On this episode of the 2X eCommerce podcast show I talk with the founder of Mission Belt, a micro-adjustable belt that was successfully pitched and funded by Daymond John on the US TV show Shark Tank. We talk about how his team managed to scale this business, as well as the fine art of selling and marketing. Do stay tuned!

[Intro clip] Welcome to the 2X eCommerce podcast show where we interview founders of fast growing seven and eight figure eCommerce businesses and eCommerce experts. They’ll tell their stories, share how they 2X’d their businesses and inspire you to take action in your own online retail business today. And now, here he is, the man in the mix, Kunle Campbell.

Kunle: Nate Holzapfel had a vision to create a company that made only belts. The first of its kind in the fashion industry. In June 2012, he launched Mission Belt. By spring 2013 Nate then appeared on ABC’s Shark Tank pitching the Mission Belt to seek capital investment. He struck a jail deal with Daymond John, founder of FUBU who in all respects is a fashion mogul and branding expert. Nate pitched to Sharks that the ‘old way of selling is dead,’ which we’re going to talk about in the show. Along with running Mission Belt, Nate is also a keynote speaker, branding expert, social media and small business growth coach. I’d like to welcome you to the show, it’s a pleasure having you on, Nate.

Nate: Well thanks so much, it’s nice to be on the show with here with you.

Kunle: Fantastic. Could you take a minute or two to tell our listeners more about yourself, please?

Nate: Sure. My name is Nate and I’m a salesman, more than anything above all, that’s what I do. And that’s how I describe myself, you know when I fly outside the country and I come back in. They ask you to fill a little form and talk about your occupation, you know and I’m a lot of different things for sure but I always consider myself a salesman. And I think we all need to be if we want to grow our businesses.

Kunle: Fantastic. So you talk about the ‘old way of selling is dead’. Could you expand a bit more on that, given the fact that you are a salesman, first?

Nate: You know, you look around and you look at the sea of people that made that their money before the Internet really existed. Now, they’re smart and they get business, and that’s totally awesome. But there’s a major paradigm change that’s gone from then to now. So before, information used to be part of the negotiation. So if someone wanted to get information on a new Range Rover, they’d have to come down to the dealership, get a brochure, and talk to a salesman. Right? They had all the information basically hostage. Nowadays you can just access it from online, so information is no longer a bargaining chip. And that’s one of the main things that’s wrong. Beyond that there’s so many other details but the main thing is that information is you know freely available, a lot of the times customers know what we’re selling before we do, and they know all the specs and they know everything so we have to take it to a new level. And it all now becomes about loving customers. We’re not holding anything. They can get. So we have to make sure that they get our product, our brand, our version, our service.

Kunle: So it’s a customer first approach.

Nate: Well yeah, it’s a you know, love your customers. I have 10 Commandments of Selling and number two commandment is, ‘Thou shalt love thy customer as thyself.’ It might sound a little funny but it’s true, you got to love the customers more than anything. If you do that, then the money will follow.

Kunle: Okay, okay. From your LinkedIn profile you actively run two companies. One’s Mission Bel and the other is the Nate State of Mind. Could you expand on how you juggle between the two businesses at the moment?

Name: Mission Belt, obviously we sell belts. It’s very simple, it’s a cool business and it’s basic. You know one of my Commandments of Selling, ‘Thou shalt keep it simple.’ I think it’s focusing on something that’s very specific. You look at all the other different companies out there whether it’s you know, Nike makes shoes and certainly makes other products now but they’re shoe company, you know. And then you get Levi’s, and they’re a denim company. And you get you know, Skullcandy or Beats, that’s headphone companies. And there’s money in specialization so, that’s that business, I love that. Nate State of Mind does personal training, business training, customer service training. Of course I do speaking all over the country and you know, I haven’t done anything outside of the US yet but I know I’ve had some inquiries over the last couple of months. But anyway, the point is it’s all person-to-person. How to sell person-to-person. How to communicate what you have to other people. And actually have another business called NerdOut Multimedia which does the online fulfillment of a lot of the strategies and things that I create for companies for their websites, optimize Amazon stores, video work, landing pages, sales funnels, things like that.

Kunle: That’s a lot on your plate, that’s quite a lot. So I reckon you travel quite often in the US?

Nate: Yeah, I travel a whole lot and I don’t have any hobbies. I like to work, it’s what I do. I don’t follow sports, I don’t even know who won the Super Bowl or World Cup, I don’t have a clue. But I love what I do, it’s a passion and it’s a hobby all rolled into one. And I have the best time doing it so to me it’s… the line between work and fun is very blurry.

Kunle: Right, right. So you’re passionate about business, that’s brilliant. Would we expect to see you at some point in the UK or in London or in Europe?

Nate: I think it’s very likely.

Kunle: Okay. Just let us know.

Nate: We sell products on Amazon in the UK and they’re actually being so there. But I love traveling all over. Europe’s a lot of fun and you know UK is right there. I speak Spanish fluently but for the most part, English-speaking countries you know, those are few and far between so gotta a love our neighbors, right?

Kunle: Absolutely. Just for our listeners who don’t know about Mission Belt, because I have significant number of UK listeners, it’s a buckle-less belt basically, an innovation. I’m going to share the video the show notes but could you expand a bit more about Mission Belt, how it works?

Nate: Yeah, so what it is, yeah it’s a belt without holes. It works like a zip tie for your pants or like a snowboard binding, if you’re familiar with that. And basically what it allows you to do, it allows you to micro-adjust the belt to fit your pants all the time. I don’t know what people expect when I explained it on, you know the belt I think it sounds like this big complicated thing you’re going to wear. It’s actually very slim very slendery, it looks like a normal belt in many ways except there’s no holes. And they end up lasting practically forever because there’s no holes.

Kunle: Okay, so you’re a celebrated American entrepreneur, you know, with ‘Nate’, your brand, you’re growing, I can see a lot of activity on YouTube, on Facebook and Twitter. And everything hinges on your personal brand, right. And basically it all started in your pitch in Shark Tank. What advice would you give to entrepreneurs who have only one chance to victory, right, and they’re facing a pitch basically to grow their business or to make contacts for the business. How do they hold their selves, to brace there, and be as successful as you?

