Ross Worden is the Founder and CEO of Conquest Maps, a manufacturing and e-commerce brand specializing in high-quality map products. With a background in industrial design, Ross turned his passion for travel and design into a successful business venture. Conquest Maps started out as a simple Etsy shop and evolved into a successful business, earning a place on the Inc. 5000 list three times. Based in Columbus, Ohio, Ross and his team manufacture and sell customizable travel maps that celebrate life experiences and connect people through shared adventures.
Breaking into the direct-to-consumer market can be a challenge for any entrepreneur. What does it take to transform a homegrown idea into a thriving business with a global reach? How do you navigate the ups and downs while maintaining the passion and drive to succeed?
According to Ross Worden, a seasoned entrepreneur and innovator, breaking into the DTC market starts with a deep-rooted purpose and unwavering determination. Leveraging local partnerships and investing in quality materials are key strategies to maintain control and ensure excellence. This strategic approach has allowed his business to scale while adapting to market demands. Ross also emphasizes the value of continuous learning and creativity in marketing, which has been crucial for driving growth and engagement.
In this episode of America Open for Business, host Cameron Heffernan sits down with Ross Worden, Founder and CEO of Conquest Maps, to discuss the journey of building a successful direct-to-consumer brand. They talk about the challenges of scaling from a small operation to a fully integrated business, the innovative product development process, and why staying inspired in marketing is essential.
This episode is brought to you by Your B2B Marketing.
Are you a mid-market B2B company facing challenges articulating your value proposition to customers? Without a well-defined strategy, allocating marketing funds may not yield optimal results.
Your B2B Marketing, a team of experts specializing in devising and implementing plans, helps entrepreneurs and leaders understand what makes them invaluable to customers and puts that front and center in their messaging for scalable growth.
Discover how strategic marketing and communication approaches can drive your expansion by visiting www.yourb2bmarketing.co or contacting us at info@yourb2bmarketing.co.
Narrator: 0:03
Welcome to America Open for Business, where we talk with high-growth entrepreneurs and leaders who have found success in one of the world’s most important markets.
Cameron: 0:15
Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of America Open for Business. I’m your host, Cameron Heffernan, and I’m glad to have on our program today Ross Worden of Conquest Maps, who I’ll introduce momentarily. Your B2B marketing that’s the sponsor, that’s us, of the program, and we are working with many mid-market companies in the B2B arena who face challenges as they enter new markets and look to expand. We handle end-to-end marketing, from strategy through execution, so our clients can be free to focus on growth. Discover how we can drive your expansion by visiting yourb2bmarketingco.
Cameron: 0:53
That’s not com Past. Guests on the show have been Brian Smith, the founder of the UGG brand of sheepskin boots and slippers from Australia, and Ben Tijia, the founder and CEO of Earthly Wellness, a $20 million plus direct-to-consumer e-commerce brand that is changing healthcare. Naturally, Today’s guest, I’m happy to welcome to the show, Ross Worden, who is the founder and CEO of Conquest Maps. That is a direct-to-consumer manufacturing and e-commerce brand that helps people collect, track and share experiences through meaningful, high-quality map products, which he’s going to show us. Ross Warden, welcome to America Open for Business.
Ross: 1:36
All right, Thank you for having me Cam.
Cameron: 1:38
Cool, so glad you can come on. Well, could we take a look at one of your maps, since we’ve got? If you’re listening to us on audio, you’re going to miss out on the visual. But let’s take a look at one of your products and I can explain it a little bit to the listeners. But show us what your maps look like.
Ross: 1:51
Yeah, sure, absolutely. Well, you got a good example behind me. Of course, this is one of our most popular products physical, pinnable travel maps so that you can track where you’ve been, where you want to go, your clients’ locations, destinations or locations that are important to you, right, for whatever those reasons may be. Our mission, of course, is to help a million people celebrate their life story, and we do that in lots of ways. But to get into the product itself, I have one of our smaller products here. This is called a Prism mini map actually, and what’s behind here is a pinnable substrate, and this one is.
Ross: 2:31
We sell beautiful decorative frames, but this is what a lot of our products really are. They’re a canvas, stretched canvas products where we design the graphics in house and we design or we create this, this internal frame, which you not really see, but kind of see on the back here. But we produce, we manufacture everything here, right in columbus, ohio, and that allows us to control you know a lot of our processes. It keeps, it allows us to use high quality materials and control a lot of things domestically. So we don’t have to import a lot of stuff from overseas. We don’t have to. You know, we use um like a poplar, which is a domestically grown weed, effectively. Uh, you know, there’s not much use for these, these trees, uh, in many ways, except they are very straight, very consistent grain. There’s not pretty colored, and so we could put those inside and um keep everything domestic. Use local mills and it really works out. So, yeah, we’ve got our whole 15,000 square foot campus here where we make everything and we sell all B2C e-commerce Cool.
