Building a $40M Global Brand as a Digital Nomad, with Dan Demsky

Speaker A: M

Speaker B: Because there were so many orders coming in, we started trending on the crowdfunding platform. And because we were trending, you started to see who's this guy? This guy is from Berlin. I don't know who that is. You started to see a few names that weren't my friends and family. And then we hit 30,000 and then Indiegogo saw that we're a successful campaign. They put us in their marketing. We're, uh, a hot new thing on the front page. People just started rolling in. So by the end of the campaign, we ended up having two customers. That was the start.

Speaker A: You're listening to Deal Closers, brought to you by website closers.com, a show about how to build your e commerce business to be profitable, scalable, and one day even sellable. I'm Jason Gilliken, and on the show today, we're unpacking what it really takes to build a thriving e commerce brand. Not just financially, but in a way that aligns with your life. For many founders, the path to scale often feels like it requires constant compromise, long hours, giving up control, chasing every shiny new trend. Uh, we call that the, uh, squirrel syndrome there. So our guest today is Dan Demski, the co founder and CEO of Unbound Marino, a $40 million global brand he built while working 100% remotely as a digital nomad. Dan's journey started with a crowdfunding campaign alongside his best friends. And he's learned firsthand how to scale a business while prioritizing freedom and, and a well lived life. Dan, welcome to the show.

Speaker B: Thank you so much for having me. It's cool to be here. And thanks for the intro.

Speaker A: Yeah, uh, I was so excited to hear about your story. Um, but take us back to the beginning, Dan. What was your why, um, and how did you start with on Maurino?

Speaker B: Well, I never had a career path that went into any kind of like corporate kind of journey or anything like that. I've sort of been born an entrepreneur. I've always been scheming and hustling and trying to find ways to dig up little businesses. Even when I was a kid, you know, it could be shoveling snow or selling iced tea, street side. Um, and I, this is going around

Speaker A: door to door when it has already snowed and saying, hey, can I, you know, you've got your shovel, like, can I go ahead and shovel your driveway?

Speaker B: Snow was white gold for. Because I had endless energy and we go knock on doors and we'd do a driveway in the, uh, in their walkways. For 20 bucks back then, you know, 20 bucks is quite a lot of money for a kid. And definitely everyone paid. And we would. Me and my buddy would just go nuts. We just clear the driveway as fast as we could, get the 20 bucks, go to the next one. And I. I remember just. And it was never about the money to me. It's still not about the money, but just feeling like we can just go do it our own way.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And I remember I have this picture of us just holding a bunch of money, like this little kid. Just like, look at all the money we made me. And we must have been like, I don't even know, eight, nine. Just. It's always been in me and my first career. Hang on one second.

Speaker A: What was. What was the. Like, what was your reward? Was it candy? Was it baseball cards? Like, what were you into then?

Speaker B: Um, I don't remember. Probably toys. The one big thing that I remember saving up for when I was. I guess I was maybe 12. I don't remember exactly how old I was. But when Nintendo 64 came out, oh yeah. I couldn't just go to my parents, be like, buy it for me. They would. So I had to make my own path. And I remember the day that came out and I had the money to buy the system. I got Mario, I got an extra controller and a controller pack. And I think I was like 30 bucks short. My dad's like, don't worry, I'll get your extra 30 bucks for you. And yeah, I always knew that I can just kind of make it happen myself. I think that was ingrained in me. I figured that out young. And my first business was a video production agency, which wasn't intended to be a business. It was a side hustle, you know, I thought I was going to get into radio and I was working in a restaurant. I was in school and all of this stuff. And me and my best friend, we would do video production. And we were really good at it. We were good at it because we put a lot of effort in. And if someone was going to pay us 2, 300 bucks to shoot this thing or an extra 2 or 300 bucks to edit something, we put in long hours to make sure we delivered something great. And we liked it because we were learning the art of editing and shooting and someone was paying us. So I think because we put our heart and soul into it, people kept coming back and they kept referring us to other people. And then we got busy and we started needing to hire people into my mom's basement. Then all Of a sudden we had clients that were small little businesses becoming medium businesses. And it was a little weird to sort of bring people into our studio, which was my mom's basement. So we need to get a studio. And then we got a studio and then we had a team and we had to incorporate because we had big corporate clients. And all of a sudden we had a seven figure business and 18 employees. And I'm like, this was never meant to happen. This just happened.

Speaker A: Wait, how old are you at this time?

Speaker B: Early 20s.

Speaker A: Oh, my gosh.

