334 | Creating Demand From A DIY Game Idea | with Tyler Simmons

Tyler Simmons

Do something different, to be something that's not already out there in the market.  

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. Today, I'm welcoming to show the founder and CEO of Elevate Sports, the makers of the BucketGolf game, Tyler Simmons. Welcome to the show. 

Tyler Simmons

Thanks for having me on, Chase. Excited. 

Chase Clymer

I'm excited. So can you quickly let people know what's Elevate Sports doing over there? What do you guys bring to market? 

Tyler Simmons

Yeah. So Elevate Sports, our bread and butter bestselling product is definitely the BucketGolf game that some of you may be familiar with or not. We started with actual sports training equipment. Specifically lacrosse training equipment is how we entered into the market and then  added BucketGolf as our second product line. And we specialize, I guess, in making games that bring family and friends together to have a good time over the spring, summer, holiday period. And then the other side of the business is making sports training equipment that just helps athletes get better and train on their own or in team practices to improve their games. 

Chase Clymer

Absolutely. Now, I guess if I'm going to ask you to take me back to the beginning, it would be maybe just like the start of the Elevate sports business because BucketGolf came along a little bit after. How did this business come about? What was going on in your life? What was the inception like? 

Tyler Simmons

Yeah. So it started when I was about probably 3 years out of college. Maybe 4 actually. I always had, think just like the entrepreneurial spirit. I always liked making things with my friends. I used to build things like bike jumps, rails, videotape ourselves doing it and kind of like come out with, I guess, products that we would just use that we liked using when I was younger. So then out of college, I actually started with the BucketGolf game, even though I know I said, Elevate Sports started it. I'll explain how.

But anyways, we were just in the backyard kind of over the summer and my sister-in-law's family brought this game that I had never seen before. And it was just like a bunch of random buckets from all these stores  and a bunch of  like just this golf game pieced together by what seemed like eight different stores. And we started playing it over the summer and I absolutely loved it. I was a golfer. I was like, I'm obsessed with golf, still am.

So at that point, I asked them, where can I buy it? And they told me, oh, this is just some homemade thing we put together. It's not real. And at that point, that's when I was like, no way.  I've played every yard game out there. This is one of my favorite ones. So being entrepreneurial spirit, I was just like, can I try selling it to people? And they were like, go ahead and knock yourself out. And that's how the idea started  and just took it from there.

And yeah, that's how Elevate Sports was born. That weekend in Lake Tahoe was where Elevate Sports was born. And then yeah, long, long story from there. 

Chase Clymer

Well, I'm here for it. There are a lot of people out there listening to this show that have a good idea, but they just don't know what to do next. So you had a good idea. And it sounds like maybe you had a name. Where did the name for the business come from?

Tyler Simmons

So the name actually was at that point, we called it Lawn Golf. Just cause like you played on a lawn. And when I first got started, definitely the best thing to do is cause everyone has a million ideas. I would say 90, whatever, seven something percent of people probably just won't ever act on it. And even some of those ideas are probably better than better than this one and people could have done it better if only they just liked it.

actually started. So I think that was really just the keys. 

I just jumped in having no idea what I was doing and just started figuring out like, where can I get this stuff in bulk to try to put some of these sets together and just like just go. And then because of that, you end up making a ton of mistakes, but I still would choose that over trying to figure everything out or else you just never get started. I think just like just going, you're to make a million mistakes and then just kind of figure it out along the way. 

And part of that was I didn't realize that there was already a trademark for a name Lawn Golf for something completely different than what we were doing, but the trademark already existed. So after we placed our initial order, we had a ton of things that said Lawn Golf all over it. Didn't realize that it was, so then had to switch and kind of, well, like, what is this game? It's a golf game with a bunch of buckets. So that's kind of where we switched the name to BucketGolf at that point. 

And yeah, I just had to figure out all these things. No idea what I was doing. sold. I don't even know. In the first year, I think maybe I sold 15 sets or something like that total. And that was about it. So yeah, it didn't really work at all. 

Chase Clymer

How long was it from the ideation of like, I'm going to try to commercialize this game that we played at Lake Tahoe to a prototype of figuring out what you're going to do to source this and make it an actual product. How long did that take? 

