Equation of Excellence

Rabah (00:01.305)
Dude, that's an incredible story. I did not know you had all that background. That's insane. That's super insane. How did you land on the name?

Caleb Ulffers (00:05.93)
Yeah, it's wild.

Caleb Ulffers (00:10.97)
Uh, you know, we had tossed around a handful of things and my co-founder Nick, um, who comes from the design world, he was helping us with some of the more creative aspects and you brought a couple of weird ones to the table. You know, we were in the fitness space and we were kind of thinking more fitness-y, organized, maybe we call it something to do with bags and he's like, Hey guys, like I got a couple of, I had a couple of like random ones and one of them was like salt, one of them was Haven, one of them was.

Rabah (00:26.137)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Caleb Ulffers (00:37.002)
I remember the others, but they were all like, kind of like weird. He's like, I wanted to do an exploration to like kind of off the cuff. And when he talked about Haven, um, being kind of like, you know, this place, and that's kind of what we landed on and extrapolated this idea of like, Haven is the spot that you go to every day, whether that's your workout, yoga, running a walk meditation, yeah, it's this thing. It's a safe spot. And like, for me, like with someone, uh, someone who has ADHD, like I've always used the gym as a, as a way to get like.

Rabah (00:57.157)
That's beautiful.

Caleb Ulffers (01:06.946)
physical energy out so it helps my mental energy be more focused. And so like, yeah, like every day, man, like I've gone to the gym and it's been such a practice in my life, partly because I love it, but partly because like, if I don't go to the gym, like I get antsy and distracted and it makes my symptoms worse. And so it has always been this like haven, I can go and it doesn't matter if it's a good day or a bad day, if I'm angry, if I'm sad, if I'm happy, like it's become this really like safe spot for me.

Rabah (01:09.825)
Yeah. Man, that's beautifully put.

Caleb Ulffers (01:33.678)
And as we talked about that, a lot of people were like, yeah, that's a 100% what like my daily practice, my gym, whatever it is, is to me.

Rabah (01:42.797)
That's beautiful, man. That's beautiful. Speaking of partners and co-founders, how did you guys meet? What was the kind of criterion? Because I've heard some horror stories, but I've also heard solo founders. It's a grind where finding that, if you can find that partner, you know, much analogous to life, it can make everything just so much easier versus the solo entrepreneurs, especially if you want to build a behemoth. I think it's one thing if you...

Caleb Ulffers (01:58.605)
Yeah.

Rabah (02:09.741)
you know, or just cranking on something. You want to have a little $10,000 a month, $20,000 a month business or something. There's nothing wrong with keeping it in house, but I think having a co-founder is a path and it sounds like you found a really a match in Haven. See what I did there folks. I'm on it. He's back. Um, yeah. So just tell me about how you sourced them. How do you know them? Uh, was there any kind of beige or red flags that you were like, Hey, if any of these pop up or on the opposite of like, Hey, these are really green flags. Let's go.

Caleb Ulffers (02:25.306)
He's on it.

Caleb Ulffers (02:39.998)
You know, we did kind of the classic early thing where it was me and my brother. So there's three of us, co-founders is me and my brother. We had the idea. We're like, well, it's like research and kind of try to figure this out. And then we asked a friend, uh, Nick, the guy I was talking about earlier. Because he can draw. And we were literally like trying to concept this and we're like, we don't really know much about design. We don't know how to draw. We don't know how to like think more than just like, you know, we want organization. And so we're like, we should.

Rabah (02:56.142)
Mm-hmm.

Caleb Ulffers (03:08.406)
work with someone who knows more about the concepts of design. And so we started talking to Nick, who's a longtime friend of ours. And we're like, Hey, can you like help us think through how to actually design something? And he was like, yeah, that sounds fun. And, you know, after like a few months, we were like, Hey, like, we really like working with you, do you want to be a part of this? And he was like, yeah, man, it sounds like something cool to be a part of. And so it wasn't this like, you know, Ivy league.

setting up the perfect people, you got the product, you got the finance, you got the, it was just like, hey, we're just some, like I liken it a lot more to like Yeti or big ass fans. It's like, you know, we kind of like happened upon a problem that we really wanted to solve for ourselves and have gone down this road trying to solve it. And have kind of like lucked out with some good people.

Rabah (03:51.193)
That's so well put.

Rabah (03:55.765)
Yeah, that's so well put. Shout out Yeti. Yeti's actually out here in Austin. Wonderful, wonderful company. You are one of the few founders that I know that are in just exquisite physical shape. And I would also, and feel free to push back, but also mentally you're in, there we go, there we go. No, mentally you're also just in this incredible place. So before we get into kind of the money making stuff and we'll get into the nerdy stuff with Haven.

Caleb Ulffers (04:14.134)
I'm not going to push back on that.

Rabah (04:24.569)
Can you just tell me a little bit kind of how you structure your life? Cause you have some really cool stuff and I promise people we won't get super hippie dippy, but I think it's fairly meaningful in terms of like how you think of your life. Cause I know a lot of founders and even I'm not a founder, but even previously at Triple Whale, like, you know, transparently my life was chaos. Like it was, it was just, I lost my health. I wasn't showing up in my relationships. I wasn't, you know, being social with my friends. And you're, you're this guy that's

Caleb Ulffers (04:47.938)
Mm-hmm.