Speaker B: Yeah, it happened just out of nowhere. And, you know, it was really exciting and it was really fun. And we did that for years. But at one point, uh, the ignorance of being someone in their early 20s sort of caught up with us where we realized, wow, this is actually hard because when you have a big staff, you have to make a lot of revenue just to keep the lights on. So I felt like I was a prisoner in that business. And I did it for years. And it went from honestly, probably being one of the coolest and most exciting things ever, thinking like, am I some kind of genius? To I think I'm an idiot because this thing sucks and I hate doing this now. I love the work, I love the people I worked with, I love the clients sometimes. Um, but I really started to feel like I don't want to do this anymore because it's like I have to be on the hunt all the time for new business. Business and freedom is something that, like, I need. I need to feel like I can kind of live my life on my own terms. And the way that business was set up is I stopped being able to live my life on my terms. So while this is happening, I'm seeing some of my friends create these e commerce businesses and it just work differently. They lived a little bit better than I did. And I looked at it, I'm like, man, that's what I need to do. Uh, I had this idea in my head that I want to create an e commerce business. I want to have a product that I sell to customers instead of a service I sell to clients because that way I can make money while I sleep, just like my buddies were doing. And I would see it, I would see they would put the same effort that I would put in, but when they would release a new product, it would scale differently and it would work while they slept. Didn't work like that for my agency business. So I just started ideating with my best friends, like, what will the thing be? And that process took about two years where we come up with all sorts of crazy ideas. Some of them might have been good ideas. A lot of them for sure were terrible ideas. But the point is, is we really, with intention, sat down and thought, what could be the thing that we could sell? And the ideas ran from all over the place. I mean, we had ideas to sell, like art prints and pickles and anything you could think of just.

Speaker A: Did you say pickles?

Speaker B: That's the dumbest idea we had. I. Yeah, my business partner, he said we should do pickles. He, first of all, he always jokes around, says that I kind of look like a pickle. It's this running joke. So he thought I'd be a good mascot first, like, why don't we do, like, honestly, we're just thinking about anything. But then we would say, okay, well, who's buying pickles online?

Speaker A: Right?

Speaker B: And it's shipping pickles. Like who? Like this thing is. So you just throw jars? Yeah. It doesn't make any sense. I'm just trying to make the point that like, any idea was on the table and then we would just throw it out or unpack it a little bit more. And some of them went a little further in, like the thinking process. But it wasn't until I went on a trip and I decided that I hate hauling around heavy luggage, where I started to look for a better way. And I went. I came across a Reddit post because I was searching for how to pack light, how to pack with just a carry on when I travel overseas. And I came across a post that said to pack with just a carry on for any trip, no matter how far, no matter how long you're going away for. Use merino wool T shirts because they're antibacterial and they're odor resistant. So Instead of packing 14 of them, you could pack three. You can rewear them. Even if you sweat, they'll never smell. They're antimicrobial, they're wrinkle resistant. It's the ultimate travel hack. And I thought, perfect, that sounds great. I'm going to go buy some merino wool T shirts. So the area that I lived in, Toronto at the time was right near all the outdoor stores where you'd be able to buy this stuff. Now, I didn't know merino wool could be a T shirt. I thought merino wool. I thought scarves, sweatshirts, sweaters, rather beanies, things of that sort. I didn't know it could be like a light, breathable T shirt. I discovered that day that you could. So I went to all These stores. And while I did love the fabric, I just didn't love any of the shirts. They were all made for the outdoors people. Now if I was going on a canoe trip or portaging, or if I was using it as a base layer for skiing, the options were endless and they were amazing. But that's not the kind of travel I was doing. I was going, you know, sort of more business travel. I was a little bit more urban, going to some cocktail bars. I still going on like city hikes or even some forest hikes and things like that a little bit. But I needed stuff that I could dress up a little bit.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: And it didn't exist. I couldn't find it. I looked everywhere and then it was like, boom. I've been looking for an idea. There must be more people out there like me, that if they just knew this message and they travel like me, this would be a fit. So I thought, why don't I give this a shot? Why don't I be the person to create it? Because I want it to exist for me. And I wanted this to exist so bad that I was willing to go make the prototypes. And even if it failed, I'm uh, like, I'll have a box of the T shirts that I want to have anyway. Like, so I'm going to walk away with a box of T shirts that I want for me or my dream business. Let's give it a shot. So I went to my business part. Well, I went to my best friends at the time. They weren't my business partners. I said, hey, here's an idea and this one sounds good, let's go. So we went to do a crowdfunding campaign and that was our way of validating the idea to find product market fit. It was our way of getting the money to buy the inventory because we didn't have extra capital sitting around to invest in the business. We didn't have investors and let's see if we can make it work. So we tried to do $30,000 in pre sales, which would be enough to just squeak by and get a little bit of inventory. But we ended up doing 400,000 in the first, it was the first two months. So at that point I was like, okay, this thing is going to work. So I left my other business. I didn't sell. I just, I gave it to my business partner and I started from scratch in my early 30s.

