Chris Wachowiak, a branding guru from Ronin Branding, shares his journey from owning a bar to co-branding with Red Hook beer glasses, which had a 20-year shelf life and significant community impact. He emphasizes the importance of adding value to every project, using his “Ronin” approach to focus on client needs.
Chris highlights his counterintuitive marketing strategy, minimal social media presence, and reliance on referrals. He also discusses his partnership with Apparel Redefined, praising their accountability and transparency. Chris stressed the importance of passion, discipline, and gratitude in business, advocating for impact over impressions.
Key Highlights
• Early Promotional Successes 3:13
• Challenges and Adjustments in Business 5:37
• Building Ronan Branding 15:31
• The Importance of Passion and Value 20:08
• Final Thoughts and Advice 21:07
Presentation Transcription
Curt Anderson 00:02
Alright guys, hey, hello. What a wonderful, incredible day to have a wonderful, incredible conversation. John LeRoy Apparel Redefined, how are you, dude? What’s happening?
John LaRoy 00:11
Doing good. Kurt hard believe it’s another week, but closer, closer to winter here in Chicago, which is crazy, but oh yes, happy.
Chris Wachowiak 00:21
Weather’s great. Hey, let’s not, you
Curt Anderson 00:23
know what? Still, we still got baseball season. We’re full fledged football. So we’re, we’ll, we’ll just take it one day at a time. So, you know, temperatures are dropping just a little bit, but wonderful time of year and so and again, I’m just still admiring your wonderful studio. I’ve got total studio envy right now and then. Just to make it even worse, we’ve got our guests here today, our wonderful friend, Chris. Chris, how are you, dude? Look at the background you got going on? What’s, what’s happening in your world? Yeah. So
Chris Wachowiak 00:50
it’s like promo threw up in here. That’s where I live in that space. So a lot of these are projects. This is just hairy cow. It also looks like perfect devil head, you know, orange, yeah, for sure, it comes in handy. You know, I got projects back here. They’ve done a lot of fun things that I enjoy, like good bourbon from bookers. Jim Beam. I got stories going backwards. That’s how I kind of got into promos, doing stuff with Jim Beam. I used to own a bar, and I just saw, like firsthand, how promo can just nurture a community. And that’s what I love about that’s why I got into this. Like it is, you know, it’s done, right? It creates nostalgia. And that’s what I love about this. Well,
Curt Anderson 01:36
I absolutely love it. So just really impressive background here. And so we just want to dive in, just share a little bit about your branding guru. You eat, drink, breathe and sleep branding. Just absolutely love that. And so you know, we’re going to dive into your company and what you guys do. But before we go there, share a little bit what drove your passion, your how’d you choose this career path, what really drove you to be the branding guru?
Chris Wachowiak 02:00
So think it was 2002 maybe I used to own bar called kryptonite. It was a live original music bar, and we go to these meetups with different bar owners for the Illinois Beverage Association, and a bunch of bar owners getting together give him a reason to drink and just complain. Can I swear in this it’s kind of going to happen, so let’s make sure say okay, so they just let the bullshit show each other. It’s all in complain. And everybody’s complaining about how everybody stole bar glasses, like if I had a logo on it, you know, like bass or ours was Red Hook, which, of course, I don’t have one right here in front of me, but I was complaining about it. And what I did was I took a glass and one side of it, did a whole bunch of series of them, or some minorities. I don’t have it here, but I said on there, kryptonite insisted I took this Okay, so what to me was the problem was the opportunity. You know, everybody’s complaining about why I saw an opportunity. So I did a co branding thing with Red Hook. They paid Polyglass. They paid 97 cents, and by doing that, I went through just under 1500 cups in a matter of three months. Now, you say, all right, $1,500 but that was almost, that was over 20 years ago. And if I post a photo of kryptonite, since I took this, it still shows up in people’s covers, like, it’ll show up news feeds like, uh, people tag me on still to this day, 20 years later, I don’t know a better use of money that has a 20 year shelf life, if not more, you know, something simple. And at that time, I was going a bunch of after parties, so everyone was busting it out other cupboards and say, no, no, I didn’t take this. They insisted I took this. So it became a marketing piece, and it got my community talking about me, and I loved it. And you can see now I’ve done tons of one sense, I I’ve done a series. I think about a different think about 50 different types of coal branded cups, and it was always a staple, and it’s something I now sell to other bars and friends, and we just use one. We were talking about Cheap Trick earlier, and bon Carlos, Bonnie Carlos, good friend of mine, just passed Dan McMahon and to help raise money for his battle of cancer. He just lost. We he he was able to get these glassware partners in our community. And they’re coming to different communities too, called Rural vintage maps. And they take maps from civil planning that they got back from the, you know, as early as 1800s up to, you know, the mid 1950s and then they target historic areas. And one was the Olympic tavern. They did Dan’s