Nate: People ask me all the time you know, people watched me on that show and I have one of the best pitches of all time on that show or that kind of show. And I didn’t get beat up. And the name of the game is posture. I had so many people asked me about, ‘Hey Nate,’ you know, ‘What do we do, what do we do, what do we do?’ that I actually wrote all the things down. Turned out there’s 10 things and I thought it was funny to call them the 10 Commandments of Selling. You can download 10 Commandments of Selling, it’s an e-book, it’s free it, it’s on my website, TheNateStateOfMind.com. Go get those. But following those things, that will make all the difference in the world. The 10 Commandments of Selling are really where it’s at. So it’s all about representing yourself, being you, asking great questions, having great listening skills, loving customers, keeping it simple, strategizing. You know, loving your customers, you really got a love those customers. You know you absolutely have to. Keeping it simple, eliminating distractions you know, those are the things that it’s about. And they’re so simple, but you know what, I found that the best things in this world are simple. You don’t need to be the best salesman in the world to pitch your business. You need to be the best salesman in the world to pitch any business. And I can pitch any business. But you can you know, a person can learn to pitch their own. They can get focused in on this one thing, and you can do it. And whether I create the pitch with you, or you do it yourself, just make sure that you don’t have any, you know like my belts you don’t have any holes in it, right? [laughs] You want to make sure that you stand there and say, ‘Hey such-and-such investor, I would like this in exchange for this, and for all of that I’m going to give you this, and this is what I’m going to do, and this is how were going to do it.’ People want to sign up with somebody who’s winning. Nobody minds working with an underdog, but everybody hates a loser. So you’ve got to come off as a up-and-coming winner, as opposed to a loser. And as we get a little bit older, all of thus, it becomes a little bit harder and harder to prove.

Kunle: I like that. I like that, come across as a winner. Awesome. Good stuff. Right. What was revenue pre Shark Tank, and what was the impact of your Shark Tank appearance on revenue in 2013?

Nate: So when we filmed the show, I had sold about 39,000 bucks worth of these belts, just to people by knocking doors and in a couple of small stores, right. Pretty good results for a short thing. We air on the show and we do 1 million bucks in 3½ weeks.

Kunle: [laughs] In 3½ weeks?

Nate: Yeah and then from there it’s just been multi million dollars figures ever since. But you know, I was able to pitch to the entire United States suddenly, right, it changed it, right. You know, you always look at all the crazy people that are on TV, I’m one of those crazy people and sometimes, sometimes you know, the stars align for a guy and it works. Now, not everybody that goes on that show sells that kind of volume. I mean, a lot of people go on there and they sell anywhere from $3,000 to $15,000 or $20,000 worth of stuff. So a million dollars is shocking even for that program.

Kunle: So you sold to audiences, you sold to Daymond, obviously, and then you sold to the entire America, basically.

Nate: Yup.

Kunle: Wow. Okay, so you killed two birds with one stone. And then what about revenue expectations now? What are you expecting this year, to do this year with Mission Belt?

Nate: We actually are not discussing finances right now but, tell you this, a million dollars is a drop in the bucket of what we have accomplished and what was about to come forth. We grow fast and a lot. I think right now, I have to double check the mathematics on this but I think we’re, you know we’re… at first we were doubling like every 90 days just because, it was just like crazy. I think now we’ve slowed it down, we’re doubling that rate every six months or so.

Kunle: A bit of gravity there. Okay, all right.

Nate: Well you have to, I mean there’s a certain point you know you’ve got to. We’re busting out of three facilities right now, currently looking for new facility. I mean you walk into my office, you look at my Instagram today I’ll post a video, it just shows what it looks like walking into my office. I mean my office where I’m supposed to have desks and things, it’s up to the walls with belts. Everything is, it’s all, the whole place is up, it’s a controlled forest fire, man.

Kunle: [laughs] Are you still based out in Utah or?

Nate: Yeah, we are. Yeah, Utah’s actually a great place to run a business. It’s not far from LA. I mean you can run out there pretty quickly. But you know, it’s not expensive. You know, one of the things that’s hard about a business is you end up having a lot of overhead. Not only just employees but, you know taxes, real estate to rent. Utah’s about half of all that so it’s a fantastic place to run at high speeds, low cost. It’s pretty awesome. And smart people man, there are some smart people here, so it’s great.

Kunle: What about Daymond’s impact? What kind of doors has he opened for the business?

Nate: Well I think more than anything, there’s a lot of different ones but the main thing is… you know naïvely, when we all get into business or we ever start doing something, we think, well you know, missionaries who went to Africa in 1880, ‘Well I’m just going to baptize the whole continent.’ And it’s a great attitude to have to want to go out there just take over the world, you know, and you start a little business and you think, ‘Well, I’m just going to go ahead and I’m going to go get into Harrods or whatever tonight.’ And you want to do all these things but, you got to realize that you need to scale up. So when you are ready to deal with a big store like that, it’s not your only client. And that you’re prepared. So you know it’s about that. And so Daymond’s helped me understand expectations and timelines. You know, we didn’t even start going to trade shows until we had been in the business for about almost 2 years. And I think most people, the thing is they think, ‘Well, I’m going to go out, start my business, go into the hugest retailer in the whole world, that’s going to make me a million dollars, and then I’m going to get a private jet and then we’ll see what happens.’
And it’s like well, those things can happen but there’s actually like you know, I always believe that you got to get into the mom-and-pop shops first, the little shops. I do know what you call them in England but it’s the shops that have two, three, four locations, one location, 10 locations. They’re smaller. They will be more forgiving with what you’re going to screw up on. Because you will screw up, if you don’t think you’ll screw up you’re kidding yourself. And then it will also help you train and scale you to that big level. Think about a professional athlete or somebody who lifts weights for a living. Can you imagine walking into the gym the first day and expecting to lift the heavy weight that Arnold Schwarzenegger or Lou Ferrigno would lift? It’d be crazy, right? So you need to work your way up and build up. Now you can do that fast, but you still have to do that. Now Daymond is has done that for me, he’s helped us understand where we need to go and creating the roadmap. Now that might sound crazy, but let’s put it this way. If I were to come to England right now and then just walk around, you think I’d see more just walking around or if I got a professional tour guide or even you who lives there, says,’Hey Nate, let me just show you the areas and oh by the way this is a great restaurant.’

Kunle: You’ll get more with help, definitely.

Nate: Well Daymond’s my tour guide of entrepreneurship and now that he’s shown me, guess what? I can show others. But he’s been phenomenal that way. The guy’s sold $4 billion worth of clothes. That ain’t bad.

Kunle: Not bad at all, not bad, I agree. Okay. What about this direct to consumer experience? How does it feel actually making stuff from scratch and selling it on to customers direct? Sorry, can I ask, do you distribute through retail outlets or do you sell exclusively direct to consumers from the website?