Speaker A: So what does $400,000 do for you then? You know, you um, do you need prototypes to begin with and then, uh, do you get, are you able to create a bunch of different products or like three or four products at the time? Like, what do you do with. What were you hoping to do with 30,000 and then what could you do with 400,000?

Speaker B: So we already developed the prototypes. We put in about fifteen hundred dollars. And that was just for paying for prototypes and samples and things of that sort. And our first, I guess, little kit that we had was T shirts, boxer briefs and socks because we felt like that was the thing you packed the most of. Uh, the thing that you could reduce the most amount of luggage space with. So that was the sort of core concept. And $30,000 would get us. We actually wouldn't even get us our first order. It would get us almost our first little mini minimum order quantity run. But it was just, we were shooting low, just as we just wanted to get to a hundred percent. And we weren't sure how easy would be to get the product market fit. I believe that we'd do it. I'm an internal optimist. But we really needed a bit more of that. But we could have put the money in ourselves, but we. Before the crowdfunding campaign, we only put in 15 bucks. And that got us a couple of little graphic design things and samples. And, uh, and then we did the crowdfunding campaign. We probably needed a little more than double the $30,000. But the $400,000 was just. We put it all into inventory and we reserved a little bit of money for us to be able to fly ourselves to the suppliers so we can see the product being produced. Because we were very afraid of like, uh, manufacturing overseas. What if we get ripped off? The business would be dead on arrival.

Speaker A: Well, you haven't done it before.

Speaker B: Yeah. And I've heard horror stories from actual friends who have done stuff overseas. And then there's this like dip in quality out of nowhere because they're trying to save on, um, profitability or whatever it is. For whatever reason, the quality wasn't there and businesses have folded. So I was very paranoid about quality. And I knew from the beginning that the quality has to be top notch for this thing to survive. It's the only way people will come back.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And one of the things we're really aiming for was to have a product where once you get a customer that likes your product, they'll come back. They tried the T shirt. They're, you know, they're going to want to try the underwear. If they try the T shirt and love it, they're going to want to come Back and get a couple more. So if the quality is not good, they're going to try it once and they're gone. You're always looking for a new customer. So, you know, I once heard, you don't want to get in the order business, you want to get into the reorder business. Right? So I always knew, like, the quality has to be top notch. So paranoia. Ah. So having a budget to go do the inspection, see it build the relationship with the supplier. Having them like us, uh, that was in there. A little bit of extra money to get a storage locker for our inventory, which was our first office. And then we just. We're off to the races.

Speaker A: Well, Dan, why was it so successful? Like, why was the crowdfunding campaign such a smash? And was it marketing that you had done for it? Was it just word of mouth? Like, what happened?

