Welcome to the top floor podcast. This is the Denver edition. I'm your host Darren Cantball. And today we have Mr. Kevin Brown, CEO and co-founder of Friction Labs. Thanks for being here, Kevin. Hey, Darren. Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it. All right. So why don't we start and give you the opportunity to introduce yourself, please? Oh, awesome. So I'm Kevin Brown. I wear a lot of hats. I'm the CEO of Friction Labs. We started this business 10 years ago. My business partner's Kia Kalantari. We co-founded the business together. I'm a husband, two amazing women. I'm a father to two kids. I'm an avid rock climber. I'm an aspiring jujitsu player. And yeah, I try and fit in a little bit of fun outside of all those things. But yeah, I get to wear a lot of fun hats right now. All right. So jujitsu player, is that how you describe it? A player, not like a practitioner? Yeah, I mean, I think that's the lingo. I'm just a blue belt. So I'm still just trying to learn my way around it. But yeah, I think they refer, let's refer to as players. Yeah. Okay, cool. You know, there's that saying if you love what you do, you never work a day in your life. And I often roll my eyes at that. And I wonder how much that rings true for you because you are a rock climber. And keep me honest here, friction labs is chalk or at least started with chalk. Is that right? Yeah, friction labs, we created the premium chalk market for rock climbers. And fortunately, we have athletes from sports as wide as tennis and golf through baseball, you know, CrossFit gymnastics. Many athletes used our, used our chalk in the most recent Olympics. Yeah, we've been very fortunate in getting our product out there. But yeah, I started the company from being a rock climber and my own selfish need of wanting better chalk because there was really inconsistent product at the time. And yeah, now 10 years later, we're in a couple thousand doors across the US 27 countries. And it's amazing how much little t-shirts that we make show up on amazing athletes all over the world that we see on Instagram almost every day. So it's been, it's been quite the ride. Very cool. All right, so one of the things that I like to focus on in our podcast is the human experience, which is shared amongst us all. I'm sure there's plenty of other spouses and parents that are listening. I'm a quasi on both. My girlfriend and I are not married. She's got two kids. And because we're not married, they're quasi step kids, but I get the world. Where I was going with that is, all right, so you talked about the chalk and you talked about being in a thousand or a couple of thousand doors. Give us a little window into how did you go from inception to where you are today over the number of years it took to get there? Like what were some of the main milestones and how did you achieve them? Oh, cool. So I started out as me being a little bit of an obsessive climber. So I was out working on a climb that I had like the first half of it kind of figured out. And I felt like I was really close to being able to do the whole thing. I ran at a chalk. I went to an REI. The chalk that I normally bought wasn't there. The guy told me all of it was the same. So I bought some chalk. I went out and it felt like a greasy mess on my hands. And I failed miserably. My wife's a geologist. So I came home and I was not in the greatest mood. So I asked her where chalk comes from. She said, "That's not my expertise." Well, she gave me some insight, but you know, that's not her expertise. But she hooked me up with a guy who has an X-ray fluorescence lab. Long story short, we realized that all the chalk that was on the market was being marketed as 100% magnesium carbonate. And it was around 50%. So I selfishly started to pursue creating the best chalk I possibly could. I think we did a pretty good job with the early batches that we made. I'd also started a rock climbing gym. So I brought my chalk into the rock climbing gym. I tried or I started and I had a bunch of my friends try the chalk out. And I knew it was pretty good when I looked over my shoulder and to my good friends were stealing my chalk and pouring it into their chalk buckets. So I asked them if they could if they would buy the chalk and they said they would buy it. So my business partner and I, we launched a website. About a month later, we got a single sale, $14 of revenue for that for the month. The next month, we did a single unit, but that time we did 17. So up into the right, which is the direction you want your revenue to go. And yeah, you know, it started out, we thought we were going to be an e-commerce like subscription type play. And we quickly realized that people buy chalk at their place of play, usually at the rock climbing gym. So we still have, we still have website and subscriptions and things like that. We saw products on Amazon, but when we started to venture into wholesale, which was me cold calling climbing gyms and trying to, trying to get them to carry our product. And at the time, our product was about two and a half times more than any other chalk that was out there. So it was a a lot of rejection, a lot of no, like, I don't believe your stuff's better. So then we had to work on our marketing, we had to work on a whole bunch. And, you know, painstakingly, when you go back and