Rabah (04:53.445)
crushing it, but you also, it feels like you haven't, I don't wanna say given up, but it seems like the structure that you've put around your life allows you to have a very, quote unquote, balanced life, but you're still killing it. What's the secret?

Caleb Ulffers (05:07.394)
Hmm. Um, you know, so this is like kind of what I'm trying to, I guess, build a little bit of a personal brand around. Like some of the videos I've started putting out is what I have learned over the last five years and coming out of the last tech company, I helped start and, um, merged it, uh, merged it off. And then I took like 10 months or so of a break after that. And I had, at that point, I had worked maybe like eight or so years of my career and.

Rabah (05:15.342)
Mm-hmm.

Caleb Ulffers (05:35.47)
COVID was happening and I was at this really cheap house with a friend in Nebraska. So like, I was at this place where like, sold this company, lifestyle was super cheap, COVID's happening, I can like, just like chill. I didn't really need to like work. And so I took about a year and learned how to slow down. ADHD, fast mover, high performing. And I was just like going, going always like filling the schedule, being busy, being full, working out, doing this.

And in 2020, I was like, I want to learn how to slow down. Um, I've never done that. And the way I thought about it was like, I couldn't actually think well. Um, I felt like my thoughts were like airplanes and they were trying to land at the airport and they were touching down and then they were just taking right back off and I was like, yeah, right. And I was like, I want to know what it feels like to have the plane touchdown and like unload the passengers and like, maybe get a little tune up. And so I got a couple of books on meditation and, um,

Rabah (06:17.849)
That's a beautiful way to put it.

Rabah (06:26.561)
Yeah.

Caleb Ulffers (06:31.622)
I just sat down every day with a cup of coffee is the first thing I did. Cup of coffee, this book on meditation, um, the daily stoic, and then also another book by Ryan Holiday called, uh, stillness is the key. And I was like, that sounds interesting. And so I just read all of these books on, uh, how to meditate, how to slow down, how to think, and created this safe space for my thoughts. I was like, my brain is not a safe space for me to think, uh, cause they don't want to stick around. I was just like, you know, I'm like, I want to like,

Rabah (06:40.301)
Yeah, powerful Ryan Howell there. Yep.

Rabah (06:55.981)
Yeah, oh wow.

Caleb Ulffers (07:00.578)
think deeper about things that I didn't know how. And so I read these books and they provided the foundation for me to be able to think deeper and slow down and actually like spend some time in my thoughts, not just going, going. And that has helped me be significantly more intentional in my life and was a really big turning point to where I've come to now, which is integrating all of those things, integrating a morning routine, integrating meditation, integrating manifestation, which is really woo woo, but is also very scientific.

Rabah (07:29.975)
It's a thing, dude.

Caleb Ulffers (07:31.27)
It's a thing, man. And it's wildly changed my life. And over time I've just stacked, um, you know, people talk about like your tech stack, but this is like my life stack. I've, I've stacked these like disciplines of having a morning routine and all the things that go along with that, going to the gym, eating healthy and doing all these things, and I see other people and there's a bit of a trend in certain, um, uh, realms right now where you can see people, um, someone had tweeted out, you know, like friends, family, business, health.

whatever, you know, pick two. And I've seen that before and it's kind of funny, I get it. Kids, you know, especially if you have kids. I totally get it, but I look up to people who figured out how to do it all. And they have stacked, you can't just like cold turkey, you can't just be like, cool, I'm gonna do it all today. But like you add in one thing and then you add in another thing and then it's particularly.

Rabah (08:14.489)
So we'll put.

Rabah (08:20.909)
Yes.

Caleb Ulffers (08:25.63)
If you're successful and you have the funds, you can really, you have no excuses, honestly, at that point, because like you can hire the people to clean your house. You can hire the people to cook your food. You can hire the people to help you raise your kids. But until they're like, I see the people I want to be like, and they're people who have it all. And they're not billionaires. They're not even a hundred millionaires. These are people who are, you know, making six figures a year, but they have a great family life. They have great friendships. They are wildly fit. They're really successful.

Rabah (08:30.373)
Fair.

Caleb Ulffers (08:53.526)
You know, they're, they're doing it all. And so I, I saw that and I was like, there is a way. And over the last five years, I feel like I've added these things that have allowed me to kind of be at that place where I'm pursuing it all. Um, and I've had some moments where like literally sitting at the kitchen table in my apartment being like, is this it? Like anxiety, written panic attacks and been like, something's got to change. And sticking to those routines that I know has been the

absolute change. I'm handling way bigger and way harder problems right now with a way better mindset than I ever have in my life.

Rabah (09:29.549)
Dude, that's so beautiful. You're such a muse for me. And going back to kind of some stoic ideals, cause shout out Ryan Holiday, absolutely just a G of a human. He's actually out here in Bastrop as well. It's like an hour out of the city of Austin. I got to work with him way, way longer previous life. Really good dude. But in stoicism, there is this kind of, they call it like the locus of control. And you can think of it almost like a circle and you're sitting at the center of that circle. And one of the tenants in stoicism is,

Caleb Ulffers (09:37.602)
Mm-hmm.