Cameron: 3:34
You showed an example. There’s the larger one behind you and then the smaller one you showed were different. It’s customizable options. What are the different options that people can pick from when they’re selecting your product?
Ross: 3:50
Sure. Well, so what you see behind me is kind of our full-size lineup. That’s our biggest single panel behind you though you have no sense of scale, since it’s a handful of feet behind me that’s a 48 by 32. We also have a triptych three panel. That’s 54 by 36, but we go all the way down to about a 24 by 16 on that kind of style, and so you’ve got all kinds of different styles to choose from, different aesthetics, so that it fits, you know what makes sense in your home, your office, your environment, whatever, um. But we’ve also got a smaller line of products too, which is one of the things that I just showed you there, and, um, those are lower price point, lower uh or smaller size, so that you can fit it, say just, I don’t know, in a hallway or a bathroom or in a cubicle, or it’s a different way to commemorate things.
Ross: 4:31
And as far as personalization goes, like I said, sizes, different styles and colorways, if you want to think of it that way. And, of course, even most importantly, you can see this just probably barely right here. It says the world with two pin lines indicating past adventures and yet to explore. Well, you can customize any of that and this, this customizability varies by map style, but that’s our legend and that’s what you can customize. So you can go ahead and put Cameron’s travels on here and you know whatever you want to put for those pin lines, and so it’s totally uniquely yours. It’s printed right on the map and it’s one of a kind at that point.
Cameron: 5:09
Okay, it seems like it’d be great for, like, a milestone gift graduation or wedding or a new child being born to track for, you know, a lifetime.
Ross: 5:18
Absolutely, it’s a highly giftable thing and it’s honestly, a gift for it’s. It’s cliche at this point, but it’s a gift for those people who are hard to buy for because they already have everything. They don’t have this. This is a very unique item and, uh, it’s, it’s a very cherished item. It’s something that’s going to hang in their house for a long time.
Ross: 5:36
So I mean even for for businesses, um, as as a gift, we could put your logo on there, for example, cam, and we could. You could give this to your clients, no pressure. But I mean, seriously, this is, this is going to hang on someone’s home for a long time. They’re going to interact, they’re going to love with it and they’re honestly, they’re going to have conversations around it and they’re going to connect with other people. Everyone who walks past that map is going to have something to say about it, because they can identify with one of those pins somehow about it, because they can identify with one of those pins somehow. You know and it’s it’s a much deeper thing than just a map that that pin is a series of memories, it’s a collection, it’s a way of interacting with those around you, and that’s what makes it kind of special.
Cameron: 6:15
Yeah, amazing. I mean the the. The pin itself is tiny, but the stories and the memories and the emotions that are going into that one little location are huge. Precisely, I was in a coffee shop last summer in Savannah, georgia and I saw one of your maps on the wall at a coffee shop as we were waiting. Good thing for an entryway to a busy place, and, man, that thing was loaded up with a lot of pins, and just to think about where all those people had come from. I always look for the most obscure place. Have I been there too? And there’s, of course, a lot in the Atlanta metro area. But look across the world. They’ve come to this little coffee shop. Just the stories that we can explore there.
Ross: 6:52
Yeah, it’s very, very interactive and everybody can identify with it somehow or another, and it’s really fun. You should go peruse our reviews sometime if you both want to be entertained and possibly shed a tear or two, because it’s pretty wild the things that our customers use these maps for and we share our reviews internally just to talk about them. And man, we’re really a part of people’s lives in a pretty special way. You never think about it on the surface, but it’s very touching. This is a heartfelt product, for sure.
Cameron: 7:22
So we looked at a couple global world maps. What kind of options do people have when they’re picking the product? Countries, states, what are?
Ross: 7:30
the options, Sure, yeah. Well, I mean I’ll say that let’s say 70%, I’m kind of making the number up, but the vast majority of our sales are the world map. People like to track where they’ve been in the whole world. They like to see the world. But that said, depends on your use case. Right, the US comes probably in. We’ve got um every continent, except I don’t think we offer Antarctica right now, Cause, honestly, let’s be honest, not that many people are going there.