look at the numbers, it was, you know, we'd win a couple of accounts a month. And now I think we work with about 600 accounts in the US. Some of those accounts are like an REI that have, you know, over 150 locations. And some of those are, you know, a single gym, a single climbing gym that just has one location. And, you know, we've, we've grown the team over time. We had a gentleman who was helping us pack the chalk, like putting the chalk in the packaging. And he became our first sales rep. He opened up so many accounts for us. David Powell will forever and always be very close to my heart for all the impact that he made on the business. And yeah, I mean, you know, we've had a long saying at friction labs that no one retires here. This is a platform for improvement. Kevin, I know one of the things you're super proud of is the community you've built. And I'm speaking more to the team. And you told me a few things, milestones, some of your team have met. I also want to ask about it. And the thing I think a lot about is there are so many entrepreneurs doing so many different things. And they have levels of success in their piece of the world. And your piece of the world is currently impacting a team of 30 with some pretty big life events. And I wonder if you want to talk about that for a moment, the impact you're having on your team. Yeah, so, you know, we so we've been a business for 10 years. And early on, when folks came to work with us, it was we kind of tried to sell them on the dream of if you've ever wanted to work in a startup, you get this this is your opportunity. And you know, we we could barely pay ourselves early on. We tried to we've always tried to pay everyone else on the team fairly. And my business partner and I would just sort of take the whatever we could to keep things moving forward. Unfortunately, we've been able to have enough success that yeah, so we have about 30 employees on our team. I think about six years ago, we were able to roll out health benefits and 401k. And a lot of the things that, you know, we joke around, like, you know, we're a real company now, like we're we're offering a 401k, we're a real company. And, you know, like, I think we've had we've had a number of employees that bought their first house because of their their job with us. We've had we we hired a bunch of folks that were Afghani refugees. So we worked for the company that placed those folks. We gave them good flexible jobs. And, you know, when the interpreter came through, and we were explaining, you know, the flexibility that we offer, like, are you sure? We're like, yeah, this is like, this is how we treat everyone. Like, our belief is, you treat people well, they're going to do a good job. So we try and treat people the way that we want to be treated. And, you know, we've never really had a strong micromanagement philosophy. We've, it's, I wouldn't say it's laissez faire. But, you know, our job is the owners is to paint the vision of where we're going, set the strategy in place, give people direction, and make sure they understand what we're expecting of them, and then get the heck out of their way and let them do their jobs. And we've found that, you know, not everyone does phenomenal in that environment. And most of those folks, usually within 60 or 90 days, they kind of self select that it's time to leave because they want more structure. Really, I don't know if they want more structure. They want a lot less accountability. And when you get the freedom of this, we it's not that different from starting your own job, your own business. Your job has an impact on the business. We have a very transparent business. We show everyone every week all the way down to the pennies in the bank account. And we've always done that because we want everyone to realize there are no unaccountable middle management roles at friction labs. Every single person's job matters. Every single person's job contributes to the bottom line. Every single person's job shows up in the numbers we look at every single week. And we want them to understand how important their job is, because when they understand that they don't just have a job, they have like a real role that's causing this business to succeed or fail. They show up as a better version of themselves. And we've had, you know, I think one of my favorite people in the company, this guy Mike Seidel, I think he's coming up on his seventh year with us. When he started, he was he was a warehouse associate packed shipments and shipped them out. And then eventually he was running the warehouse. And today he runs our supply chain. He runs all of our shipping logistics. I mean, it's not there's not a lack of complexity. And he's figured this out along the way. Every time there's an opportunity, we give him an opportunity. And he just steps up and he takes it on himself to learn what he needs to learn. And you know, mistakes happen along the way. But I don't think Mike's ever made the same mistake twice. And it's it's relationships and partnerships like that, that I mean, that's that's the stuff that feels really good. Like the revenue is cool, profits, how much money you make, all that sort of stuff. It's cool as an entrepreneur, for sure. But that's the stuff that I think really like gives you a sense of pride. And you feel like this