Being on Shark Tank, Raising Capital, & Developing a New Product

Today we’re talking about the many ways you can raise capital for your startup or new business. You might have a great business idea, but don’t have enough cash to make it happen. Raising enough capital is a barrier to entry that many entrepreneurs face when trying to get their startup off the ground and there are several ways to do it. Today I’m asking someone who has successfully used several methods to raise capital for his business.

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I’m interviewing my friend Hans who is the inventor and CEO of the company Tenikle. In 2021 he landed a deal on Shark Tank with Daymond John after almost losing everything during the pandemic. He is a wealth of knowledge and determination. We discuss working at Hurley, coming up with his product idea, product development, product manufacturing, raising capital, crowdfunding, getting on Shark Tank, and new business developments. Here’s the interview!

Welcome

Rebecca: Thanks so much for being on the Product Sessions Podcast, Hans! Hans and I used to work together at Hurley designing and developing t-shirts. It was a super fun time. There were like seven or eight guys and me all in this back corner in the design area. Everyone was just joking and messing around all the time. You guys would play handball a lot, I remember.

Hans: It was a bunch of rowdy boys that you had to deal with, but honestly those are like the best times in my life. It was a fun job. Everyone was so cool.

Rebecca: Yeah, it was a great group of people and everyone was really laid back, but somehow we also got work done too. And at the time you and I were both launching businesses, so we would have side chats occasionally about what you were doing and how the progress was. We would give each other ideas and advice.

So Hans, I’m really excited to have you on because you’re my first guest whose business is not a fashion-based product. You have a different kind of product that we’re gonna talk about. Hans is the creator and CEO at Tenikle, which in my opinion is a multifunctional suction mount tripod for devices like your smartphone and your iPad.

We use ours a lot at our house. My favorite way that we use it is when we give our boys haircuts at home. We suction the iPad to the mirror so that they can watch YouTube while we’re cutting their hair. My husband cuts their hair. So we love our Tenikle.

Hans was also on Shark Tank in 2021 and had a successful deal with Daymond John, which is so exciting. I can’t wait to hear about that. Thank you for being here!

Hans: Of course! Thank you. I mean, of course I would be here. It has been a wild ride, I think for both of us. It’s been cool checking in every now and then sort of. When we were first starting together, we were like two baby sprouts in this world of entrepreneurship with no idea of what were going to get into here.

Tenikle has been fun. It’s definitely a different product. The “Octopus Mount” is what I keep calling it. That’s what I have here on our packaging. At retail, “Octopus Mount” isn’t clear enough, so we’re changing it back to “Bendable Suction Mount,” which is in the form of a tripod because it just makes more sense to people when they see it.

This has been a hard part with Tenikle throughout its life. It does so many different things, so what category does it fit in? It’s always been a challenge to figure out those things. We can test whatever we can at retail. It works online better because you can explain the products longer, but on a shelf we’re having some challenges with that messaging.

Rebecca: Yeah, how do you summarize that in just a few short words? That’s interesting.

Tell us a little bit more about your background, your career, and how you got where you are.

Well, you know most of my background. Really the foundation of my whole career was Hurley. It was being able to learn the business side of, “Who are we targeting? What’s the message we’re trying to say as a brand?” We had the Nike influence because Hurley was owned by Nike at the time. I feel like it was a super cool education on a lot of levels there.

I started as an intern at Hurley out of high school and I’d never done that stuff before. So it taught me that things aren’t really that hard. You just have to go try it and figure it out. Yeah, I think that’s really the foundation of it. I was just always wanting to try new things and do new stuff.

You were more on the developer side, so you got a super good education on how to like actually make stuff which is super cool and valuable. For me being on the more creative side as a t-shirt designer, there was so much graphic stuff. Not just with the t-shirts that are getting made, but even putting CADs together and the instructions on how to make something [tech packs]. It was a really fun, awesome learning experience.

Wally Sato was the Creative Director a while back and there was a round of cuts. I got under the chopping block for some reason and Wally said one thing that stuck with me for a long time. He said, “I’d be really bummed if you just make t-shirts your whole life.” And that was interesting. At the time I was pissed off. I’m like, “Why are you getting rid of me?” I ended up coming back to Hurley afterward, because I loved it so much, but that always stuck with me. And I was like, “You know what, maybe you’re right!” So I started working on some other ideas and eventually came to Tenikle.

Rebecca: Yeah, I bet at the time you were like, “Making t-shirts is cool. Why would you say that?