Ross: 8:11
Um, we haven’t gotten enough of those requests, but, um, and we have every U S state uh as well. Um, right now, um, and actually, uh, I’ll I’ll spill a little bit of beans here for you because nobody knows this yet but we’re actually releasing a product here pretty soon where you’ll be able to kind of choose your own area. You’d be able to get kind of a modernized map of, say, your home city or a city that was special to you for some reason or another, or a state, or you can zoom in and out as much as you want Very interactive, and it’s going to be a lot of fun for people.
Cameron: 8:48
Very cool. I’m going to show your website here. People can take a look and you’re a direct to consumer site. It’s. Do you have people visiting from all over the world? Where do you see the bulk of your visitors from?
Ross: 9:03
Yeah, so it’s probably in the ballpark of 90,. 95% is domestic here. Um, it’s a but, but that’s really largely because we’re not trying to go abroad too too hard right now. We definitely sell a lot to, relatively speaking, uh Europe, um, mostly say, uk um, and as well as, uh, australia, canada, of course, is actually probably our second or our first international um, of course, is actually probably our second or our first international destination.
Ross: 9:27
But the reason is we got pretty large products and they’re big, they’re heavy and to ship them it costs a lot of money. It’s not insurmountable by any means. We’ve got really good negotiated rates with couriers and whatnot. But you know, it’s just not something that we push super hard right now. But there’s a lot of opportunity there and we’ll continue to work that direction. We operate on Shopify and actually they’ve just released some really impressive new features where they work with a partner and they cover all of the customs and duties and all of that, and by that I mean they deal with collecting it and remitting it, and therefore it takes all the strain off of us, the seller, and it makes it very seamless for the buyer. And so we’re on the cusp of, you know, possibly expanding further into the international markets with a bit more. You know intent, but we’ve always shipped internationally. I think we were. We’ve probably shipped to 70 or 80 different countries at this point, yeah.
Cameron: 10:28
I mean, you can do it. Your product is light. Of course the bigger ones would probably be tough, I suppose, to keep it protected, but the weight wouldn’t be such an issue.
Ross: 10:36
Yeah, yeah, and I mean that that far of a trip you can get damages. We have a very robust product and we package it well, but things are out of our hands when our courier’s throwing it from truck to truck, um, especially packing stuff into a plane, um, but it’s nothing insurmountable, it’s just, uh, we have got to be considerate of all those factors, sure yeah, how did uh you get the idea for this?
Cameron: 10:58
how did this evolve and into what it you know originally you came up with and to what it is today, totally.
Ross: 11:05
Well, this idea actually came shortly after my wife and I got married. We got married in 2012 and we went on a cruise for our honeymoon, and she’s from a family where they used to go to the vacation they had like their vacation spot. It was up in Michigan and it was beautiful. I mean, it is beautiful there. It’s an awesome place to go.
Ross: 11:24
Um, but I grew up where we would just go for the most part, explore different places, and so we had this interesting dichotomy where we have this really traditional family and we have a fun, or we have a exploration and trying new things, versus going back to the same. So we were just thinking you know what? Um, we should, we should start traveling more places together and that would be a lot of fun. This cruise was cool. We, we experimented with that. Um, so you know, the natural first step that I thought was well, we’ll hang up a map on our wall and we’ll start keeping track of where we want to go together and where we’ve been together. Um, what I found out there was I’ll just be blunt and say, complete garbage. It was either tacky or really poorly made, or it looked like it belonged in a classroom and it just wasn’t a home decor piece that I wanted to hang up, right? So I’m an industrial designer by career at that point, and education, um, and I just decided I was going to figure out how to make this myself. Um, fast forward, let’s call it, about six or nine months, something like that.
Ross: 12:23
It took a while to pedal through this and you know I had no real plan, um, but I made it and, uh, figured out how to make version 1.0 and I’m like you know what? Well, I gave it to my wife and she’s like, wow, this is great. Um, and it was cool. We hung it up and it was, it was fun. Um, we got all the pins put in there and it was super interactive and awesome. We really loved it, right. I’m like you know what? This checks a lot of boxes for kind of a business. I had discovered the four hour work week on the floor of my friend’s vehicle going to lunch one day and I’m like, hey man, can I read this? This is cool. He’s like, yeah, I don’t read for it, and so, anyway, that that really changed some things in my head. I was like you know what? There’s something to this business thing.
Ross: 13:07
It’s kind of weird, but whatever, and so it was lurking in the back of my head and um I’m like you know what, I don’t have to invest a lot of capital into this because I can physically make it myself. It’s a higher price point item, which is good because it would support margins that I can actually try to make something out of it. Um, um, I don’t know it, just it, just it just hit some boxes. So I decided I would invest kind of my life savings. At that point in my life it was a while back, bear in mind I was, um, paying off lots of student debt, so my life savings was, let’s call it, about $500. I put into that Um I say it a little jokingly, but not that far off Um, so I put 500 bucks into this.
