How Alternative Marketing and Drive Led to 15M in Revenue

Chris Meade is the Co-founder and Chief Marketing Officer of the world’s first four-way volleyball game, CROSSNET. Before CROSSNET, Chris has been involved in the production of the Warner Bros. film, Winter’s Tale and HBO’s Girls Season 3. He has also held positions at Portlight LLC, NBC Universal Media, ICON International, Inc., SeaMeade, Contently, and Uber.

Chris is a kid from a small farm town in Connecticut and graduated from Quinnipiac University with a Bachelor of Arts in Film, Video, and Interactive Media.

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

• [04:01] Chris Meade tells the story of how he took an idea and brought it to life
• [06:39] How a unique marketing strategy paid off
• [09:32] The value of working with different investors to build a brand
• [15:03] Chris talks about building both a brand and family experience
• [18:05] Why being frugal, but still taking a risk, can grow a business
• [23:03] What is on the horizon for Chris?

In this episode…

Do you want to invigorate your current marketing strategies to grow and scale your business?

Taking an idea and making it tangible is a leap of faith. The e-commerce world is ever-changing and growing; finding the right niche and marketing your product for success can be a bumpy road. Chris Meade knows how to start with an idea and nurture it into a multimillion-dollar brand. Chris pulled from his marketing background to deliver a unique and unprecedented marketing strategy — showcase your product by using it and making it public.

In this episode of the Quiet Light Podcast, Joe Valley sits down with Chris Meade, Co-founder and Chief Marketing Officer of CROSSNET, the world’s first four-way volleyball game, to discuss a revolutionary marketing technique. Listen as Chris discusses mitigating the risks of starting a new business, creating an affordable product, and how he was able to grow and scale his brand. Stay tuned!

Resources Mentioned in this episode

• Chris Meade on LinkedIn
• CROSSNET
• Quiet Light
• Quiet Light on YouTube
• Joe Valley
• Mark Daoust
• Quiet Light Podcast email: [email protected]
• The EXITpreneur’s Playbook: How to Sell Your Online Business for Top Dollar by Reverse Engineering Your Pathway to Success by Joe Valley

Sponsor for this episode…

This episode is brought to you by Quiet Light, a brokerage firm that wants to help you successfully sell your online business.

There is no wrong reason for selling your business. However, there is a right time and a right way. The team of leading entrepreneurs at Quiet Light wants to help you discover the right time and strategy for selling your business. By providing trustworthy advice, effective strategies, and honest valuations, your Quiet Light advisor isn’t your every-day broker—they’re your partner and friend through every phase of the exit planning process.

If you’re new to the prospect of buying and selling, Quiet Light is here to support you. Their plethora of top-notch resources will provide everything you need to know about when and how to buy or sell an online business. Quiet Light offers high-quality videos, articles, podcasts, and guides to help you make the best decision for your online business.

Not sure what your business is really worth? No worries. Quiet Light offers a free valuation and marketplace-ready assessment on their website. That’s right—this quick, easy, and free valuation has no strings attached. Knowing the true value of your business has never been easier!

What are you waiting for? Quiet Light is offering the best experience, strategies, and advice to make your exit successful. To learn more, go to quietlight.com, email [email protected], or call 800.746.5034 today.

Episode Transcript

Intro  0:07

Hi, folks, it’s the Quiet Light Podcast where we share relentlessly honest insights, actionable tips, and entrepreneurial stories that will help founders identify and reach their goals.

Joe Valley  0:29

Hey, folks, welcome back to another episode of the Quiet Light Podcast where we help entrepreneurs build and sell their online businesses. The EXITpreneurs Playbook is available to all of you, I wrote it for you, it is the same thing. It takes all of our experience here at Quiet Light, puts it into a book format so that you can digest it day by day, chapter by chapter. It’s the EXITpreneurs Playbook. You can find it on Amazon or exitpreneur.io. And today, we have a I want to call him a I told him he looked young that he had a baby face. And it’s only because we were side by side on our screen. His name is Chris Meade. And he developed a product out of the blue, then marketed it successfully in ways that I hadn’t heard of anybody else marketing a brand like this. So he’s charting new paths. Let’s, let’s say so we’re gonna talk about it. Just a minute, Chris, how are you?