face on it with this, and it became a great fundraiser. So, you know, this is a way that we’re, you know, the thing I love about is like you can personalize it. You can help, you know, give a hand up versus a hand out, and you have something that. You will forever treasure like that’s that’s what I love about that’s what I got into. So I I’ve done probably a good 1000 promotions, events, over 1000 I’ve run, I still do one to this day, called screw sea Beer Fest. It’s been 15 years. And the way I market and market myself is very counterintuitive. Where I do absolutely no marketing, we make one post three months in advance of the event, and it sells out, typically about five to 10 minutes online. And the way I market myself is the same way I done a pretty good job. Removed my name and my phone number, off social media. My website makes it harder to contact me, because I’m 100% referral based, and we can jump into this. But I accidentally stumbled onto this back in during covid, where I was getting overwhelmed with production, and I was getting nice referrals, but they’re like the small one off, two off, you know, little short run stuff. And I have no problem doing that, you know, occasionally, but as you guys know, it takes just as much time to put together an order for 1000 pieces as it does or 10 pieces. So I try and focus on the 1000 plus piece runs or 100 piece runs of stuff. But my friends were nice, my customers were nice, refer me out. And I just kind of said, Hey, do me a favor. Please stop referring me out without my permission. And the next thing I kind of they’re like, what I’m like, Yeah, I greatly appreciate it. But you know how I work, and you like the attention I give you, and I love that you want to share me with your friends, but I can’t properly serve you and them the same time. Like You’re my ideal client. Now, if you have ideal clients like you, that get me and we’re doing separate orders. By all means, let’s have that conversation. But please stop referring me out. And I did that with all my customers because I was just in a mood, and it’s like, hey, just heads up. And I have, like, a core base of 12 main clients. Well, next thing I was like, maybe a week or two later, I start getting some phone calls like, Hey, I heard you print t shirts. It’s like, I’m sorry, how to get my number? Like, what? I’m like, how did you get my number? Like, oh, you print seeds. You’re like, yo. That’s kind of what I do. But how did you get my number? Because I removed my information you had to get from somebody. I need to have a talk with them before we can continue this conversation. And that changed the dynamic of price went out the window, like they were no longer concerned. Like, because it’s that idea of, like, ever Prince T shirts, right? I know 10 guys you know printed out of the garage alone. Like, so what makes this guy so special? It’s like I started have my customers communicate me, as I call it a branding concierge for a lot of them, it makes it very simple. It gives that elevator pitch, like, what does the guy do this concierge? You tell them what you want to take care of it. You won’t get the best seats to restaurants, you know, show you’re going to pay a little higher price, but you’re going to get superior service quality, and everything’s taken care of. And that’s how I stumbled into this. Like, it’s just really because before covid, I was doing this on this, not only saying the side, but you know, you’re an entrepreneur, you work 80 hours a week. So 40 hours of that, and 40 hours doing events promotions. And then covid hit, and then it became 100% now, or 99% I’ll promote promo goods, so and I, I’m obsessed with it, you know, I left, I closed my bar with the intent of getting into this industry. Because I saw at my grocery store, my son was, like, four years old the time, we literally saw two people stop in the middle of an aisle and talking because they’re wearing screw city shirts. And I just kind of stood there in awe, and my and the guys got looked over. They noticed this, you know, this few minutes. Or look this, like, Can I help you? My son’s, like, that’s, that’s my dad’s shirt. Like, huh? Like, that’s my festival. I do the fast. And this, oh, like, it was instant kindred spirits. And it was just like, Man, this is this. Is it? Like, this is cool. And I was hooking my buddies up at the time with the company. I was working at it. And then, John, you’re self employed, and Kurt, I don’t, I don’t know if you know what your background is, but mine was, I’ve always been an entrepreneur, and I’m a horrible employee. So I went to work my friend, I was kind of like, you know, everybody was so concerned about telling me what their job wasn’t I couldn’t handle it, like you took more time to tell me what, why you couldn’t do it versus could have been done or, you know, who’s going to catch the blame if something goes wrong, it’s like it shouldn’t be as difficult. So they hired this consultant, Mark crude Ray. And I’m sure you know that name, if you’re the key is the the guru of high volume printing and business. You know, even he didn’t touch consulting job for under 100 grand, just all around badass. So he was, he was mentoring me in his catalyst, catalyst accelerator. And all the stuff he was telling us not to do, is the stuff I was doing and what to focus on. It’s like, I get it, but I’m just. Not there yet. I didn’t know how to get there yet, so I was causing all this trouble around this my friend’s shop, and I told him, like, you know, see old joke, like, Hey doctor, here’s my touch, here’s