Ross: 13:45
I bought enough materials to produce five more of these maps and, um, I listed them up on Etsy and I named that store conquest maps, because the legend that we had put on our map set our conquest meaning. Um, this is our deliberate journey through the world. It’s our intentional desire to see these places. Um, I want to be, you know, I want to see this stuff. It’s not that we’re wandering through life, we are going with passion, and passion Exactly. And so you know I conquer can have negative connotations, so I don’t really like to say we’re here to conquer the world, but the point is we really wanted to do some cool stuff and so I decided to call the store I didn’t even think of it as a company at that point in time called a Conquest Maps and that was what the Etsy store is called, and so I listed that. It came within about a week.
Ross: 14:40
We sold, I sold it. I’m so in the habit of saying we it was, it was a lie at that point sold it. And then I’m like okay, great, I have a product, how the hell do I ship this thing? And so, literally, literally, I I was scrambling, I had, I didn’t have cardboard, you know, I didn’t know what to do. So I actually started driving around to big box stores here in Columbus. I’m like, hey, do you guys have like a old box I can use, because I’m like they bring in desks and they assemble them. They probably have a box right. So, literally I think it was like office of my next or something I found an old box that they let me have. I flipped it inside out, I built my own box and I packaged it up and I shipped it and there it went and uh, that was that was the early days of conquest maps right there. What year was that? That would have been 2013.
Cameron: 15:26
Yeah, I think we launched in, uh, april, april or may uh, yeah, so we’re 11 years right now wow, and you think that’d be like looking at, uh, my, my oldest son is 12 and I look at what his level of capability and maturity is compared to when he was three and four. It’s a huge change, but he’s still got a long ways to go. And I think you know one of the one of the guests we had in the show, brian Smith. His book is called that the Birth of a Brand, the metaphor of brands and companies as people going through all those stages and phases, and how hard it is and how there’s just two steps forward, one step back.
Cameron: 16:00
I think as entrepreneurs, we face that every day. I think, for what you do, it’s harder because you’re dealing with all those things that me, as a professional services and agency creative provider, doesn’t have to worry about. You know inventory, physical product and goods, all of that. How do you? How do you kind of sort through all that? And, and you know, keep on the right point toward the North star.
Ross: 16:24
Yeah, yeah, you’re right. I mean, I’ve always thought of this as kind of running two businesses at the same time. It’s a manufacturing business and it’s an e-commerce business. It’s obviously very tied together, but at the same time, both segments of that business requires very different things, and so it’s been a lot. It’s definitely been a lot, especially when it came from me wearing every single hat in the business to now. You know my awesome team literally offloading piece by piece by piece, has been definitely a challenge, especially when I’m very tied into diverse collection of experiences, let’s call it, with my past jobs and how I grew up and that sort of thing, and so I’ve been able to really wear all of these hats. Maybe I’m not the greatest or best suited for them, but I’ve been able to at least get through, you know, wearing those hats, and so that’s been a big component of it.
Ross: 17:26
It’s definitely not for everybody and in hindsight well, in hindsight, I do it again anyway, but I didn’t know what I was getting myself into. Let’s put it that way. But then you bring on people who can help and understand things better than you, or at least can take, can, can take over for certain things, and, um, it’s, there’s nothing easy about it. It’s nothing simple. It’s just, uh, understanding each component of of the business as we need to, understanding how to preserve that cashflow, how to make investments and, honestly, this is the first time I’ve ever had a business of this size. Literally every day is is that right? So, um, it’s all, in a sense, trial and error. It’s hopefully learning from other people’s mistakes. It’s listening to awesome podcasts like this, where I can glean a little tidbit of something here and there that I can, you know, apply it to my business.
Cameron: 18:19
It’s being open all the time, so, yeah, I love that concept of applicability and it’s really interesting to me. For somebody like you in a consumer business, everything that you do is at a higher level as far as volume, page views, visitors, content. You got to crank out add budgets. But I think B2B companies providers, services companies can learn a lot from B2C companies, because they just have to hone their game better and earlier in their evolution. How did you learn that stuff as you went? If you go back to those early days, how did you start to pick up that knowledge and apply it?