Chris Meade  1:24

Good, man. Thanks for having me on.

Joe Valley  1:26

Welcome to the Quiet Light Podcast. Now I said You look like a baby. When we first went on the call again. My beard is gray. You have none. As you said, You can’t grow on maybe you could grow a mustache. But we talked about never ever doing that. We’re not bringing the 70s back people know Chris, why don’t you? Why don’t you help us out a little bit with your background in the e-commerce world? Yeah, man.

Chris Meade  1:45

So I 28 years old, like he said, he invented the world’s first four-way volleyball mat. And I grew up in a small farm town, went to college for film. I grew up wanting to be a film director. Just get out of my small farm town. There’s one stoplight one restaurant that only sells chicken tenders. And it’s like, how do I get out of here? Right? I’m sorry, working at HBO after college for a little bit, then got a sales job because I needed to pay back that college tuition. Yeah, it was always like, Alright, we’re in a sales job. We move to the next sales job for a year you’re making money. But it’s just it’s a grind, cold calling people that don’t want to talk to you email and more people that don’t want to talk to you. The money is good, but you just I was never really like, really happy. I don’t want to say I was burned out when I was 24. But it sucked waking up 10 hours a day and doing something you didn’t really like, right? Yeah. And then one night, me and my friend said this idea for a four-way volleyball net. And we googled it. And we’re like, How the hell is this never been done before? And that was it. I was like, why not us?

Joe Valley  2:52

So how did you take it from there? I mean, you had an idea. You’re probably at a bar drinking. I’m gonna assume right? Or Yeah, we’re home drinking. But yeah, so you’re 24 Yes, sir. All right. Yeah, so it’s been a while but I don’t forget to date those days completely. I, I started a Chris called the wrong number when when I was a little younger than 24. And it was a restaurant delivery service. And as you can imagine, there was something making my mind get a little more creative than it normally would if I came up with a business called the wrong number is so I hear that I hear in the ballpark. Alright, so you came up with a four four-way volleyball net. It’s called CROSSNET now, right? So what did you What did you do from that idea when you’re talking with your buddies, to actually creating a test one that you tried out with your friends to? How did it go? Just give us a little bit more of that story?

Chris Meade  3:43

Yeah, the idea like that night at like three in the morning. Went to bed.

Joe Valley  3:46

That’s morning, by the way, just for those that are you know, you’re okay, I’ll stop interrupting Go ahead. I

Chris Meade  3:51

had the idea like three in the morning when I woke up the next day went straight to Walmart, we got to badminton. That’s we literally texted our friends and said, yo show up at two o’clock like we have something for you. Caught up the center of the badminton net. We rigged them up together. One side was attached to like my mom’s shed and the other was like her garden. And it stood up stood up, there’s it was four quadrants. And we just made up rules on the spot. Keep the ball live ball lands in your square, you’re out. And whoever serves the ball gets a point if they stay alive. And then we’re like, Alright, how long do you fly? And we’re like, game 211. one by two. Sounds good. Because we’re basketball players. Yeah. And that was it. That was the proof of concept. That was the gameplay rules. And we looked at each other after like, three or four hours. Nobody had checked their phone. Nobody was texting their girlfriends. It was we’re just having fun. And we’re like, that’s the only proof of concept we’ll ever need. Like this game is dope. Everyone in America would play it. We have great time. Let’s go. Let’s go make it

Joe Valley  4:51

and you did it just like that. Okay, so let’s, let’s fast forward to today. Yep, we’re recording in August of 2021. What do you expect your total revenues to be in 2021?