Hans: Yeah, I was a 19 or 20-year-old kid, stoked on working at a surf company that I always thought was cool.

Rebecca: You’re like, “This is my dream job. What do you mean?”

Hans: Exactly.

So what inspired you to start Tenikle? Where did this idea come from?

Well, I guess I could say that Wally inspired it with just that little tidbit of “Do something else.”

It’s funny, when ideas come about you usually get hit at multiple angles with things, right? For me, I wanted to make something so I was working on a phone case. This was back when smartphones were becoming a lot bigger of a thing. I think it was iPhone4 and I had an idea for a case with slide attachments, so you can slide different things onto it. So you can slide a clip. You can slide wallets or car mounts, even lenses. I had an idea for a lens that would switch like a microscope switches lenses. It would be something like that. A lot of those things ended up coming out anyways.

Me being a graphic designer, I just led with visual first. I made a marketing piece of a tentacle with eight arms and each arm was a different attachment so I called it Tenikle. And I thought, “That’d be really cool. What if there was actually a product that was a tentacle? What would that look like? Maybe it’s a keychain. Maybe it’s something that actually uses bendable legs and suction cups and you can mount things by a system.” That kind of clicked and I was like, “Dang, that’s actually a really good idea.”

There was a point where I went on a hike I was by myself. I was doing a solo run hike thing in Laguna Hills somewhere. I went to take a picture at the end of the hike. I did the typical, you know, prop your phone up thing and the phone falls and breaks the screen. Shattered screen, but still usable.

I go back to my car and I put it in my car mount. And I’m like, “Why couldn’t that have also been my tripod?” And then it was like, “Wait, I have this idea for this bendable thing, that could be it!” And the rest is history.

I decided that it would be easier to make one product that did everything, rather than all these other products that attach to this one phone case. So that’s the route I took and here we are 10 years later.

Rebecca: Wow. I love hearing how your brain worked through that because I feel like a lot of us have an entrepreneurial drive and we’re like, “I want to start a business, but I don’t know what to make.” It was cool to hear how it took you a while to figure out what it was exactly that you were going to make, but that you came to it eventually.

Read More: How I Started My Own Bag Company

Hans: It’s interesting you say that. I feel like a lot of times in entrepreneurship people default to, “Let me solve a need for a problem.” And that’s the first thing that you’re thinking of. You’re thinking of all these problems and how to solve the need. Sometimes that can be a pretty effective way, but other times just play.

Like not having a real solid general direction that you’re trying to get to. Just having fun with ideas and always keeping in your mind that you want to do something, you just don’t know what it is yet. Just having fun and goofing around with different ideas. Like me drawing an octopus with eight arms. There’s no reason for me to do that. I’m just playing around with some different ideas. I even have the old drawings. It looked totally different than how it looks now. But just play.

You know, I don’t think the guy who invented the super soaker was solving the problem of running around squirting kids in the backyard. That’s kind of why he invented it. But it’s a hit, right?

Rebecca: Maybe a little less pressure on yourself to come up with something.

Hans: Exactly, yeah.

Rebecca: Yeah, just enjoy your life and then you’ll stumble upon it. Maybe? Okay, cool. I like that.

I remember you going through the process of developing Tenikle and you were telling me about the molds. There must have been a lot of trial and error to get it just right. Can you tell us about that?

Yeah. It was tons of trial and error. And the first iteration of it, I didn’t know how much things cost. So I just am told numbers and I’m like, “Oh, that’s how much it costs.” I spent $40,000 on the first set of molds. My last set of molds I did was $4,000.

And that was of course in the U. S., but it was actually made in China and they shipped the mold to the U. S. So you know, look at prices if you can, please.

Rebecca: Do some comparison.

Homemade Prototyping

So the process of getting it there, first I molded it out of clay in my bedroom. Then I used art silicone that you can cast like your hand or cast different things. I used art silicone over the top to make the mold and then I peeled that one off. Then I had to make a mold of the mold and then pour the reverse.

This is like literally crappy wire and suction cups like tied around and then placed in there. I did it in my bedroom at my dad’s house. It takes about 24 hours to cure that art silicone. In the morning I woke up with the gnarliest sore throat from the fumes because it was in my bedroom. It was so bad.

Rebecca: Oh no, you’re like sleeping in the chemicals!