Ross: 18:56
Oh man. Well, I joined groups, I read lots of books. I tried to network as best as I could. It turns out you actually don’t just stumble across people who are able to relate to this sort of stuff. So in my case I really had to seek them out, and podcasts have been a really important thing. But it’s one of our core values. We’ve kind of encompassed it here recently, but one of our core values has always been growth and learning in one way or another, and that’s a core, fundamental aspect of me personally and that’s what I’ve been taught growing up. But it’s essential to being able to stay relevant, to take all the information in, to process it and be as nimble as you can. But marketing is quite a thing and it’s different for every business. But and honestly, the more I learn about it, the more I’m a little bit jealous, cam.
Ross: 19:54
In some ways, of course, the grass can be greener, but you’re right, d2c is not easy. We’re dealing with big, big numbers for individual you know transactions every time and the recurring revenue model is not really a thing that we’re operating with right now. So we have to really work for every single sale every time and then scale that. But the service side as well is very fascinating because you’re really solving problems. You know, we’re a lifestyle brand. We’re not necessarily solving a problem per se. We’re providing an awesome thing that provides, um, you know, happiness and encouragement, inspiration and ways to connect with other people. It’s a very positive thing. But between this and toilet paper, you’re probably going to pick toilet paper, is my guess Um, whereas, you know, in a B2B world, uh, you’re solving problems. There’s no other reason for the most part, and that’s what makes it really compelling.
Ross: 20:52
You know, whatever future ventures I find myself entering into, I’m of course, very interested in that dynamic, because solving problems is essentially what an entrepreneur does. It is simply it’s what an industrial designer does. I’ve learned that early on. It’s creative problem solving. All of businesses is a series of problems that need solved. You can fight that or you can be okay with that, but it is the case and so that’s. That’s kind of what makes it always interesting, always different, always new, but always challenging, and you’ve got to be able to embrace that and that’s been. You know, the lesson is never fully learned, I think, because there’s always a curve ball and then you got to figure that out.
Cameron: 21:33
Sometimes you don’t feel like it but?
Ross: 21:36
but it’s cool stuff. You know that’s experiences that not many people are fortunate enough to be able to have in their lifetimes, and so you know it’s also an honor, in that sense, to be able to experience these things. Yeah, To learn the highs and the lows right. The highs and the lows right, Right, Right.
Cameron: 21:51
That’s the part that a lot of people when they meet you. You’re an entrepreneur. That’s really exciting and interesting. You don’t see all the hard times or when you’re. You know the sleepless nights. I had them a lot myself and hey, are we going to be able to make payroll this month? Or, hey, is that client going to go away? Things are out of your control, like an acquisition of a client. Bang, then you’re out of client all of a sudden. That was a big part of your revenue and I think personally I always say that the more that you learn just makes you that much more valuable and knowledgeable for the next obstacle that you’re facing.
Ross: 22:25
Yeah, someone once told me that really a CEO’s job. I’ve always been reluctant to call myself CEO. I’m like what? That’s not me. Well, it is me actually, but what it is is a dot connector. The role of us as CEOs has less to do with being in the weeds when we’re doing our job right anyway, but stepping back and seeing this, this, this, this and this, and seeing what the overlap is and connecting those thoughts, and that’s where the breadth of knowledge, the breadth of experiences, the more knowledge you can kind of collect in different areas, the better you can see different overlaps. And I think, again, that’s been one of my advantages. In a sense it’s what’s gotten us here, at least from my leadership standpoint in many ways, and so that’s what’s fascinating too, right, and it makes it fun, right?
Cameron: 23:17
And how did you get to? Because, basically, from what you’re explaining, I’ve seen your facility. It’s impressive. How did you get from basically let’s call it garage or basement production to now basically full vertical integration in one facility, from the e-commerce side to the manufacturing, to the fulfillment? Tell us about that journey.
Ross: 23:39
The journey was a very short period of time. It was literally the foot of my bed in a one-bedroom apartment. I would store all of our components there and I would build things at night after work and my facility there. But then when we bought our first house, I literally sought out a house that had an unfinished basement where I could carry four by eight sheets of MDF down to the basement so I could put a table saw in there. I built a wall down the middle so that I could have my dusty manufacturing side in my printer and office and inventory side and honestly, that was the foundation right there. I had kind of all the areas right there and literally towards the let’s call it I don’t know 2015, I think I was having people come over and work in the basement.
Ross: 24:31
Um, you know, I had two of my friends who were my employees and we started operating as a business, and so then it was 2016. And I realized there’s no way that I’m going to be able to survive this holiday season and work my full-time job. Yeah, and so I’m like I need to make this holiday season and work my full-time job, and so I’m like I need to make a decision. And then now’s the time where I gotta I gotta actually go all in, and so, um, I jumped in here and, uh, I got one unit. So this is there’s this is a business complex. There’s a bunch of units here.