Nate: We do both. Because both is better.

Kunle: Okay, okay. Makes sense, right. Okay, let’s move into social media. How are you currently acquiring customers?

Nate: So right now you know, for the longest time we didn’t really have to think about a whole lot of… things were coming on, you know we just got on that TV show and so everybody was buying and we had a hard time fulfilling all the products, people wanting to buy from us all the time. But we finally started getting caught up and then we decided, okay we’re going to start doing some stuff. But from day one we knew that it was important to have social media, you know because everybody knows that. But the big secret of social media is, nobody knows this, is that if your social media is not linking people up to opportunities to buy things, then you are not going to realize the efforts, the fruits of your labors. So a lot of people of social media and they’re just putting it out there and it’s kind of like sending a radio broadcast just right out to Mars, there’s nobody there. You know, you could spend all the money you want broadcasting but who cares if nobody’s listening? So, social media is a tool that I think everybody knows is important but I think only about 1% of all people know how to use. So we use social media as a way to advertise. And we actually make money using social media. I know that sounds pretty insane but it’s actually doable, we do do it. We’ll launch something that’s only on our social media, and we’ll get direct sales based off of that code or that coupon being used. The trick is not to overuse it. You don’t want to have stuff that’s on sale every other week, otherwise you’re going to be sorry. But couple times throughout the year you could have pretty great sale and could sell a lot of product.

Kunle: Okay. So how do you go about it? Do you kind of space stuff out, where maybe for every 10 posts you give on Facebook one is more salesy and the other are more fun?

Nate: No, it’s not a formula like that per se, but there is this. So sales, like if you actually discount your product, you’ve got to be very, very careful. That’s reserved to one or two times, maybe even three times a year, for any brand. And that’s as much as you can do, in my opinion. And that’s how you have huge sales, you have these huge sales where you post something up on a Friday and over the weekend you sell 50 grand with of stuff. You know what I mean. And everyone thinks, ‘Well, no I want to sell more,’ and in doing so it doesn’t make it special, it’s not great. But the thing about it is that you know, you want to make sure that your social media is entertaining. Think about the television. If you were to turn on the television and it was all commercials would you turn it on again or would you just leave it off?

Kunle: No, just turn it off.

Nate: So you got to make sure that it’s engaging and it’s fun. Now some products are not particularly exciting. I don’t know if you’ve noticed but belts are just belt. It’s just leather that goes around your waist. It’s not girls in bikinis, or people having a great time drinking a beer, or Porsches, or things like that. It’s pretty basic, right. But we’ve made belts, in my opinion, about as fun and sexy as you could make a belt. We’ve done a good job of that. So you got to take your product and you got to give it a lifestyle, you’ve got to give it branding. When you go look at Mission Belt and you look at all the things we’ve done there, all the branding ties in, all the posts… you see a post and you know exactly what it is.

Kunle: Yeah, I mean your imagery is stunning. I had a look at your Instagram and I saw a watermelon wearing a red belt. [laughs] And it looked really good. Quite lifestyley.

Nate: That’s all in-house. We do everything in-house. We don’t do anything outside. Now if you have a small business and you can afford to do it in-house, then you hire like my NerdOut Multimedia to do it for you, or you hire somebody to go out and do things that you have to make sure that you take an active role in your marketing. Because I’ll tell you what, nobody’s going to care more than you. That’s the truth.

Kunle: Absolutely. Okay, would you say social media is most effective after you’ve had big PR coverage? Because you know you’re talking to millions potentially, every time you publish stuff to Facebook or Twitter or Instagram you know, thousands, hundreds of thousands of people if not millions of people see that, or see your update. What comes in first?

Nate: The PR is an extremity. So the PR is something you do once you’ve developed same sales channels, once you’ve done things. Because really right now, if you… There was a company that came to me for some advice, and they made the shirt, you know Michael Jackson he used to wear this red kind of military dictator style shirt that had the little black buttons on it, you know the one?

Kunle: I remember, yeah.

Nate: Do you know the name of the company that makes that?

Kunle: No.

Nate: Nobody does. The point is this, is that they were a little company and they had one of the most famous people in the whole world wearing their shirt on a daily basis. And yet for some reason they were never able to quantify sales. And that’s because there was no place to buy it, there was no marketing, there was no advertising, there was nothing. So all the press releases in the world wouldn’t have mattered. Press releases in my opinion are awesome, they’re incredible. But the reality of it is, is that it’s an auxiliary to marketing. It’s an auxiliary to social media. It’s an auxiliary to getting the product in the stores. If they had taken this product and they had figured out, hey look, let’s do a big deal with whatever superstore or mall and say, ‘Hey look, we’re going to have these products, we’re going to have Michael Jackson’s picture in there. We’re going to have them up, you know they’re there.’ And then we say, ‘Hey look, ever wanted Michael Jackson’s shirt? You can go get it. Check out where.’ And then there’s you know 1000 different places where you can buy or 400 places where you can buy. But without places for people to go buy it, I mean the website’s nice but it’s not enough. Right. And so, you have to be able to stretch out. In time I think online will be enough, but right now it’s still not.

Kunle: What about TV coverage? Should brands or small businesses try and get TV coverage to boost their social media or is that lucky, do they get lucky getting on television or really big media channels?