Caleb Ulffers (09:45.015)
Nice.

Rabah (09:59.821)
just worry about the things that you could control, which sounds like super cheesy and like, duh, but it actually works. And when you start to kind of eradicate all those other thoughts around things that you can't control, you start to kind of your point, you get more planes and they stay on the tarmac and maybe you can get off the plane, go have a martini at the airport bar. Like you get a lot more out of things. And paradoxically, when you do that, your locus of control actually expands.

Caleb Ulffers (10:02.434)
Mm-hmm.

Caleb Ulffers (10:06.711)
Yeah.

Rabah (10:28.533)
And so when you stop worrying about the things that you can't control, the things in your life start to get better and then that concentric circle kind of starts to expand and you land in where you're at, where you're like, dude, I'm handling all these things at a really high level that aren't that expensive, where just previously two or three years ago, I would have either been, my life would have fell off the rails or you're redlining it where, and again, I'm not against redlining, you just can't live there.

Like there's a certain aspect of sprints, right? Like in CrossFit, like you can redline every now and then. And if you redline every workout, you get into either some over-training issues or injuries. Like, and so that's so beautifully put. And the other thing is I will endorse manifestation as well. And not just because I have a huge amethyst geode in my living room, but back in the day, it's awesome. It's, my chakras are aligned.

Caleb Ulffers (11:02.858)
Yep. Yeah.

Caleb Ulffers (11:15.637)
It's huge. You should see this guy's crystal.

Rabah (11:22.245)
But we had an incredible track team. So I was a really good runner and every race day, our coach would get us out of advanced PE. So like our weightlifting class, and we would just go walk the track and you would just think through how you would win, how you would run it, blah, blah. And I think there's, I don't know, there's definitely, there's a there for me anyway. So if you guys aren't hippie dippy, I guarantee you that manifestation can help when done well. And at worst,

Caleb Ulffers (11:36.092)
and

Rabah (11:51.885)
you just start to put those positive thought cycles in your head that sometimes your subconscious will just help you manifest. So I do, I couldn't endorse it more and definitely go follow Caleb on his Instagram if you wanna get more involved in his kind of personal development stuff because it's spectacular. Okay, with that being said and done, white people bought the ticket. Let's get a little nerdy on Haven. Obviously, first and foremost, tell me about Black Friday.

Caleb Ulffers (11:57.519)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

100%.

Rabah (12:22.073)
Good, bad, fantastic, crush. Let's go.

Caleb Ulffers (12:23.458)
Blifright had crushed. This was awesome. This was a great year. This was a great month. This was the first year. So like year one, 21. I don't even know if we did a sale. We probably didn't. We only did like 180K in revenue that year. So we weren't doing a lot. Last year we did like 700K in revenue and we did our Stuff the Duffel. We worked with a bunch of partners to put in a bunch of free product in the.

Rabah (12:48.057)
That's brilliant.

Caleb Ulffers (12:49.33)
It was great, dude. Like we're going to bring it back at some point, um, when we can treat the partners even better. Like it was good, but I really want to add some like solid ROI for people who are going to donate, you know, $5,000 for the product. And so I was like, this year I want to like hold off on that. So we ran like a traditional black Friday sales cycle. We started black Friday sales two weeks early. It was a really significant discount. It was $80 off. And from day one, we just like, boom popped like three X revenue to X.

Rabah (12:51.929)
That's brilliant.

Caleb Ulffers (13:17.866)
And then just continued that all the way up until Black Friday where, jeez, man, I think we did like 50 K or something. Um, yeah, we like Black Friday crushed. And then we did like 30 K 30 K and then another 40 K on cyber Monday, like all in all, I haven't looked at the final number, like Black Friday did something like, like 150 K through all of the sales. And then we actually had our biggest month ever in November because of that. And we've been chasing 300 K this whole year in one month.

Rabah (13:19.845)
Amazing.

Rabah (13:27.589)
Great.

Caleb Ulffers (13:47.574)
And we came really close in April when product landed. And then we ran out and we went back to pre-sale. So sales dropped. And then we came really close in August. We got 282 because we had product in stock and then we sold out. And so it dipped. And so this is really cool that one, we hit it and two, we hit it without product being in stock, like nothing changed about product. We're sold out of half of our products. And so we did that with products on pre-sale, which is wild. Like we're, uh, we're like over the moon right now. Yeah.

Rabah (14:06.072)
Wow.

Rabah (14:15.381)
Dude, that's absolutely mind blowing. That's incredible. And then this was paid email, SMS, and then obviously website banner, things of that nature.

Caleb Ulffers (14:27.242)
Yeah, update the website, ran a good amount of ads. We didn't like overextend the spend. Like mostly we just saw Mer go through, like on Black Friday, it was literally like a 25X ROAS. Yeah, it was insane. So we had some days that were just absolutely killer, great margin, great money, like made a.

Rabah (14:44.341)
Let's go.

Caleb Ulffers (14:53.526)
better contribution margin percentage, even with $80 off because the ads were working so well.

Rabah (14:58.021)
amazing.

Rabah (15:02.681)
That's man, that is legendary. Now you guys are in, let's see, are you guys a big gifting vertical? Do people, do you?