Ross: 25:00
Um got up and running in in one, uh, of these business units here and um put together kind of the same type of thing, just bigger, and we put it all together just in time for holiday season. And then it’s just been iterative ever since, right, you just kind of keep building on and keep tearing stuff down and rebuilding better and trying to optimize. And now, yeah, we’ve got like five different units here. It’s a lot, it’s definitely a lot, but it’s very iterative. So that, yeah, we’ve got like five different units here. It’s a lot, it’s definitely a lot, but it’s very iterative. So that’s really the gist of it.
Cameron: 25:32
Well, tell us a bit about your Black Friday season experience. Let’s stay from pre-Halloween up into Christmas. What’s that like at Conquest Maps?
Ross: 25:44
Well, this is yet another cross section where I’d say we have two different businesses. It is very difficult in that sense because we from January through let’s call it, november 1st, but really Black Friday it is one business, then Black Friday through Christmas it’s a completely different business. I mean, we do like 45% of our revenue during holiday season, or during at least Q4, 40, 45%, and so you know we need at least double the staff, right, and we need all of our stuff prepped. I mean, we have a lot of really incredible um customized machinery. That’s that’s really made to be fluid, really precise Um, it’s kind of a balance between handmade and automated, so it’s very hands-on, um human touch, but we also have great semi-automated tools to allow us to produce faster.
Ross: 26:41
But still, even with that, we definitely still have bottlenecks, right. We can only do so much and we’re up against that threshold during holiday season, and so we have to prep different components in advance, kind of spread that out, and then, as that wave comes through, we basically cash out the bank that we’ve been putting deposits into, from an inventory standpoint, throughout the remainder of the season. So it’s very tricky. All of our conversations are around holiday season. But then the flip side is how do we maintain a profitable business due to the overhead we need to maintain throughout the course of the year? There’s no, even for us. It’s not staying month to month, it’s always different. You know, it’s not staying month to month, it’s always. It’s always different.
Cameron: 27:27
So it’s interesting I’m always amazed by those really seasonal kinds of businesses like swimming pool production or, you know, lawnmowers and things that are, you know, skiing, skiing equipment. What are they doing in july? And? And on the the podcast interview with brian smith, he talked about that because his original market was surfers and in Southern California, you know, it says a certain season for that and then it was very cyclical and he would have a part-time job in the in the other part of the season. I think of like NFL referees who are also chemists in the in the non-party NFL season. And that’s gotta be a hard thing for you to to kind of, you gotta try to calibrate and even as much as possible, knowing it’s never going to be completely even.
Ross: 28:09
No, honestly. I mean, like I said at the beginning, we have a very gift centric item or series of products, or core product line, like I just discussed with you. We do have other stuff too and we continue to release other things, but it’s very gift centric. That’s the core of what we do and we just kind of have to embrace that and continue to try to work with that as best as we can. And it gets, in a sense, easier as we get bigger, because we have more people to stabilize. You know our base threshold of people. We can support more infrastructure and then be more adaptable and fluid as as as we need to flex up.
Ross: 28:46
But, um, all the same, it is, it is a bear. So, um, I don’t know, I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t again, I wouldn’t necessarily have chosen this, but we don’t really have much of a choice and that’s okay, right, that’s just one of the dynamics of the business and we’ll continue to try to find other ways to offset that. But that’s we’ve never hit that home run, to be perfectly honest, and that’s okay too. And that’s okay too. That’s, you know, one of the keys to running a small entrepreneurial business is being willing to fail and letting the team know that that’s okay too.
Ross: 29:28
One thing I tell them all the time is we’re probably going to try about 20 things and one of them is going to be the thing that actually works. You know, we don’t need to be discouraged when we launch a product and like nobody buys it. I mean, obviously we try to do our research and avoid that, but sometimes you just have to put it out there before you can understand what’s going to happen with it, and that’s fine. You know, we try a lot of different things and they’re not all going to stick. That’s okay. But that’s how we find that one that is going to stick and that’s how we can continue moving forward.
Cameron: 29:56
And you apply that like in your case. It applies both to the actual product product development decisions you’re making there, but as well as the marketing side of things, I and my audience can definitely relate to that where it’s, that’s marketing advertising. Let’s just try four things. If one of them turns out, great, you don’t worry about the three that didn’t work out, because that’s part of your batting average.