Chris Meade  5:03

This year, we’re shooting for a little bit over 15 million

Joe Valley  5:06

15 million from drinking with your friends at three in the morning to $15,000,000.04 years later. It’s about right. Yes. All right. All right, let’s talk about the journey on how you did that. Let’s talk about the prototype. You did that in your backyard? Let’s not talk about that. How did you get to the next level in terms of creating a product that could be shipped to you or to your fulfillment center?

Chris Meade  5:28

So the next stage was how do we find a manufacturer, right? We’re small farm town kids, we’d have no idea. We know how to make a prototype, we don’t know how to actually build the end product. So we started messaging suppliers on AliExpress Alibaba, looking in the volleyball space, hey, we have this great idea. We don’t really want to overshare because we might wake up tomorrow, and you’re selling our product on the internet, before we could even market it. We found like one or two suppliers that we really trusted. And then it came down to the negotiation stage, we pulled out all the money we had in our bank account, which was like 15 grand across all three of us. I’ve pulled out my 401k. And we’re literally like, Hey, we have 15 grand, take my money and ship me 100 nets, if not, like grin have to find somebody else. So we found somebody to ship us 100. And they were pretty good. I mean, they weren’t perfect by any means. But they were what we asked for. That was enough to launch crossnetgame.com. Back in 2017. That was like late in September, sales were terrible. But what we did was we literally left our apartments in our houses in Connecticut. And we moved to Miami, all three of us, the founders, we all move to a one bedroom in Miami, and we’d go to the beach every single day. And we play our game. And then beginning people would be like, what the hell is this alien looking thing. And by the end of the day, we’d have 70 people on the net playing, we’d sell to somebody and they would go then take it home and start playing in their town. So then we’d start getting sales from their town, and it just became a snowball effect.

Joe Valley  7:02

You get out there and demonstrated the product. That’s absolutely brilliant. Now, for people that are listening, they’re probably doing the math on $15,000 and 100 units. That’s $150 cost of goods sold. How much were you able to sell it for? Were you just breaking even on the front end? Or were you making some money?

Chris Meade  7:19

Yeah, at that point, we were just pretty much looking to break even it was with the logistics. I mean, now we still have 40 foot containers. Back then we were air shipping. We had no idea what the hell we were even doing. But yeah, we were just trying to get the product out there get some content, because we needed we had no content was also in our backyard on a rigged up badminton net. So it was just get it out there right now and we’ll try to make some money on the beach. But yeah, we kind of broke even then took the money and got our cost of goods down. And then we were able to buy like 250

Joe Valley  7:50

did you have day jobs during this whole time? Or did you literally play outside all day on the beach? Yeah.

Chris Meade  7:55

So I had a day job. I worked at Uber. Uber Eats actually. So I helped launch it in Boston in Rhode Island on the sales side. So I went to Uber and I said, Hey, guys, I’m moving to Miami. And they said, will you work remote? I was like, Yeah, I will work remote in Miami on the beach. Yeah, I worked remote for six months, like selling, selling restaurants during the day or night or answering emails and then I hit the beach and sell CROSSNET

Joe Valley  8:20

beautiful. So you double double time working at least full time running your business at least full time as well.

Chris Meade  8:27

Exactly. Yeah. So we did that for close to like eight months. And we just started seeing traction, right? It was 100 website visitors 250 conversion rate going up from let’s say 2% to 3%. Like, we just saw positive progress. It wasn’t anything close to like paying ourselves. It took a few months till we paid ourselves a single dollar. And it’s harder when you have three partners compared to just doing it yourself. We all everyone has to eat and everyone has to eat. Absolutely. That makes sense. Exactly. Exactly.

Joe Valley  8:58

Did you ever raise any money to get capital for inventory or anything like that?

Chris Meade  9:03

Well, we are 100% self funded. No debt on the business. No investors no cap table just three founders can Where are you selling right now are sold in 3500 plus stores Walmart, Dick’s dillards Academy sports shields, Toys R Us Canada tire. The list goes on and on.

