Dave:
All right, welcome to the Brand Sweat and Tears podcast. This is Dave Oldham. Today I'm excited to have my guests from SHYFT Global, Alex Burge and Levi Lindsay. I've kind of been a fanboy of these guys. They don't know this. I'm a secret stalker. But what they've done, I think, is really cool. SHYFT itself is an agency. And I'll let them talk about that and the origin story of that. But they also have created their own brands, so several different brands. And I want them to tell some of the stories behind that. So they're this unique combination of providing services for other consumer brands at the same time, launching and scaling some of their own brands. So they eat their own dog food, and they know what they're talking about because they've lived it. So it's pretty cool. With that, I'll let you guys kind of introduce yourselves, talk about the origin story of SHYFT and tell us how you got here.

Alex:
Sure, thanks Dave. I don't know, you wanna start introductions and I can talk about SHYFT a little bit?

Levi:
I embarrass myself on the internet for a living.

Dave:
He's very good at it too.

Levi:
Well, you're about to see. I had a video production company for a while and that all went to crap. And then... What happened next? And I went to Kizik, which was amazing. I got a masterclass in marketing there and then went to neighbor.com and did some really cool things with organic social and content there and I got blackmailed into coming over to SHYFT.

Dave:
Alex had some dirt on you and he's like, hey, I'm going to release this. And you were probably like, I'm cool with that. There's way worse stuff out there that I've leaned into.

Levi:
I have.

Alex:
I have the extended cuts of his product undressings. Yeah. Yep.

Dave:
OK, the extended cut, the director's cut.

Levi:
And I just, for my family's sake, I can't have those seen publicly.

Dave:
Yeah, well, I want to fill in some of the blanks there. That was like a super high level thing. And, it might be worth talking about the video company and how it all went to crap and maybe some lessons learned there. But Kizik is, and I think a lot of people know Kizik nowadays, but it is a shoe company that started here in Utah that's this cool kind of slip on technology, so it takes sneakers and other shoes and you don't have to tie and untie laces. It's comfortable slip on, but they still look really cool. Nike, I think, is a big investor. I'm fully anticipating Nike just buying them at some point and then integrating all of that slip on technology to other Nike styles and stuff, which is probably happening right now, right?

Alex & Levi:
Yeah.

Dave:
Super smart marketers over there. And then, Neighbor is like an Airbnb for your extra space, right? You got a corner of your garage that you wanna lease out to somebody so they can stack some boxes there or lease out your basement for something. So it's kind of like a storage. Is it mainly focused on storage or they actually for other purposes too?

Alex & Levi:
No, just storage. Yeah. So it's like the Airbnb for storage space.

Dave:
Right. So it's kind of a cool thing. So you were there for a while. And then Alex convinced you with some of this not rated, not safe for work material to blackmail you over to SHYFT Global.

Levi:
Yep. Yeah. I actually met Alex, um, because I was like, Oh, I really want to get back into product while I was at neighbor and software is fun but I just, I don't know, I missed product from my time at Kizik.

Dave:
Yeah.

Levi:
I really wanted to dive back into creating new brands, working with new brands, working with rocket ship brands. Um, and there's a lot of diversity at SHYFT and my ADHD brain loves that.

Dave:
Yeah, awesome. Okay, so I wanted to fill in the blanks. I want to give Levi a shout out because nine out of ten people that I know that know Levi love Levi, and then there's that one jerk that just can't get over it. But you know, it's okay...

Levi:
You know what? There is. And Dale, give me another chance!

You know what? There is. And Dale, give me another chance!

Dave:
There's an honest plea!

Levi:
An old high school gym Coach. Listen, please love me.

Dave:
That's awesome. High school gym coach is the one person on the planet that doesn't love Levi. It's probably good that your high school gym coach doesn't love you because that would get really awkward. That would get really weird. Okay, Alex, tell me your...

Alex & Levi:
Okay, I'm done.

Dave:
For those of you who are just listening to this, we just got a belly flash from Levi, which was awesome.

Levi:
You caught me in a creepy mood today, Dave.

Dave:
This is great. This will be great content. We're just gonna be laughing the whole time. We won't really even talk about anything serious. We'll just be laughing. So Alex tell me your origin story.

