245 | Winning Comes From Good Partnership | with Kris Dehnert

Kris Dehnert  

One of the things that I had to learn over the years is to do what I do best and outsource the rest. 

Chase Clymer  

Welcome to Honest Ecommerce, a podcast dedicated to cutting through the BS and finding actionable advice for online store owners. I'm your host, Chase Clymer. And I believe running a direct-to-consumer brand does not have to be complicated or a guessing game. 

On this podcast, we interview founders and experts who are putting in the work and creating  real results. 

I also share my own insights from running our top Shopify consultancy, Electric Eye. We cut the fluff in favor of facts to help you grow your Ecommerce business.

Let's get on with the show.

Chase Clymer  

Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of Honest Ecommerce. I'm your host, Chase Clymer. 

And today I'm welcoming to the show Kris Dehnert. Kris is an Ecommerce veteran with experience in multiple industries. 

Currently, he's the CEO and co-founder of Dugout Mugs, which is an 8-figure-a-year Ecommerce company in the baseball space. Kris, welcome to the show. 

Kris Dehnert  

Thanks, man. Appreciate it. Awesome. 

Chase Clymer  

I'm very excited to chat. We had so much fun on the pre-call. So for those that are unaware about Dugout Mugs, can you quickly talk about the types of products you guys are bringing to market?

Kris Dehnert

Yeah, so it was about seven years ago when we launched Dugout, but it started with a flagship product. It's the one that's up here behind me. 

It's a baseball bat barrel hollowed out and turned into a bad-ass drinking mug. Like that's literally where we started. 

And then as we built the momentum, as you do with Ecom, you identify who your target audience is and ask them the simple question of what else, right? 

And it was, we want a mug that has a lid that I can take to the ball game, right? Like that doesn't spill.

We want shot glasses. We want little tchotchkes for weddings. So the more questions we ask, we end up having wine and whiskey and beer mugs and tumblers and shot glasses and bottle openers. 

But at the end of the day, it's just premium baseball bat themed barware. It's very, very niche. 

Chase Clymer

Absolutely. That's where the money is, right? It is. Alrighty. So where did the idea for this product come from? Take me back in time. 

Kris Dehnert

Yeah. So my business partner, Randall, invented the bat mug.

He was a pitcher for the Blue Jays organization. I guess it was probably 12, 13, somewhere in there. And then he got cut. And it's at that point you have to like learn how to walk again. 

Like, you know, I'm gonna be a pro athlete. Like this is all you've been training for for a decade or more. And then someone says, hey, you're not good enough. And life changes. 

And he went back to, you know, doing a couple of jobs he didn't really care for. And he got back into coaching baseball. He wanted to get back into baseball.

So he went to his alma mater, Florida tech and started coaching. And while he was coaching one day, a guy was cutting bats in half to do a hitting drill and leaving the barrels in the dugout. 

And that was it. He picked it up and there's a natural cupping in the top of a bat. 

And he's like, I wonder how far that, cause if you know Randall, like these kinds of odd thoughts just go through his head. And that's one of the very special things about him. 

And he's like, I wonder how far I can drill that out. So he went home and he's drawing on napkins, like the traditional founder story. 

And then he bought a drill and a saw and all this shit just on his counter and started figuring it out. And bumbled around like any manufacturing product and the drawings and the samples and the testing and all this shit like that. 

But then eventually he got to a point where he had a prototype and he started making it and he was just belly to belly sales, but he's an introvert, right? 

So it's really conflicting with his personality. So that's how he brought it to the market.

He was probably $70,000 in sales by himself in the first year, which was 2016. And then he found some articles about me. 

I helped bring a print-on-demand t-shirt company to the market and things like that, and was successful with it. 

And he read some articles. He came to me, he's like, dude, I need to pick your brain on this idea. And I looked at it, and we had some conversations. 

And I said, look, man, if you really want to go for a ride, I was just going through a transition in my life, a very… traumatic transition. 

And I was like, you could be the dude. If you believe in me, you show me, quit your job, call me tomorrow, kind of conversation. And that's what happened. 

In 2017 is when we launched Dugout. And we're almost $44 million in sales since. It's crazy. 

Chase Clymer  

Oh, that's amazing. So obviously, you came into the business a little bit past where your partner had found product market fit. 

But do you remember anything in those beginning days of what he was doing to see if there was an audience for this product? 

Kris Dehnert  

Yeah. So what's funny is the first... Well, the first conversation we had, I was at a mastermind, Board of Advisors. I'm a founding member of this mastermind. 

And I happened to be at a meeting and he happened to be driving past the hotel. It was just fate, man. 

And I was like, bring me a mug. Let me see this thing. And he brought it to me. 