Joe Valley  9:22

Now let me just clarify the other two partners don’t have online retail experience or a brick and mortar retail experience as well. nobody’s been in this world before you guys all just figured it

Chris Meade  9:32

out. I don’t know a single person as experienced we, my one partner is an engineer. So that was very helpful. He built the blueprint on it kind of helped build the whole product. And then he’s the one who works with China to import. And then my brother just good social media experience knew how to like blow stuff up online. But besides that, I was the only one with the sales experience.

Joe Valley  9:56

This is stunning that you’ve actually done that to be honest with the 3500 stores? Or is most of your revenue through the stores? Or is it through online sales at cross? That can be a game.net.com? crossnetgame.com. Sorry. Yeah, the whole thing out there.

Chris Meade  10:12

Yes. Now crossnet.com was taken at a Baptist Church, we’re still trying to buy it. Okay? But no. So we try to keep the revenue balanced, because you want to own the customer like that. The whole saying is true. Do you want to own the customer, we want to upsell them, we want them to come to our tournament. So we’re trying to find a balance, I’d say right now, retails probably 7032 our e-commerce and Amazon business, and it goes in flows, right? Like, during, during the summer, we’ll still get tons of e-commerce traffic. Black Friday will be huge for us. But the wholesale checks are just super consistent. And as a marketer, my job has been, let’s start getting people into the store rather than just on our website. And it’s been a whole, it’s been a learning curve, to be honest. How do I get somebody to go into one exact location and pull across it off that shelf? It’s tough. How do you do it? We do right now we’re experimenting we’ve been doing out of home commercials then started doing out of home. So whether it’s commercials connected TV, billboards, podcast segments, like paying for advertisement on that, in the actual stores, we’re creating like, pop up displays, palette displays, and all of that as well. So it’s been tough. And then on the paid side, we’re running searches, running ad campaigns within the towns that we’re selling to be like, Oh, did you see the billboard on top of like I 95 in Salt Lake City that we did. So just trying to get them to make as many impressions as possible? Because it’s $150 product, right? Like, it’s not an impulse buy like a pack of gum, you need to see it a few times. So getting those impressions are super important and getting them for as affordable as possible.

Joe Valley  11:52

Let’s talk about the numbers again. It’s $150. product. What did you end up getting your cogs down to all Park cogs cogs at roughly 30 bucks. They go brilliant five times I like it. Okay, good. People were listening are wondering that themselves. So I figured I’d get it get it answered. Let’s talk about I want to jump to podcasts at one point, because I think you’re doing something quite unique in terms of the marketing of the product and brand. But I’m curious about staffing. It was you and two partners. What do you have on staff now with employees and contractors for a competence got to do 15 million in revenue?

Chris Meade  12:27

Yeah, right now we have 25 full time employees.

Joe Valley  12:30

25 full time employees.

Chris Meade  12:32

Yep. And the majority of that are marketers and fulfillment people. Because in our situation, we run our own warehouse three PL. So we have a lot of headcount, when it comes to packing the orders, shipping them doing it correctly, there’s nothing worse than getting a chargeback for 50 grand because the label is on the left side of the box instead of the right side. So it would be great to avoid all of that headache can use a three PL but every three PL that we’ve ever tried to work with, as quoted us over 5x what we pay like in house, so that’s why we have the headcount. We

Joe Valley  13:08

understood I’ve got a good friend that does it on his own as well. Yeah. Did you I assume Well, let me ask Where are they? Because you’re currently in San Diego, you’re going back to Miami. Where’s the warehouse

Chris Meade  13:20

warehouses in Escondido, California.

Joe Valley  13:23

And why Escondido?