Caleb Ulffers (15:11.402)
Yeah, for sure. Because it's a $300 bag. And it's for the, it's, you know, $300 athletic bag. That's not, not your common thing. And so it's on a big Christmas wish list. And so like last year we saw black Friday pop, and then we did the same amount of revenue in December as we did in November because of the giftability. So we're expecting December to crush as well. And we're also, um, doubling down these last two months of the year, we have just really stacked.

Rabah (15:13.786)
Beautiful.

Caleb Ulffers (15:38.87)
the deck in favor of us. So like going from Black Friday into Cyber Monday, we're launching this legendary referral program that's gonna be a lot like Cometeer. It's going to be absolutely killer. And then, yeah, we've got holiday sale dropping and then it'll be like last chance Christmas, which like are 3PL, shout out Chad Carlton, Springfield, Missouri, best rates, best shipping time.

Rabah (16:04.58)
As you're saying.

Caleb Ulffers (16:05.094)
So like last minute Christmas, if you're doing expedited shipping, you can order all the way up to like the 21st or the 22nd and get it by Christmas. Yeah, dude, it's insane. Yeah, yeah, like 19th is like guaranteed we'll get it by Christmas. 21st, 22nd are like, depends on if FedEx ships on Saturdays in your area, but yeah.

Rabah (16:11.853)
What? That is insane.

Rabah (16:22.869)
Yeah, yeah. That's a crap. And then I'm guessing too, you have the new year, you know, new you kind of vibe as well. Right. So, so. OK, that's not them. OK, OK.

Caleb Ulffers (16:31.158)
We didn't catch a lot of that last year. Yeah, so I'm kind of curious to see as we get more popular. The thing is, you know, there are a bit of a tagline that we say is like, we make organized bags for high performance and professional athletes. And that's just not the average gym crowd. Like a bag this big isn't meant for someone who carries a pair of shoes and a pair of headphones to the gym. We will eventually make a bag for that kind of average gym goer or, you know, if you want to call it gym bro, whatever.

Rabah (16:47.033)
That's fair.

Rabah (16:53.529)
Superfare.

Caleb Ulffers (16:59.942)
But right now, yeah, it's just like, it's kind of big, it's kind of gnarly, unless you're taking like clothes or, you know, you're like doing something like that, doesn't make as much sense.

Rabah (17:09.217)
Well, I've seen you double it as a travel bag. The large one. Yeah. The large one doubles that as a travel bag. Pretty nice. I, uh, especially for kind of shorter trips or just carrying on, pop in, pop out. Um,

Caleb Ulffers (17:11.986)
Oh, Travel Bag is great. Yeah, yeah.

Caleb Ulffers (17:20.002)
For sure, yeah, we have a ton of people using it for travel right now.

Rabah (17:23.361)
So speaking of the kind of professional kind of high performing athlete, you recently, so I used to be very, very heavily involved in CrossFit and I was randomly catching up on CrossFit stuff and you're at the games, you're sponsoring the games, you have a bag with that. For people that aren't in the space, like CrossFit is kind of the NFL, if you will, of fitness or the...

it's like how would you describe it? It's the professional sports league. It's the UFC of fitness, if you will. Like if you are in that space and not in bodybuilding, like CrossFit is the thing. Like it's the, it's, that's how you prove your worth, like or not prove your worth, but that's the aspirational thing and all these CrossFit boxes. Even if you're not competing, you get to do the games, works out, workouts, blah, but.

Caleb Ulffers (18:13.678)
Mm-hmm.

Rabah (18:14.733)
That is such a get. Tell me about kind of the partnerships. How did you find that? Like, did they reach out to you? And then you also, and you don't have to spill tea if you're not allowed to, but you're poking around with some professional licensing teams as well, is what I've heard through the grapevine. Is that correct?

Caleb Ulffers (18:31.394)
Yeah, yeah, we're talking about a lot of stuff always, but CrossFit is, it's kind of like the sport of fitness. They are a billion dollar organization. They are massive. They have 4 million members worldwide. Massive. If CrossFit, like people like sometimes like kind of shit on CrossFit are like, oh, what's that? Or like, oh, is that where people like flail on the, on the pull-up bars? You know, dumb shit like that. And you're like, you don't understand. If CrossFit were a restaurant, they would be the seventh.

Rabah (18:38.445)
Yes.

Caleb Ulffers (18:58.946)
biggest franchise restaurant in the world. They have over, right? They have over 12,000 locations. They would be bigger than Domino's. And people are like, well, it's CrossFit. I'm like, literally like, pull your head out of your ass. Like they are a major sports organization. And they're a player. And so when we started in CrossFit, cause like I'm a CrossFitter and I have all this gear and CrossFitters like gear. We do multiple movements. We do gymnastics. We do Olympic lifting. We do regular workouts like.

Rabah (19:01.721)
That's a bar. Yeah.

Rabah (19:13.369)
Third player. Absolutely.

Rabah (19:22.465)
love to care.