thing's bigger than just yourself. Yeah, it's leadership and adulting at its best. You know, I work as an executive coach and there's far too many companies that employ the exact opposite to the philosophy you've just described, where they are micromanagers. They're not treating people with the respect, dignity, expertise, et cetera, that we quite frankly deserve and we should receive. And yet corporations are full of these crappy ass leaders that, you know, just don't trust the adult to be the adult. It's amazing to me. So kudos to you in that sense. I love that story. I know we want to talk about athletic hands. So let's go there. Let me not butcher what it is. Tell us what what is or what what is athletic hands? Sure. So so we created this premium chalk market. And, you know, our like our internal mantra of the company is what Nike did for feet we want to do for athletes hands. So in rock climbing, chalk is it's you need good chalk to have a good grip. And in rock climbing, your your grip kind of comes down to life or death in some situations definitely comes down to whether you're going to fall or send the climb. And from that, we were able to expand into other sports. Now, there's a lot of sports that use chalk, track and field, gymnastics, weightlifting, things like that. But let's take a sport like tennis, right? Tennis is super popular sport, been around for a really, really long time. And in tennis, your grip really determines your success. If the better connection you have to the racket, the better you're going to play. And when it's really hot out, your hand gets super sweaty. They have these sweat absorbing grips and things like that. But at Wimbledon, like a household name, tennis event, they would have a small bucket of sawdust on the side that athletes could use to dry off their hands. And, you know, in the last probably four years, we've had tremendous growth in that channel where more and more tennis athletes are using our chalk products to get a much better grip. Now, from that, we said, okay, what's the next extension from this? Like, if we're helping athletes get a good grip, what's the next big problem we can help solve? And it really comes down to your skin health. If your skin is ripped up, torn, or, you know, the first time you go to the gym after a long layoff and you pick up a bunch of barbells, the next day your muscles hurt, but your skin hurts. Like, it can be uncomfortable to pick up your cup of coffee. So we worked with a team of dermatologists that work with burn victims to develop the first skin recovery cream specifically designed for athletes. And everything we do at friction labs is not, it's not intended to just kind of sort of work. We want to involve science. We want to make sure that everything we're doing is putting out the best product we possibly can that's actually going to deliver results for an athlete. So we were able to uncover this ingredient called copper tripeptide one. There's like 40 or 50 PubMed articles about it. And every PubMed article shows time and time again that it signals your skin cells deep down your dermis, not just the epidermis on the surface, to go into growth mode and start producing new skin cells and your skin grows like an onion from the inside out and your old skin cells that everyone's always thinking about because that's the thing that's in front of you. Those are the oldest ones and those are the ones that are about to get sloughed off and the new healthy ones kind of replace those from underneath. So we worked with this team of dermatologists to develop this product. And then we have about 140 athletes around the world that are on our athlete team. And we sent it out to all of them with this description of what it was. And, you know, first week or two, we didn't hear anything back. The athletes, they're usually really good to respond to you if they need something. But if you need something like feedback, sometimes it can be a little bit slow feedback loop. And this was the first product that they were reaching out and saying, what is this stuff? This is amazing. You know, I had a cut on my hand or I had like a split. And days later, it's completely healed. This stuff's magic. I need more. Like, all right, these are some of the most persnickety folks on the planet. Like they're constantly looking at their skin. If they're showing, they're telling us this is that good. Like, I think we should bring this product to life. So we called it athletic hands. We launched it about a month ago. And the early response has been absolutely amazing. We've had folks that my nephew has really bad eczema on his hands and feet. He's been going to dermatologist for like two, three years, getting steroid creams. And now he's on his, I think, second tube of this stuff. And all of his eczema has like calmed down and gone away. And we keep getting like, it's early times right now, but we keep getting these feedback about how impactful this product is for people. And you know, Darren, it's like, it's one thing when you have someone on your team that's able to buy their first house because of the job and the paycheck that they get from you or go on a vacation or take, you know, take their significant other on a vacation or something like that. And then, you know, then there's like the other side when it's like the