my touch, here, here’s my touch here. It’s like, it’s easy, a broken finger. Like, dude, I’m your broken finger in a company. Like, you don’t want me. And I left there and told my took me a while to find what I want to do, you know? And I did my own hybrid version of the promo business, and it’s like, I’m calling it Ronan. I had to lunch with him and said, Hey, this what I’m gonna do, you know, I’m doing a lot of events, but I’m gonna do promo owner this brand. And he’s like, Oh, you’re now competition to me. Like, sucks, because you’re like, my mentor, my best friends. I didn’t want to screw up your company like I know I was causing a lot of headaches in your team, and then I got hooked up with Jim Gordon through promo kitchen. You’re familiar promo kitchen industry. Have you heard of it? It’s a non profit from the PPA, our organization that you get mentored by people across the country. Basically, mine was out of Arizona, and lo and behold, six years later, and it’s been the best thing that’s ever happened to me. Like, just because this industry is funny, it has two flip sides to it, you know, there’s those that are very, you know, secret of how they do stuff, you know, and those are usually people are just throwing something else, a logo on some random piece of stuff that, you know they don’t know. Why? Why using that garment like, you see, like, I use a lot of all made stuff, and I love what Ryan Morrison with the sustainability and the passion he puts behind it, like, there’s reasons. It’s my madness, and that’s what I share with my clients. You know, when you connect that passion level, it becomes like, you know, I think that’s the defining factor, what separates you the next person. So I’m a very firm believer in that idea of radical transparency. You know, I got it from that book principles by Reid alio that I don’t have that, as my wife has said, I missed the filter between my brain and my mouth. It’s just rapid transparency. Yeah. So working with Jim and do my own thing allows me to just be me. I my customers know, and the ones that I my main buyers, you know, I usually preface it, let them know my blogs, my my history, my background, and those who want to know like always make the joke in my youth, I wasted half my I told my wife the same thing we first met. I wasted my youth, least half my youth, on women, alcohol and drugs, and the other half it is wasted. So like, I know where I’ve been. I’ve done a lot. I’ve had a lot of fun owning the bar. I worked for a record label on Malibu for a few years. I owned it with Warner records and Rico disc. And I just wherever I turned. I always saw promo as part of a serious part of any business we were part of in any that’s not utilizing from most part of the business is losing investments on their dollars. In my opinion, the only you see, touch, feeling, experience, it could bring back. You grab that cup. And I remember the day I designed this cup, and people would get it. Remember the day where they got the cup at the t shirt. You know, you do a nice t shirt, it becomes their favorite tee. You don’t do a sorry Gildan. I usually still have customers, because I won’t sell gilded shirt unless my customer absolutely insists. And I usually talk them out of it, hoping that’s not
John LaRoy 13:39
spray Gildan. No, probably whatever. But
Chris Wachowiak 13:41
they own everything now, it seems like, so my point is, like, always differentiate. Always find that little, that little difference. You know, originally I wanted to be a chiropractor. I thought in college, until I had this teacher in business, 101, with Miss Boger and this idea of the thing, that difference between Pepsi and Coke and it’s what, it’s just a little bit different. That’s between Target and Walmart is what you sell 99% same stuff. It’s just low variation, this perception, and that’s all business. Is this feeling that low gap, and the greater you can, you know, focus your niche, I think the better chance of getting rich. It’s it’s for, say, a niche doesn’t rhyme is fun. So, yes,
Curt Anderson 14:21
yeah, riches are riches. And yeah, man, Chris, so much gold right there. Jen, I’m not even sure where to start. First off, our deepest sympathies to losing your friend. Thank you for sharing your story. Thank you for sharing your journey. Now I know for for the guy that says your anti social media, John, I do want to share a couple of comments that I think Chris has one of the best about sections I’ve ever seen on LinkedIn. And I’m a LinkedIn junkie, Chris, so I just want to share things with you real quick. John, I live and love branding for businesses and special events. It’s my niche right there. There’s your word, Chris, niche, my wheelhouse, my obsession, and then you’ve met. In the grocery store with your four year old, and I love this. You have it right on your LinkedIn. Maybe you don’t even remember this. Yeah, ask yourself, when was the last time you made a connection with your brand, your vision, your passion, and you never knew it until you saw someone wearing your T shirt that you made for an event or your business while you’re running errands at the grocery store or somebody’s at the bank using your pen. And so I just, I love the enthusiasm that you share. And just, I had high expectations coming into our call, and you’re just absolutely crushing it. So you have a company, Ronan Brandon, where’s the name come from? And how do you now you’ve, you’ve dove in, you know, covered some of this, the niche share with folks, how you and your team, how do you guys make the world a better place?