Ross: 30:17
Totally it is. It’s all elements of any business or, if you really want to go as far, it’s your whole life. You know it’s efficiency with manufacturing, it’s trying seeing what email actually gets the clicks. It’s exactly all that stuff and that’s one of the critical components being comfortable with seeing things not work as uncomfortable as it seems and it is being mentally prepared for that actually tends to be a good thing in the long run.
Cameron: 30:48
So the show is called America Open for Business and if we get the listeners that we want, hopefully we’re getting people in other countries that are tuning in and downloading the show, getting people in other countries that are tuning in and downloading the show. So if someone is looking at a you know, let’s say they’re in Europe and they’ve got a product that had some success with and they’re looking at entering here or perhaps growing here in the U S as someone who’s run a you know decade old, uh uh, direct to consumer business that was three times Inc 5,000 award winner, which is a fantastic accolade. What, what experience would you share with someone like that?
Ross: 31:25
Wow, that’s very wide open, kim. So my perspective is I like to control things and I try to bring as much in house as possible. Um, generally speaking, um, and I and I really largely mean that from a manufacturing standpoint, because, um, if I’m it’s I guess I kind of mentioned this already once Um, I like to have things domestically. I want to buy our boxes because domestically, like in town, domestically, not just in the country, because those shipping costs add up, so we need to have partners that are very close to us, so I don’t have to spend all of our money on just getting the things here, I just want to buy the things themselves. Right, same with our raw materials. I wanna, I wanna spend as little as possible and time too, right, um, from?
Ross: 32:19
Uh, if I’m buying um rainforest pine from indonesia or something which I don’t do, or we, it’s like emergencies, but that’s what. That’s what the frame world in general kind of runs on like. It comes from brazil and indonesia and all sorts of right, but I don’t want to say there’s nothing wrong with it. There may be things wrong with that. I don’t personally try to do that, but we have good reasons to be here on this side, so it’s being very conscious of all of those little needle movers that having partnerships can solve when they’re very close at hand. That having partnerships can solve when, when they’re very close at hand On the marketing side, we actually leverage agencies. We have people worldwide, because it actually makes a lot more sense in that case. So I don’t necessarily say that as a blanket statement, but when we’re dealing with physical things, yeah, keeping it close.
Cameron: 33:13
Right, okay, yeah, it’s today’s a much more global creative production environment where, if you don’t have a strategy, some so somewhere else for production, whether it’s physical production or, you know, creative you’re probably going to be, you know, trailing.
Ross: 33:28
Yeah.
Cameron: 33:30
How do you guys, when you, when you look at where you want to grow and, do you know, product innovation or new product launch? Can you talk us through your process a little bit?
Ross: 33:40
Sure, yeah, insofar as there is a process, because inspiration kind of comes from all sorts of different places. We operate under the traction methodology, the EOS methodology, which probably many of your listeners will have heard of and, if they haven’t, probably worth checking out All the same. We’re on a cadence right, and so we have a quarterly cadence for the most part where we’re setting our goals for the coming quarter, and that’s where I, being largely in charge of product development, will bring my ideas to the table on what we should probably be working on, as well as discussing that with the team at large. Everyone’s kind of contributing ideas throughout the course of the preceding quarter. We put stuff kind of in the parking lot right that we can bubble up and say, hey, is this the time for this? And that’s one way we just are always looking for the opportunities. We’re listening to what the customers are telling us and saying, hey, we really want this product. Okay, Well, we, we may want to make this. People are really saying this a lot, um, or a lot of times. What happens is I’ll take a deep dive into one of our channels, say Etsy or Amazon or something, and I’ll go and notice like a gap in the marketplace, and it will.
Ross: 35:00
One of our best successes last year, with with products, came from from a result of this just digging in and saying, wow, you know, I see I see a product kind of like this is moving really well right now, but it’s not as good as it could be. We could definitely do it better and, honestly, we could do it cheaper. Why don’t we try this? And so then we do, and it was just an absolute takeoff. So, and honestly, there’s other times where I do stuff just because I want to and it seems like it’d be fun. I released some designs that I’m like there’s no way we’re going to sell many of these, but I don’t know.
Ross: 35:37
You know that’s part of the fun of it, right, just create something because I want to, and there’s nothing wrong with that either. You know the team encourages that and vice versa. So we’ve got to be making, you know, products that can ultimately drive the business forward. But we can get inspiration from any different place, and that’s what makes it fun. But we can get inspiration from any different place, and that’s that’s what makes it fun. Um, but we were really good at what we are good at, and so we try to leverage our current technology, our current processes as much as possible, um, and and really leverage that. That’s that’s how we can. We we’ve had to invest a lot of money into this equipment right and streamline this whole process, and so the more we can leverage that, the better. So it’s like we’ve got some kind of loose guardrails, but we can do a lot within those.