Hans: So the process was just me again goofing around and wanting to be creative. I always took it as an art project, like something fun and interesting. I got to a certain point where it was like, “Okay, this works. It’s actually pretty cool. If I’m going to keep doing this, I’ve got to perfect the prototype. I’ve got to come up with a really good design and actually go for it and do it.”

Figuring Out How to Have it Made

So the first thing I did is took a course. It was a week-long course on Rhino 3D, which is a 3D model software. There are so many other cheaper ones out there. Well, this one was pretty good, but it’s too good. You don’t need all those bells and whistles. So now I use a different one called MOI 3D. It stands for Moment of Inspiration.

So I learned how to 3D design and then I learned how to make this shape, which was incredibly difficult because it’s super organic. It’s not like, you know, just stretch a block, but the form needed to flow. The legs needed to be perfectly aligned with the other legs. And I really wanted it to not be too techie. I wanted it to feel more like a toy and something playful and round and gummy. So I learned how to design that.

Then once I had a really nice design in 3D, I was walking in Irvine Spectrum. There was a booth where they’ll scan your face and they’ll 3D print your face or 3D print random objects. It was a little company called Thingify. They had just a little kiosk at the mall and I thought it was pretty cool. It was right when 3D printers were starting to become a bigger thing.

And so I asked them, “Hey, if I brought you guys a file, will you print it for me?” And they were like, “Yeah, absolutely.” I sent them the file. They’re like, “This thing’s huge. We can’t print this.” They’re used to printing these little things and what I needed was big. So I said, “Okay, well tell me the biggest size that you can do and I’ll try to cut it up into sections.” I ended up making a 36-piece mold because the suction cups, all the undercuts, and everything needed to fit together. So it was this big puzzle piece that I put together.

I do the wire first, I bend the wire, put it in there, pour the silicone, and then the product would come out. And the lesson I learned in doing all this, is that’s way too much freaking work. You don’t need to do that. It was so over the top. It was expensive. It was such a mess. I just thought like, “Oh, I’ll prototype it myself. I don’t need to pay some company to go do this.”

Now you can just take a design to a factory and they’ll give you a great working prototype in weeks. Me, I probably went through like 100 different prototypes. I’m sanding and polishing the suction cups because it needed to be perfect. So stupid, but it was fun. It was a good part of the process and I’m super glad I learned the hard way and also put in the sweat equity.

Finding a Factory

And then So with the prototype done, I used Thomasnet.com which is a U.S. factory source. It’s like Alibaba, but instead of showing all the products that they make, you type in what you need. So for me, I needed a metal wire bending for the interior part cause it was made out of metal. I searched a bunch and then I found one that was sort of local so I reached out to them. They said, “Yeah, we can do this.”

Then I needed the injection molding. At the time, I didn’t know that silicone would be actually the best end material to use because, with my experience in prototyping, silicone would tear. As soon as there was a little thing, it would just tear and keep going. It was horrible. But that’s art silicone. That’s not like real industrial-grade silicone. It doesn’t do that.

So I found thermoplastics to be the thing that I should use and I found a company in Vista that did injection thermoplastics. It turns out, thermoplastic was not the right thing to use because it really affected the suction cups. Now now we use silicone, it’s a lot better, but that was the process.

I’d say the best thing about ThomasNet is it gives you a list. I made a spreadsheet and on my lunches, I don’t know if you’d notice, I’d disappear. Everyone else goes to lunch, I disappear and I call all the people on the list and see if they can make this thing.

Back then the design actually functionally didn’t even work. So a lot of places just turned me down. They’re like, “We can’t make this. No way.” One company said that they could do it, but it needed some tweaks. I’m like, okay, I’m okay with some tweaks and that’s where the first Tenikles were made.

Rebecca: Wow. What a process. You were committed.

Find Guidance

So I would say, find some guidance, if you can, from someone else who’s made products before. Don’t go down the crazy rabbit hole.

For me it was fun. I always knew I was going to start this business, but it wasn’t business time yet. It was for me, art project time. “This is fun. I’d love to see if people actually care about this.” I took it seriously, but I didn’t go seek help. The things I probably should have done.

Rebecca: I feel like you had more of a playful attitude about it. Like all your eggs weren’t in that basket of “This has to work right away.” You’re kind of like, well, I have my job. This is going to come when it comes. And you’re just kind of chipping away at it until it comes to fruition. I think that’s a smart way to do it.