Chris Meade  13:24

So we were shipping out of Connecticut where we’re from. And then last year when COVID hit, we were over 35,000 units backordered it just became so popular, we couldn’t get inventory. Wow. And as a result, we had two options. Keep it in Connecticut and wait for the really long shipping time that it gets takes to get to Connecticut, or we ship it to Escondido save two grand a container. And we cut down our lead time by 20 days. It was a no brainer when we were 30,000 units backorder Yeah, for sure. packed up shop moved out of Connecticut bought like a 6000 square feet warehouse right now. It’s nothing too crazy. And all this stuff there and they just brought everything got routed super quick.

Joe Valley  14:08

So there’s one of the partners in charge of the warehouse. Uh, yeah, he oversees it. Okay. All right, let’s talk. So you get about 25 people on staff, which is crazy. The marketing technique that you and I talked about, and the way that we got introduced is, is you’ve done something I haven’t heard anybody else do. And I’ve been doing this for a long time. Okay. I’ve sold about 100 million in total transactions myself, my team started another half billion and that’s going to double pretty quickly. We’ve got somebody that’s working on listing that’s $350 million. What do you what are you doing in terms of podcasting? Go ahead and explain it. Normally pod people podcast to promote their service or their agency or their company, your podcasting just to talk about CROSSNET games, right?

Chris Meade  15:00

Yeah, it’s a product. I mean, it’s a product and it’s also a sport. I’m trying to build. Yes, I’m trying to make as much money as quick as possible. But I’m also trying to create a sport that your kids will play, and my kids will play my kids kids will play. And in order to do that, I need to get impressions everywhere. Doesn’t matter what type of podcasts, it’s on. People like sports. I love basketball. I love hockey. I’ll listen to it. I’ll give it 15 seconds and how I might give it two hours depending on how interesting The topic is. So I’m working to build a global sport right now. The Olympics are 100% insight. We just had an airing on ESPN. We had a 30 minute segment on ESPN last week, that showcase CROSSNET. So Wow, we’re in over 10,000 schools, physical education programs everywhere. I’m looking to build a sport. And that doesn’t stop on podcasts. And it certainly doesn’t start on podcasts. But it’s been a it’s been a good avenue to get your name out there. Especially when you come from a farm town. And you don’t know anybody you don’t know any celebrities. You don’t know anybody with big pockets. It just you need to get your name out there on the

Joe Valley  16:03

10,000 schools have you donated CROSSNET Games to them where they buy it?

Chris Meade  16:07

We’ve done it some CROSSNET to it. But they’re right now we’re so every physical education teacher gets a catalog in the beginning of the year, and quarterly, and right in that catalog is CROSSNET smack in this front and center.

Joe Valley  16:20

Are you paying for advertising in the catalog? No,

Chris Meade  16:23

you just move a lot of units. So they want to they get they have good margin on the CROSSNETs. And I mean, think about it, like how often does a new sports product come out or something that’s like, revolutionary like this doesn’t happen often. So all the teachers want something new for their school, graduate, amazing

Joe Valley  16:44

for people that are launching a business launching a brand, a product themselves that are doing the same that you and your partner said where you just bootstrapped the hell out of it. You worked full time jobs, and you grinded it out for a few years before it even took off. And you could take some money out what what kind of advice do you have for somebody that’s just at that stage where you were, maybe after you started getting after you got that first order, let’s say

Chris Meade  17:09

yeah, it’s just staying through, right? Like, if you got to still think about it, even if you have your partner’s money in it, treat every dollar like it’s your own dollar coming out of your own bank account. I still try to have that mindset now. And it’s harder now with more money at play. But if you wouldn’t spend it on your own bank account, like I remember, there’s days where I couldn’t afford the venti Starbucks, I had to get the tall Starbucks instead. Like if you wouldn’t do that, like for your own bit like for yourself, why would you do your business is money. And like, you got to take risks sometimes. But you also can’t blow the whole business and sacrifice everything off the jump, like and things like that, like, you don’t need $1,000 of Shopify apps, when you start your Shopify store, right, you don’t need a $10,000 promo video, when the iPhone works just fine. You don’t need the biggest celebrity in the world when micro influencers are way cheaper, and you get way more bang for your buck, then risking it all with one celebrity partnership. So stuff like that just have that frugal mentality. And it might just be who I am and how I grew up. Like I grew up with that mindset coming from like a very lower middle class family. But it’s definitely helped me grow the business. I love