products that you bring to life. You know, it's one thing if someone's like, oh, it's good, or you get like a five-star review on Amazon. But when you're actually bringing like real relief and you're causing someone to have a better existence because of your products, I mean, that's kind of the piece of all of it. Like that's that's when it's like, man, this on all cylinders to things just really working well. And it's it's very rewarding. Congratulations. I love it. I am especially curious about your inclusion of the dermatologist. How did that come to be? How did you figure out to talk to dermatologists that had experience with burn survivors? Well, I think what I've learned, entrepreneurship is it's this like pay-it-forward sort of universe. And early on, and when we started friction labs, I was really fortunate to get to find some mentors and cultivate those relationships. And the thing that I found early on was people are really willing to help you when you're humble and you're willing to work hard and put their advice into action. And we've taken that ethos on almost every single thing that we've done. When we run into a challenge that we don't know the answer for, we try and find people who know a lot more than we do. And you know, beg, borrow, steal some of their time, be very humble about, you know, who we are, what we're trying to accomplish. And if they give us any good direction, we take that and we were absolutely run with it and go back and thank them for it. And, you know, early on with chalk, we worked with material scientists, we worked with geochemists, we worked with just a whole bunch of anyone who we thought might be able to give us like insight on how to improve our product. So when it came time to do this, like, well, we should start talking to dermatologists. And most dermatologists, you know, like most people, we go to the dermatologist once a year, get your skin checked out. And I would ask like, hey, what do you know about like skin creams? And they're like, Oh, you know, like, but it was like pretty generic. And I'm like, so what do you like, what do you really focus on? And like, oh, skin cancer or this and that. And I'm like, okay, what subset of dermatologists really are obsessed in geeking out about how skin grows. And what I kept hearing time and time again was the folks that work with burn victims and skin grafts and things like that. Those are the folks that are really into it. So just searching on Google found some, I found a small group of dermatologists that work with burn victims and told them what I was trying to accomplish, asked if I could, you know, pay for their time. They wouldn't let me pay for their time, you know, like asked if I could like take them out to lunch, like, Oh, well, you can bring lunch into our clinic. And they showed me a bunch of the equipment that they use. They show me how skin grafts work. And then we started talking about what causes skin to grow. And I mean, after talking to, I think, probably six different groups like this, I just kept hearing this copper tripeptide one again and again and again. And I like for anyone that's listening to this podcast, if this is the first time you're hearing it, I'm pretty convinced in years to come. This, this will be very common in most skin creams. I think we're just really early on the adoption curve and getting it into a commercial product right now. So cool. Love it. And there's a, there's a woman, I'm going to make an introduction with you, Kevin. There's a woman I met some time ago. And she has a more it's beyond fascinating. It's an inspiring story. She was a child and her house blew up while she was in it. I think there was like a Girl Scout meeting or something. She and her brother were badly burned. And she's an inspiring speaker. I have to believe that she's connected to the burn community, although I don't know that. But nonetheless is, I have to find her name. And I wonder if she might get good intro for you. I'd be curious if she knows and whatever the tripeptide. I didn't, I can't try peptide one. Yeah. So early on, I was, I was working for a software company. I was the VP of marketing, sales and customer service. That's when I, that's when I started Friction Labs. And started in my business, started in my basement. And we were fortunate enough to get a distributor from Japan to, they absolutely loved our product. So they placed an order at the time was the biggest order we'd ever had. And I had to take a week off of work to pack the, to get the order ready, make all the chalk, get everything packed up. It was working like 12, 14 hour days. And my son was about, I think, five or six months old at the time. And I'd just gotten everything done. All wiped down. Everything was in the boxes, shipping labels, everything. I just had to take it to UPS the next day. Came upstairs, pour myself a drink. And I was absolutely beat. And I came up, and my wife gave me that look, that it's not the look that you want to get. And, you know, she, she's up kind of late and our, our, our sons there. And she's like, do you notice anything? And I'm like, I mean, I'm a little beat. What do you mean? And she's like, runs her finger on the kitchen counter. And she's like, a lot, a lot of chalk here. Your, your, your side hobbies really become in a problem. And so I took that