Put All Your Mental Eggs in the Basket

There was an element of, “It’s going to work,” in my head. I’m not putting all my eggs in this basket yet, but it’s going to work. I’ve had that attitude throughout the life of it. There’s been times when it was not working like, “Give up, this isn’t working. Move on.” And I didn’t. I just always knew, “I’m doing this. It’s going to work.” I think if I didn’t have a lot of eggs in the basket as far as my attitude towards it, I don’t think I would have made it this far. 100% not taking it that seriously in the early parts, but still working on it heavily. It was good to learn the hard way, but have some determination that I am going to make this work. It allowed it to actually eventually get there.

Rebecca: Yeah. Your eggs weren’t all in the basket right away financially. You weren’t relying on this right away to be a success. But in the distance, you knew that someday this was going to be an actual product. You had that faith about how it was going to end up.

Hans: I think that’s a good way to say it. Financially: not all your eggs in one basket. Mentally: all your eggs in one basket.

Rebecca: One thing I noticed about your product is that it’s just so unique. It’s not like you made a selfie stick and you just like tweaked it a little bit. It’s a totally new thing. Not a lot of people are making a 100% new product. So you really had to go through the wringer on how to have that made.

Hans: Yeah, totally. There’s a lot of science behind suction cups. There’s a lot of material science that I had to learn. The metallurgy is a whole other science because the product bends with metal and it repeatedly bends. I don’t know if you’ve noticed anything that you repeatedly bend with metal brakes. I figured out how to not break it. It literally cannot break. The old ones broke, but figure out what’s wrong, fix it, all that stuff. The new ones do not break. It’s pretty wild, actually.

Do you have your products developed here in the U. S.? How did you find the manufacturer that you use today?

So the manufacturer I used today is actually through partnership with Shark Tank. They are cheaper and I have better financing options with them for inventory. Prior to that, I had another fantastic factory. Great people called Kenvox. They have a satellite office in Westminster and they were great. I found them because they actually reached out to me.

At the time I was still producing in Vista, which is the one that I found by seeking from ThomasNet. Then when I did the Kickstarter and everything, eventually Kenvox reached out and said, “Hey, we can do this better with silicone.” So that’s how that happened.

Just having your products out there in the world sometimes. Maybe because this is such a weird and unique and different product, it got different types of attention. Just having it out there, sometimes things come to you. And in that case, it did.

Rebecca: Listeners here are mostly entrepreneurs who want to start or have already launched their product-based business. One of the biggest barriers we have as entrepreneurs is how do we raise the capital or get the finances that we need to launch?

You’ve used a couple of different methods to raise capital. Would you mind talking about the different ways that you’ve been able to finance your business?

Savings

So the very first financing for developing the products was purely just me saving whatever cash I had. Once I got to the point where, “Okay, I know what I have to make now. Now I need molds to produce it.” Then discovering that molds were going to cost me $40, 000 (which they didn’t need to cost that much I got screwed) but learning that’s how much it was going to cost it was like, “Well shoot. How do I make this happen?”

I immediately defaulted to, I’m going to do a Kickstarter. Other people are going to pay for this. But once I started going down the Kickstarter rabbit hole, planning and prepping and everything, I realized that there was a crucial thing keeping me from me being able to even do the Kickstarter. In order for me to make the Kickstarter videos and shoot all the products I still needed the product, right?

SBA Loan

So, I did a very risky thing that I wouldn’t advise people to do. Especially in this case, because it was $40,000 for the molds, it was incredibly risky. But I went to the SBA and I got a business loan.

It actually was pretty cool to have to go through the loan process because it jump-started all these other things to happen. I had to write a business plan. I was like, “Oh, I guess I should have a business plan. If I’m getting a loan.” I had to like actually file all the things correctly. Do all the stuff to make the business a real operating legit business with the LLC etc. So doing the business loan was actually a really good thing because it propelled all those things to happen. My dad thought it was nuts to get a loan before you know if the product’s going to work. And he’s kind of right.

Crowdfunding

In my head, I thought I’m going to use Kickstarter [a crowdfunding platform] as a marketing thing because I’m going to launch before the holidays. I’m going to promise everyone that they’re going to get it before Christmas and before the holidays. I know it sounds scary. I promised everyone, “Look, I already have the molds. I just need the money from you so I can produce it and go.” Most Kickstarter things don’t even ship for a long time. I actually held to my promise and I got everything [in time]. There were  few stragglers. It just happens in e-commerce, but I managed to do it within a pretty short window. I launched Kickstarter in August and then September and shipped everything before the holiday and it got to everyone.