Tyler Simmons

So that was actually pretty quick. I hit the ground running literally as soon as I got back. And I think within 3 months, I had all the stuff here. I had a website up and I was selling stuff pretty quickly. And it was really bad. The website was terrible. I still have it.

I can still go look back at what it looked like. And I still have the first version of the product. It was also terrible. But yeah, I got to go in pretty quickly just because I don't have patience. What I just think was a key for it working out was I was just going to go and do it. I didn't want to sit there and think about everything and try to figure it all out. I just wanted to go and get started and try to sell something. 

Chase Clymer

Yeah, I think that that's something that a lot of entrepreneurs have is just making forward progress towards whatever that goal is.

I think that a lot of people get caught up in that idea of perfection, which is the enemy of progress. It's quoted everywhere. And  it's just like, just make a choice and move. And that is better than standing still and waiting for it to be perfect. And this is a completely different industry. Yesterday, I was listening to an interview by a metal band named Underoath and they're talking about the same thing. 

They're just like, just make a choice in songwriting and move forward. And if you want to change it later, you can. And was just like, wow, that's  just like business. It's anything creative or entrepreneurial. It's just like, just make choices and do. 

Tyler Simmons

Yeah. Couldn't agree more. The amount of people I've talked to since we started this who are like,  that was my idea. Like, oh, if only I actually did something like acted on it. Like I've wanted to do something for so long. And just never did it insane. So yeah, it really is. I think that's the key trade that I've found as well talking to a bunch of other entrepreneurs. It's just like, they just go.

They're okay with it. I'm still a perfectionist. We still change everything to this day. There've been very few orders we've placed where we haven't upgraded something on the product. 

Chase Clymer

Yeah. 

Tyler Simmons

And if I was waiting for it to be perfect, I literally would have never ordered anything still. So  yeah, you can always perfect it later. 

Chase Clymer

Yeah. There's the book. I think it's the Lean Startup. It's like if you're not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you waited too long.  

Tyler Simmons

Yeah. That sounds about right.

Chase Clymer

Alright. So in the first year, you sell 15 of these things under someone else's trademark name. When does it start to get a little bit of traction? When is it like beyond when your friends and family are starting to catch on to what you're doing here? 

Tyler Simmons

Yeah. So that was like about one year I tried doing that. Couldn't figure it out really at all. Didn't quit but pivoted a little bit because I was coaching lacrosse at the same time as my main job.

And I kind of learned a little bit about this from just starting to try to figure out how to do the golf stuff  where I thought, okay, maybe this idea isn't going to work. 

And I loved lacrosse, I coached lacrosse and I had a couple of product ideas there for a couple goalies that you could like an inflatable goalie that you could use to work on your shooting that didn't exist. So I kind of tried to start doing that.

And started to actually see some success there. That's kind where the name Elevate Sports started for the actual company period because we called it Elevate Training Equipment.  And so started to actually figure it out. And at that time, I thought it was because the lacrosse stuff was going to work and the golf stuff wasn't. But looking back, it was just like, just like it takes time, it takes reps to figure this thing out. And I started getting better at learning how to actually sell something.

How to do it with social media is kind of like the bread and butter that I really started to learn with lacrosse stuff is that social media really gets eyes on products and you can really show how a product benefits somebody through  video is like my specialty. So that was about yeah, like another year and a half in I figured it out with the lacrosse stuff. It started really working. I was like, whoa, I'm actually getting some sales here. I think we did a couple hundred thousand dollars in sales the next year.

And it was mostly in the lacrosse stuff. And that's when I came back to the golf stuff being like, okay, now that I know how to sell this lacrosse stuff, I like the golf stuff would work 10 times better now that I understand it now a little bit better. I've been doing it for 3 years at this point.  Let's go back and try to  get the golf stuff going again. So I completely redid the product. In the beginning, it was just like this homemade version. I think that was a big problem. It wasn't portable.

The buckets were actually like ginormous buckets that you just couldn't bring anywhere. You couldn't store them. They were super expensive. Like, so there's a million problems with why it wasn't selling. And now that I had learned all this stuff about packaging, shipping, like small boxes, I kind of completely redesigned the entire long golf BucketGolf game into this portable thing that could all fit into a bag that was one quarter of the price, but just as good and high quality.