Chris Wachowiak 15:45
So Ronin came from when I told my friend I was leaving the ronin of Sam Ryan no longer has a master, and in some ronans will go from scenario to scenario where they’re needed. And that’s kind of how I I went about starting my company was it, you know, like, I would tell my customers, like, if I can’t add value, then you don’t need to do business with me. Like, I’m here to serve a purpose, and then if I can’t serve that purpose, I’ll be very transparent. And it’s like, you know, to this day, Hey, I just need to get some coasters done for my bars. Like, to disco coasters.com. Like, you’re gonna get cheaper than I can. Like, I’m not gonna add any value to you. You very good design. You know, it’s not worth my time. It’s not worth your time for me to mark it up on you. And you’re savvy enough. Like, here’s the link and that, you know, things like that. It’s, it’s that idea of, and I have it written on my board when I walk in and I walk out like I do left, I can turn over you want, and you can see how messy my office is worse than this, but it’s what value do I add today? That’s what I and what value will I add today? And so I kind of start off every day. Is that my Notepad is like, right? What value am I bringing in today to my projects? And I start every morning off. I try Sunday nights. I’ll do a preview, kind of the week. Monday morning, I double check. Here’s my list of views Monday night. Alright, did I get these things done with transfer to Tuesday? And, you know, it’s just a running list of, like, man, today I screwed up. You know, I’ve had those situations, and I read a lot the book by Jocko. Well, because I’m gonna say I’m not everyone’s Jocko, that Extreme Ownership and that book me up. I didn’t sleep right for two weeks. I don’t know, no, and I funny, because I actually own a production shop in house too, but I outsource majority stuff to barrel redefine, because I’m not adding value to my business by me printing my own stuff. I’m going to a minute here, but I did screw up on my first orders and bought this shop, and I had about eight grand in inventory. It was most emails where I we use common skew, which John I’m showing to you before. Kurt, not sure, familiar with it, but basically, subject line, it gives pictures, it gives identification, it gives colors, sizes, and it says blue shirts, blue shirts and picture. And the client receives the shirts and said, Hey, I don’t use blue shirts. I use black shirts. Like and we, you know, we have manuals here. And it’s a two color, two color, two location, and it’s a pain. He has to print with manuals. We’re printing 1000 shirts, and I didn’t know if everybody finds them. Otherwise, would have been on the phone with my amazing rep, Derek, which I can just go on and praise you guys, like how great you are to communicate with, and that’s another reason why I love working with you guys. But normally, in the past, I’m a huge thing of accountability. Like, I love accountability when I screw up, but it’s like, Hey, you did this, you did that. And it’s like, read that book. And it’s like, I kid you not. It was maybe, like, 30 seconds, like, fuck it. It’s my fault. I’ll make it right. And we, I called the bony buddies. We got the as, you know, Diane, I’m sure you’ve seen this. When you have over 800 pounds, you have to use ground, you know, the different freight. So I broke the order in three pieces. So I got the next day shipping, and then we printed it all and turned around, got everything here by 10am and it was out the door and about extract by three o’clock and just made it right for him, and no charge, and we paid for shipping back, and I ended up selling majority garments over the next two years now, but it was that, like, every screws up. And you see in our industry, people complaining, like, this flyer did this, and this person did that, and it’s like, how much was really your fault. How much did you not communicate, like, really, with your vendor that you had this timeline or you had this need and you had this little twist that wasn’t in the notes, and that was shame on you. Like, so that’s made it easier for me to work with people. This may be easier for people to work with me. And. You know, the nice thing about what I do now is I tell my customers and my buyers and I’m your guy behind the curtain. I’m like, another thing I use is my branding, my branding ghostwriter. Basically, you know, you’re like, your journalist, a ghostwriter, book ghost writer, but your brand ghost writers. Nobody knows you are. I’m just putting your life out there. And here’s the good thing, and things look great. They look awesome. You get a lot of recognition. Take all the credit, and then if something goes wrong, my fucking promo guy fucked up. I’m sorry, you know, like, throw me under the bus. That’s what I’m here for, and I’m happy to take that and you know, it’s worked out phenomenally well for me.