So I justified it in my head that this is going to help me move faster to just get the loan. Pay for the molds up front and then get it going. That’s how I’m going to do this.. and it worked. So that was crazy.

SBA loans can be risky because you’re promising to pay back something, but it’s a great way to get capital without giving up any equity. You have to be okay with things going south. At the time I was a single guy, like “Who cares? I can restart if I need to.” Um, so that was good.

Investors

Then I went through a few other processes throughout the life of the business where I really used that as leverage, for this business. It got to a point where it was actually way too risky. I would way rather have investors helping, but the problem with that also is I’m kind of in debt to these investors and I would hate to disappoint people. If someone put their hard-earned money into my business, believing in me to do this, I would hate to burn. So I always had that healthy fear of not taking money from investors either.

So I was putting my money where my mouth was by getting these loans because I had to personally be liable for those. It helped enough to just scrape by and get what I needed to continue on and build the business up.

Eventually, I did get an investor, Daymond John on Shark Tank, and that’s been a whole different, awesome, way easier experience than it was before.

Rebecca: You worked hard to get there.

Did you do Kickstarter and Indiegogo? Did you find the experiences very different or are they pretty similar?

Comparing Kickstarter & Indiegogo as Crowdfunding Platforms

Yeah, They were actually quite different. The cool thing about Indiegogo is that it keeps going. You can just keep it on there and continue selling there. At least it did at the time when I did it. I’m not sure how they do it now. Where Kickstarter is make-or-break. You have to raise a certain amount within a timeframe and you have to be communicative with all your backers. That was something we were pretty good at.

I think Kickstarter, it’s more of a community where people are just excited to see cool things happen. Indiegogo is a bit more, in my perception, just really cool tech gadgets. It’s a great way to sell for startups.

When we’re talking about funding the business, they’re both incredibly useful because you’re basically getting a sale before you’ve had to pay for any of the cost of goods. I mean you could put some of your marketing as cost of goods there, but you’re getting money from them to do that.

A Unique Approach to Crowdfunding

I looked at Kickstarter not to help me make this product because I had already gotten the mold to do that for me. I had a different approach on how I looked at the Kickstarter.

It wasn’t as much “How much margin can I push out of it to make these things?” Even though that was kind of an important part. For me, it was “I need to validate my business and get as high of a number as I can for market validation.” Then I have a large user base that I can pull from and learn what needs to change on the product.

So my approach was a little different going into Kickstarter. It was less, “Help me make this thing become real.” It was, “This thing is real. It’s out in the world. Validate my business.” That was the approach I took. And I think it allowed me to make moves that were maybe a little riskier.

Gosh, it sounds like my whole business was a bunch of risk, but it kind of was!

Using a Third-Party Crowdfunding Agency

I would not be as successful on there had I not hired a third-party agency to help run the marketing. That was a crucial thing. I used a company called Funded Today. They’re still around. They’re great. They specialize in Kickstarter marketing. So they have email lists of people. They’ve raised hundreds of millions of dollars at this point. Just all the people that have used them.

There were a lot of bad reviews I saw on their stuff. I’m like, “What’s this all about?” What the bad reviews were, were people complaining that they took my $2,000 and then said that they couldn’t work with me. But those people didn’t understand how it actually works. What Funded Today does is they take a test budget, you pay them $2,000 basically. They use that $2,000 to run a test to see if the product is going to work or not; if it’s going to resonate. So if they can reach a certain level of return on ad spend then they’ll work with you. So that was a two-week trial period. $2000 bucks; two-week trial period.

I was nervous, like “Is this thing going to work? Who knows?” I knew that all I could control is what they can use. So I was just making all kinds of content and sending it to them for ads. Like, “Try this one. Try this one. Try this one.” All these different ads and they found some that really worked.

And they’re like, “Okay, great. We’ll work with you.” At the time they took 30% of all the sales. But what was crazy is they funded the marketing too. So, it was on their marketing dollar and they would take a percentage of the overall sales, which was a really interesting way to have low risk for me, the creator, and they assume the risk. And If the ads are working and it’s moving and flowing, then great.

We did really well on Kickstarter. My goal was $15,000 and I think we did about $112,000 on Kickstarter. And then we did another. Like $40,000 or $50,000 on Indiegogo and then some pre-sales on the website.

Rebecca: So you paid back the loan!

Hans: Actually, I didn’t pay the loan with all that money because now I had some capital I could start a business with. I know how much my loan payment is. Just keep the loan payment and take as much cash as you can and start your business.