Speaker B: So, um, there are two answers. The simple answer is, I think we just found the product market fit. It was kind of like introducing people to a new idea. And we were very focused on selling the benefit. Like, this is not a fashion product in the sense that, oh, these are really cool T shirts. This is a benefit. And the benefit is you will have more enjoyment and peace in your travel and more freedom in your travel if you pack lighter. Here's how you do it. This is a tool to help you pack lighter. So I think the product market fit thing worked. But that is just one element that's like having the product market fit. The actual tactical approach that we had to the crowdfunding campaign was. I mean, that was like a year and a half of working towards, you know, first of all, getting the product right, getting a brand that resonated, getting all the photography together. We studied every successful crowdfunding campaign and tried to find patterns. Like, we look at the video and, you know, broke down the script of their videos. What is it like? What's the hook? What do they say after? And we just ripped off and duplicated all of the stuff that made sense to us. But here's, I think one of the best tactics that we did, which was unique to our camp. I mean, we didn't learn this on a blog about crowdfunding or I didn't see this in other people's crowdfunding campaigns. But one thing we did is we manufactured momentum. Because, you know, if you see a crowdfunding campaign that's 15% funded, you might not be excited to be like, I want to. I don't know if I want to try this. I don't know if I'M going to believe in this. We knew that there had to be kind of, like, excitement. You know, I think of when a, uh, video game, Nintendo, does this all the time. It's the second time I'm talking about Nintendo for some reason. But when they release a new console, they sell out of it. And there's always like a lineup and there's demand, and then, you know, everyone talks about. Everyone wants it, everyone wants that new Switch or whatever it is because there's so much talk and chatter about how hot of a product this is. So we kind of wanted to replicate that a little bit. So that's another reason why we set our. Our funding goal to, like, less than we really needed. So $30,000 was, like, the amount that we were shooting for, because we felt it's easier to get to 100% of $30,000 than it is 50 or 60, which is what we really needed. So what I did is I went to every single person I knew and I told them about the campaign in advance. Like people who are my family, friends, acquaintances, anyone. I felt comfortable just asking. I said, hey, I'm taking a big swing here. We're doing a crowdfunding campaign. It's coming out. And let's say m. I don't remember the time, but let's say it's coming out in a month. When that comes out, would you be willing to sort of buy a T shirt or something? It's not gonna be a lot of money just to sort of support. Cause I really need to get some momentum here. And a lot of people, they're like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh, it's a pretty low commitment thing. So, yeah, uh, yeah, whatever. Like, they're not doing it now. I'm not asking them to buy anything. I'm just saying, in the future, will you. Yeah, yeah, just send it to me when it's there. And then for every single person that I was comfortable asking that question to, I did a video, one video per person, where I would just talk to the camera. So I'd be like, hey, Jason, remember I told you about that campaign? Well, it's here. And I gotta tell you, this past year, I put my all into this thing. Every weekend night I was with Andrew and Dima. Uh, we worked all night to put this thing together, and the product's right here, and I'm so proud of it. And I know you said that you would support. No pressure if it's not good timing, but the thing is live right now, and if you can go and buy a shirt it would mean the world to me. I won't forget it. Like, I'm really, really chasing that dream here. And, um, but more so than that, I'm really proud of it. I think you're really going to love what we're selling. So if you go ahead, now's the time. Thank you so much. But again, no pressure. Blah, blah, blah, whatever. They get this custom video, and then I would send them in Facebook messenger the video. So it's a Jason mpeg, so you look at, it's kind of compelling. A lot of times you get these messages, hey, can you please upvote my thing? Can you please support my thing? And they're very easy to ignore because, you know, they copied and pasted it to 100 people. But when it's a video thumbnail, you see my face, there's a play button, has your name, you're going to play. So I stayed up for days making these videos, and I sent them to every single person. And then when that, that was when the campaign went live. I set them all one by one by one, and people started buying. And I remember, you know, seeing my brother buy one and then Andrew's cousin buy one and then my friend from high school buy one. And we just racked up the revenue getting closer and closer and closer to that $30,000 until we hit it. But halfway through, because there were so many orders coming, and we started trending on the crowdfunding platform. And because we were trending, you started to see, who's this guy? This guy is from Berlin. I don't know who that is. You started to see a few names that weren't my friends and family. And then we hit 30,000. And then Indiegogo saw that we're a successful campaign. They put us in their marketing, were, uh, a hot new thing on the front page. People just started rolling in. So by the end of the campaign, we ended up having 2,000 customers. That was the start. So, you know, it started with crowdfunding. And once we had those 2,000 customers, now what we had to do is make sure the product was good, make sure it got into their hands as fast as we could get it. And that was the seed that sort of started everything from there.

Speaker A: Yeah, I think the crowdfunding success combines two of the things that you've done in the past. You know, the snow shovel hustle, um, just brute force going through hustling and figuring out, okay, I'm going to send this video out to everybody. But then the video production skills that you have from Your first business. So it just married those two perfectly. And, um, that's why it was a big success.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Really smart, Dan. Um, all right, so you've got the 400,000. You've got these orders. You're concerned about the quality, making sure that everything's fulfilled. I, uh, know from past stories of crowdfunding, um, that not everything works out perfectly. Were there any hiccups in the beginning?