Alex:
Yeah, so. I was about to go way back to the very beginning of my origin story, but

Dave:
I was born on a cold dark December morn in the ghetto...?

Alex:
Yeah. So kind of my story starts, I got involved at a supply chain company and I interned there and that was my first exposure to supply chain. And I think COVID did a lot for the term supply chain for just the common vernacular. But prior to COVID, the majority of people I talked to really just, you know, didn't mean anything. What does supply chain even mean, right?

Dave:
Nine out of 10 consumers probably just aren't aware exactly how does a product end up on their doorstep eventually, right? They're not sure all the thousands of little things that happen to get it there from getting it built to getting it shipped to all that.

Alex:
Totally, yeah, and that was me included. So when I got to this internship, I went there because, anyway, I had a connection through my dad and it was kind of a thing where I wanted to give it a try. And so I went and interned there and quickly found that it was something that, I always tell people, when we got caught up too much and like, I wanna do what I love and I agree, but I think the thing we don't say a lot of is you love what you're good at, most of the time. It's very rare that we're good at something and then we don't enjoy doing it because there's a lot of fulfillment. You know, there's a feeling that you're adding some value to somebody. So for me, I don't know that I was good at it, but I was better at supply chain than anything else because I hadn't really pursued professionally very many things. And so I enjoyed that and had the opportunity to be exposed to kind of a rapid growing startup environment that really... It was a good refiner's fire and I often tell people that it was no more difficult or less difficult than it has been to build SHYFT. It was just very Wild West and just out of the reality of kind of how that company was growing. And that was a huge blessing to me and kind of gave me gave me contacts in the space and exposure. And long story short, that company ended up going out of business, while I was still there and luckily I didn't have a lot to lose because you know, I was recently married but we didn't have any money, any assets to worry about yet.

Dave:
Were you still living in your mom's basement or something?

Were you still living in your mom's basement or something?

Alex:
Yeah, I was pretty naive to reality. Frankly, I remember we tried to get our first apartment like, Oh, yeah, we can afford this. And had I not gotten like a significant raise the week before we moved in that I wasn't planning on we would have for sure gotten way in the hole. Like I just didn't even know how to think about married life. But anyway, so we did that and then the company went out of business and it was time to like, either jump off and start a company or go get a job and, you know, my wife and I and and my dad, who is our chairman and my partner, we started this, bootstrapped this together. So we all kind of felt convicted that there was something that we could do in this industry that we felt was underserved and that was exciting.

Dave:
What was your dad doing at the time?

Alex:
So he did a couple of things. He's he's very entrepreneurial. And that's been awesome for me to have in my life. But at the time, he was the full time CEO of a stone importing and building company. So they build hotels and large stone buildings. And so he was running that company and it was kind of one of those things where he saw an opportunity, I saw an opportunity and I was in a place where I could dedicate most of, you know, I was still in school, but I could work a full-time amount of hours.

Dave:
So he didn't quit his day job, he kept doing that. He just said, hey, I'll work on this with you or contribute to this, help out with this.

Alex:
Yeah.

Dave:
Okay, cool.

Alex:
Yeah, yeah, and that was really good. Like it was, it was important for me to kind of go do something. And we wanted to build something meaningful together. So it lined up and it was, it was super organic. I mean, we started out just your classic, you know, $200 for rent in a tiny little room without windows. I remember we spent $2,000 furnishing our offices with all the necessities and that was a pretty big, we felt it, you know, that was a pretty big deal for us.

Dave:
Yeah, 10 months worth of rent.

Alex:
Yeah, yeah. And we were lucky to have also my brother had just moved back to Utah, my younger brother, and he helped with some projects and was instrumental in those. And then my sister is a professional graphic designer and she was instrumental as well. And so... you know, there was, there was certainly some very critical part-time support as well early on from really just family. And then we hired our first intern a couple of weeks in and he's now our COO.

Dave:
Oh

Alex:
He's been just incredible. Yeah. His name's Norm Skrkowicz and he's as tough as his name sounds. We're super blessed to have that team, but that's the origin story. You know, we bootstrapped it. We just used some of our own capital and it wasn't very much. One of the things I like to share is early on, we had imported a bunch of hoverboards. You know, when hoverboards were like the thing, then they started blowing up, not ours, but other people's. And Amazon just sent an email to everyone who was selling hoverboards. We were like the number one seller on Amazon. Amazon said free refunds, no questions asked. So it was like this high of making money at first but then every three or four minutes, my dad's phone would ping with a return all the way through Christmas. And it was like we would get them back and they'd be stripped and they'd be just shells but they'd get the $500 back from Amazon.

