think that the one thing that I do well is find, like, this point of diminishing returns, where we're getting 90 to 95% of the way there and then living life, because I think, like, the additional stress that comes with it, or adjustment to your life. And like, what can you eat as you go out and, like, you know, do I have to worry about if I go to a networking event and they've got chips out there and that's all they have? Do I not eat or just eat the chips at one day? And it's got you to, wasn't, you know, it's like, okay, like, just, like, just find that balance. I think is the key for everything in life. But generally, you know, if you're the best diet, in my opinion, is the one that you can stick to, the one that you know works with your life. So it could be vegan, it could be vegetarian, it could be pescetarian, it could be carnivore, it could be intermittent fasting. It could be water fasting. Like, I want to try water fasting. I've heard kind of the same thing about, you know, going on water fasting does the same thing to cancer cells or whatever, makes it really hard. I don't know how true it is, but sounds good to me. Let's try it. Yeah,

William Harris 1:16:16

I think there's a lot of truth to it. I mean, Dr David Sinclair, you know, Harvard has talked a lot about activating sir two and one through seven, and so I think that there's some really good research out there to support the way that your body works. But again, all of these are still hypotheses to a point, right? There's some evidence to support them, but there's nothing that's guaranteed. I think what you said about balance is really the key, and I really appreciate it. I think that's wise words if people wanted to work with you or follow you to learn more about what's in your brain. What's the best way for them to get in touch or stay in touch? Yeah, there's

Eric Bandholz 1:16:54

a couple of ways. I've got a podcast called e-commerce conversations, so I bring on guests as well who are far smarter than me, and I try to learn from them. So that's hosted by practical e-commerce. Encourage you guys to listen and subscribe to that. If you want to follow me, be warning on X is the best platform. That's the only platform I'm active on. Is my last name at Bandholz, I tend to be a little bit on the libertarian side. So come Be warned, if you're not a big fan of capitalism or if you're a supporter of communism, you are not going to enjoy my my tweets here and there. I don't go political but I do go political philosophy. So yeah, there's a little bit of difference in there. That's fair.

William Harris 1:17:41

Well Eric, I really appreciate you jumping in, sharing your thoughts, wisdom. Time with us here today.

Eric Bandholz 1:17:47

Wow, it's been a pleasure, man. Thanks for having me on. Yeah, and

William Harris 1:17:50

thank you everyone else for listening. Hope you have a great rest of your day.

Outro 1:17:53

Thanks for listening to the Up Arrow Podcast with William Harris. We'll see you again next time, and be sure to click Subscribe to get future episodes.

‍