I Sold Shatterproof Archery

I sold shadowproof archery it's true it's not clickbait but it's not as dramatic as it may sound today I'm going to cover the future of shadowproof archery why I sold it and what I'm going to do in the future I started shadowproof archery at the end of 2019 this is when I started selling my handmade bow strings at this point in life I had been making YouTube videos for a year and a half I had 500 subscribers and I was going strong that's that's trash that's more trash that's a lot more trash all that trash came out of this dark gloomy Workshop so this is the new workshop I'm excited about it but you can see it's kind of my wife and I were at a point where we could try to be entrepreneurs so to speak we had worked traditional jobs corporate jobs and had been able to be really Frugal save save away some money CI had actually already started her own business and was making money from it she was a well she was an influencer me on the other hand I was just a wannabe YouTuber so I decided to start selling archery products that I made to try to increase my income and become a full-time self-employed entrepreneur so at this point we stopped our traditional jobs and went all in I gave myself 6 months 6 months is what I was going to have as a Runway before I decided to go back and get a get a real job now recognize this is when I started selling bowering so I had sold zero bow strings and I also had 500 YouTube subscribers thinking maybe I could get a maybe I could get a few customers from there so I pitched it to my subscribers and I got two orders in December of 2019 and I was jumping around the house cuz I was so pumped I think I sold both of them at a loss um I think the materials uh cost more than I sold the bow strings for but I got my first two sales I went all in I started making YouTube videos every day every week Within 3 months I had my first viral video that video today has over 5 million views as a 35 minute video and that video changed the trajectory of my business and I was able to get more viral videos relative term but viral to me over a million views I was able to consistently get those videos and people started asking for more archery products I want more than just Bo Rings what else could you provide CU we love the boow ring so much so for traditional archery leather is a big thing so we started a leather shop and I started hiring people and and we built out different leather products and armguards and tabs and quivers started stamping and sewing everything ourselves I couldn't keep up with the demand by Springtime so I hired two people the first person I hired was my brother I hired him remotely so I helped him set up a bow string setup for himself so he was working as a contractor for me and he would make bow strings and not too long after that he he got super good at it but I realized he had a different skill set than me and I realized that he was really good with people so I asked him if he'd be interested in taking over some of the customer service stuff and he was and as a matter of fact he's much better at it than me and I'm sure you've seen him his name is casden Cass he's been in a lot of the shatterproof archery videos and some of the videos here on this channel so he started working for me in 2020 let's just fast forward time in summer I think 2020 he took over customer service and he was making most of the boow Rings after I think about a year and a half of this he finished up college and somehow I was able to convince him to move out here to Colorado from Oklahoma to come work in shatterproof archery with me at this point in time he had basically been there since the beginning I wanted him to have some more skin in the game so part of my offer to bring him here along with his salary was 10% ownership of shatterproof archery and since then we've been Partners running this business we've hired a lot of different people we've made a bunch of mistakes we've learned what works in business and what doesn't we've learned our different skill sets and what we enjoy doing most and we've been able to work really good together cuz our skill sets are quite opposite after a few years of enjoying the operations of shadowproof archery less and less I was trying to decide if I should just stop the business altogether but it was too much of a positive financial asset for me to justify just quitting but I also knew and I'll talk about this more later that it wouldn't it wasn't going to be super healthy for me to continue and I'll get into that in a in a little bit but I had made the decision I don't want to run and operate shatterproof AR Trey for a long time it's not a long-term play for me so I was like I can just quit the business or I can sell the business so I started looking into selling it and my biggest fear to selling the business is that I would sell it to somebody who wouldn't have your best interest in mind and I don't know what it was one day I was just out on a really long run and I just thought to myself I wonder if Cass would be interested in buying the business I thought about it for a while and I was at full peace with him owning shatterproof so that's when I asked him K do you want to buy me out of shatterproof archery you want my 90% and he's like I haven't thought about that let me talk to my wife and I'll get back to you he came back and said yeah I do and after 6 months of negotiations and figuring out how all this would work out Cass is officially buying shatterproof archery we're in the transition period right now he is operating 100% as owner and by the end of January everything will be legally completely in place and I am super excited for him and I'm super excited for myself morning hey I didn't know you were here but that's perfect here I am how are you I'm good good so what's the future of shatterproof archery it's going to be the exact same to you guys Cass has been running the business for the past three years doing more operations than I have he's been taking care of all customer service emails all phone calls the past two years he's been taking over more and more in completely 100% leadership now I haven't run payroll in a couple years personally like done it I haven't answered customer service I haven't fulfilled an order in over a year the only thing I've done is marketing and then I I help build the bows so since he's already done it all he's going to be fantastic at continuing what he's doing which is running shadowproof archery so the future of shadowproof archery is is not going to be changed especially from your guys's perspective like the ownership's transitioning but the exact same people who are doing everything that they were doing previously are going to be doing the exact same things so the people in the company who fulfill orders are