Dave:
What?

Alex:
Yeah and so it was wild but anyway we spent the next several years building rebuilding these hoverboards and then we'd sell them like where the Girl Scouts sell their cookies by Costco we like have a folding table and that helped a bit.

Dave:
You can get some Girl Scout cookies and grab a hoverboard. Buy 10 boxes of Girl Scout cookies, get a hoverboard for free!

Buy 10 boxes of Girl Scout cookies, get a hoverboard for free!

Alex:
Yeah, I got down to the last hoverboard only like two years ago out of my garage Like I was still making them...

Dave:
No way!

Alex:
So we used that to fund payroll and then we just grew you know. We were blessed with some early customers that helped us, but it was very much like Hey, could we last three months? Is this an experiment like could we pay? The very little money we need to survive for three months, and then just went from there. So anyway that was long-winded, but that's kind of where we started.

Dave:
No, that was cool. In fact, I have a couple of questions. One thing that jumps out at me, which I think is cool, is there's a number of founders that I've spoken to over the years that their origin story is kind of forced entrepreneurship or highly encouraged entrepreneurship. And what I mean by that is they were in a stable job that they maybe even thought like, this is probably my career. Like, this is the job I'm going to do forever. And then they get fired or the company goes under or it gets acquired and then there's strategic realignment, which is just a sexy term for firing everybody that was acquired or whatever. And then they're kind of like, okay, what do I do now? And it's amazing and interesting how in retrospect, years later when they look back on that, they're like, that's the greatest thing that ever happened to me. But in the moment, it sucked. It was terrible. Like it was horrible. It's kind of scary.

And it's such an interesting thing to think about. You know, you guys were young, newly married, probably didn't have a ton of expenses and stuff and so getting fired from your job probably wasn't like, oh, you know, this is the end of the world and this is like the worst thing ever. But it still created this opportunity for you to like really think about, okay, what is the future going to look like? What am I doing? As opposed to just sticking with that job for, you know, the next 10 years or forever, right? That's happened so many times.

So I think, you know, if somebody's listening to this podcast and they just recently got laid off from their job, maybe this is going to turn out to be the greatest thing that ever happened to you, even though I get that in the moment it's really painful and it sucks. And I've personally, I've been there too. So it takes maybe some years and some retrospective to look back and say, hey, that was, that actually turned out really great. And now I've built this thing and I probably would have never built it if I wouldn't have been maybe forced into that situation.

So SHYFT is going, when did you start thinking about creating your own products? And how did that come about? What was the first product that you guys created?

Alex:
Well, that's a good question. So I mean, the intention to have our own brands has always been there from that origin. The origin story, it evolved into, hey, this could be cool. We know how to make stuff. And maybe we do our own. And we were even more naive than we are now in thinking how easy that would be. But I remember we have some early prototypes of like, paper made, we'd like prototype out a paper, a product that we wanted to make when it was just three or four of us in a room. So the desire was always there, but the reality was we just weren't set up to be successful.

Entrepreneurship is a lot of luck. And it's a lot of timing and it's a lot of who you do it with.

And that's the one thing I'd say as a slight tangent, but to comment on your last statement as well as this, I think the thing that people need to remember is that entrepreneurship is a lot of luck. And it's a lot of timing and it's a lot of who you do it with. And then it's a little bit of how good you are personally, you know, and there certainly is a component to that and there's certainly hard work and, and. You know there is something to that, but, um, for us, the timing was really critical and I had jumped off and done some of my own products and just tanked because I didn't have the time to do them right. I didn't have the right people to do them with, you know, there were a lot of things that just didn't line up. And not to mention my own inabilities. But to answer your question, it was a desire, but it was probably, we're in our sixth year, it probably started to really dawn on us in year four towards the end of the year, where it was like, okay, we now have this entity, we're not just in China, we have offices in Vietnam and Mexico, we have this agency is evolving into something that's a lot more stable and real. And we now have the privilege of having people that are experts, you know, from Skullcandy and VF group as our executives, and these are the guys who are going to do this a lot better than I could do it having only been a CEO of a service company. So that's when it started. And then specifically the blackmail incident, you know, with Levi was all born out of just how, you know, I felt inspired by Levi and the things that he does in telling stories about product and brand and creating experiences for people. And so at the end of last year, it was like, okay, if we could bring Levi here, that would be the final piece in my mind to set us up to succeed...