Cameron: 36:25
How do you get new ideas for marketing or a campaign or how to position something? Do you come up with those on your own? Internally work with the agency How’s that come together?
Ross: 36:36
I’ll tell you, marketing ideas are almost one of the easiest things ever, and I don’t say that egotistically, it’s just that if you go ahead and listen to a podcast or listen to an audio book, that’s how I usually consume my information. First Audio book, because I’ll be driving or something, and um, and I got three little kids that you know don’t let me read books Um, it just one little thing can trigger something. It just happens. It just happens, right. So my honest advice is just keep a keep an open mind and consume information and then write down or type out those ideas as they come to you, because in my case, they definitely disappear very quickly as well. I won’t be able to remember them later, but really interesting, good ideas can come out of there, but it’s only with the right impetus. It’s some book I don’t remember what.
Ross: 37:32
It was noted that you should just drive home differently. Sometimes you should change your day up just in weird ways, right? Because you never know what that new stimulus is going to make happen within your brain, and that’s why I just there’s never, ever no idea for marketing, that is, if I’m ever just dried up man, I’m just I go listen to something and it just they start happening.
Cameron: 38:01
And I feel trouble if that’s the case. In the book Purple Cow, seth Godin talks about that in a couple of different vantage points, how the ideas can come from all kinds of places. You know B2B should borrow from B2C and should try to. You should go to other industries and get your ideas from other sources. And even countries can’t afford to fly to a foreign country. Go to a for uh, go to a chinese restaurant or go to a spanish restaurant. And again, just different perspective, different way of looking at things. Or like when I go to trade shows and events, I prefer to go to events of bankers, accountants, lawyers versus other marketing agencies. Yeah, because I think that’s like you get more of a cross section of who we want to be in front of. That’s different.
Ross: 38:46
Right, and just imagine that if you get your whole marketing team and agency and everybody kind of thinking in this vein what you can do, when you bring all that brainpower together in one room, you can find some good. Bring all that that brainpower together in one room you can.
Cameron: 39:03
You can find some good ideas. There’s no doubt Sky’s the limit. Well, I’m going to ask you one last question, but before that I’m going to say thank you, ross Worden from Conquest Maps that’s conquestmapscom for being our guest on America Open for Business. It’s been fantastic to have you on the show. We look forward to watching the company grow and thrive. And so I’ll leave you with this last question to contemplate, which is, if you’re sitting down with a new business owner who was thinking of putting an idea up there on, let’s say, etsy and throwing it out to the world, what advice would you share with them?
Ross: 39:36
What advice share with them? What advice? Well, one of the pieces of advice that I’ve given in situations like this in the past is make sure you have a reason why you’re doing it. You’ve got a real it. You’ve got a real crazy path ahead of you and there are going to be ups, really awesome ups. There are going to be really hard downs, and I have seen so many people in my life, around me my peer group either just not do anything, they give up because there’s not the drive. And I’m not saying it’s anyone’s better than anyone. It’s just that when there’s not enough kind of pain or itch to get to that place that you’re going to, whatever that reason may be, it doesn’t matter. It just you’ve got to have something that drives you to want to get past this hurdle, because otherwise it’s just too tempting to give up. But the upside can absolutely be worth it.
Ross: 40:43
And I never fathomed how far this company would ever grow. I never truly envisioned that it had the potential it did. And now I imagine this kind of walking in a tunnel that gets wider and wider and wider the further you go out, um, and. But you can only see so far. So the further you walk along this path, the more you can see and understand uh, that is possible. And so now that I’m standing here, this opening is so much larger and I see so much greater potential and potential, and it kind of never stops, in that sense. So it’s amazing. It’s definitely amazing. It’s a really cool path, but you’ve got to be driven by something that gets you through the hard times.
Cameron: 41:32
And if it’s just money or pay it at the end, it’s probably not going to be enough to get you through those hard times.
Ross: 41:38
Probably not. Yeah, depends on what that money means to you, though.
Cameron: 41:42
Sure Well Ross Worden of Conquest Maps. Thanks so much for joining us on America Open for Business.
Ross: 41:50
All right, Thank you sir, appreciate it.
Narrator: 41:55
Thanks for listening to the America Open for Business podcast. We’ll see you again next time and be sure to click subscribe to get future episodes.
Sign up to join our mailing list and be alerted when new episodes are released