Caleb Ulffers (19:26.578)
it helps to have a lot of gear. If you're a regular person, like I'm not trying to like rip my hands every time I do like a shitload of pull-ups. And so like, I'm going to buy the hand protections, you know, all this stuff. And so, uh, we started in that, we had a lot of traction in there and they came to us at one point and they're like, Hey, we're opening up our sponsorships. Like no bulls are big, like, you know, you know, sponsor of the games, but we're opening this up to like bags and belts and chalk and tape and all this other stuff, like you guys are kind of the obvious choice. And I was like, thank you. I know we are. Uh, so.

Rabah (19:42.916)
Yeah, yeah.

Caleb Ulffers (19:54.494)
We started talking to them about it. We spent a handful of months figuring it out and ended up landing on a solid deal. The official bag of the CrossFit Games. Yeah. Super cool. Comes with sponsorship, comes with licensing. So like one of these bags right behind me has, you know, CrossFit on it. So we are allowed to use their logo. We're allowed to use their name and language in our promotions.

Rabah (20:03.621)
Crazy!

Rabah (20:11.533)
Yep. It looks great.

Caleb Ulffers (20:19.882)
So CrossFit's just like NFL, you can't be like, hey, we're the bag of the NFL, like they'll sue you. Same with CrossFit, you can't just be like, we're for CrossFitters, they're like, that's our name, that's our licensing, you have to pay us for the right to use it. And as a partner, we can use that now. So we get a ton of benefit from that, we get a ton of benefit from the licensed product, we get a ton of benefit from all the media at the actual games where our logo is everywhere and they're doing a lot of filming and creating content and that content's gonna live on forever, like CrossFit is a media company.

Rabah (20:22.718)
It is.

Rabah (20:33.881)
That's brilliant.

Rabah (20:40.345)
Yeah. Oh, it's huge.

Rabah (20:47.105)
Yeah, it is.

Caleb Ulffers (20:50.262)
Um, and the licensed product was huge. Like we popped off week one, we did like a hundred K in sales of licensed product. Yeah. And so like overall, like it was a great partnership for us to strike. It was a year long thing. So we're in talks about like what that looks like going forward, but, um, you know, all in all, like it was a, it was a win for us.

Rabah (20:57.189)
It's amazing.

Rabah (21:09.513)
Oh man, that's the, I mean, just pinnacle of partners for, for you guys. Like it is, like you said, the, the NFL or what have you, um, are you looking into like distributions at boxes like sending back, or is it just the, the economics don't make a lot of sense?

Caleb Ulffers (21:15.063)
Mm-hmm.

Caleb Ulffers (21:26.766)
The economics don't make a lot of sense. Like boxes work great for CPG and consumables. If you've heard about, you know, how RX bar got their start there. Totally makes sense. Like you can send a box of 40 bars that sit on the counter and someone buys $3. Sending a giant ass bag or sending multiple that's $300 you buy once, it doesn't make sense. So.

Rabah (21:35.484)
Yep, exactly.

Rabah (21:40.385)
Yeah.

Rabah (21:44.901)
through him. That's fair.

Yeah, yeah, that's fair. Sorry for people that aren't hip. Boxes is the nomenclature for gyms for CrossFit. So if you guys think we're talking about proper cardboard boxes or something, that's not it. That's incredible. What are you guys doing? One more question, then we'll get into the Firmat 5. What are you guys doing in terms of influencers or things of that nature? Have you tapped that? Has that been an interesting or successful channel for you?

Caleb Ulffers (22:16.094)
Yeah, man, it's been wild. So along the way we've had people sliding into our DM since we started and I've chatted with some really cool people and got him bags and then they promote us. And what has really happened is that has exploded the last year. And so we brought on someone to help us manage it. And this person, shout out Lily. Um, she is a, she's our director of partnerships and she's got 10 years in the industry, she has a masters of sports marketing. She got.

Rabah (22:21.89)
Mm-hmm.

Rabah (22:30.368)
Okay.

Caleb Ulffers (22:43.746)
She cut her teeth with Lisa mattresses, building out their affiliate program, working with Michael Phelps. This person is one of the most talented people I've ever worked with. She is an absolute killer. I love working with her. And we brought her on and a couple weeks in, she was like, hey, I've been in this world for a minute and I've never seen a response like this to a brand, both the quality and the quantity. And I was like, okay.

Rabah (23:06.917)
Let's go.

Caleb Ulffers (23:09.442)
I thought it felt like that, but like, it's really cool to hear that. She's like, you're, you're doing something really special here. And I'm like, that's what it feels like. Like when you have the product market fit, I often will call it like, you know, ungodly product market fit or like gods here, cause it's just, it's something different when you have athletes, professional athletes getting paid millions of dollars with millions of followers sliding into your DMS being like, yo, this is sick. Can I get a bag?

Um, or whatever. And then us being like, yeah, Hey, can we send you one? And would you be chill like posting something about it? And then them saying yes. And a lot of them being like, Hey, yeah, for sure. Like don't talk to my agent. They're going to try to get you to pay money. Like you don't have to, like, I just want this product. Like I like what you're doing. I like what you're building. I like you guys. And so the last couple of months we've literally brought on, uh, like 150 different athlete influencers with like 80 plus million followers total.

Rabah (23:43.438)
Thanks.

Rabah (23:49.305)
That's so cool.