Levi:
The nail in the coffin. It would be the nail in the coffin. The straw that broke the camel's back. So anyway.

Dave:
Yeah, there's a lot of fun ways to talk about that final piece.

Alex:
It's knowing that having Levi here is like being on death row. You just know the time's coming that things are going to blow. Haha. So, no, but in all reality, I skipped a little bit there. We do have XR Nutrition, which is a nutrition company and we have some other things that we've done, but we've never really created a brand, right? Like we've, we've launched products and we've had some success and some failures. But now this is more of an evolution to like, okay, you can have a, you can have a product. But to have a brand is a whole nother thing. And that's a world where Levi's really great. So anyway, I don't know if you can maybe speak more to that saga, but that's kind of what led to it.

Levi:
Yeah. It's interesting because we're kind of in our genesis of really trying to build a sustainable brand engine, as well as, because we already have that product engine, but then also building something that... generates revenue on its own and is another leg of the company. I certainly underestimated how much work would go into it when it came on board.

Alex:
Yeah, you did.

Levi:
I really did.

Dave:
You were thinking it's probably gonna be a good solid like 8 to 12 hours a week for me but oh this 40 hour week is brutal!

Levi:
I didn't, well, I wasn't expecting it to be work. I have been punching in at 10 a.m. I've been working all the way till 2 p.m. every single day, Monday through Thursday.

Dave:
It's a grind, bro.

Levi:
And Monday through Thursday, it's like, I don't know. My four-year-old daughter started singing Cats in the Cradle to me the other day as I walked out the door. Where's my dad been? You know?

Dave:
This four hours a day being gone, being away from the family, it's just brutal, brutal.

Levi:
Yeah, it's so tough.

Dave:
Laughing... What is the brand that you guys are building now?

Alex & Levi:
So one of them is Kano. We just acquired Kano Dog. And

Dave:
Okay, so that's a product that you guys picked up from, was it a client or you specifically went after it?

Levi:
I think it's publicly known now that Thread Wallet started it. Yeah. So Thread started it and did a killer job.

Dave:
I didn't know that. Okay.

Levi:
Yep. And so they, they took their model and basically applied it to dog products, and then I think they found very quickly one, the demographics didn't quite match with their current demographic. And then two, Thread is such a rocketship on its own and requires a lot of attention and is growing really fast that they thought let's just focus on Thread and so it was a good opportunity for us to take it on and we're going to put our own little spin on the brand and it's been interesting to navigate a whole new world which is dog products that we knew a bit about but had to learn a lot about.

Dave:
Okay, and it's called Kano, like K-A-N-O.

Alex & Levi:
Yep.

Dave:
Kano dog, and what's the first product?

Levi:
So right now we have collars, leashes and harnesses.

Dave:
Okay, all three.

Levi:
And then we're working on, it should be - oops, our office light turned off. We just wanted to make your podcast a little more ghetto.

Dave:
Yeah, well, this is awesome. This is real. This is raw. This is not high production.

Alex:
We couldn't afford the power bill.

Dave:
It's like, that's it, lights just went out.

Levi:
So let's tell our failure story now. How did we get here? I'm getting "strategically realigned" after this. So where were we?

Dave:
Three products so far.

Levi:
Oh, yeah, we're working on a dog bed and a really cool, funny, liquid death type campaign that I think people will really enjoy because I don't think people have really... There's a few things people haven't brought to the dog space and one is kind of a streetwear style. A lot of it is just very like Petco, cheap, and the ones that have done a good job are very outdoorsy, but we're hoping to bring a really cool streetwear style and aesthetic too. And then also nobody's really made a fun whimsical brand and brought humor to the dog space.

Dave:
Applying the liquid death brand strategy - like really out of the box sort of thinking to a category that's kind of, yeah, been for all intents and purposes boring, other than one of my favorite clips from Halloween where the little dog has the little Chuckie outfit where the front paws would fit in the thing that looks like Chuckie, which is awesome. Okay, cool. So are you guys gonna do like a viral video, like long form video, working with my boys over here at Creatably? Are you gonna produce the video yourselves or what are you guys doing?