Speaker B: Well, you learn how long it takes to pack and ship an order.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: You know, you didn't really account for that. And we have, like, a nice, nice packaging. And every order is different. It's not like it's all prepackaged. Just slap a label on and it's out. Someone will order, you know, two medium T shirts, two medium boxers, two socks. So one person will order one large T shirt, one small T shirt. And, like, you have to go and pick and pack and assemble and wrap, put in the box. And when we first were packing our orders, I was timing, and I remember it was like 11 to 12 minutes per order, because you have to take it, go get all the stuff, put it in the poly bay, print the label, type it in, and whatever. And we're slow. We were doing it for the first time. So Times that by 2000 orders, when we had one part timer helping us, it didn't go out very fast. Yeah, you know, it was long days. And customers start to, you know, once we start shipping, they think it's going to go out that day. Because they were used to Amazon. They're not used to a couple of guys in a storage locker trying as hard as they can figuring out how to pack an order. So then they start to get a little angry where, oh, I knew this was a scam. And, uh, so I did a video in the storage locker. Say, hey, we're shipping them out. They're all coming. Here's the stuff, you know, and managing the angry people. And they use. They use their anger as a weapon to get their order faster. I think sometimes they know it's not a scam. They know they're just. Because if you're. They're loud. We're going to prioritize their order.

Speaker A: Aside from that, maybe that means they were just excited about it, you know?

Speaker B: Yeah. Well, we got into their hands. It took us a couple months to ship them all out. So that was the biggest hiccup. But the quality of the product was great. The supplier that we worked with delivered. We were there. We watched them come off the production line. We were in Shanghai wearing the Product testing it. You know, we were there two weeks in advance testing it as much as we could so we could see that it was good. If there's a problem, I could be right there facing them. And I felt like that was a nice tactic. I think right from the beginning. I said, are you okay if we visit the factory during production? Because I wanted to know we're going to be there as a, as a, uh, safety mechanism. So don't try to cut corners with us. We're going to see this, we're going to put it on this. Absolutely. So well in advance of production. I showed them the flight, I showed them where we're staying, so they knew we were coming. I don't know if they would have ripped us off. I don't think they would have.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: But that was just like our safety mechanism. And we tried it out, we had dinners with them, we were wearing it. So from a product standpoint, everything worked out really well. Customers loved it right from the get go. The only hiccup was not knowing how to ship it.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: As fast as we would have liked to.

Speaker A: So, Dan, one of the things that you mentioned is you founded this with some friends. And, um, you know, sometimes that works and sometimes it doesn't. What's been, what's been your experience in working with, with friends and what advice can you give our listeners about that?

Speaker B: I think about this a lot. I feel like I'm the luckiest guy in the world because I get to work with my best friends. I mean, people say business and friendship don't mix, and I think that's insane. Of course they mix. It's just liking the people you work with. But that doesn't change the fact that you need to have complementary skill sets. Uh, you know, you can't just work with people because they're your best friend. You need to work with them because they're good people to work with and they're the right people to work with. And you guys can pick up where the other slacks. So I got very lucky in the sense that the friends that I. My childhood best friends, including my original business partner. So the one that I left the business, he was my other best friend. He now works in our company.

Speaker A: Oh.

Speaker B: Uh, so we've been best friends since we were kids. And, you know, if you have childhood best friends that you remain your friends through the rest of your life, one thing that's a benefit is you have core values likely baked in, which is very important in business. There's all sorts of benefits. Like we can be very candid with each other. You know, we know there's a lot of love there. We care about each other and we see each other in each other's lives as friends. And we treat the friendship separately, but we treat the business as a business. And we, we were able to be like, I can be a lot more candid with my business partners because they're my best friends. And I can with other people I work with because I don't, you know, I'm not, not childhood friends with them.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: I can't be like, dude, that's stupid as hell.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: My business partner tells me more days than he doesn't that that's dumb. But he's just trying to get to the bottom of what's good. And sometimes he's wrong, sometimes he's right.

Speaker A: Yeah, but is it the guy that had the pickle idea?

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker A: That's dumb, right? Yeah, you can always throw that, throw that back at them.

Speaker B: Yeah, you're right. Actually, will I start using dude, you wanted to start a pickle business. I had the idea for this one.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: But we treat it very, very seriously to try to keep it healthy. And one of the tools that we have, we call it the same page meeting. Once a month we get together. And the intention of the meeting is we can bring stuff to the table there that's bugging us where we agree that we leave the ego at the door. M, you know, I can really criticize the way that they're showing up and talk about what's on my mind. And instead of m getting defensive, that's the place where we agree. Like, let's hear each other out, let's talk through it and let's work on that. And, you know, it's kind of like a marriage. Like, you know, you have to have the things in place to be able to make it survive and thrive long term. And, you know, we share a vision we don't have. No one wants to be the star of the show. We want to see each other win. Like, it's, it, it's really, really awesome to care about the people that you're doing business with as much as I do. Like, it's a great thing. And I, I, I, I believe strongly that more people should consider, you know, assuming they have the complementary skill sets, getting into business with their friends. It's a really amazing way to live. It's really fun.