Caleb Ulffers (24:05.126)
Um, all for free, like, so the influencer conversation is really interesting because you have a lot of tools, you have a lot of good people, you know, got super affiliate and you got snow and you got, um, toki and all these, all these cool people doing cool things and all these conversations around how do you find affiliates and influencers and, and for us, like, it just, like none of that matters. Like we're in this, like, you know, and I'm just like, that conversation isn't interesting to me because people are just literally sliding in all the time. Like

Rabah (24:11.105)
Yeah.

Rabah (24:20.067)
Yeah.

Caleb Ulffers (24:33.63)
We've got bags to some of the biggest athletes in the world right now that I'm like, what's happening? Like, this is something crazy because of our products. So it's working really well for us. We're funneling a lot of them into our affiliate program. We've got agreements with a lot of them to produce content every month that we have rights to that we can run in ads. And I'm like, I'm like looking at some of these people. I'm like, literally like you're on a contract making millions of dollars and you're like, yeah, sure. Like here's.

Rabah (24:40.133)
What's up?

Rabah (24:50.626)
That's surreal.

Caleb Ulffers (24:59.17)
Here's free content for this bag company. Also go ahead and run it in ads and like use my likeness. I'm like, really? Like that's wild. Like what sort of dream land am I living in?

Rabah (25:09.333)
Let's see folks, see previous manifestation works. No, I think that's so spot on. And I think there's a certain accelerant there because as you alluded to earlier, CrossFitters are very big gear heads. I have lifters, I have wraps where, if I'm doing heavy deads, I'm not testing my grip, I'm trying to move heavy weight. So I have wraps to your point. If you're doing heavy or high reps on pull-ups, you might have hand protectors.

you have all these things and a lot of times you find those through the killers that are doing the crosshair, right? So like the OG Rich Fronings, Jason Khalifa, these are, this is showing my age, but these were like kind of the previous killers in the space and there's a new generation of them, but it's very similar to any kind of gearhead community where essentially the gear you buy, you look at the killers and you're like, oh, I'm going to go get that. So I think it dovetails incredible.

Caleb Ulffers (25:50.446)
Mm-hmm. Ha ha ha.

Rabah (26:08.569)
Candidly, Crossfitters are incredible customers. Usually affluent, usually have a lot of disposable income. And it's something that they're very passionate about. I kind of get the cult analogy, but at the same time, it's like a good cult. If you've ever been to a Crossfit box, you almost get ostracized if you drink soda, if you're eating, and so there's a lot of really good reinforcement for healthy behaviors. And so I just, man, I think that's.

Caleb Ulffers (26:14.862)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Rabah (26:38.093)
That's totally the path. Okay, I lied because I said that was the last question. One more question. How do you guys think about expanding your TAM? Because I know you have different bag variations, but I'm guessing not many people buy more than two or three bags. You do have that really nice gifting vector, but is there anything, and you don't have to say too much. I just want to hear about how you're thinking about kind of next year and the evolution of the company to add on kind of more line items, whether that is maybe some sort of subscription model or.

Caleb Ulffers (26:42.134)
Alright.

Rabah (27:05.409)
or something in a new kind of product categories. Have you thought about that at all or are you just kind of heads down right now and dominating the elite CrossFit bag market?

Caleb Ulffers (27:15.91)
Yeah, no, we've definitely thought about it. And right now, we added a pre-sale, so we ran out of product to September. And it's kind of like typically what happens, we run out of products, we add a pre-sale because we just can't buy enough because it's really expensive product. Part of the reason that it's a $300 bag is because it costs us a lot more than the average bag like 10X. And so we just can't get enough in. And then as soon as it's in, sales velocity jumps to 3X and we just sell out immediately.

Rabah (27:22.562)
Okay. Yep.

Rabah (27:29.389)
Yeah. Yep.

Rabah (27:34.606)
a lot.

Caleb Ulffers (27:44.046)
And so this time we were like, okay, we have some ideas on ways to expand. So we're adding some variants. So we're, we're taking it from two bags to like six bags. So we're adding like a Velcro version. We're adding a stealth version, like black on black. A lot of people asking for that, you know, like, Hey, I don't want this, like, I think this one, yeah. Hey, I don't want this like big logo on it. Um, and so I think that one's going to crush. It's already like on the presale. It's kind of like starting to take off.

Rabah (27:53.593)
Very cool.

Rabah (27:59.237)
sick. Yeah.

Caleb Ulffers (28:12.15)
So step one is like variants, like make colors, make black on black, like those were really easy to do. Making colors actually takes a ton of time because you have to like get the zippers and match the colors and then you have to dye the product and then you have to like match all the dyes and you have to make sure it looks okay. And we're gonna do it, you know, to the best of our ability. So we're not gonna put out some piece of trash. And so that takes a bit of time. We'll definitely get into colorways next year. But then we're definitely looking at expanding categories.

Rabah (28:16.686)
Love it.

Rabah (28:33.229)
Yep.

Caleb Ulffers (28:40.102)
into a handful of spaces next year. We're working on one really solid one right now that's really cool. Kind of like tweeted like some various bits here and there about like working with like this like billion dollar company, 40 billion dollar company. And that's in process, kind of keeping it under wraps, but I'm really excited for like some of these moves we're gonna make next year. You know, what we've found is like people want organization and so we're gonna bring it to them.

Rabah (29:01.933)
Yeah, love it.