Alex:
We'll be teaming up with Creatably and yeah, we've got some other stuff cooking with those guys. Part of it is like this. So we went to a pet expo in Florida and like Levi said, what we saw was just this ocean of sameness. You know, everybody had that. It was like the bright blues and the bright oranges and the you know, there's nothing wrong with that. Obviously, like the there's a big market for that. but it was just the same thing over and over and over. And for us, COVID was this accelerant for a lot of things, but dog ownership was one of the major categories that increased, right? People were hungry and they wanted this companionship. And frankly, they started to live these really integrated lives with their dogs because they were always together. And now that people are... going back to the prior format of their lives in some sense, we have this spike in dog ownership, and then we have this delta between what your life used to be like and what it needs to be now in terms of going into the office, going different places. And so part of our mission is, hey, number one, don't let your dog cramp your style.

Levi:
And a lot of the time you try to curate this beautiful home or you're thoughtful about how you... present yourself and then you're carrying around, or your dog bed's in your living room next to your nice sofa and it looks like it's from a SpongeBob episode or something.

Dave:
Yeah.

Alex:
Like it's goofy looking. And so we're trying to kind of elevate that experience and then also to create, specifically the products are all focused on creating this more integrated life with you and your dog. So whether that's for you to be able to travel better with your dog. We've got something in the works called the doggy duffel. Things that enable you to go to the beach, go on a hike, throw your dog in the car, whatever, and to do it in an elevated way. So that's kind of the goal and we think there's a big opportunity there, but we're certainly new.

Dave:
Going to partner up with Nike Jordan brand and have some Jordans, Jordan 1s for dogs?

Levi:
There you go.

Dave:
You have to do a design collab with Travis Cook and get Cactus Jack kind of branded dog wear and stuff like that, right? Going to get real.

Levi:
Honestly, we'd love to do collaborations and have Kano on Hypebeast and do cool streetwork collaborations. That's definitely for sure.

Dave:
Yeah.

Levi:
And one cool thing, one thing that we've learned this year is the importance of data too. I've always been kind of like a go with your gut kind of a guy, but it's scary when you are like, can we invest money into this brand? And I... I hope there's a market fit for it, but you have to, first you have to see what's out there, see who you're competing with and see what product features people are wanting and not even just what exists, but what doesn't exist. And so not even just having the data, but reading the data. And so that's been something we've implemented this year into SHYFT, but also it's been really nice to look at it with Kano or with some of these joint ventures that... people have been talking to SHYFT with.

Alex:
Some of these, like, a lot of people are coming to us with like joint venture ideas, and we're then taking data and saying, okay, here's a product we can win at. Instead of just, here's what you're passionate about, or here's what you think would do a good job. We can accumulate a lot of data from different sources.

Dave:
I love that and it's brilliant. How do you, as a Creator, how do you test and validate something where it's a brand new category, right? There isn't kind of historical data. Even if you're doing customer interviews, if it's something that they've never seen before, how do they know if they really want it or not? Right? Either you're going to get false positives on people saying like, oh yeah, that sounds really cool, but they're just trying to be nice. Or people will be like, what are you even talking about? And, and so there is this challenge, right? To bringing something to market and using data to validate the idea in a category where they're not sure if they're going to want it or they don't know if they would buy it until they actually can like see it or touch it. How do you approach that?

Levi:
I've seen a lot of companies do a great job, like Nomadic and Gravel with Kickstarter is a really great way to test your product out there. Pretty low risk. Um, I like what Jay Davis at Pillow Cube says. He's like, I give a product to a bunch of people and I call them and ask for it back and if they don't want to give it back, then I know I'm onto something.

Dave:
You got to come out with a dog bracelet that does like sleep patterns and like an Aura ring for dogs and you know, the like the doggy. What's the cool bracelet that everyone's wearing these days? Like a Nora or what's it called? I can't remember what it's called.