as I should quit my job and take this thing full time. I don't think that's what she was trying to communicate to me. But yeah, within, within like 48 hours, I had a, I had a warehouse, our first warehouse, had everything moved out of the basement, moved in there, had cleaned up the chalk out of the house. And those were those are the last units that we ever packed in the house. And yeah, we're now we're on our six. Yeah, now we're on our six warehouse. So that's funny how high time time flies after 10 years. Yeah. Oh, what was describe that feeling you had or the experience when you went to your last corporate gig or working for someone else to tell them you resigned? What was that like for you? Yeah, so I was working for a software startup. I mean, there were, it was like a reasonably big company. I think there was like maybe 60 or 70 people that worked at the business at the time. And I mean, I had a great job. They paid me well. I had like very flexible benefits. You know, I reported to the COO and president, really, really good guy, super supportive, CEO is a really good guy. And when I went into resign, they were like, well, what's like, what's wrong? Like, why? And I'm like, Oh, well, like, honestly, like, like, after working with you guys for a couple of years, I realized like, I can do this too. And you know, I've enjoyed working for you, but I like, I want to do my own thing. And like, I want to start my own business. And you're like, well, you know, like, do you want to stay on like part time? Do you want to do this? And I'm like, no, I'm just ready to make the jump. And yeah, I had some, I had some money saved out to try and make the jump. You know, probably in hindsight, I probably should have worked there longer and ramped the business more. I mean, you know, we were, we had maybe a dozen to 20 orders a week. That would take maybe hours to pack up and ship. And there's other things like trying to like grow the business and things like that. But it, it, I wanted it more than it needed me at the time. And so yeah, I just kind of decided to, I don't know that I would say I burned the ships, but I yeah, I definitely, I definitely took a big enough step that I had to make the thing work. Yeah, similar story for me. And when I left corporate, my first full year of business, I made $35,000. And I don't think I had ever made that low of money post college. Yeah, I think my first year of business, I think I spent almost 50 grand of my savings. Yeah, yeah, I don't think it was until the, like, I think it was like our third year that I would start, I could consistently pay myself $3,000 a month. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Atticurious, what were those early days like at home and was Jacinda supportive? Was it stressful? What was that like for you in those early days? Both. I think she's always been very supportive. She's, she's, she's an amazing, yeah, I'm super lucky to get to be married to her. But there was, there was stress, you know, like when I had my job before, I made good money. And, you know, we, we didn't have a budget. We, you know, if we were going on vacation, we just went on vacation. And then all of a sudden it was, well, going on vacation, I'm going to be working pretty much as much as I can during the vacation. So I wasn't very present. And then like the money stuff, yeah, like it created stress in the relationship. I think, you know, in the long run, with the COVID and pandemic, she had a consulting gig that kind of went away. So eventually the, the teeter totter bounced out across everything. And, you know, at this point, it seems like quitting my job and starting friction labs was a, was a good idea. But there were, there were more than a few years where it was, it was not a good idea. And, you know, I was taking a lot of money from my savings to try and make this thing work. And, you know, it's, you get like, when you get rejected trying to open up new accounts during the day, and then you come home and there's a little bit of stress, like it's a, it's a special help that early entrepreneurs get to experience. And I think, honestly, I think that's why, like, for the few of us that are able to make it work, anytime we see someone wanting to do it, or starting down the right path, and you see like, oh, you, you've got the chops. Like, there's, there's tons of entrepreneurs. I get, I get asked to go get a coffee with folks quite frequently. And it's like, I don't really take very many of those. But, for the most part, there's, you can tell when someone is genuinely going to do it and make it work, as opposed to someone who's, they just want to compliment that they have a good idea and they could do it, but they're not willing to leave the security of what they've built around them. So yeah, it was tough. But I think like that's, that's like the fuel that, like, you know, makes you work the consistent, you know, 10, 12, 14 hour days. And when, you know, you think that things are finally starting to work a little bit, then like you get hit with some tax bill, or, you know, you get some random, you know, someone sends you a cease and desist for things, something you don't even think that you did wrong, or copyright, and for like, just all that stuff. Like, you just, you get all these firsts where you're like, what? Oh, come