I was like, bro, that's kind of weird. I was more of a football fan. And he said, “Just trust me, carry around for a week. And...let me know what people say.” 

I said, “Okay, sounds good. I'll do that.” And sure, I was two or three days in and people were nonstop. Hey, man, that's cool. What's that? Where can I get it? I'm like, okay. 

And then what I did is I actually thought back to my t-shirt days to print on demand, we did $20 million in t-shirt sales. And all we did was take a blank canvas and put something on it that was relevant to the audience we were targeting. 

This is when Facebook was easy, push buttons, print money. And that's what I told him. I said, dude, this reminds me of a t-shirt. All we got to do is say, um, “I love baseball” or a baseball field and put Cincinnati or Cleveland or New York. 

And, and all you're doing is starting to layer interests on a unique product. 

And man, we went from 70,000 to 500,000 in 90 days, you know, just putting an interest on it and, and, you know, he's an overthinker.

And I had a couple agencies, social media management, whatever. So I told him, I see you have to understand the mentality of people on social media. 

There, low is an overstatement. So we started dumbing down the content and we started dumbing down the messaging and we started doing memes and giveaways and gamification and things like this for the interaction, which blew him away because he is a high level thinker. 

Right. Measure 45 times, cut once and I'm ready to fire aim over here. I said, but you just gotta trust me. I've done this before. It's not my first rodeo. 

And he did and we did and we decided who fits in what lane because we certainly couldn't coexist in the same lane. We're too different. 

But that's the magic. That's the essence of a partnership, which is not always easy. 

So yeah. And then we started rolling, man. 2017. 

Chase Clymer  

Oh, man. You just said so many things that I have said before. My favorite thing... And guys, I didn't plan this, everyone listening, is that if you have a partnership or you have employees, you have to establish swim lanes and two people cannot be responsible for one thing because they're assuming the other person is doing it and it will never get done. 

Kris Dehnert

Yeah. If two people are doing the same thing, one's not needed. Period. 

Chase Clymer  

Exactly. Exactly. All right. So just to clarify on the partnership. 

So you came in and you joined Dugout. You're not just doing marketing as a consultant or anything. You are now part of the team. You are part of the cap table per se. 

Kris Dehnert  

Correct. I stepped in at 40% owners. 

Well, so what it was is Randall was looking for help and investment and all these other things.

And like I said, I was coming out of a place in my life where I almost died actually. And just chaos and I was in the wrong deals with the wrong people. 

I was losing money in the cannabis space, the restaurant space, all this stuff, right? 

And I was like, dude, I need to get back to what I know well. 

And that's marketing, sales, social hype. This is what I love to do. 

And when I found Randall, I was like, “Hey man, I can't invest right now.” I said, “But I can 10X your company in six months or less. And then you're...you're winning in a very big way if I can step in and do that.” 

And then at that point, I had capital around me. So I was able to pull LOCs, hard money. 

We were getting funded on the front side of it to do big POs and things like that. And then Randall could focus solely on what he was good at. 

Chase Clymer  

You're hopping in here. You already know there's something here. 

What were some of the first levers you started pulling on to accelerate the growth?

Kris Dehnert  

I look at things like, you have to build to where you're going. Don't build to where you are. Right.

So the first thing I did is we had to get capitalized and not a lot, a hundred grand with 150 lines of credit. It wasn't crazy. 

But we needed to be able to drive down the cost of goods by putting in a larger order, right. 

And the first order was $80,000 or something crazy like that for the wood and the bats and the, you know, for it out and everything. So the first step was getting funded. 

But immediately from a marketing standpoint, it was licensing. And you know, you can, it's all fun to do generic and really walk the line. 

But when you get on the radar, you get popped. There's no way around it. 

And I had some other businesses that currently had licensing in Major League Baseball Players Association, which means you can do the players name, image, likeness, signature, things like that.

So I made it, now, this was a funny part. So I only had a couple percentage points in this company. 

But I called MLBPA and I said, hey, one of my other companies has already licensed you guys, and I have a new product and I need a license for this other one. 

And they jumped on board and they're like, yeah, that's fine. So within 120 days, we had a license for Major League Baseball Players Association.

Strictly network, because that's what one of my superpowers is networking.

So people know me, I know them, it's a good relationship. 

So when I can make a call like that, it holds water. 

So now we got a license. And then immediately we're doing Mike Trout and Aaron Judge and Francisco Lindor and all these mugs like this. 

And that's when we started to gain traction in the first probably... Well, the second half of that year. 

And we finished that first year I was on board at $1.1 million in our first year. 

Chase Clymer  

That's amazing. 

For rapid growth like that, a lot of entrepreneurs think that… you know, it's paid ads, paid ads, paid ads. Was that the playbook? Or what were you guys doing?