Joe Valley  18:16

that. I love it. It’s it’s grinding it out and keeping things tight. If you have too much overhead in your life, you can’t start a business like this to begin with, because it’s too much risk and your situation. You didn’t have much you had nothing to lose, really. So you’re able to to get this started. How many podcasts Have you been on in the last two? Three years?

Chris Meade  18:39

Yeah, I think I think we said it was upwards of over 100. So it’s been good to get the name out there. And we kind of do it like partnerships, right? Like, you start with a small partnership, then you get the bigger one. And now we’re on ESPN in the official product of USA volleyball. So it didn’t happen without going on the this first podcast that may have had two downloads.

Joe Valley  18:59

Amazing. When it comes to the retail stores. What was your first contract? How did it work? What was the store? Who was the store with and how big was the order? How badly Did you screw it up?

Chris Meade  19:12

terribly. So we had a store called shields, which is the Midwest store, they have 35 locations. So the first contract was to two locations only. I found the buyer on LinkedIn. And for anybody listening LinkedIn is incredible for growing your business. It’s how I got almost all of my retail deals and partnerships. So I reached out to the buyer and LinkedIn. I said, Hey, man, we have a great product for you. You should be selling it cuz people want to play it. Are you interested? He said, Sure. Let me order 16 see what happens for two stores, eight units per store. I don’t hear back from him for eight months. Seeing the products flopped. I’m kind of too embarrassed to even send them an email to see what happened. Never heard anything of it. At the time. 16 units was a big order for us like Have a cup. Final $2,000 roughly like those those great everything we needed. I didn’t hear back, but I blew the deal, but we’d never be in shields again. I get an email one day, Chris, I don’t know what the hell happened. They all sold out overnight. Can we go nationwide? With 35 stores? I was like, oh course you could go nationwide. And at that same time, we had our first viral video, hey, we had no idea how it happened. I ship the product out to Lativa to Olympic volleyball player didn’t even know who he was. And we woke up and there’s 10 million views on the video 1000s of comments. And our score was just going off. And that was like the beginning of CROSSNET 2.0 was like,

Joe Valley  20:42

how did you fund that? I mean, when you’ve got, you know, 35 stores nationwide, they want even just 10 units a store. That’s a lot of dough. How did you fund that and finance it?

Chris Meade  20:52

Yeah, it was. So we didn’t we at that point? Yeah, almost at that point. We had not paid ourselves though. So we were just investing in inventory. And at that point, we had a couple 1000 units built like stockpiled. And we had the inventory and very important that Shields was a very good partner. And it was only on that 30 terms. So we had already had the inventory, sometimes even past earlier if you plug them so it was only we were only at 30 days. And it wasn’t like it was moving that well on Shopify, historically. So we had the inventory we were when we were taking that chapel they will. Okay,

Joe Valley  21:28

so you you put all your money in inventory, hoping that it would sell.

Chris Meade  21:33

Absolutely. We just kept doubling down. So sell 505,000 7005 back 2000

Joe Valley  21:39

How long did it take before you and your partners were able to quit your day jobs?

Chris Meade  21:45

It took 12 months for good our day jobs. And I had stockpiled about three months of like living expenses. We had a whiteboard I always tell the story of it’s a good one. We had a whiteboard that Chris Greg and Mike showed how much money we had in our bank account. And every day we deduct it until we hit zero. And like if we hit zero, that was one we were gonna go back to our full time job and they never hit zero. Thankfully, you never want to never want to do that. Right? Well, he got into the low hundreds, though. I’ll tell you that.

Joe Valley  22:14

Could you imagine today actually getting a job?