on. Like, the universe is just not giving me signs. I should do this. And you just knuckle down and work through it. And eventually, a lot of those things, I don't know if they happen less, or if they do happen, it's just like a blip on the radar, because there's so many other good things going on now. But yeah, I mean, it's, I don't think you'll ever find a successful entrepreneur that said it was easy. Yes, I second that. All right. So first I have a story, then I have a point and then a question. So Brene Brown, who I would otherwise characterize as like the godmother vulnerability, she started a podcast, I think right around COVID. And I think it might have been her first episode, she talked about these FFTs, which are fucking first times. And she was talking about, at least my memory of what she was talking about is as adults, we probably have less FFTs, but when we do, they're pretty impactful, right? For me, I had a first podcast recording, which I'm rather critical of and don't think it was my best showing. And I've got some embarrassment and all the stuff. You know, Brene Brown had something similar with hers. And you bring up a great point about entrepreneurship with some of the FFTs you've experienced. The segue I'll make in the question is, I know you're very passionate about entrepreneurship. And I forgot you're saying of it being the cure for something. So in a moment, I'll ask you what that saying is. But if you're speaking to some other folks out there that might be considering the path of entrepreneurship, hey, what's your saying about it? It's the cure to what? And what are some FFTs that they might be or they should be more aware of as they kind of delve into our world of business ownership? Cool. So my saving, my saying is entrepreneurship is the solution to most of the world's problems. I don't, I don't think that we should wait for governments or giant corporations to solve the problems. I think there's a lot of smart, scrappy people out there that identify a problem. And they can, they can create a business that improves that problem and makes it better for other folks. And in doing so, they're going to make their life better. They're going to make the lives of people who joined their platform better. And I think that just drives all of us to a better existence. On the, on the FFTs, I mean, whatever you map out as your business plan, it's just not. It's just like that. It's, it's a great activity to sell yourself on it. But hold on to that document, because if you stick with it in years to come, it will be something that you laugh about a bunch of your assumptions. Before I started friction labs, two of my friends and I started a climbing gym. And we, on our first business plan, I think it was by like year two or three, we were convinced we were going to have like 20 locations. The business, that business is fortunately still in business, been in business for 15 years. And there are three locations now. But quite a bit to get there. So, yeah, I mean, let's see, there's, if you're going to be an entrepreneur, everyone falls in love with their idea and these like creative marketing ideas, and like how your thing is going to go viral. That's great. If you don't know how to read financials and how a P&L flows into your statement of cash flows and flows, it flows into everything else related to your, your financials, you are, you need to learn that language, because accounting is ultimately a scoreboard for every business, whether you make premium chalk, widgets, you're a therapist, whatever it is. And if you don't know those, or you're like, oh, I'm not a numbers person, I'm going to hire someone for that. No, you don't get that luxury as an entrepreneur, you have to know how your financials work inside and out. You are responsible for making sure that money works in your business. Cash flow is the, it's the blood of your business. And if you run out of cash, your business dies. And you can't, you know, a business founded and operating on perpetual debt. That's not, that's not a great business. One of my mentors has a saying that heaven is a privately owned cash flow positive business. I tend to subscribe to that myself. And when, you know, when you get there, it's quite heavenly. It changes how you look at almost everything. People, if you, like, if you build it, they will come, doesn't really exist. You got, you have to give people an opportunity that is better than something that they can find elsewhere. You have to pay people fairly. And you have to continue to remind them what we're all trying to accomplish. And when people buy into what we're all trying to accomplish, a lot of things work themselves out. And if people know not just what we're trying to do, but why we're trying to do it, that why usually trumps the what. And people can make a lot of decisions for themselves, so long as they understand the why of how you answer their questions. And if you hold on to that too tight, then every time you come into the office, you're just going to have a line out your door of people with problems that you need to solve. And the only way you're going to be able to empower those people is if you explain the why of, like, this is how I'm answering your question. This is why I'm answering the question this way. This is how we operate the