Kris Dehnert  

Well, everything was kind of low hanging fruit at that point because it's an extremely unique product. Right? 

Paid ads are tough. You got to cut through the noise. And even then, even in 2017, it wasn't as bad as it is now. 

Chase Clymer  

Yeah. 

Kris Dehnert  

To cut through the noise and at the cost to do so. 

So what I was explaining to Randall from the very beginning was CAC, right? Customer Acquisition Cost. How do we get as many customers as we can? 

And then, because once you have them as a customer, selling, that's the cheapest thing you do, is sell to the same customer again and again and again and again. 

And with our product being a gifted product versus a self-use product, people can go back to that well five, 10 times a year and it not be overlapping, because they had a great response, so then they can buy it for everybody who likes baseball, right?

So I was like, we gotta get this customer information. So even if we're only in the black 10%, 15% after CAC and CPA and all this other crap, it's still worth it. 

And we have to start building that today. 

We have a 600, 600 to 700,000 person email list of buyers, right, that we've collected since then. 

And when COVID hits and things go wrong, maybe you just lean right into it. 

And as long as you've nurtured that list, it's gonna win. You can lean into it many, many times. 

So like that's...why we spent the money we did on ads. But a lot of it was gamification, hashtag hijacking, things like that back before some of these systems got more sophisticated. 

Chase Clymer  

Absolutely. Yeah. Can you talk a bit more about more of the organic play that you were doing? 

Kris Dehnert  

Yeah. 

So I'm a huge fan of UGC, user-generated content. So every single time we're at an event, Here, hold a mug, click, right? Here, do a video, click, right? 

Constantly collecting content. That is so, so, so important. 

I just launched a new golf brand at the end of last year. Same thing. I want videos, I want photos, I want people hitting balls, I want all this. 

I'm huge on UGC. Because then you put it into the market and it lives there forever. 

And you can constantly go back to that and use it in advertising because people will believe someone else before they'll believe us talking about our own brand. 

And that's why we push so hard for reviews. So we have 55,000 five-star reviews at this point. 

And we've done that because every single person that's purchased a product, we have asked them to leave a review. 

And so how we've done it from the beginning is still how we do it now. And I think that's part of the reason we're winning. 

Chase Clymer  

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Chase Clymer  

We're talking about all this winning. Is there anything that you look back on that maybe was a loss, like a mistake that you might have made that you want to let the listeners maybe avoid? 

Kris Dehnert

Yeah. In Ecommerce or just life in general? 

Chase Clymer  

Let's keep it in Ecommerce. 

Kris Dehnert  

Yeah. So with Ecom, I don't get involved in anything that isn't positive. I don't work on anything that brings...bad into the world, right? Like bad vibes, anything. 

So there's things I've pushed, things I've affiliate marketed and things like that that I wish I would not have. Nothing crazy.

But some of the Nutri stuff, whatever. If it's bringing good into the world, I'm all about it. Wish I would have done some of that because it's off alignment. 

And at the end of the day, sure, we're doing business. Sure, we're making money. 

But the moment you fall out of alignment with your morals, your goals, your objectives, your belief system. Nothing really works well after that. You start making bad decisions because you're not in alignment, right? 

So from that, that's a little deeper, but like that's one of the things I wish I would not have done. 

The greed at points where it's like, damn, we're tripling, let's go for 4X, and you end up burning $300,000 of a budget in one month and you go from being in the black 200 to being in the red 100. 

You're like, that was stupid. Let's not do that again. So trying to scale too quickly. 

One of the other things, I have a team, right? We're a manufactured product. We fell off for about two years on culture building. 

And I think culture internally permeates into your business, your customers, your tribe.

So that's one of the things that I wish we would have kept a little closer eye on. 

We were so focused on where we were going. We lost sight of how we got to where we were. 

And so we've changed that. We do block parties at our warehouse. We do speed tests and hitting and home run derbies and bowling and ax throwing. 

And we try to do stuff like that to try to bring that culture back. So not Ecom specific, right? But it is because Ecom is a weird thing because you're doing real business but not in a real place. 

You're floating around the Internet, typically. And a lot of people on your team can feel like they're on an island. 

So really bringing them in and letting them understand that we're doing a real thing here. That's been helpful. 

When your tribe gets behind you, it's pretty damn unstoppable, to be honest with you. 

Chase Clymer  

Yeah, absolutely. That's something that a lot of entrepreneurs don't realize is at a certain point, you become a manager and those are learned skills. 

It's very hard to be an innate ability. It's quite difficult for some people. 

That's why you see sometimes founders will move on to roles that are not a CEO role because they understand it's like, this isn't where I can be my best self. 

Kris Dehnert  

Yeah. Well, and I think that's important too. 