Speaker A: Yeah. My question was going to be on, is it, is it tough to have the hard conversations with your friends? You know, like, uh, this isn't Working out type of conversation. But it sounds like it's actually easier to have the hard conversations with the friends because there's no. There's no B.S.

Speaker B: yeah, I think it's easier because that's what people say. It's. Isn't it hard? It's like, no, it's like, just as long as you know that you have to be able to have the business conversations and they don't have anything to do with the friendship.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: Like, even, like, again, it's like, you have to remember, uh, my first business I told you about with the video production agency. I started that with one of my best friends, and I left that to start a new business with my other two best friends. It was like breaking up with someone. And he told me it stung. This was really a huge learning moment for me. I remember the first conversation, and it was a while after. The reason why I didn't want to do it with him is because we, uh, ended up in different stages of our lives. He ended up getting a mortgage and having kids. Kids. And I was in my early 30s. I was renting an apartment. I didn't have any children. I was in a place where I can take a really big swing that was super high risk and not be afraid of the outcome like he was. And he expressed to me, I don't want to do any of these side projects. Let's focus on this business. This is the one where we can make money. Dude, I have kids now, and I wasn't happy there, right? So I had to go start something new. So when I. And that's what I did. And I made that decision, and it was bold and it was hard, but I'm like, I knew in my heart that I needed to go do something new. And I remember this conversation where he sat with me, and it was a while after, and he said, you know, I was really hurting because it's like, man, since we were kids, we would do all this stuff together, and now you're going off and you started this new thing, and I wasn't involved. And it stung. He's like. But, uh, I made sure that I could just process that on its own because I never want anything to come in the way of the fact that, like, we're best friends. And that is something I want to carry with me for the rest of my life. And that matters more to me than any stupid business thing. And, uh, said, first of all, I didn't know that it stung so much that I'm really sorry, but thank you, because that's what's important to me too. And in the back of my head, I, uh, always knew. I'm like, one day he's going to work with us again. But the thing is, first of all, it worked out for him because he was making way more money without me. He was able to structure the business in a different way to make it more profitable. Ended up buying another property. Like, it worked for him. But in the back of my head, if this thing really works and this thing grows, one day we'll hire him. But we need to be able to afford him. Right. Because he's not like someone that, you know, we're all making like, baby salaries at the beginning. Mhm. And he needs to make real money to support his family.

Speaker A: Yep.

Speaker B: And the second the company got big enough to be able to like, afford that salary, I remember sitting with him in a sauna. I said, dude, it's time. Do you want to come work with us? And he was like, it. He was now working for another company as a sort of like, leading like, uh, a department. And he was making good money. I'm like, we'll pay you more. Let's go. And it was the best. We went for steak dinner that night and it felt like they got the band back together.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: And yeah, it's like we really know that we can be really hard on each other in business. And that's the business part of it. But then at the end of the day, we're still going out and enjoying our friendship. This weekend we're going, me and my two partners, we're going to San Francisco to see the Dead. The Dead? You know, the Grateful Dead? The spin off of the Grateful Dead. That's what we've been doing since high school. We still make time for that every year. It's just us three. We make time for our friendship still.

Speaker A: That's amazing. So you talk about the growth and being able to hire this friend of yours. And I mentioned the beginning that you grew unbound Marino to $40 million company. Um, so can you talk a little bit about that growth? And, um, I also said that you were a digital nomad. And so, like, do you have a set office location? Can you tell talk a little bit about what's going on with the company?

Speaker B: Um, yeah. Well, so about being a digital nomad. Yeah. You know, I think I felt so imprisoned in my last business that part of what I was really trying to achieve was to be able to sort of live life in our own terms. So, like, even the brand Unbound is about Freedom. It's about the product offering, but it's a. It's more than that. It's an ethos of feeling like that's a way that you can live, and that's the way that you should live. And, you know, I'm semi nomadic. I have a place in Toronto. Yeah, I'm at home right now, but I have the freedom to run, uh, from wherever I want to. I don't have to. We have a warehouse. We have a warehouse in Toronto. We have a warehouse in Dallas. And those are autonomous. And I, uh, go and I try to Visit and make FaceTime and hang out with the people there, but I don't need to be there. They know how to do their job. You know, they report metrics. We just know that it's healthy or it's not. And the only time we're ever there, it's not to, like, help run the business. It's to hang out and eat lunch and to make FaceTime. You know, they like when we come, but we don't need to be there. My office is my laptop. I'm in it right now. I try to be in places where I feel happy and productive. So I leave Canada, where I'm, um. Toronto is my hometown. I leave for January and February because I'm miserable in the winter. And I go to Buenos Aires or Mexico, or it's sunny, and my office is there when I'm there. So freedom is at the core of what we're trying to achieve and we try to make. It's not just for the founders, it's for anyone. You know, obviously, if you work in the warehouse, you need to be local. But all of our meetings are set up to be virtual. Um, and we'll just. We really encourage people to just, like, live life on your own terms, as long as we are doing the work.