So, and then as soon as I did that and put that back out into the market, that's when things really were like it all kind of came together. I had learned how to sell  ads, social media, and how to make a product portable, affordable. And then it was just like all stars aligned  about 3 years in and the sales really started to ramp up. And that's when I thought, okay, this is actually going to work now. This is really good. 

Chase Clymer

What year was that?

Tyler Simmons

So that was in 2021 when it first really started to like, I brought it back kind of right coming out of COVID, which also like the timing lined up perfectly because everyone during COVID kind of started playing way more like games in their backyards. They were already thinking about a product like this. It just wasn't there yet. So the time you have everything, all the stars kind of align at one time.

Chase Clymer

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Chase Clymer

And you said that you learned more about selling and more about product, how social played into it, how paid ads played into it. You don't need to give me exact dollars and cents. But do you remember where you started with paid ads and how it evolved just to set expectations for folks out there that are thinking about getting into Meta or Google or whatnot? 

Tyler Simmons

Yeah. So I actually still remember exactly how it started. Someone had told me, like, hey, you should try using Meta Facebook ads to sell your product. And at that point, I had tried so many,  most things I think you try don't work. I tried so many different things like paid, just like ad things, not Facebook, but like Google and like just advertising with other companies and like all these newsletters and things like that. And I couldn't find a way to get a return on my investment ever.

So that's like, kind of almost giving up on paid and that's when I really like to learn social just because it's organic, it's free. But then someone kind of told me about Facebook. They're like, no, you should really try Facebook. I know none of the other stuff works. But Facebook really works. Like I promise. And I was like, okay, I'll give it a try. It's kind of like starting my own account. And I think I started with like $15 a day or maybe $25, whatever the minimum was. 

And I had this video and I put together and kind of like this is actually probably bad to say this because immediately it worked. I spent $25. I think we got $300 in sales on the first day. And I was like, whoa, is this actually going to work like this every time? And then the next day, same thing, next day, same thing. So I started raising the budget and it just kept feeding me more and more and more. Which like I said, probably shouldn't listen to because nothing works like that ever.

Chase Clymer

We can distill that down. I know why it worked. We don't do marketing at our agency anymore, but we used to. And I would tell people, like, it's gonna work real well right at the beginning because you've never retargeted people. There are people out there that need to see it one more time and they're going to buy it. And Facebook knows that stuff. But also, you had already put all this effort into  social and understanding what worked organically.

And finding those organic posts that went semi-viral, just got a bunch of likes or whatever. Putting money behind that is just making it work like gangbusters.  

Tyler Simmons

100%. And yeah, that pretty much you just hit the nail on the head. I agree with why it worked. It was also pre-iOS  before. It was when Facebook was at its peak when I started using it. Now, it's not quite the same. And how it works, it's completely different. Still works great. But definitely not the same ballgame as it used to be. 

I feel like you could use it to put anything out there and it would sell. Now you have to be really good at your creative and beat everybody else out what's putting out there if you want to get good sales on Facebook. 

Chase Clymer

Yeah. But another thing is just to put some hesitation out there for anyone just to start spending. It's like your product, first and foremost, was amazing, differentiated, and unique in the market. You're not going to see the same results if you're selling another t-shirt. I just really want to clarify that for the audience.

Tyler Simmons

That's the one key that I've always tried to do with all of our products is to do something different, to be something that's like it's not already out there in the market. And it's very unique and it's easy to show on video why it's fun. That's kind of like how I design every one of our products  to make sure it fits those molds. Then it works on meta ads and social media.

But yeah, if you have something that already exists, unless yours is way better, or unless you have a lot of money in the bank and you can just afford to lose money while selling these things, yeah, it's probably not gonna work that well. 

Chase Clymer

This is a saying I use all the time when talking to people. Like, you got the fire started, which is you found product market fit, you found where your customers were, you had a product that was resonating with your audience in your market. Then you poured gas on that fire with paid ads through Facebook. Things are starting to take off. How did Shark Tank enter the picture? 

Tyler Simmons

So that was like the first, I guess this is year 3 now when BucketGolf actually starts to really work. Year 4, we started to do even better. Started like, yeah, increased our pay, got more creative. This is when we got a couple decent amounts of viral videos going of us just playing BucketGolf.