Speaking of mistakes… One of the things that really I had to learn over the years is to do what I do best and outsource the rest, right? 

Just stop, don't ask me to do literally anything other than big conversations, close big deals, be on a stage, talk to the celebrity athlete, do the interviews, like that's where I live. 

Don't ask me about the numbers, don't ask me about the manufacturing, don't ask me about this.  That's why we have good people in that place. 

And I think reflection is really what it comes down to. I don't think enough people reflect on not just what they're good at, but more importantly, what they're not good at. 

Because oftentimes you'll be the roadblock in the growth if you're inserting yourself into areas of the business in which you're not proficient. 

Chase Clymer  

Absolutely. It's either going to grind the gears and stop the growth. 

Yeah. If you're injecting yourself in there, it's like, why are you hiring these people that are smarter than you if you're just going to get in their way? 

Kris Dehnert

Yeah. Or not hire people at all because you think you're saving money. 

But the truth is, you're actually costing yourself money because you're not growing because you're in the damn way. 

Kris Dehnert

Exactly. Kris, now is there anything I didn't ask you about that you think would resonate with our audience today?

Not offhand, man. I wasn't really thinking about it like that. I just like bantering back and forth. 

I mean, talking about business and Ecom and success is something I'm very passionate about. 

I mean, speaking of passion, right? Don't do things you hate around people who suck. 

It's so vast. Please don't waste your time or your life or your energy or anything on something that sucks just because you think it's chasing money. 

So all the time, I mean, we had a family member pass two days ago. And everybody's rushing to the thing to say their goodbyes. 

I'm the guy that's like, “Where the hell were the hellos?”

You're so busy running around wasting your whole life in this wherever the hell you are mentally. And then like last minute, you rush to do something. It's like, you know, I'm a big time guy and spending time, not wasting time, saving time, you know, collecting experiences, not things. 

So I always tell people,chase the happy and not the money. 

Because when you're chasing happy and you have a shitty day, you know, it's like, “Nah, I'm still around good people. I'm kind of happy. I just didn't win today.” 

If you're having a bad day around bad people doing something that's not in alignment, it sucks. It'll take you a week to get out of that funk or more.

So I'm a big chase-the-happy guy. And that's why I do beer, baseball, golf, cigars, baseball cards, like this is what I like, you know? 

So this is what I do. And I think if people stop and reflect, back to reflection, I think they need to do more of that. 

What do I stand for? What do I not stand for? What drives me? 

You know, because oftentimes, and you can attest to this, and I've been guilty of it, and you've probably been guilty of it.

You measure your success with somebody else's ruler, you look at the Gary Vee's or the Grant Cardone's or whoever, pick one, pick a muse.

Well, I'm not to that point. So I need to keep grinding. It's like, well, maybe. 

But what does success look like, smell like, feel like, and taste like to you. And at that point, you can reverse engineer a lifestyle. 

And that's what I've done. I wanted to play with my friends. I wanted to do things I like. I wanted to not lose. I work… This is my house. I worked from home for almost 10 years. 

And especially after I got sick, everything changed, the lens adjusted that I looked through. 

And now everything is based on a whole different set of metrics and I can be on a stage and flip-flops and shorts and discussing, and there's a hundred million dollar guy, right? 

It happened last week. 500 million dollar guy right next to me. 

And after the talk, they're coming to me saying, “Hey man, can you help me with a couple of things?” And it’s because of the alignment. It's obvious when you're aligned and doing this. 

And then they were just chasing the money and they missed the happy in some cases. 

So I really think reflection and alignment are two things that anybody listening right now should probably spend some time on because then it makes all the decision-making at that point so much easier. 

You already know where you're going. 

Hey, do you want to do this? It makes a lot of money. “Actually that sounds really good, but I really need to be over here because this is what feels good to me.” 

When that happened, I've never been more successful in my life financially than when I got in alignment with what I'm doing because it never feels like I'm working, like ever. 

Chase Clymer  

Kris, I think that's just the perfect area to end the episode. 

If I'm listening and I want to check out Dugout Mugs, where should I go? 

Kris Dehnert  

dugoutmugs.com

Chase Clymer  

Awesome, Kris. Thank you so much for coming on the show today and sharing your story. 

Kris Dehnert  

I appreciate the time. Thank you so much for having me. 

Chase Clymer  

We can't thank our guests enough for coming on the show and sharing their knowledge and journey with us. We've got a lot to think about and potentially add into our own business. You can find all the links in the show notes. 

You can subscribe to the newsletter at honestecommerce.co to get each episode delivered right to your inbox. 

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Lastly, if you're a store owner looking for an amazing partner to help get your Shopify store to the next level, reach out to Electric Eye at electriceye.io/connect.

Until next time!