Nate: Well if you can get on something specific like Shark Tank, like I didn’t pay any money to be on Shark Tank, right. They had me on, I was a guest right. So that’s a free million-dollar commercial, right. Now you could sit here and say, ‘Well you know, the only reason Nate has any money is because he went on the show.’ Yeah, I’ll show you a bunch of people who’ve been on Shark Tank and don’t have any money. And I’ll tell you, that was a good springboard and we made the most out of it, but it was part of a much bigger thing that’s happened since, it’s just riding that wave bigger. So the thing about it is, is that TV ads, so you got to think of TV, TV is a shotgun. And it blows pellets out all over and just kind of, it’s a big, wide spread. What you really, really want to do, when money’s tight, the thing is you have a little business – money’s tight, you want to make sure that you are hitting your exact demographic. Now if you’re selling Coca-Cola, or you’re selling Fords or you’re selling, oh I don’t know, hamburgers at McDonald’s, yeah TV commercials make a lot of sense. Why? Because everybody eats and everybody drives, it’s a no-brainer: everybody’s your customer, right? Now let’s say you are selling computer routers. Do you want to put a commercial on TV? No, because only a quarter of the percent of all the populace is going to be even interested in knowing what your product is. And then 3% out of that may convert if they go to your website. It’s a horrible idea, right. So you’ve got to make sure that you’re being able to do it.
The thing that’s so brilliant about marketing online with social media, and online marketing and things like that, specifically promoting Facebook ads and things like that, the thing that’s so phenomenal is you can actually target and focus in more. So every time your message is heard by somebody, it costs you something, right? So if I go to the BBC and say, ‘Hey I like to have 30 minutes on Friday evening about 7:30pm,’ they’re going to want a lot of money for that, right? Then if I go and say, hey whatever-radio-station out in the middle of Australia you know out in whatever territory, I say hey I want to be on for 30 minutes, we’ll that’s going to be a lot cheaper, won’t it? The point is there’s a reason, because every time another person hears your message, the cost goes up. So the great thing about it is, is TV is very expensive because everybody watches it, but your exact market segment may not be paying attention, and you’re not going to be able to get the same dollar per set of eyeballs or ears. Whereas on social media or online, you’re going to get a more exact figure. You’re going to have more concentration of getting your information to those people, and then you won’t be paying for the ones that don’t want to listen.

Kunle: You applied for Shark Tank, and did you have a plan B if you didn’t get a place on Shark Tank?

Nate: Oh yeah, we were just selling it. I mean I’d sold $39,000 of these things myself you know out of three months, so that was going to be happening anyway. Shark Tank was just a bonus if it happened, you know 40 – 50,000 people apply for that show every year, it was a long shot. Got on it, I was lucky.

Kunle: Good stuff, good stuff. Okay. Let’s continue talking about social media. What are your thoughts on YouTube as a channel versus Facebook and Instagram?

Nate: They’re all different things. YouTube’s amazing. That’s a dedicated video channel, it’s wonderful. It’s a great place to have programming and things. Facebook obviously is the most relevant and the oldest social media form that anybody’s using right now, nobody’s using MySpace anymore. And then Instagram is another thing. So Instagram has awesomeness and it’s very popular right now but it has some weaknesses. There’s no way to have direct links unless you think something in a bio. But if you put a post on there and say, ‘Hey look, want to see this shirt, or buy this shirt, or read my post that I wrote for whatever magazine?’ you have to put it in the bio and point people up to that. So there’s little bit of a disconnect, so it’s not as engaging. Whereas Facebook, that’ll allow you to put in links, videos from YouTube, and link them right up to it. Now you know, there’s two different things. When you link a video, you’ll have a small little video viewer, but when you put a video directly into YouTube or right into Facebook, it’ll actually show up bigger and it’ll get more noticed. So the best way to do that is typically take a video, make a shorter portion of it, upload it to Facebook and then have the link below it and say, ‘hey if you like that, here’s the rest which is on YouTube.’ To get the post noticed you almost have to do that, and I think you know YouTube does it on purpose, they’re smart, they’re not dumb.

Kunle: Yup. Everything is kind of deliberate when you think about it. I think Instagram is just set up that way deliberately, but let’s see how long it will last for. Okay. How would you engineer word-of-mouth marketing? Is it engineered into the product or is it engineered into marketing, or both?

Nate: Okay so my Commandments of Selling, ‘Thou shalt eliminate distractions.’ Thou shalt ruthlessly eliminate distractions. So you’ve got to get rid of distractions, so here’s my point. Is, you’ve got to make your product and your service a no-brainer. When someone is confronted with your product they’ve got to say, ‘Yeah. I’ll buy it. Yeah. That’s cool.’ And so a large percentage of people will say yes, and they’ll go home, show a friend or family member or somebody, and those friends and families members will also go out and buy them. Now that’s the magic of Mission Belt. It’s a great belt. It’s a fantastic price point. You can buy it out for me from me for $35-$40 for the most part you know, it’s very economical and it’s a great belt. It’s a $60 – $70 belt in my opinion and it’s a no-brainer. So when you’re trying to go out there and create that word-of-mouth, the only way that’s going to happen is if the product is truly great. And it doesn’t have to be the best product, it just has to be a no-brainer. Like, you know here in America, McDonald’s right. McDonald’s has a program, it’s called the dollar menu. And you can go buy a cheeseburger for dollar. Now, it’s not the highest quality hamburger you’ve ever had, in fact is probably one of the worst, right. But it’s consistent and it’s very clear about what it is. McDonald’s is a fascinating business. Whether you feel like it’s a healthy place to eat or not, that’s totally irrelevant. They’re selling billions of hamburgers every single day and week, right? They’re amazing. And so my point is this, is that that’s a no-brainer. You’re confronted with a hamburger, even though it may be low quality or not natural or un-organic or whatever, but it’s a dollar. One US dollar. You say, ‘Well, okay I’ll buy. I’ll take two.’ It’s a no-brainer. And so that’s how you get something going. I know that sounds like kind of a maybe evasive answer but the truth of it is, is you have to have a product that’s a no-brainer. You get confronted with it you can say, ‘Yeah. Why wouldn’t I do that?’

Kunle: No, I agree with you. All of the brands, the e-commerce brands that have been on this show that’ve had success or seen success in word-of-mouth marketing have had just terrific products you know, just worthy of praise and that’s how they spread the word naturally. Let’s talk about Instagram. Your personal Instagram profile has 16,500 followers and growing. Huge engagement. 500 likes per post. How did you do it?

Nate: So at first what I did was I would post thing that I thought were cool that I liked. But the other thing I made sure to do is that I would follow people back at first. I don’t do that now unless I think it’s something that’s really, really interesting, it’s just got to be too many people. But if you look, I follow almost 1,000 people myself. And those are people from the early days or early on or somebody that I that I think is relevant and super cool. It’s important to engage. If you look at through my Instagram right now, you’ll see that I respond to everybody. That’s huge. Most people just want to kind of post something and then wait for the rest of the world to just leave their comments and then not get anything back.

Kunle: Be the superstar.