Speaker A: Yeah. So with your service business, you mentioned you built that to 18 people, and, you know, there was that pressure of payroll every month, and you're probably looking at, I don't know, 100, 100, $20,000 worth of payroll every month. And that became such a pressure point for you. Um, but then now, with a $40 million company, how many team members do you have at Unbound Marino?

Speaker B: It's in the early 30s.

Speaker A: So how have you done it differently where it doesn't feel like the pressure as much this time around,

Speaker B: we made some dumb decisions. In my first business, where we were growing, in the first year in my mom's basement, we did $60,000 in revenue. And in the second year we did 600,000. And in the third year we were closer to $1.2 million in revenue. And I'm a kid, so I think like I thought I was like, I thought I was the man. I'm like, I'm a genius. You know, Bill Gates says success is a lousy teacher. You know, let a 22 year old or 23 year old get to a seven figure business. And it taught me things that I shouldn't have learned. They're done lessons. So, you know, our, our little studio downtown Toronto ended up being this amazing office with this big overhead and we had amazing muralists come in and it was just like, I thought we were just going to keep growing until it stopped. We flatlined and then we're like, oh, this thing's expensive. You know, you learn the lesson hard and fast. Um, that was very suffocating. So when we started this business, we kind of took the approach and sometimes we slip a little bit on this, but we try to like burst the seams before we expand in any meaningful way. So our first office was a tiny storage locker, like a self storage. And then when we outgrew, uh, that because we had more inventory, we just got a bigger storage locker. And then when we outgrew that, we just got the biggest storage locker and we outgrew that. We had two big storage lockers and it was at one point we had three storage lockers. And we're like, we can get a little mini warehouse. And we stayed in that warehouse until we were bursting at the schemes like the guys in the warehouse, like we don't have room for stuff. So then we got a bigger warehouse. And that was sort of the attitude was just like, we're okay risking making a risky financial investment on something there. Maybe this swing will pay off, maybe it won't. But when it comes to overhead, the things that come every month, we're really a lot more careful. Um, just, you know, it's, it's the lessons that I got from the first business that changed how we look at it for this business. So we're a little bit smarter. I'm also 40 now, so it's like, you know, I have a lot more years of seeing how things work and seeing other people's businesses and a lot more lessons, a little less ego about it. So yeah, I think we're a lot smarter at how we built this from, from the get go. And yeah, it also scales differently. You know, we do make money while we sleep now.

Speaker A: Yeah, and that's pretty sweet. And so for listeners, for viewers, um, who are at that inflection point in their business where they're like, you know, I'm a solopreneur, I've got an E commerce site, maybe I have an EA helping, uh, me out. Um, but I am interested in expanding, but I'm just not sure that I want that scale lifestyle. Um, what would you, what can you advise them?