the people who are continuing to fill fulfill the orders now part of this deal is that I'm helping out with content for shatterproof archery and it's good for you guys to know that I have two businesses one shatterproof archery one's Kramer's media Kramer's media encompasses uh crammer ammon's YouTube channel and a couple other as well as different things I do like my wife's a real estate agent I take a real estate photos real estate videos and I help out with those sort of things and I also do videos for other brands so this is Kramer's media then I've got shadowproof archery which is shadowproof archery YouTube channel and then that's all of shatterproof archery products bowering line leather line bow line everything the manufacturing business all of that the Amazon store Etsy eBay you know everything encompassed in there is shatterproof archery so Cass is buying shadowproof archery but I'm keeping Kramer's media because Kramer's media is exactly what I want to do so why did I sell shadowproof archery well I want to clear up the mental space for me to work be able to put the time and energy into the projects that I want to do that's what it comes down to practically it's it's hard to explain but for somebody who's more of a creative type the managerial tasks of running a business with payroll and employees and a bunch of customers and things like that take up the emotional and mental space that I would prefer to be able to give to create creative tasks like making videos I found myself every time I had the time to make a video I was emotionally wasted so I couldn't produce as good as videos as I would like because I had spent all my energy on shatterproof archery it's definitely not my top skill set to be a manager I can be a pretty good leader at least I believe I can but after putting all the energy towards that I just didn't have time for the media stuff I want to do so then the question is okay Kramer you could be an owner of shadowproof archery and just detach yourself completely like you've been working on the past couple years and just let other people run it but then you still get the financial benefit of owning it and that's true I totally could do that but it doesn't clear up the complete mental space to do that secondly if I were the full owner of shatterproof but 100% detached from it and nobody working in the business has any ownership I think the business would go down a little bit because there would not be that passion there and I didn't really want to do that I want shatterproof to be able to serve customers as good as possible and with Cass buying the ownership from me now he has that 100% skin in the game ownership responsibility where now he can push that forward since he's in it every single day and I think that's going to be best for Cass and me I am an affiliate of shatterproof archery so I'm still doing a lot of the marketing through my YouTube Channel if you click the link in the description right below here I'll get commission from Cass for by bringing customers over but I'm not an employ of shatterproof the other thing we have deals in place with like bows and bow lines if we're coming out with things we're going to collaborate and work together and sell bows through shadowproof archery I'm not going to be making any production bows though and I may set up a website and do like custom oneoff research and development bows that I might sell I'll do this for the incentive of this this idea of making the best bow possible for specific reasons one for smoothness one for Speed one for tall people one for short people one with heavy draw there's different reasons people shoot but if one of those hits then I can license it to shatterproof they can make the production of it but I will help set up that process potentially but this completely frees me up to not have to worry about that and I can just do what I want to do we're actually working on a small batch of the mountain bow right now and we have a business deal set up between us where I'm no longer an owner but we're still working together and I'm still able to scratch the itch of the products that I like to do as well as market and support shatterproof archery I have two boys one of them's 2 years old the other one's three and part of having kids has changed time the way I relate to time but I just see how short these young years are with them and I'd rather clear up the time and energy I need in life and do less things to be able to spend more intentional time with them at this age in life when I come home from work compl completely emotionally wasted because of the task I'm doing is not in my sweet spot it's it's not who I want to be and I've been working my way out of this place for the past couple years by the task I'm doing each day and I think this is one of the final steps and stages to living the life that I think is best for me and my family here's the best way I know how to say it it's like I've been doing two full-time jobs with a couple part-time jobs on top of that but I personally thrive in a less complex environment I like to go really deep but not wide I don't like to do a bunch of task at the same time so basically I'm leaving one job that I like for a job that I really really enjoy I asked myself if you were to design your life completely from scratch how different would it look from what you're doing right now and then what could I do to bridge that Gap last question so what am I going to do instead well I'm working on Kramer's media I'm working on my YouTube channel that's what I'm going to do in the future is dial it in here on YouTube dial it in with the media a business I like making content I like being creative and that's what I'm going to do one of my favorite Frameworks to use when there's a troubled employee is to ask myself would I hire this person today if they weren't already an employee and if the answer is no of course I wouldn't hire them then it's like I'm rehiring them every day I keep them on the job and I try to do this with my own life so if I didn't have shatterproof archery would I start shatterproof archery today I want it I would just do the media business and that question really helped me solidify what I want to be doing so there you go I spilled the beans now just being straight up with you guys as I always am I've been working on this decision for a year and a half trying to figure out what I should do with shatterproof thank you so much for supporting me uh you can subscribe to this channel if you want to see more coming out in the future I've I've got to R wrap up shadowproof archery in the next uh 3 months after after that I got some cool things coming some cool things coming baby I'm pumped for it so I'll see you guys on the next video Stay shatterproof my friends and uh go crush it today