Nate: Yeah, superstar. And I don’t think that’s the best way to do it. I think even if you had big huge names like Tom Cruise who would actually go back and engage with people, man, I’ll tell you what, your popularity would go up even more. Because… I’m just Nate, I’m just this dude who sells belts and you know and I write for the Huffington Post and I get to do all kinds of things, I’m a philanthropist, right, because I’ve helped over 20,000 families become independent and all that, it’s great. But the thing about it is, is that it’s all about engagement. It’s about creating a conversation. And what people miss on social media is it’s not a conversation. Why have all the benefits of social media if you’re not going to use them? TV: no customer can talk back to you and say, hey I love this or I like that. I actually go back and say thank you so much. So when someone new follows me, I’ll usually post a thing and say, hey thanks for the follow. I’ll post it right in my post. And they’ll say, oh no problem. And it’s about getting communication, getting stuff going. And I could even be better than I am. But it’s starting to work pretty good and I’ve noticed that as I’ve gotten more and more… you know, the breaking point for me was I remember I hit one spot where hit about 6000. And took forever to get to 6000. And then after 6000, you know it just started going. I think I’ve probably gone from 6000 to where I’m at now probably in the last year.

Kunle: Okay. And how old is your account?

Nate: My account’s probably maybe two years old. And it’s just my personal stuff, I mean it’s just whatever I think is meaningful or whatever.

Kunle: It’s great content though, it’s great content.

Nate: Yeah, it’s, my personal one there’s not really like anything you know in my opinion terribly clever about it, it’s just you know, me being myself and giving a chance to focus on people and let them talk about what they want to talk about and then responding to people, you know. There’s so many people. I’ll like somebody’s post on Instagram, even for somebody I’m not following, I’ll see somebody that likes something of mine, I’ll go in there’s, and if I see something I like I’ll like it. And people will freak out. They’ll say, ‘Nate, you liked my post! That’s so cool!’ I have posts that people post of me liking their thing. They’ll say, ‘Nate Holzapfel liked your post’ and that’s their Facebook post. Or that’s their Instagram post. And so you know, being cool and being real, there’s nothing wrong with it. No magic gets taken away from me when I like somebody else’s post. People are worried that that’s going to lower their status. Not at all. People love a high five. They love it. And saying hello to them or shouting out somebody’s name. There’s nothing wrong with that at all. You know, so it can grow and be a thing. And I’m crazy on top of that. So I’m the product of my own person, right. And people like crazy. I’m crazy, I’m practically insane

Kunle: Would you also suggest brands, or e-commerce brands similar to Mission Belt, actually respond to comments on social media?

Nate: Yeah, and if you look at Mission, we do that. Now at Mission, we’ve never followed anybody back on Mission. Mission, we’ve always wanted that to be clean labor. My one personal one, it’s who are people interested in me and what I’m doing so they have a comment about you know, my sunglasses, or they’ll like what I’m doing with my son, or they think I’m an idiot because of whatever and they’ll say so, right? For the most part mine’s pretty positive, but with Mission Belt’s we wanted to keep it really like, hey if you’re interested in following the brand go-ahead. But we don’t really do a lot of follow-back stuff, that’s not the method on that one. I think for brand you have to stick more to that and I think for a personal brand well you can be a little bit more personality and ‘hey how are you?’, I think.

Kunle: Okay, okay. So, brands… What about commenting, would you suggest a brand comment on platforms like Instagram?

Nate: Oh yeah. Yeah, for sure. You know you want to respond to all your followers. We do that on all of our stuff. What we don’t do is we don’t go out and follow other people. Belts are cool and neat and if you buy one you might not even, I mean there’s obviously is way more than 5000 people who bought Mission Belts, right? [laughs] Like way more, right? But not everybody’s going to be engaged there. They see it in a store or they bought it online and that’s it. Now for Nate Holzapfel, it’s the other way around, so there’s 60,000 people that are following me but those 60,000 people doesn’t necessarily mean that they’ve ever paid me anything. It just means that they find my story inspiring and awesome and neat. In fact a lot of the people who pay me a lot of money, they don’t follow me on any social media. They see it, they’re like, wow that’s cool, let’s get Nate in the office. And then they’ll send me a check for $20,000 and I’ll come in and I’ll talk to them for a little bit, right. So I mean, not everybody who’s paying you is going to be on there. Whereas a product base, it’s a little bit more like that where yeah, they people who like the things they own the product. So I’m inspirational, I’m weird, and crazy, I’m funny-looking, whatever it is, people follow my account. Mission Belt’s, they do it because they like the belts they already own.

Kunle: And you wear a lot of sunglasses. I don’t think I’ve actually seen your eyes. Okay. [laughs]

Name: I wear Ray-Bans. Yeah.

Kunle: All the time, all the time, all the time. Okay, evergreen questions. What does your team look like in Mission Belt?

Nate: So we’ve got smart people, and then we have some smarter people, and then we have some really smart people. And they’re all smarter than me. The name of the game is surrounding yourself with really smart people. We’ve got you know, we’ve got all the standard things that a mid-sized to small business would have. You know we got about 40-something employees and we’ve got vice presidents and CFOs and operation guys, and we’ve got guys who run the warehouse and we’ve got Customer Service Department and all these different things. So there’s a variety of jobs and things, but I’ll tell you one of the things that I think is so often overlooked in a business is our Design Department. We’ve got a great in-house design team that does an amazing job. We do all of our own photography, all of our own products shots. Whenever you see the curled-up crazy belts, there is a guy that we have working for us, George. George is phenomenal, he does incredible work, the guys the man, he’s awesome. Frankly, I could sit here and take credit for all the stuff we do, but frankly it’s the designers that create the posts you know, because having good ideas is important but execution’s important. And George does a great job of tying that all in and making it great. And then at NerdOut Multimedia I’ve got Drew and to does all those. These people that surround you and make your team work. But the thing about the leader or somebody who’s going to go out and you know start a business or do whatever or run the team within a business, I mean even if you don’t own your own business and you’re responsible for people… the name of the game is being good at coordinating people and coming up with plans so everybody can work together. A lot of times where you walk into kitchen, you see all these ingredients, you know as important as each individual ingredient is, and how honey it makes thing sweet, sugar makes it sweeter, and everything’s got its job, without a chef there to put it all together, well it’s just ingredients, right. And that’s how the people and parts of the business are. I’m just an ingredient myself without all the others, right? Or I’m just a chef without any ingredients – who cares? Right?

Kunle: What about company culture? What does company culture looks like?