Curt Anderson 20:39
So John, let’s, let’s pull you in here, just so share a little bit of you know, what’s your takeaway? What you’re hearing so far from Chris, and I’d love to share a little bit on like, your relationship with Chris.
John LaRoy 20:49
Yeah, it’s the passion and commitment to the customer and understanding you can’t be everything to everyone. I think is a really good point there. Extreme Ownership. Jocko Willink, you know, I, I absolutely love Jocko. I’ve seen him live a bunch of times, all of his books, and we’ve have our leadership team read his books, just because of the the take home value, not just, you know, at work, but at home. Parent, Father, leader. You know, all those things apply. So, really good stuff there, but yeah, it’s in his space. We, you know, the PPA I ASI world is difficult. You know, it’s, it really is about how cheap can you do things? You know, it’s, it’s, you’re, you’re a broker competing for jobs, and it just becomes a race to the bottom, and it’s difficult to sustain and retain, and I think you’ve really carved out your niche in adding value, like I wrote that down, because that’s something I definitely will borrow, if you don’t mind. But how have I added value today, and what will I do to add value tomorrow? It’s a really good, really good takeaway message that hit hard. That’s really cool. Yeah.
Chris Wachowiak 22:11
So that alone has become like a litmus test of how I take on a project. Can I add value if I can’t and I don’t do it, okay? You know, I don’t go next step. Yeah? So it helps, you know, it saves time.
Curt Anderson 22:24
Yeah, it’s a powerful North Star for you Chris and just, you know, having the ability, you know, back to, like, you know, John, we like using that line niche down till it hurts. It hurts to tell a customer that I I’m not going to take your order. It hurts to, you know, work with a customer that you know, How admirable of what you did, Chris, to make that situation right. And just you took the bullet and just like, hey, it’s on me. I’m going to fix this. I got it. And just look at the trust. The you know what you did is you planted seeds your gardener. You planted seeds for the long term relationship by establishing that trust, instead of like, looking short sighted, of like, hey, how am I going to get out of this mess? How do I not how do I pass the buck? And, you know, share this, you know, because our egos get involved, right? So let’s go here. Chris, I mean, man, this is a good conversation. It takes a village to raise a child. It takes a village to raise a business. Now, you work with a wonderful, amazing group of folks. You have our friends here at apparel redefine, you know, when, say, when, when the other person does mess up. Like, what are you looking for for, like, those real strong, healthy relationships. You gave a wonderful shout out to our friend Derek at a power redefined. What are some of the traits that you’re looking for to build those long, lasting, healthy, trusting relationships that help driven your success,
Chris Wachowiak 23:38
reasonable response time, open. You know, communication like, you know, there’s been things that have gone wrong with very few orders. I say I got your margin, I believe, is well under 2% if not 1% with jobs we’ve sent to them. And, you know, the one thing that did fail, I just let them know, hey, this, this failed. And like, Well, yeah, I could see an email. There’s almost like a defense in this. Like, no, I’m not asking there, you know, not charging for it. I’m asking for anything. I’m saying, you know, hey, one piece failed. I don’t know why it happens. And the thing let them know is, like, Hey, your success rate’s way better than mine. That’s why I outsource it. So I’m just letting you know, in case you saw something, because I keep notes and documentation of how I pressed up when we pressed off. You know, we know the humidity of the day we’re I’m just completely hanging on, not the fun way. So, yeah, and I’ve been in their shop, I’ve seen their team. I’ve seen the ownership their team takes. You know, part of the thing, I got suckered into it, and I searched for years to find the right partner in decorating, and it was off. You think you end up buying Joshua Foster’s business? Right? That crazy
25:01
area. No, you guys
Chris Wachowiak 25:03
worked out. You guys, well, he’s how I got to you. He was doing business with you, and, yeah, we’re doing his production. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he’s no way he is on the shop. He had one of those big, fancy rock machines you guys got, which is so flipping cool. You know, you guys have the best toys. And I don’t want to invest million bucks in a business like that, like, I’ll let the guys that want to be especially in this. So I want us to move back to the North Star. It’s funny. I so the North Star, there’s a north star connection. So Jim Gordon is on Phoenix, Arizona. He is North Star promotions, North Star identity, that is, he’s always been my North Star too, ironically. So I’ve kind of created, we kind of craved out our own hybrid system of Ronin, as I say, an affiliate of North Star. So he does my invoicing, billing. He I’m such an ADHD person, I’m hyper. Is like, I’m done on the project, on the next thing, oh, yeah, I collect from him. Like, I was always one of my biggest downfalls. It’s like, you know, oh, you know, so well. I was like, Yeah, you know, we’re, I’m killing it, but I got, you know, 90 grand out 3030, to 90 days right now. I’m