And that's when sales really started to pick up was like the combination of all those things. And then that's when Shark Tank found out about us through one of our videos, they said, they, we saw you on social media. Are you interested in going on Shark Tank? And we had applied like a ton of times and never got asked to come on the show. 

But yeah, they saw us there. And we were so excited, obviously, because I think any entrepreneur is probably just like me, as I just dream of going on Shark Tank. I used to watch every single episode. Maybe one day I could go on this show. How cool would that be? 

Chase Clymer

It might be my favorite part of traveling because it's always on hotel TV. 

Tyler Simmons

Yeah. It is. I think that, yeah, I don't know how it is. But I don't know if they have a deal with every hotel. But it is without fail on every single station in the hotels.

Yeah, so then they picked us up and went through the whole process of trying to get on there,  made it through all the checkpoints and got lucky enough to actually get to go on the show and pitch the sharks. And then also got lucky enough that our episode actually got aired and that  really kicked us up to a whole other notch once we were already on there.  

And same thing, I would put Shark Tank in there and the same thing as Facebook ads. It only works if you're already doing a lot of good stuff. If you already have a great product, you're great at doing whatever makes your product sell, you're good at it. It has a good market fit. You know what you're doing. It will pour gasoline on the fire and make it even better. 

But if you don't, like I've talked to a lot of people who maybe like it wasn't a great product market fit or there was something they were trying to still figure out. Shark Tank won't like to fix anything for you. It'll just be like make, if something's good, like Facebook ads, it'll make it even better.

And just help get the word out there. And that really does explode you just with the retailers and just getting your name out there being like a trusted brand and product that you're on Shark Tank. It's like everyone knows you're legit. You're real. You're not going to rip them off. You're on the show. They don't bring people who rip people off on that show. I don't think so.  

Chase Clymer

Yeah, absolutely. That's amazing. And then  now, is there anything  I  didn't ask you about that you think would resonate with our audience? 

Tyler Simmons

I think the main thing would be that a lot of people I talk to and like entrepreneurs like they have it in their mind that like their expectations are  things are going to work quickly, things are going to be easy. And once I figured out it's really it's just going to work. It's just going to take off. And like that's how it's going to go. That's how all these other people I see their stories out there like I explored it overnight. I got two million dollars in sales in my first two months. 

Like that's what those are the stories that go viral. That's everyone's expectation. 99.999% of people, that's not what really happens. It's so tough the whole entire road to get a product going or any business going. And even once you get it going and you think it's working well, that's when you're just going to get punched right in the face and something else is going to happen. It's stuff going wrong over and over and over and trying to put the fires out and kind of just keep going in the direction you want to go. And it's just like always up and down, but slowly trickling up. And if that's like your expectation of this is what it's going to be like, then you're not going to be upset because that's how it really is like just everyone I talked to shares, like no one is perfect. 

Like it's just always stuff's going wrong. And that's what it feels like for us too. It's just like the outside maybe but on the inside. It's just like stuff is just going wrong non-stop. And we're just trying to fix it and keep getting to where we want to go. 

Chase Clymer

That's amazing advice to leave the audience with. But now if I'm listening to this and I'm interested in learning more about your product, which is just for listeners,  funny enough, I met Tyler maybe a month ago before we recorded this. The day I met him, I had lunch with my father who said, I just watched this guy on Shark Tank. They have this game with buckets where you golf into it. I was like, Dad, you won't believe it. That's on its way. We already got it. But if I'm a listener out here and I don't have it, where should I go? What should I do? 

Tyler Simmons

So you can go to bucketgolfgame.com. That's our website. We have all of our options up there. Every product iteration, we have regular bundles with all the club sizes, glow sets, pretty much everything you can think of for golf in your backyard or out at the park or on a vacation. We got it. So you can check it out there and learn more about it and pick up a set if you're interested in playing. 

Chase Clymer

Awesome. Tyler, thank you so much for coming on the show today. 

Tyler Simmons

Yeah. Thanks a lot, Chase. 

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 https://honestecommerce.com/ to get each episode delivered right to your inbox. 

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Until next time!