Chris Meade  22:18

It’d be nuts. I really. I couldn’t I don’t think I’d be able to work for somebody else. like back then. The biggest horror story I had is I got a I got an email from my boss one day saying the back left of your shirt is untucked. Chris, can you please tuck the shirt in? And then the other one was?

Joe Valley  22:39

Did you reply? What? Why are you looking at my ass?

Chris Meade  22:44

The other one was Chris, one of the senior partners saw you in the elevator at 501. This means you must have left your desk at 459. Yeah, I was like get me out of this place. Yeah,

Joe Valley  22:57

yeah, for sure. Alright, so you think CROSSNET games? Olympic sport 2028. What are we looking for? The Summer Olympics? Yeah. What are we looking at?

Chris Meade  23:07

2028 would be pretty, pretty damn good. We got a lot of time to learn 2028 could be sooner, right? Yeah, 2028 would be pretty good. It’s really crazy to think about, we’ve done so much in three years, like, clearly made a lot of money and spread it a lot. But sports take a long time. And it’s just like, I want to do so much right now. And we’ve done so much already. But on the grand scheme of like thinking back to them shooting basketballs and wooden crates like that takes time to develop and we’re doing pretty good. But yeah, 2020 it would be great.

Joe Valley  23:40

Do you see yourself sticking around for that long time? Or do you think there’s a there’s a point where you say okay, all right, you’re gonna give me x I’m out. I’m gonna move on to my next adventure.

Chris Meade  23:51

Honestly, there’s nothing I’d rather be doing right now. And there’s nothing on the back of my mind that like I need to be going to do this. Sure. I have other plans and things I want to do with my life eventually. I’m 28 I wake up every day on my laptop wherever I want to be happy as hell have a great team I have great friends. I do think there’s going to be a point where we’re going to bring need to bring on people even smarter than I am a little Intel we have already but like people from that sports world who can make it may be more corporate II as terrible as that sound. He’s that experienced, you know. So those people are definitely going to be coming soon.

Joe Valley  24:26

You know, we’ve got a client that we he said it best I think he he took the revenue of his business to 20 million. He said I knew I could take 20 I knew I knew I could handle that and do it. But I also knew that the business could do 100 million I just knew I wasn’t the guy for it. And so he sold the business but kept equity so he did it what’s called an equity roll and he knows that his second exit with his I think he kept maybe 15 or 20% in the equity roll and his his next x it’s going to be 234 We’re five times larger than the first. And he doesn’t have to do the work. He’s grinding it out every day, you don’t feel like it’s a grind. Right now you wake up excited for the day, you could just work from your laptop and do it anywhere you want to, which is brilliant and will last for quite some time hopefully forever for you. But you can always do an equity roll someday and still get that you’ll still have that upside when it when it does get to the Olympics if you’ve still got some ownership and it could be bigger than anything you could ever do on your own. Which is if you said as you said you bring the right people in, they can be part of your team or outside your team helping you grow it or owning the majority and making you a minority but earning more strangely enough because they can take a tie to camp. This is brilliant man I we connected through mitko and he’s a podcast booking agent alien wants his contact information reach out to me but what you’ve done here Chris is so damn impressive. so incredibly cool that I’m going to go out and get myself a CROSSNET game. I’ve got two teenage boys and they are crushed me and everything that we play together when it’s sports, even poker now they crush me. So I’m gonna get out there and I’m gonna embarrass myself even more, but congratulations. This is quite a success story. And they want to have you back on in another year or two, just to see where you’re at how close you are to, you know, getting getting Olympians to play it or future Olympians to play it.

Chris Meade  26:24

I appreciate that so much.

Joe Valley  26:26

All right, man. Thanks for coming on.

Outro  26:30

Today’s podcast was produced by Rise25 and the Quiet Light Content Team. If you have a suggestion for a future podcast subject or guest, email us at podcast at quiet light brokerage calm. Be sure to follow us on YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram and subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening. We’ll see you next week.