always, wait, where’s the money? I’m like, I gotta get one email, though, yeah. So, like, I just know your your weaknesses. Like, that’s the thing. And I found a partner that compliments me. And this industry is so easy to be shading. And, you know, gouge a little nickel here to dime there, and adds up over time. But anytime that we’ve had that possibility, it’s gone the opposite way of, like, it’s been overly No, I’ll take care of it. Or you take care I got this, like, we’re fighting to make sure that a person’s good, versus, like, that short term, like, well, he’s not going to hurt, yeah. So it’s been six years of that, and you know, that same thing I do my clients, so we talk about this, knowing who you are, and Extreme Ownership. I think a lot of it goes down to that golden rule to treat people how you want to be treated. And there’s been lots of times where I’ve gotten t shirt orders. And now this company stopped buying T shirts last year when they did binary freeze and open get the business back, because it was constantly, like 600,000 T shirts every week. And for three years that we were doing that printing with them. And then at that time, they had a lot of big size, between 2x and 6x and we’re talking a few 100 feet. 100 pieces, and it was cutter and Buckhead. They’re spent not the spin T, but they’re classic t that they’re offering. They don’t charge rough sizes. So I’m like, Hey, if you want, we can just use this black shirt in these plus sizes. It’s very similar to what you’re currently using. The only catch is, it’s gonna save you a few $1,000 are you okay with that? Like, what? I’m like, it’s gonna, I know you okay the sale to pay a higher price. But if you’re right, when you save me, like, grand or two grand, just let me know. And like, oh yeah. So like, you weren’t used to somebody doing that, like, I was constantly looking out for their money. And you know, if I had a sale price going on, like, Hey, these are unclosed out right now. Let’s just use these are cool with that. I can’t guarantee this price will be here next month, but we got it right now. So if you’re cool with it, let’s do this like you’re kidding me, absolutely. So it was just constantly, like, just being transparent as possible. You know, there are things that I have way better margins on where I have to do very custom, unique stuff that might, you know, it’s hard to find, and that really, initially we’re talking about, but the cut and repeat stuff, man, just don’t get greedy, and your customers will be loyal to you since you’re low. It’s not rocket science.
John LaRoy 28:35
Awesome. All right. Man, I
Curt Anderson 28:36
know. Man, Chris, I could listen to you for hours, dude, I know we’re coming into time. I want to start winding down. This has been like a pure masterclass. John, any takeaways, thoughts that you want to share? What we’ve heard from God this is like Christopher charges for like this class, because, like, this was like a total masterclass. John, what are your thoughts so far?
John LaRoy 28:56
Just part of his intro story. It just brought back a memory. I don’t think my parents were watching this, but maybe I could tell them to watch but different type of cup. But I had an obsession with cups, from like God, six years old to about 1213, and I was fortunate enough to go a lot of baseball games, a lot of hockey games, and back in those days, you know, the souvenir cups were awesome. And I would walk we would wait till the end of the game, and I would walk around not a care in the world, you know, not the hypochondria that you see kids now and parents. But I would walk out of games with three, 400 cups, you know, half filled with beer, dumping a beer out, peanuts shells all over, just disgusting, and then throwing it in the back of my parents car, and then using the dishwasher. And, like, over the years, I mean, 1000s and 1000s of cups, and my my parents, like, why do you want all these and, like, the first thing that came to mind is, like, when I get to college, I’m a. Row keggers and everyone’s gonna have really cool cups. And they’re like, how do you know what a kegger’s like? And then I went away to college, and I didn’t bring them with because I didn’t have room in the dorm. And then I got back when I was ready to move into my house, and all the cups are gone. My mom threw them away so, but I did keep, she kept a couple of the cool ones for me, the holographic ones. And, yeah, it’s really cool because, like, I just remember what game it was at the score. What happened, you know, by looking at a cup, and it is cool, we talk about, we don’t make memories. We make teaser, we don’t make T shirts with memories. And that same type of concept applied to a cup. And I was also guilty, then, in my college days, stealing cups from bars. And now my bar is a cup from all my the cool bars I went to. So, yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s cool,
Curt Anderson 30:51
awesome stuff, you know. And John, we’ll have to talk to your mom about denying you those cups of the keggers, you know, like, what’s going on? What’s going on here? So, Chris, as we wind down I’ve got, well, first off, I want to thank you so much, man, what an honor, what a privilege to hear your story and your passion, your enthusiasm for what you bring for your clients on your website. So first off, I strongly encourage, welcome everybody. Connect with Chris Wachowiak, yeah, wow. Was that right? I
Chris Wachowiak 31:17
see none. That was perfect. That’s what I thought.