Speaker B: You know, I think you just have to know what your vision is for how you want to live and how you want the business to be. It's interesting. Uh, I'm at a place right now where the business that we built mirrors so exactly the vision of what we thought we could build when we started this to the point where now we're here and that's cool. Like, it actually feels really cool. But now it's time to sort of adjust where the goal posts are like, and what's the vision in 10 years like? Like, you know, this is who we are now and where, where can we take this? And I have ideas. We have some pretty, we have some vision for the next three to five years. But it was, it's not as clear as it was when we started. Like, I knew that we wanted to be this profitable eight figure business working remotely, being able to be where we want to be. The friendship is thriving. Like a, uh, lot of the stuff, you know, the product lines expanded, it was vivid and it's kind of exact, um, I think that's what gave us something to wake up to and work on. So I mean if you're a Solopreneur, it's like, do you want to stay at Solopreneur? That's a perfectly awesome thing to want to be. Like, some people hate having a team, they hate working with people. And honestly we're in a place right now where I feel how complicated it is with all the moving parts and like letting people, helping them grow, giving them autonomy, letting them feel like they have the ability to make their own decisions. Trusting them, but also helping and support them and understand what's going on. And so it's requiring all sorts of new leadership skills. Skills for me, I love this. I find it very hard and I love it. And I love having a team. I love having a team of talented people who are bonded to the vision and feel like we're all in this together and they have the hunger to make this thing grow in the way that we do. And that's what I feel we have. That's what I want. That's what I always wanted. I think Having clarity of where you want to be, like, and being a little audacious. Like, you know, the concept of bhag, big, hairy, audacious goal. That's the North Star. You know, we are right now living the bhag of nine years ago. And now we need to adjust the goalposts. But knowing where do you want to be in like, 10, 15, 20 years? And then reverse engineer it to the three to five years, like, and by, like, being a little audacious, like, oh, man, that would be crazy. You know, maybe you have a $200,000 business right now and say, I want it to be 5 million bucks. Like, how am I going to do that? And just really map it out and then think about the year and think about the quarter and just, like, work those baby steps every way. So I think it really comes down to knowing how you want to live. And for us, it's about freedom. That's why we don't take on investors. We haven't. And I don't ever want to if we don't have to, unless I feel like it will add to the vision, but I don't think it will. Um, we bootstrap the thing. Because I don't want to have to answer to other people. I want to just do this as a family affair like we were doing it right now. Um, I want to make sure the friendship thrives. I want to be profitable so that we can live well and the business has the ability to do cool things and not feel suffocated. And. Yeah, I mean, it just pertains to what our vision is. So I think that, uh, that's the most important thing is having vision. Because vision's what you need as a starting point to be able to then say, okay, well, what's the strategy for unearthing or achieving that vision?

Speaker A: Yeah. This is such great advice and I really appreciate you sharing your story, Dan.

Speaker B: Thank you.

Speaker A: Um, so many lessons learned from this. Dan, how can our listeners, our viewers, connect with you? Uh, and unbound?

Speaker B: Well, just gotta Google Unbound Marino or Dan Demski. You'll find Instagram or the websites and things like that, but, yeah, we're there. We're out there.

Speaker A: Yeah. Well, I know that I want to order some of these shirts because, uh, if it can be lighter and, uh, it doesn't smell, that's a big win.

Speaker B: Well, listen, when people put on her shirt, if it's the right fit for them, if they like the way it fits, the. They're hooked.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: So many times it's all you know, the people I meet along the way and different events I go to and things like that. I'll. I'll give them a shirt, and then I'll see them, like, a year later or whatever, and they're like, dude, everything I own is unbound now. And. And we're at the point now where I'm, um, start. Like, it's cool, because I've always wanted this. I wanted to see it in the wild, to see people who I don't know wearing it. And I see it a lot. You know, we're. We're a travel product. You know, we. It doesn't have to be for travel, but that's the way we position it, and that's what the. That's the real benefit of, or at least how we frame the benefit. But I'll be in airport lounges now, and I see it like, you know, I know our fabric, so I'm like, I think that's our T shirt. But then when it's like something like our hoodie, I know immediately because I know the zipper pull and everything. And I'll see people in airport lounges, walking through the airport lobby, bars of hotels, and it's like, it's really. It's awesome to see. People are hooked. They love our stuff. Because, you know, the one thing. And this is for a product business, I think the most important piece of advice is you have to obsess over the quality of what you're delivering, because that's what makes, like, it's not easy to acquire a new customer. And sometimes it's hard, sometimes it's impossible, depending on algorithms and things of that sort. But if you have a customer that loves your product, they just come back. You don't have to do any marketing. So I think obsessing over product quality and what you deliver is the best way to create a healthy business that works for service businesses, too. That's why my video production agency was successful from the get go, because we obsessed over delivering quality. And if you deliver quality, people are just like. Especially men. Men, when they find something they like, they're like, I don't need to ever look anywhere else ever again. They're good like our men customers. Like, we're their T shirt brand and they stop looking. Yeah.

Speaker A: So, yeah, I believe it. Um, well, I'm gonna go check it out. Uh, Unbound Marino. For, uh, anybody listening viewing this, check out unboundmarino.com, dandamsky, CEO of Unbio. Thank you for joining us on the Deal Closers podcast.

Speaker B: Thank you so much for having me.

Speaker A: Great chatting and thank you for listening or watching Deal Closers brought to you by websiteclosers.com make sure you follow the show rate share with your network. It helps us reach more e commerce founders like yourself. If you're thinking about selling your business or you just want to know, uh, what it could be worth, visit website closers.com this episode was edited and produced by Walk West. I'm Jason Gilliken and we'll see see you again soon on the Deal Closers podcast.

Speaker B: M. Sam.