Rebecca: That’s amazing. I have never heard of hiring an agency to help you with Kickstarter. That’s so cool. I did a Kickstarter, but I don’t know if those agencies existed at the time. I did it quite a while ago. One thing I did do is, I sent a message to literally every Facebook friend that I had that said, “Hi, will you support my campaign?” And that helped.

Hans: Awesome. It’s tough to promote your Kickstarter.

The good thing about these agencies is that they’re already marketing to people that have bought from Kickstarter before. So if you’ve ever bought anything off of Kickstarter, it’s not easy. It’s not like shopping around on a store. It’s like, “It’s a pledge? What’s a pledge? What do I get? Which pledge do I pick? Why does that one not have any pledges left? When do I get the products?” It’s kind of confusing for the Average Joe. So marketing to people who’ve already bought on Kickstarter is a lot better.

And then they did a lot of tricks like cross-promotion of other live ones and a lot of interesting tweaks that really helped. So that’s cool.

Rebecca: Cool. So with this agency, do they usually create their own ads or did you have to supply all of the content for the ads?

Hans: I supplied the raw content. I would give them some videos and photos, but I would give them some that were totally unedited and then they would do some editing to them.

How did you end up on Shark Tank? Was that always the plan?

It was sort of all because of our friend Ray Coder at Hurley. He was always joking with me like he was one of the sharks and I would have to pitch to him. It was just a crack-up talking with him about it. But it was always in the back of my head like, “Oh I’d love to be on Shark Tank to help promote my business. I’d love to get a deal.” I always knew it was a shot in the dark to do that. It’s pretty difficult to get on. But it was always in the cards at some point to do it.

To the point where I wouldn’t even watch it because it got me too nervous. It gave me so much anxiety watching other people on there. It just hits so close to home. For being on the show, I really have not watched that much Shark Tank, purely out of anxiety.

The Process to Get on Shark Tank

Getting on was insanely difficult. The producers actually reached out to me the first time around in 2018. It was a Monday and that Friday was the last day to get anything in. I’m like, “Wait! Number one, I’m not ready. And number two, I’m not ready. There’s no way.” But I thought, “What the heck, we’ll throw a Hail Mary and we’ll see if we can get on here.

You have to send in a video of who you are, your idea, what you’re seeking, where you’re from, and all that stuff. I recorded the video with Lydia, and I could just tell she was like, “There’s no way in hell I’m going on Shark Tank. There’s no way you’re dragging me up there to do this with you.” But we shot the little video and it was horrible. And of course, we didn’t get on. It was like a goofy, horrible video.

Then in 2021, we’re now living in Dana Point and the product is a lot better, but things were kind of not going great. There were some problems, but the product was a lot better and I saw that they were casting again. I thought, “You know what? This time I’m gonna do this. I think it’s time. I think I’ve got a good story. I can do this.”

Recording the Audition Video

I did the audition video again and this time around I thought, “What are they looking for? It’s TV. They don’t care about your product actually that much. The product has something to do with it, but the production team is trying to make good TV.” So I thought, “Okay, let’s just be ridiculous. Let’s be a personality.”

One of the rules for the video was to not hold your phone. So I start the video by holding my phone and I go, “I know you don’t like that I’m holding my phone right now, but watch this,” and then I put it on a wall and there’s a tripod behind me. I said, “You said to use a tripod, but I want to show you that you don’t need tripods anymore!” and I kicked the tripod and it was like, so obnoxious. No one’s like that in real life, but that was what got me the attention. Just being ridiculous.

Working on the Pitch

Then I got a call back and they’re like, “Hey, we’re interested if you want to talk more.” So I start to put a pitch together. I don’t want to take myself too seriously. I’ve never done that in my business, and I don’t certainly want to be the cool guy now. I’m definitely not the cool guy. I’m definitely a goofball and I wanted to be myself and have fun and just see what happens.

Basically, the goal was just to make good TV and if I make a really compelling and great episode, I will see higher sales. If it’s a boring stupid episode then you’re not going to get as much in sales. My goal for this was for Shark Tank to be the thing that keeps giving, right? You air once, that’s the biggest spike in sales. Then you air more times after that and you consistently still get good little chunks of sales. So I thought, “This is my infomercial!” I’ve got to just make it really good.