Rabah (29:10.553)
Dude, that's beautiful. Well put. Man, you're so polished. You shouldn't, you're not allowed to be so good looking, so smart, and you're so well spoken. You have it all. Tell you have it all. Okay, you ready to do some Firmat 5? Okay, if you could have a conversation with any historical figure, dead or alive, who'd it be and what's the first question you would ask them?

Caleb Ulffers (29:18.637)
Tell the ladies. Ha ha ha.

Caleb Ulffers (29:24.77)
Ready.

Caleb Ulffers (29:32.206)
It's such a good question and it's so hard. At one point, yeah, geez, man. At one point I had a really good answer for this and off the top of my head, there's no way it's gonna be that thought out.

Rabah (29:35.134)
hard. These are these are hard ones.

Caleb Ulffers (29:47.12)
Uhhhh

Rabah (29:48.329)
I need like some Jeopardy music. Do do do.

Caleb Ulffers (29:49.95)
Yeah, do do. Off the top of my head. Okay. Oh man, I had like three, but probably Steve Jobs. Yeah.

Rabah (30:00.834)
Love. What's the question?

Caleb Ulffers (30:05.914)
something around like how do you do what you did? We know your attention to detail and how you brought all that in. You fought for what you knew and we heard some things about how he did it, but what all, from his perspective, what all went into that? What all went into you being so.

deeply rooted in your beliefs that you could do this thing and holding onto them and, and telling everyone else to like go fly a kite and be like, this is the way we're doing it.

Rabah (30:41.953)
Yeah, and then candidly too to get kicked out of your own company. Can't can't have that's not a great feeling. Um, you know what I mean? And then, uh, yeah, he's fantastic. I will say a little caveat, fantastic, uh, book jobs, obviously by Isaacson, who does a ton of things. I have yet to find, I think Richard Branson is like the closest one for me, where these super killers that are like, you know, I think it's pretty.

Caleb Ulffers (30:45.422)
God, right? No.

Caleb Ulffers (30:56.502)
Mm-hmm.

Caleb Ulffers (31:04.629)
Mmm.

Rabah (31:11.649)
It's not an egregious statement to say that Steve Jobs was probably not the best human. Like some of the stuff he did with his biological daughter, um, the way he treated people, et cetera, et cetera, but he was a killer. And so, um, that's a really interesting question. I would argue probably the best product person ever. Like the, the amount of focus he could maintain, but there's a video, I'll see if I can find it and we can link it to it in the show notes. But when he destroys Apple, when he comes back to Apple,

and he draws the quadrant of what the products are going to be because it got into such a... He really was a special, special business leader. I don't know if I would model my life after him, but really, really special business leader.

Caleb Ulffers (31:52.019)
No, no, I'm still gonna eat meat.

Rabah (31:55.566)
Well, that was the other thing too. He probably didn't even need to die. They caught these precursors to pancreatic cancer and he had this kind of, anyways, we won't go too deep. Jobs, and those are great questions. Okay, what's the most unusual or interesting skill or hobby you have that most people don't know about?

Caleb Ulffers (31:58.722)
He probably didn't need to. Yikes. Yeah.

Caleb Ulffers (32:16.03)
Skill or hobby? Um, jeez. I don't have a ton of hobbies right now. Like I've had to pair back a ton and I've made like a lot of active, like I used to be, I played piano since I was five. I picked up the drums at 10. I've played in a bunch of bands. Yeah. I've like, I've like led music, like all of it. Yeah, man. Yeah. Like a long history of that. And I was, at some point I was like, I don't have time for music right now.

Rabah (32:32.635)
Really?

Caleb Ulffers (32:47.018)
That's probably like the interesting thing that you see. Yeah. Yeah, I would love to jump back into it at some point I love I love all forms of music

Rabah (32:48.057)
That's good, I did not know that at all.

Rabah (32:54.309)
Gosh, I love that. Okay, an oldie but giddy, but if you're stranded on a desert island, can only bring three items. What are you bringing? What's coming on the island with Caleb?

Caleb Ulffers (33:04.55)
I have no idea what do I bring on an island. There's some weird thoughts happening.

Rabah (33:11.461)
What?

Rabah (33:15.073)
I told you these are the quirky ones. This is like the hot seat questions.

Caleb Ulffers (33:16.73)
Yeah.

Caleb Ulffers (33:22.626)
Jeez. Wow, man. Cause like, nothing matters. Like if you're stranded on a desert island and you bring like a book, you're like, okay, well eventually the book's gonna run out or it's gonna get old. You bring some type of like food or something. You could bring like a water filter. Okay, cool, now I can drink water from some source. Yeah. If I'm trying to preserve my life. But that's the other thing is like, do I want to preserve my life? And I think that's where the questions, the answers like started to get weird. Cause you're like, well, if I'm stranded on a desert island, I don't.

Rabah (33:34.838)
Okay.

Rabah (33:41.564)
That's not bad.

Caleb Ulffers (33:52.47)
I don't particularly want to live for a super long time by myself on a desert island. And watch me. Yeah, I think that's the answer is like you bring something that will allow you to go out in spectacular fashion. We'll try to put it nicely as possible.

Rabah (33:55.525)
Just send it and bring a bunch of drugs. Bunch of shrooms, just send it.