Curt Anderson 31:19
Okay, man, how about that one? John, I practiced that out. So go to ronanbranding.com strongly encourage you. Check out Chris. Chris, my last question for you, and again, just to continue this masterclass, and I’m asking John shamelessly, just for me, You talk a lot about getting bold branding boldly. What advice do you have for whether it’s a new entrepreneur or maybe those seasoned older guy like myself, that’s an entrepreneur. What advice do you have? How do we brand boldly? What do you have for us there?
Chris Wachowiak 31:50
So the the biggest thing, and it’s gonna this will connect, I promise you. But it was, I think, 2007 micro doing dirty jobs at a time. And he had this saying that, you know, people always talk about falling patching things to complete horseshit. Like, yeah, it’s great you say that. But in theory, then all these people I’m interviewing and I’m doing these shows with are literally knee deep in shit, like, you know, just just doing the most disgusting jobs. And you see him smiling ear to ear, and that’s because what they learn to do is bring their passion to whatever they do. And that is always stuck with me. I don’t follow my passion. I see what passion I can bring, and that’s what I look for every single job. It’s like even it’s the most mundane routine cut and repeat. It’s like, No, I gotta attack this with passion. And it’s been a lot of it work with discipline, to like that idea. Mike Tyson and do something discipline ideas, doing the things you hate like you love it. Because this job can be very boring at times, and it’s not all fun. It’s it’s a lot of grinding, and just the biggest thing is, like, all right, I’m going to attack the things I hate the most right now first and get those done with. And it just comes fine. And I’ve learned, I’ve kind of reprogrammed, and my wife makes fun of me. Is like, oh, yeah, of course, it’s another opportunity. Like, yeah, it is like, I don’t have problems. I just see, like, okay, there’s an opportunity here. Where is it? I can’t, I literally can’t focus on the bad, and maybe it’s part of the ADHD, but it makes it horrible for him when we’re fighting and stuff, because, like, I can’t remember why, why she’s mad at me because I was great. Like, you’re awesome. Like, yeah, yeah. Well, it’s like, no, you’ve got to pick up the kids. Oh, yeah, yeah. No, no, I got my alarm set now, like I said, reminders, yeah, don’t forget. Well, excellent.
Curt Anderson 33:46
Well, Chris, I absolutely alright. So just a few takeaways. You know, we talked about, you know, what value do I bring? You’ve talked about, you know, the riches, the riches are in the niches, or riches earning niches, however you pronounce it. And as you were talking, you know about, you know, just doing those basic, mundane, mundane things. You know, I love the story. I look, I look over your shoulder. I’m a huge Beatles fan. I see, I think you have Beatles above you, if I’m like,
Chris Wachowiak 34:10
in fact, that’s just a box. Like, that’s so much I love packaging. Like, this is just a box. It’s just a box came in. And I just love the packaging. Like, that’s every aspect, every there’s a 360 approach everything. Like, I love, like, when you’re sending out T shirts, like, you know, how do you label it? You put a nice little, do you put a nice little box? You put it in, you you know, tape and, you know, it’s just, like, everywhere there’s a touch point, like, don’t, don’t miss the details. Like, it’s everything. Like, you get excited when you see that stuff in the mail. Like, the experience starts there, right? So I do want to touch one more thing, because John will appreciate so as we talk, I have my own manuals here. I have three sets of manuals that you know, everything to do everything. Why? Not. Pretty easily. So since I love printing T shirts and I love selling T shirts. I every month I make a difference, slogan or shirt or an idea. This one is perfectly imperfect, nice. And then my logos. This is, this is a golf season, so I do a lot of this. I stumbled onto this golf brand idea a few years ago. But it’s called the PHE to play around guys, since the PGA and I have a guy drinking beer. Then I made my own little roone and Samurai holding the golf club I worked in. But last month was impact over impress. And I got that from John C Maxwell’s book about communication. I tell the story. I write letters, they I send out to my customers and say, here’s how you impacted me. And the idea of impact over impresses. If you want to impress somebody, tell them all about yourself, or if you want to pack them, tell them about all your shortcomings and you know your vulnerabilities, and you’re going to impact people. And that’s what branding should do. We talk about the nostalgia thing. It should impact you if you’re done if you’re doing branding right, it should impact over impressed if you impact somebody with the rest of your life. And here’s how you impacted me the rest of my life. And thank you, and this is my gift. So every month I do a gratitude gift. We call it and my logo. My logo is always hidden in there, and it’s all about the message, because nobody cares. Every conversation piece is their favorite is themselves, so we print it for themselves, like remind yourself, like it’s not about you, it’s about your customer, and what would they appreciate and or what would make them feel appreciated? Let them know that you’re grateful to work with them, and that’s the biggest thing. Like keep grateful and have that attitude of gratitude that sounds easy. Thoughts feeling compassion came three for three. Make sure thoughts are feeling the actions all line up.