I actually got some guidance, some little notes. My dad’s neighbor is friends with Pete Hamborg, who was the inventor of the Hamboards, the giant longboard skateboards. They’re like six feet tall skateboards. He gave me some pointers and said, “It’s just like surfing. Walking into the tank is like dropping into a wave and then you do your bottom turn when you start to pitch.” It was great. I loved and it was super helpful.

Almost Losing it All

Shark Tank eventually said, “Okay, you’re on the show! Congratulations. We’re really excited to have you.” However, during that process, [during the pandemic] Lydia and I were living in Dana Point and we ended up in an RV in Menifee. The business kind of like… I wasn’t getting inventory in time, right before the holidays. I ran out of marketing dollars entirely. It was looking pretty bleak and things were getting pretty rough.

My wife was like, “Look you have this opportunity. Let’s take it. Let’s go all in. Everything. We’re getting rid of all of our rent. We’re getting rid of all of our stuff. Whatever we can sell at garage sales, we’ll do, and then everything else we just get rid of.”

I remember backing a U-Haul in at the dump and just getting rid of like crap that was in my life. I was like, “That’s a cleanse.” It was like a hard thing to go through. It was like, “This isn’t my choice.” But it was kind of a cool thing too. It was like, “I have this opportunity. We can take it. We can do this.”

Rebecca: Wow, you have a supportive wife.

Hans: Isn’t she great? She’s the best. It’s actually our anniversary today.

Rebecca: Oh, wow! Happy anniversary! Thank you, Lydia, for sparing Hans on your anniversary.

Hans: Yeah so we moved into the RV. Things were pretty rough, but I had a gung-ho attitude that we were going to make this happen and it’s going to work.

So once you finally made it, how was it to walk out on that floor? Was that just totally nerve-wracking?

It doesn’t feel real still. I have a couple flashes of images of actually being there, but I kind of blacked out to be honest. I knew it went well. I was in there for an hour and 20 minutes and, they only aired 10 minutes of it. It was quite an experience. I was so exhausted afterwards.

They actually have a therapist that comes to your trailer and talks to you after your pitch. Because some people’s entire dreams just go up in flames on national television in front of millions of people. It’s a gnarly, gnarly thing. I don’t know if they had to do it or what, but it was a smart thing to have a shrink.

The shrink even said to me, super nice guy, he’s like, “I know you’re feeling on top of the world right now, but just know that it’s all going to come crashing down in a few hours.” You’re going to feel really depressed and that’s super normal. And I was like, “What? Okay. I’m like stoked right now.” Sure enough, I got hit by a train wreck. It was like, all this emotion and energy and excitement, all the adrenaline just depleted everything. And I was like, “Why do I feel so weird right now?” Then I started like second-guessing, like, “How did it really go? I felt like it went great, but I don’t really know.”

Read More: Let’s Talk About Mental Health As An Entrepreneur

Waiting for Your Episode to Air

And then it’s about six months for them to edit everything and then eventually get on the show. Even at that point, you don’t know if you’re going to be on the show. Even if you get a deal, it doesn’t mean you’re on the show. They don’t air every episode. It was a long process.

Then we had a Shark Tank party at my house. I still had never seen the episode. We’re all going to watch it for the first time together. It was so nerve-wracking. Plus, the week before the commercials, Daymond yelled at some other guy, but they edited it and made it look like he was yelling at me, and I’m like, “Did that happen? I blacked out. I don’t really remember everything that happened in there.”

I was like stressing, tripping out. They can make you look like an idiot too. They’re just making good TV.

But it was the best. Honestly, it could not have gone any better. The episode turned out great. They didn’t make me look like an idiot.

Rebecca: And you even made a funny joke about, how you were out. “And for those reasons, I’m out.”

Hans: You know? I wasn’t planning on saying that. But I just remember Ray always saying that to me. I just threw it in there, but it totally hit. It hit at the perfect time.

Rebecca: You did great.

Was Daymond the shark that you were hoping for?

I was, actually. Beforehand, going into it, my mom asked, “Oh, which one would you pick? I really like Mark Cuban.” Everyone loves Mark Cuban. And I said, “No, I want Daymond.” She’s like, “Daymond?” I’m like, “Yeah, he comes from FUBU. That’s kind of like my background at Hurley. He’s the most down-to-earth guy.”

Actually, his nickname is The People’s Shark, and he really is. He’s a super down-to-earth guy. I got a bunch of texts from Daymond last night. He’s a cool guy, actually. Yes, I wanted to work with Daymond and I got to work with Daymond, so pretty crazy.