Alex:
We've talked about doing technology, but that's a lot of development. It's already hard enough to get like a soft good to market. It's definitely not off the table, but that's the internal discussions you have to have. Because we had, I remember having those discussions and we're like, guys, we really want to get into like pet insurance or pet food or the electronics game. And we have the capabilities in house here to do that, but it comes down to, okay, what do we need to focus on? We think like how much resources do we have? How much capital do we have? And so it's a balancing act of like, yeah, we want to do this, but okay, realistically, what do we have time for, money for, and capabilities for that we could put towards it right now.

Dave:
Have you done like hardware kind of things too?

Alex:
We have, we actually just two weeks ago kind of had a big pow wow and said, hey, listen, we're, and you know, I mentioned our, so our chief innovations officer came from Samsung, chief design officer came from Skullcandy, chief supply chain officer came from Skullcandy. So we were familiar with the space and that that's why it's been tempting to get involved there. But when we started SHYFT, I understood and I saw how expensive it was to go down that route. And the projects take years sometimes and the engineers are justifiably expensive, but expensive nonetheless. And so we're trying to actually, rather than expand into more product categories right now, we're trying to become more focused. And so we want to be the best in the world at apparel, soft goods, packaging, and co-packing. Those are the three categories for us. And there's enough opportunity there. You know, soft goods is anything from a camping sleeping bag to a wallet. So there's enough variability where it doesn't make our opportunity shrink much.

Dave:
No, there's still tons of opportunity.

Alex:
Yeah. So we're excited. We kind of are hands off on electronics, but we are feeling a lot of energy right now on just doubling down in the categories where we've become most proficient.

Dave:
OK, so Kano Dog is maybe the core focus on the product side and expanding the category into other aspects, other items for dogs. But talk about some of the other products that you guys have created. And let's talk about some of the failures. Let's talk about some of the lessons learned from some of the ones that didn't go the way that you thought they would.

Levi:
Yeah, I haven't failed. So maybe you could take that one.

Dave:
Levi doesn't know what we're talking about, but...

Levi:
I actually, sorry Dave, I had to look up on my phone what you were referring to, I hadn't heard that word before, fail. That was weird. That's cool to learn new words and learn new stuff.

Dave:
Well, it's good to learn new things! Ha ha.

Alex:
Well, I'd say, you know, there's been like a tremendous amount of failure, both at SHYFT and in trying to introduce products. And I think I actually was having a conversation yesterday about this whole concept of failure and not to make this too like...

Dave:
But Levi wasn't there because he still hadn't heard the word yet.

The whole idea of failure, I think is, is largely misunderstood.

Alex:
Yeah, he wasn't familiar with the topic. Ha ha. But uh, not to make this too kind of esoteric, but just the whole idea of failure, I think is, is largely misunderstood. Um, and it's something that we attach a negative connotation to. There's a Kobe Bryant quote where he talks about like, what is, what do you mean failure? Like you, you missed the game winning shot. That's not failure. That's just what happened, you know, and you wake up and you do it again and you might hit the shot the next day and it's a continuum, right? And so this idea of...

Dave:
you're not failing. You're learning.

Alex:
yeah, yeah. And the failures I think are better than the successes in some ways, right? Because you're, you got to kind of take a step back and understand what you're trying to accomplish. And for me, I'm trying to become a certain type of human. And I hope along the way I can make money, and I hope I can make impact, and I hope I have deep relationships. But what at the end of the day I'm actually trying to do is become a meaningful contributor to the world, right? And I think entrepreneurship's a way I'm hopefully going to do that. I'm trying to do that. And so it just, when you think that way, it stops being, well, do we fail with Kano, or do we succeed, or did we, should we have done this, or should we have, you know? It's more of just like, OK, this is where we're at on the journey, and this is what's happened and this is what we hope will happen in the future. That's all it is. There's nothing else. Right?

Some days you have money in your bank and some days you don't. And that's just kind of what it is. So I think I mean, that's a high level. But we've failed. I mean, we've tried to launch a couple other products that we had to shelf because we just were unrealistic with how much it was going to take. We had that hoverboard, you know, fiasco where we lost a stupid amount of money. We made a stupid amount of money and then lost all of it. And that was timing of the market. And so I always tell people, man, you want to start a company, it's all about timing and who you do it with. It's like, that's it. Ideas are a dime a dozen. If you start trying to think of ideas, you'll have ideas, but you got to have the right people and the right timing. And if you do, your chances go way up.