Nate: So, company culture’s important. I mean obviously you’ve got to make sure that employees love what they’re doing. And it’s not easy to do because there’s a fine line between being a friend or buddy or pal. And I have a friend you know and she’s great, she lives down in LA and she has a business. And she treats all of her employees like they’re girlfriends. And consequently she has the same problems you would have with your girlfriends. And you know, it’s troublesome. And then I’ve had other jobs where I’d work for a place and it’s like a total totalitarianism you know, working for Adolf Hitler der fuhrer and was just like marching boots, marching orders and you do this or that whatever and that’s it. And there’s this fine line, and it’s going to be different for everybody for sure or whatever, but creating something that’s going to be good enough for people that want to show up to work, realize it’s a job, still treat it like a job, but like being there, well, it’s hard. And Mission, we’ve been able to accomplish that. It’s a fun place. It’s a cool place to be. And the name of the game though with company culture is getting the right fit and feel with the right people. Because not everybody is going to work in every environment you know what I mean. I mean there’s some guys out there who are just some incredible managers. But if we hired them at Mission, people would be unhappy. And vice a versa you know what I mean, it’s about finding a fit that works for everybody. The Beatles, you know I love the Beatles, but the Beatles were best when they were all together. You know Brian Epstein made it happen and it worked. Now if he’d have tried to promote some other band, that probably wouldn’t have been as big a hit, I think we can all agree on that. You know, stars aligned. So you know, Mission is that. It’s the right people, at the right time, during the right job, and then once you create that culture and all those things that are going on, then it really makes things happen.

Kunle: Okay. How do you hire people? Is there any set list of procedures or do you go by gut instinct?

Nate: I think it’s got to be gut instinct. I gotta tell you, you know I don’t, see, now, I’m not a college graduate. I didn’t go to college so I’m not particularly picky about college degrees. I know some businesses still are, but I think you’ll see as time progress you’ll see people who care less and less about that. I’m more interested in results. So hiring people, you know, it’s more of a let’s meet them, talk to them, see what they’re like. You know I look at a resume and I wad it up and throw it in the trash most of the time because it says the same junk that everybody else does. You know, ‘I’m reliable, I’m creative, I know how to use Microsoft Word. Here’s three people that will say nice things about me.’ Who cares, it’s a bunch of crap, right? So I will usually boil it down to just talking to people. And I think that the best way to hire people is to get yourself a couple of good people. Once you have some really good people, then you hire based off of relationships. So if you come to Mission, almost everybody who’s there is related to somebody in some sort of a relationship. Now, doesn’t mean, you know we have brothers and cousins working for us …and not my brothers or cousins even though my brother’s a business partner… We have employees who will come in and they’ll hire somebody that they’ve known for 20 years. So because we like Wes, Wes’s brother Dustin and Dustin’s dad are also probably going to be okay. Why? Because Wes says they’re okay and we’ve had a great experience with Wes. So getting your employees to refer you their friends and family that they like personally and that they would want to work with can be great if you like working with that employee. Now you get an employee who’s a total pain in the neck and they refer you somebody? Well, that might not work out. [laughs] But if you have people that are doing a great job and you worked with them for six months or year and they’re great, hire their friend that they say is so good. Because I tell you what, they probably are. There’s no way that you have 3, 4, 5, 10 interviews, you’re never going to catch a person the way they really are. It’s never going to happen, do you agree?

Kunle: Absolutely.

Nate: I mean you’re getting the whatever, you know even right now you might be getting The Nate Show. If my life wasn’t so public, there’d be no way to know. But you can look through my Instagram and you look at all the people I work with and all the stuff I’ve created or whatever and you say, ‘Well, okay. This guy obviously does know something.’ Because it’s out there. Most of the people are not like me, who you can just search me on Google. Google ‘Nate Holzapfel’ and there’s pages and pages of stuff out there, right? Videos and everything. But most people don’t have that kind of a reputation, so you need to be able to figure out who they are the quickest way you possibly can. And honestly, five interviews no matter how many resumes, people are always going to be on their best behavior. It’s like a first date. You don’t get to know them and you there’s no way you can get married after one or two dates. The best way to do it is really: hire people that are referred to you by other people that you like that work for you.

Kunle: Absolutely, people you trust.

Nate: And by the way, those names I mentioned to you are true. We love Dustin and we love Wes and we love Wes’s Dad. So you know, that’s a group of guys and then we have their cousins working for us. And those guys are actually cousins of one of the partners of the belt business. So I mean you go down there and everybody knows somebody somehow. And then we all play soccer on the same soccer team, you know football.

Kunle: You play soccer? Okay, all right.

Nate: Yeah. In fact we actually bought TVs for the warehouse and everything so when the World Cup was going on everybody could watch while they worked and I tell you that made for a very peaceful environment. Well it’s great you know it’s great, they’re going to be checking the scores on their phones anyway. Why not have it so they can have a built in the hands while they’re doing it.

Kunle: Do you follow the English Premier league or am I taking it too far? [laughs]

Nate: Well me personally, I don’t fall leagues or whatever. I like playing it. But at the office you’ll find that, my goodness, those guys down there, they’re aficionados. Like I enjoy it, I have a really nice pair of soccer boots they were like 200 bucks. I like playing but the guys out at the office I mean, we have season tickets to the local team here in Utah, I mean the guys they’re diehards, they follow everything, so yeah I’m sure they follow that and a bunch of other things.

Kunle: Okay. What are your three indispensable tools for managing Mission Belt? And your businesses in general?

Nate: Indispensable tools, you mean as in like physical tools or as?

Kunle: Software. It could even be physical tools, but what can’t you not do to manage your…?

Name: I don’t want to sound like a total moron by just saying this, but I’m going to because I think people sit down, they think, ‘Well I need all this fancy software and all the stuff to make a business go.’ What’ll make a business go really, really well right at first? Pen and paper. That’s how you keep track of your customers. I did it for years. In lieu of that though, a very nice smartphone. I think the best smart phone to have is honestly, it’s an iPhone because you can get it to work on your computer as well so you can text on your phone and you can talk to people on the phone. Having that. Having a great laptop. And then let’s face it you know, being able to use the two things, that’s the name of the game. If you ever watch the movie Top Gun, you remember the movie Top Gun with Tom Cruise? Well the guy’s always talking to him you know saying, ‘Hey, whenever you’re in an emergency you always go to guns. You always go to guns.’ I always believe you go to phones. So as soon as it’s humanly possible, soon as you get a contact from a customer or whatever the temptation would be to email them back you know, for the first column contact. Email them back and tell them that you’re going to be calling them. Go to phones. Go to phones. So many people they use all of this technology and they forget about this old-school thing called the telephone. Alexander Graham Bell, he knew what he was doing. And the phone, that is so much more engaging. Well that’s why we’re doing this interview over voice as opposed to me just texting all the messages, right, it’s different isn’t it? And so always go to phones, go to phones. So those are two great tools: laptops and iPhones. And then of course, the third best thing and I think every entrepreneur will agree with this, it’s a tool within a tool, it’s Excel spreadsheets. [laughs]

Kunle: Absolutely. The numbers, the numbers, the numbers. [laughs]

Nate: I mean, thank goodness. That makes pencil and paper seem like a spear, it’s not you know, you want a machine gun and that’s what that is so you know. That’s key. And some of the people, we’ve got MBAs and all kinds of smart people down there at the office, you know one of the partners he’s an MBA, and the guy’s spreadsheet God. He’s amazing. And so being able to use that tool properly will help you scale a business to a next level. And of course you know, if you’re not familiar with it you can take classes or you could even hire somebody to do the work but you need to make sure that you’re on top of that and keeping everything quantified, I know that’s part of our success.