Has Daymond been helping you a lot? I know you changed manufacturers.

We brought in a new partner, Cody, who’s Daymond’s friend. Cody has a big lighting company called Litezall and they sell everywhere like Costco, Home Depot, and Walmart. I flew out to Chicago to go meet him and see what they’re all about. It was a really cool experience.

He’s a really good guy and he lives in this part of Illinois where he grew up called Peru, Illinois. It’s a really cool little town. He seems to be single-handedly making the town better. He used to have a little office that he showed to me. It was about as big as this one. He’s like, “Yeah, I used to sleep on one of my desks sometimes here.” He rented that little office in this huge warehouse called the clock tower where they used to make clocks. Years later, here he is, he bought the place!

So now he owns the whole building and he’s turning it into a really cool place. He has this place called Fire on Fifth, it’s a pizza place. There’s taekwondo, art studios, dance classes, and music lessons for kids on a whole other wing. He’s got a brewery in there now. So he’s taking this little town, that didn’t seem like they had a lot of interesting stuff happening in the immediate area, and he’s turning it around. It’s become the poppin’ spot.

He’s been great with helping. They’ve been financing Tenikle with ordering inventory and all that stuff. Now they ship the product and he’s been great. Daymond has been sending me tons of tons of great contacts and lots of content too. So you’ll start seeing more content from Daymond.

But it was a long process going through the due diligence. Just because you make a deal on the show doesn’t mean you really have a deal. I was really fortunate that I set off all the red flags on the show, so they weren’t expecting anything different. In fact, the business was doing better than what they had anticipated. I really shared all the skeletons in my business because I took that as an opportunity to make good TV. And in reality, there were a lot of things that were doing a lot better for the business at the time.

Is he helping you get into more retail stores?

Yeah. We started putting together some strategies on some retail stuff and we approached a couple already. We don’t have a solid yes yet, but I’ve actually been doing a lot of work on my own end with retail. I met a great group of guys that have become my own personal team on retail stuff.

We have the trifecta partnership

1. Daymond is the influence. He gets us all these great contacts. I’d love to share all the ones that we’re working with, but yeah a lot of great stuff from Daymond there.
2. Cody is all the manufacturing. He has a sales team too.
   • Putting together the product for retail is totally different than e-commerce because there are just a lot of technical things like UPC codes, PDQ packaging, and how many fits on a pallet. It’s just a lot of stuff like that.
   • Then his whole operations team. So fulfillment and all that stuff.
   • New product creation. We have a lot of really fun cool stuff coming out very soon. Very excited to share.
3. Then me on everyday technical. Like who can I call to inspire? What is the thing I should be working on? How do I organize the business? A lot of high-level stuff and then a lot of in the weeds. Things like retail sales and new product design and stuff like that.

So it’s a great little trifecta partnership and it’s been going pretty good. We just had our biggest year ever last year and it was pretty sweet.

Are there any additional resources or actionable takeaways that you would share with someone that’s wanting to launch their own product-based business?

Ask For Help

Yeah, talk to people who’ve done it before, number one. If there’s anyone that you know. Actually, a lot of people are more accessible than you’d think. Reach out to someone who’s started a brand or has made, you know, Mommy bags, for instance. People are a lot more accessible than you realize. Just shoot your shot and get it out there. Try to get through to someone that can help you with certain things. More often than not, people are willing to help.

Daymond on Demand

The other thing I would say is, Daymond actually has a course online that I took called Daymond on Demand. He gave it to me, obviously, I didn’t have to pay for it with my partner. But he goes really in-depth on a lot of good stuff from marketing to social media to even some operations-type stuff on how to run your business and everything. So really good thing to go through Daymond On Demand.

Where can everyone go to connect with you?

@HansDose on Instagram

@Tenikle on Instagram

Or you can email me at hans@tenikle.com

Rebecca: Thanks, Hans! I can’t wait to see the new products that are coming out. I’m so excited to see that. Thanks so much for being here. You’re the best!

Hans: Rebecca, you’re the best.

Free Product Launch Guide

If you enjoyed this episode then you’ll love the Free Product Launch Guide that goes into more detail about the process of launching and scaling a product-based business.

Links Mentioned

Tenikle

Rhino 3D

MOI 3D

Thomasnet.com

Kenvox

Kickstarter

SBA business loan

Indiegogo

Funded Today

Tenikle on Kickstarter

Tenikle on Indiegogo

Hamboards

FUBU

Daymond on Demand