Rabah (34:10.317)
I love it, I love it. Okay, two more and you'll be done. Where, I lost it, hold on, let's see. Okay, another hard one, but super interesting because you're such an interesting guy. Imagine you have a time machine, you can visit any era in history for a day. Where are you going and what are you doing on your day of time travel?

Caleb Ulffers (34:12.886)
Okay.

Caleb Ulffers (34:28.071)
Only back or can you go forward?

Rabah (34:30.741)
Interesting. I'll give you two forward. How do you, how do you project where you want to go forward?

Caleb Ulffers (34:37.606)
Um, I don't know, actually. I think I just needed to know if I, if it was possible, but like I, I tend to lean. Yeah. I tend to lean more towards forward to like, think about like what we've done and where we've come as a civilization in such a short, tiny little period of like, even let's say like 2000 years compared to like how old this is, like what's it look like in another 2000 years? What's it look like in 5,000 years?

Rabah (34:43.791)
It will amend the rules for you.

Rabah (34:53.291)
Mm-hmm.

Caleb Ulffers (35:04.642)
Like where can we go? What can we do? Like I kind of have this belief right now that the only way that we're going to survive is if like human ingenuity does something absolutely wild like AI or something comes along and solves problems in a way that is the only way that we can actually reverse the damage we've done to the earth. Otherwise, like all the smart people are kind of saying like, hey, it's over. So I'm like, I like kind of hold belief that like something crazy awesome is gonna happen and we're gonna like figure it out.

Rabah (35:04.802)
interesting.

Rabah (35:16.481)
Yep.

Rabah (35:22.445)
Yeah.

Caleb Ulffers (35:34.142)
And so it'd be curious to know what that looks like.

Rabah (35:38.435)
I love the optimism. Okay, last one and you've made it through. What's your favorite CrossFit wad?

Caleb Ulffers (35:40.696)
Yeah.

Caleb Ulffers (35:44.463)
Uh, great question. Probably Fran. Yeah.

Rabah (35:49.43)
Yeah, oh you really huh? It's a quick and dirty get it done smash in

Caleb Ulffers (35:53.618)
Yeah, I love quick and dirty, uh, CrossFit workouts. You know, you just like, you send it. It's redline. You're like, you know, you start a workout and you want to redline. You're like, I want to go. And you're like, no, I need to pace and pacing is boring. I love sprinting. And so give me something where I can just like a hundred percent until I'm dead and I'm there for it.

Rabah (35:56.389)
That's it. Yeah.

Rabah (36:03.809)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Rabah (36:14.158)
I'm the same. I only have like slow or 11. That's a good WOD though.

Caleb Ulffers (36:18.674)
Yeah, I've learned how to operate it like six and seven, but it's just not as fun.

Rabah (36:23.849)
I find it not as fun as well. I don't, yeah, when I was a runner, that was one of the biggest challenges when was when we had to go on rest days. And it matters, like it's actually really important, but I'm just not built like that. Dude, this was amazing.

Caleb Ulffers (36:31.71)
Yeah, right.

Yeah, so if anyone out there is listening and wants to join our team and run or fund our team and run, hit me up.

Rabah (36:41.425)
Let's go. Let's go. Caleb, you're just such a magnificent human, dude. Thank you for coming on. Tell us how we can get more involved with Haven. Where can they buy the bags? This time's yours, my friend.

Caleb Ulffers (36:44.611)
Huh?

Caleb Ulffers (36:48.868)
Thanks, homie.

Caleb Ulffers (36:55.37)
Yeah, you can buy the bags at havenathletic.com. You can find me on Twitter at Caleb Ulf, U L F also on Instagram. Uh, I love chatting about business stuff and generally try to build like decently open, um, on Twitter. Um, Instagram is a little bit more like we were talking about earlier, like the personal brand, like the stuff I've learned, like things I've set up in my life that I feel like have really helped me and I'm trying to like learn and share their little bit of fitness and a little bit of other random stuff too. So.

Rabah (37:21.953)
I love it. I love it. Thank you so much, man. You are an absolute, like I said, gem of a human. Go follow Caleb. Great Twitter feed, even better Instagram. If you are into that kind of self-improvement bent, go check it out. And then also a big thank you to Firm Outcommerce, this who is bringing us the show. That's who I work for. If you want to make more money, if you want to optimize your customer journeys, go check us out. We just launched an experimentation feature, which is super, super cool.

Caleb Ulffers (37:26.669)
haha

Rabah (37:51.213)
So yeah, go to firmatcommerce.com and then we also have a great newsletter that goes out every Friday called the Geometry of Growth. You can sign up right at firmatcommerce.com as well. Man, it felt good to get back in the saddle, especially with such a good human. So thanks guys for tuning in. We'll be dropping these weekly equation of excellence. Go tell your friends, give us feedback, give us guests all the things this shows for you. Caleb, again, dude, thank you so much for coming on. First guest, you're the best, you're the best.

Caleb Ulffers (38:05.13)
Let's go!

Caleb Ulffers (38:16.598)
Dude, thank you. This was Stellar. Appreciate you.

Rabah (38:20.65)
Alright folks, that's all we got. We will see you next week. Bye bye.