Kunle: Good point, good points. Okay. If there’s one person you could just choose to be a visionary, who would it be and why?

Nate: It’s easy to look around and see all these people that are in the new and all these people doing amazing things and everything, it’s totally incredible. One of the stories though that’s always impressed me it’s this guy, he started this, you know he wanted to do this company. And he had a company and he was making handlebar grips for bikes, you know the kind of that go on there they have the streamers on them or whatever and this is like 1981 or something. And he’s got this business and he says you know, I’m killing it I’m doing this thing, he comes to a guy that I know, my friend’s name is Steve. Steve just died a few years ago so Steve’s much older than I am but he goes to Steve and says, ‘Steve, I want to start a sunglasses company.’ And my friend Steve says, ‘Well, why? You’ve got a great business, you must be killing it.’ He says, ‘Yeah, I have 90% market share.’ Steve says, ‘Well that’s great.’ He says, ‘Well no, it’s only a $10 million a year industry, so I’m selling $9 million worth of stock making $1 million and that’s great, but my business is no longer growing.’ And I love that because you know what? Even if the paychecks keep coming in, if the business fails to grow well are you really getting richer? You’re kind of not, at that point you just have a job that pays you a lot of money. Why not have a job that pays you a lot of money and be getting richer every day, right? So this guy does this and he goes to Steven and says, ‘Hey, I want to borrow some money to do this sunglass company.’ And my friend Steve says okay, I’ll lend you the money to do it so on and so forth. So this goes a guy goes out, takes the money… actually wanted an investment first, my friend Steve says no but I’ll lend it to you, right. And so anyway he goes out and starts this company and you may have heard of it, it’s called Oakley?

Kunle: Okay. All right. [laughs]

Nate: So Oakley becomes this huge, huge thing that’s worth billions and billions of dollars. And I’ll tell you what, this is a guy who had a good business and said you know what, it’s not growing fast enough, it’s dead, I’m at the top of my thing, what’s next? And he got into something so simple. This is a guy who made tons of money selling the stupidest things you have ever heard in your life. Dumb as belts. Dumber. It’s just sunglasses. I mean belts are stupid. Sunglasses? That’s just as dumb. It’s a dumb idea. And the dumber the idea, the more simple it is. Remember my 10 Commandments of Selling, ‘Thou shalt keep it simple.’ Now tell you what, sunglasses is genius because it’s so dumb. And so this guy took a little idea and just made them cool, shaped them, branded them and did this thing. And nobody needs to know how you put on a pair of sunglasses. There’s no customer education required, right? You can talk about why they’re cooler or better but you know, you look at them and you’re like, ‘Those are cool.’ And everybody knows the name. So to me that is an inspirational story that I loved and it reminds me that no matter how well we all think we’re doing, there’s something beyond, the something more and it doesn’t involve curing cancer or coming up with the next smart phone. It involves taking something stupid like a hamburger, a pair of sunglasses, or fishing pole, and somehow making it so much cooler than everybody else. Because the reality of it is, if you put on a pair sunglasses from Oakley and you put on a pair of my Ray-Bans, is there any difference? Not really, they both to the same thing. I mean and honestly if you put on my belt and somebody else’s belt, my belt fits better, it’s cool, it might last longer, but you know what belts have been around since what? I mean, I’m pretty sure at the time of Jesus Christ, I bet you Pontius Pilate, I bet you he was wearing a belt around his little uniform or whatever to keep his sword on. Belts have been around a while right, it ain’t new. It’s just marketed new, made new, and it’s cool, and so you always have to think about that. So to me that’s the story that I like because it reminds me that, you know what, anything can be better, and you have to focus in on what that is and you don’t need to cure cancer, you don’t need to turn dirt into oil or gold, you just need to offer something simple that’s a no-brainer. A McDonald’s hamburger for a buck.

Kunle: Absolutely. Absolutely. Dumb ideas work, keep it simple, keep it simple. Okay, yeah, I didn’t know what direction the interview was going to go because I thought it was really going to be social media this is really deep stuff, you know really, really good golden nuggets we have here.

Name: I’m crazy man, I told you, I’m insane.

Kunle: [laughs] Okay, so. What has been your best mistake to date? By that I mean a setback that’s given you the biggest feedback as an entrepreneur.