business. This is why we operate the business this way. And then magically, with a little time, everyone just starts to move in that direction. And it's the greatest thing happens when a problem came up that you didn't know about. And someone on your team comes up with a better answer than you would have. And it's completely in line with your why. That's, that's a good moment. That's, that's, that's, that's a good moment. Drop a knowledge, Kevin. Richard Branson has this cool quote. At least that's who I've seen credited for the quote, which is, if you're presented with a great idea and you're not sure how to do it, just say yes and figure it out later. I feel like that applies a lot to entrepreneurship. I especially lean into when you talk about being scrappy, you know, a lot of the entrepreneurs I know have had to be scrappy and piecemeal together revenue. And, you know, for me, I had to get used to not making six figures and making $35,000 in my savings, as was yours was the safety net, right? That was an FFT for me. So anyway, I appreciate the knowledge. How can people find you? What's the best way for them to get in touch with you? Well, our company Instagram is frictionlabs, our website, frictionlabs.com. I, I don't do a lot of personal brand promotion. So if you need something from frictionlabs, you can just email us info@frictionlabs.com. Those are probably the three best ways to find us right now. But yeah. Cool. We're just about to wrap up. Do you have any parting thoughts or anything we haven't talked about that you'd like to? I think from my understanding and talking to you, Darren, if someone's listening to this podcast, they are either on the journey or they're considering getting on the journey of entrepreneurship. So if you're on the journey for entrepreneurship, I think the only piece of advice that is universal is make sure you have a good mentor, at least one. And when you find a good mentor, don't ask someone, "Will you be my mentor?" You earn that shit. You earn that opportunity. And you earn that opportunity by asking them smart questions that they actually want to answer. And when they give you direction, you take action and you show them that you're going to run with the ball. If they tell you to read this book, you buy that book that that day, when that book comes in, that is what you obsess about on your time. And you finish that book in a few days, not a few weeks, and you get back to them with what you learned from that book. And if you do that, your mentor will most likely be impressed that you're one of the few that are actually taking action. And then next time you ask a question, look it back, do a little faster. And eventually, you can have a really great relationship with someone who is farther down the path than you. And it doesn't matter what they do if they own a gravel pit, if they founded a shoe brand or anything in between. If they've found out how to run a successful business, they know a lot more than you have yet to learn. So hold on to that. And for the folks that are considering starting a business, you got a shift at some point from the consideration, or I've got all these creative ideas to just put a piece of pen and paper and map out your plan and do it. You don't have to quit your job. You can just do it. You got to get uncomfortable. Nothing, nothing about this world is comfortable, especially for the first couple of years. So you got to be comfortable being uncomfortable. Make yourself uncomfortable. Put in some time on the nights and weekends. Take a vacation from work, but don't go anywhere. Just work on your idea and see if you can make it come to life. And if you do that, if you sacrifice a week of your vacation time, and you work on your idea, and at the end of it, you're not sold that you're supposed to do it. Cool. Tear up that piece of paper, get really happy with your job or find a new job that you're really happy with. A few thoughts in closing. First is, for me at least, I really respect the fact that you left your corporate gig or startup gig to really go full time into friction labs. As a little bit of a sidebar, I've coached some folks that had ideas like you and I have and other entrepreneurs were unwilling to cut the safety net of their corporate job, and that safety net turned out to be the hindrance. There wasn't enough time in the day to focus on both. And then they erred towards the safety of the paycheck as opposed to the uncertainty of entrepreneurship. So the fact that you did it, I respect. Two is, I'm really inspired by how you let curiosity drive your next steps. The fact that you found a way to the dermatologist focused on burn survivors is ingenious. Like regrowing skin, and I did cross it for a short time. And from doing pull-ups, my hands were destroyed. And it took weeks, if not longer, months sometimes to rebuild that skin, and yet you have a product that does exactly that. And I also appreciate how, at least the way I hear the story is, maybe the initial impetus for the product was for climbers, but there's a lot of other avenues of life where the product is useful. And so I'm excited to see how friction labs continues to grow, how athletic hands finds more and more utility for people outside climbing or tennis or whatever else. And glad to know you Kevin. This was a great conversation.