Dave:
It's such a brilliant way to think about entrepreneurship in general, or maybe just living in general, is if your main goal is to grow and to contribute, to create something for the process, for the experience, for the learning aspect of it, instead of the end result or the outcome, that mindset allows you to overcome... really, really challenging, really hard things and the setbacks. The setbacks aren't permanent. They're not a failure in the traditional sense of the word that Levi just had to look up. It's more the lessons learned.

In fact, the Kobe thing is awesome. And just recently, Giannis, I can't even pronounce his last name. I've tried to do it before, but plays for Milwaukee Bucks. Famously, someone asked him the same thing. Well, do you guys feel like you failed? And he said, you know, what's failure? What are you talking about? Like we, we learned, we grew, we played, we're getting better. That's part of this whole process of coming back. And, you know, if you look at missing one shot or losing one game or whatever as like failure or failure as like this definitive end game kind of thing. And it's over. It's just a really negative mindset.

I think having that different perspective that you guys just talked about, Alex, that you just mentioned is amazing, especially when it applies to consumer product creators and getting into the entrepreneurship and getting into the creation game, if you're doing it because you want to create, you want to build and you want to become a better human, you want to grow personally. You'll be able to overcome all sorts of setbacks and challenges. Just kind of like really thinking about that is amazing from a mindset perspective, right?

Alex:
I think, that's really helped me with my own challenges. I have, just like anyone, I have my bad days. I have a lot of anxiety that's developed as an entrepreneur where I'm just pitting my stomach for no reason. I just can't be calm. And the one thing that's really helped me has been very liberating this last year is just thinking about this idea of stepping outside of... what's happening and remembering that. Like, I am bigger than this problem. Like, you know, the Alex Burge that I believe in isn't attached to my failure. It's, those are parts of my story, and maybe, you know, you worry about what people think of you and you worry about all of the things that you worry about. But if you can remove yourself and just be at peace, like, there's nothing that can disrupt that. If you can... And I have little glimpses, you know, I hope to become the kind of person who stays in that state, but I have these moments of just like, just be calm, like you're okay, you'll be fine. This is way bigger than this experience of life. It's way bigger than the problem you think you're dealing with. So that really helps me as I struggle with my own kind of journey.

Dave:
That's awesome. And maybe that's what Levi was meaning when he said, I don't know what failure is. It's all just learning. It's all part of the process.

Levi:
I wasn't being sarcastic actually. That is what happened. Me and Kobe are cut from the same cloth.

Dave:
Yeah, you're the white mamba.

Alex:
We- ooh I like it. I like that. You're the white mamba like the candy.

Dave:
Vanilla mamba.

Levi:
Vanilla mama? You know, let's just make it mama. I'm vanilla mama. Yes.

Dave:
I love it.

Levi:
We better jet.

Dave:
Okay, well, we probably have to do like a part two at some time. It seems like there's lots more cool stories here. But really quick, how can people find you? It's SHYFT Global.

Levi:
Yes.

Dave:
Is it ShyftGlobal.co or ShyftGlobal.com?

Levi:
HHTP slash colon, www dot shift.

Dave:
You're ruining it, man. You're ruining it.

Alex:
Shift has a Y. So S-H-Y-F-T. SHYFT.

Dave:
shyftglobal.com.

Alex & Levi:
dot com.

Dave:
And you can, if you're a creator, whether you're a small brand or a big brand, these guys can help you get your product designed, prototyped, manufactured, all that sourced, right?

Alex:
Yep.

Dave:
And then Kano Dog, we can give a shout out, where can people find these awesome products and get ready for the Travis Cook Design Collab?

Alex:
Kanodog.com. But I think we'd probably prefer if people are checking them out, check them out on Amazon. Trying to build a presence there.

Dave:
Okay.

Levi:
We'd love that. Good point, yes.

Dave:
Okay, go on Amazon, search for Kano Dog, K-A-N-O Dog.

Dave:
you on all the socials. Do you got any funny TikTok doggy videos?

Levi:
We do have some good ones.

Dave:
All right, awesome. Well, you guys are great. We'll definitely have you back and talk about some more stuff, especially as you drop some of this funny cool stuff that you're working on to blow up the Kano brand. Appreciate you and we'll catch you next time.

Alex & Levi:
Thanks, Dave.