Nate: Well, I’ll tell you man, you know, it’s once again, you know part of my success is because I’m too dumb to be nervous. Now people ask me when I went on that show, they say, ‘Well Nate, when you’re on that show and 8 million people are watching you and all these big investors are watching the whole thing, the whole country’s watching, whatever, is that nerve-racking?’ And I’m too dumb to be nervous you know, and there’s sort of a brilliance in being just oblivious to being embarrassed, you know I’ve don’t worry about it. So being naïve is a good thing and a bad thing. So in a sense, it’s good because it allows me to operate and you know, now I’ve become myself and I just say whatever I think and you know I’m wearing a pair of shorts right now. I’m at the office and I’m wearing shorts and I don’t care what anybody thinks. It’s my own thing and nobody thinks anything of it, they think it’s cool right, because I can do whatever I want. But part of that naivety is you know, thinking I’ll go from day one to… I’ll go from nothing to Arnold Schwarzenegger. Or I’ll go from zero and then I’m going to be in the biggest retailers in the country or in the world. It’s great to do that, but I know that I originally tried to get a hold of some of these buyers. I couldn’t get a hold of them I couldn’t even get through the door at first. You know, this was before I went on Shark Tank, I couldn’t get through. But once I did get a hold of Daymond, he sat me down and said, ‘Nate, you’re not ready to lift these big weights.’ And that made it so, so clear for me when he explained it to me that way. I thought you know what, that’s right. So my big mistake that I learned from was thinking well, I can do it all. And to a degree it’s good attitude to have, right, because that’s how you go out and get stuff done. I remember when I started the belt business, I had people literally laughed at me and said, that’s not a business, that’s a product. That’s not a business, that’s not a business. Yet nobody’s laughing now. Right? But people were laughing, they thought I was an idiot you know what I mean. Even after I did my thing they thought Nate State of Mind was stupid, now everybody sees how much money I make from doing that and how many people able to help. And how many wonderful things get changed because of the Nate State of Mind. Now nobody laughs, right? So having that kind of blind, ‘hey I can do this thing,’ you know based in reality, will make it happen but it also, you know I’ve learned from mistakes.
I’ll tell you, I’m 36 years old, I’ve lived in three countries, five states, and I’ll tell you what man, I have made the mistakes of a 75-year-old man. And I’ve learned from every single one of those you know and sometimes I get the whole lesson or part of it. You ever read a really, really deep book or you’re reading Shakespeare or you’ve got somebody terribly articulate and clever talking to you, and you actually have to ask them to repeat something? You’re getting most of it but you not getting all it. So I’m not saying that every lesson I get I learn a hundred percent from. But I’m learning something from each lesson. And so that’s the thing that, that’s a setback. Is the thinking you can do all these things and then realizing, woah, I just wasted 14 hours trying to get into this huge store when frankly I’m not ready. If I got in and got the call, I’d be embarrassed that I wouldn’t be able to fulfill. I’d burn that bridge so early on. So I think probably I’ve caught myself before they’ve become trouble but I have wasted time. And wasting time with a shame because at the end of day the difference between you, me, and a homeless guy on the street is what we do with our time. Right? That’s all it is. My dad’s a teacher man and I don’t know what it’s like in England but you know, here teachers don’t have any money. And so my dad, I mean I was 13 when my dad got done with his PhD you know. My dad has a PhD in first century Roman history. I know that sounds really lucrative but it really isn’t and so, I’m just kidding, it’s not, there’s no money in it. And so the point is dad’s brilliant, he writes books, he’s this really smart successful guy but there’s no doe in it. So anyway, we didn’t really have any money growing up, you know when I turned 18, I didn’t get a car or a big chunk of money from my dad or anything like that. I went out and lived life and moved to South America, right. So everybody’s got to do something and I guess the point is this, is that there’s no kink to it. You know I don’t have a college degree. All I did was I used my time better than somebody else might it, that’s it. It’s time management. And so wasting time has taught me a lot about not wasting time. So my biggest setback: wasting time. Have I learned from that? You bet.

Kunle: Absolutely not bad for a 36-year-old though, so.

Nate: Not bad for a 36-year-old goofball from America.

Kunle: [laughs] Okay. If you could choose a single book or resource that’s had the highest impact in growing and building your business, which one would it be?

Nate: Malcolm Gladwell wrote a book called Outliers. I’m constantly singing its praises. And Outliers is an amazing book because it talks about what it takes to become an expert. So, long before Mission Belts was going, I’ve been a salesman, right. And I think the younger we are the more anticipation we feel, we at 21, 22 we say well I want to be successful, I want to be a millionaire, I want to be rich, I want to be on TV, I want to have a company. I want to do all these things. But the reality of it is, is that you don’t have the experience in the most cases to do that. Now, there’s some freak show things that you know, you come out and you’re Mark Zuckerberg and you create Facebook. That’s a great idea, it’s awesome, you know it’s totally great. I don’t know if you’ve noticed though, he hasn’t come out with any new businesses. Right, I mean it was great, it was right timing, it was awesome, it was totally cool. But for the most part I think people see guys like Mark Zuckerberg, who’s really smart, he’s a lot smarter than I am, the point is you see a guy like that and you think well, I should also be developing a billion-dollar business at 20. And the reality of it is, is that, no, you need to spend 10 or 15 years even 20 years becoming an outlier. An outlier is somebody that has 10,000 hours of experience. And they say that after 10,000 hours, whether you’re tossing pizzas, driving a taxicab, flying an airplane, or selling Mission Belts, or selling anything, you become an expert. So I have way over 10,000 hours underneath my belt. So when I got to on Shark Tank, guess what, they were dealing with a new entrepreneur, but they were dealing with a seasoned veteran professional salesperson who has been doing this for so long. I mean I’m Mr. salesman right? Those guys, they’d met a match there, right? Because you know, I got called yesterday by a VC company that wants to hire me to do some chore for them, you know everybody wants me to go out and posture and sell things put them, right. And the thing about it is, is that this book Outliers is awesome because it will really talk to you about what it takes to become ready to be great. It’s not good enough you know just like I said, once again, nobody’s going to be Arnold Schwarzenegger overnight. You have to prepare yourself and then you can become Mr. Olympia or whatever it is.

Kunle: Definitely going to link to it in the show notes. I started reading the book, I haven’t yet finished it. And I’ll also link to your pitch. Your pitch was awesome on Dragon’s Den, or sorry, Shark Tank. In the UK we have Dragon’s Den [laughs]

Name: Yeah, it’s super cool, maybe I could be on Dragon’s Den over there but instead of like being on the show, maybe I could get people coffee or something, you know that’d be cool.

Kunle: No, no, no you should sit there, you should sit on the board. Okay finally, finally, finally. How could the audience who want to follow you and find you, reach out to you?

Nate: If you want to follow me it’s easy, if you can spell my last name. I name is Nate Holzapfel. And because my name is so unique I have all of my Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, just Nate Holzapfel just type in Nate H-O-L-Z and it’ll pop up. And of course you can always go to TheNateStateOMind.com, NateHolzapfel.com, NerdOutMultimedia.com, and my favorite of all, MissionBelt.com so you can go to all of, yeah. [laughs]

Kunle: MissionBelt.com okay.

Nate: So those are all places but maybe put those links for people there on your website.

Kunle: Definitely.

Nate: You know I’m crazy and I actually do my own Twitter and Instagram. The Facebook stuff whatever, I’m involved in the content creation, but I’m actually the one doing the tweet so if you get a tweet, it’s from me. If you get a response, it’s from me personally, wherever, somewhere here in America doing something crazy, whatever it is I’m doing. But I’ll talk to anybody and I love twitter and I think Instagram’s a lot of fun.

Kunle: Awesome. Awesome. Thank you so much for being part of the show, Nate. It was amazing having you. Cheers.

Nate: It was really nice having a chance to be on your show. Thanks so much. It’s my first one and in England so thanks a lot for that.

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