John LaRoy 36:38
Yeah, yeah. Oh, you impacted me big time on this, on this podcast,
Curt Anderson 36:46
yeah, I appreciate you’ve definitely impacted and man that so that was a John Maxwell line. The impact compared to that, that was very powerful right there. And just circling back to The Beatles, what I love? I caught a documentary with with Paul, and they talked about, you know, like they were playing to an audience of like, three people, you know, like, probably, you know, you know, in a little tiny bar in the middle Liverpool. And just, you know, kept showing up relentlessly, just doing the mundane, mundane things over and over. And so I just really like exactly, just respect and admire what you’re doing, what you’re bringing to your customers. Again, this was just a sheer sort of, keep saying, a pure masterclass on how to deliver success to your customers. I’ve got tons of notes. Thank you. Shamelessly, gave me tons of advice. Impacted me, John, we’re way over time your last how you take last shot, your last thoughts and words of wisdom is our conversation with Chris today.
John LaRoy 37:42
No, I just think it’s emblematic of the people we want to work with at apparel, redefine people that really make an impact. I mean, last week, we talked to Chad McLean and what he’s doing. You know, his purpose driven mission to help people with PTSD, traumatic brain injury, all types of unseen wounds. And you know what Chris is doing with his brand, where he’s adding value. He’s just not trading dollars with people, you know? He’s helping them grow their business, grow their brand, grow their purpose. One cup, 1t shirt, whatever, at a time. That’s the vehicle. But the purpose is the purpose. And we’re just thrilled, honored to work with people that have such passion. I really do feel like that is true. Like, one of my axioms that I tell my new hires here is that the saying that there is no stupid question is stupid there are stupid questions. And the other thing, like, you know, that’s really buzzed right now is follow your passion, and that’s complete bullshit, too. So, you know, your passions change throughout the years. You know, you might be a blonde, might be searching for blondes two years, and next, your passion changes to brunettes, you know, and my wife’s listening, yeah, we’re both people, so you gotta bring your passion. And that was, that was really cool, too. So, Chris, thank you so much. Yeah, one
Chris Wachowiak 39:03
last thing, because you touched the Beatles. And the thing about the Beatles with George Martin, everybody loved about working with The Beatles, and it’s something you can apply why people love to work with you. These Beatles were fun. It wasn’t their great musicians. They were just so much fun. And that was that was contagious, you know, like, the passion and energy do you see, it’s contagious. And just remember, have fun. Like, don’t take it too seriously, because no one gets out alive, you know,
Curt Anderson 39:30
no one gets out of here alive, and that you’re and, gosh, I know we could sit here all day. And that was that, that document, if you guys haven’t seen it, you know, Paul McCartney, man, it’s like, just that, you know, the enthusiasm that they brought, it was just so contagious. And Chris, your enthusiasm today, and I’m a dog fanatic, the name of your friend that you just put picked up there, please. Yeah,
Chris Wachowiak 39:49
this one’s Annie. And then I got everyone here out. She’s sleeping over here. Annie’s just ready to go. Looks like she’s ready. She knows, like, hey, it’s time. Obviously, the
Curt Anderson 39:57
kids Nice. That’s
39:58
awesome. Well, I. Guys,
Curt Anderson 40:00
we’ll wrap up. We’re way over time. Chris, dude, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Big round of applause for absolutely hitting a home run for us today. We appreciate you. We wish you just massive monster continued success. Ronin Branding, again, we’ll have Chris’s LinkedIn profile his website, even though he said he only wants referrals. Yeah, we’re going to shamelessly put it into the post anyway. So Chris, God bless you, dude. Thank you. Hang out with us for one second and we will see you guys next week. So John, thank you, brother. Uh, thank
John LaRoy 40:28
you. Thanks, Chris.
Chris Wachowiak 40:29
No thanks.