Episode 1: Patrick - Pool Punisher with BestViewsReviews

Apurv: BestViewsReviews welcomes you to our podcast The Product Life, it brings you the latest and greatest products to help you live your best life, from health & beauty to home and garden we hae everything to make your life more enjoyable so sit back and relax, you’re sure to find something you love. This is Apurv Sibal and my guest today is Patrick Frank, he is a co-founder, Forbes 30 under 30 and a ted speaker, he’s also a published author and the inventor of several consumer products including the pool punisher and couple’s contract along with several card games such as who is. We’re going to be talking about his product pool Punisher today his growth plans and his advice for aspiring entrepreneurs. So Patrick, thank you for joining us today.

Patrick: yeah thank you so much really excited to uh to be on here and excited to dive into everything.

Apurv: Sure so my first question to you Patrick is what is the key differentiator of your product from other competitors. Can you tell us what cool Punisher is?

Patrick : yeah absolutely so you know when we think about like what the pool Punisher is at its core right is is simply a pool float right if you take it down in the most basic version and if you know what the main differentiator us is like you know the way the product idea and where it came from. We were actually at a bachelor party coming back from it and we realized you know here's all these water floats that exist today and what is the one thing that's common with all the water floats that existing well all you do is float around maybe you can take a couple photos and then we realize there's no water float out there that actually is dynamic in the sense where you can actually have fun with it it's not action-packed and my co-founder George he is a father of two and and his son Loved These like little tanks that he used to play with and I think it's like what happens if we put one of those in the water and we put a water gun in the tank and lo and behold what ended up happening was is after a lot of uh manufacturing back and forth a lot of uh figuring out how to build products and we ended up having our first edition of the pool Punisher which is a military-esque pool float uh military inspired pool float that has a work like an actionable water cannon that just can shoot up to 50 feet so in simple and the pool float is simply a pool plug but at the same time it has an action-packed water can added on to it.

Apurv : That's quite interesting so when you actually thought of a action-packed water cannon added to a pool float did you actually do any competitor analysis? Did you see any products that were actually live during that time in the market?

Patrick : Yeah so it's really interesting you know we we went to like we went to Amazon right in the first place we stopped and we were looking it's like hey what else is out there right is there anything like this and there wasn't right they have these little tiny flows that are made for small children that have like little tiny you know you know maybe squeeze like almost like a spray bottle if you will and that was the little water the like the only water stream that came out and we bought these products and we realized like okay we bought them and then they basically just like fell apart like you know we first of all no one can fit in them because they're so tiny but they would just fall apart and we're like okay in the world of pool floats there are really high-end pool floats right think of you know fun boy for instance which is our main competitor and then you have these like wholesale cheap pool floats that just kind of like are one-off kind of floats that just fall apart and we're like okay we need to have a luxury high-end pool float and not necessarily high-end pool float that brings action Dynamic and excitement back to the water.

Apurv : Interesting so we have a AI enabled tool, voice of the customer which analyzes the positive and negative sentiments right. So we analyzed 150 000 reviews for all the 377 products in the pool raft and inflatable ride-on category and we our AI system give your product a rating of 7.69 out of 10. based on the review sentiment and user opinion right the main reasons to buy the product were the action uh pump action, squad gun, the inflatable tank which is made of heavy duty vinyl material and the impenetrable walls of the armor. Though there was a minor drawback as well the water gun was not sturdy enough. Can you comment on this?

Patrick : yeah absolutely um you know just like with anything right and this will be one of the like key lessons that we've learned as entrepreneurs is like nothing is ever perfect right and there is a very fine balance between ideation testing and action and releasing your product right um I've built software companies where we released the product too early. The nice part is is with software right you end up getting feedback and you can change it really quickly right but with products such as the pool Punisher without question the number one issue that we have had as a product in the company is the water gun. Unfortunately it you know in some cases you know if you're roughhousing around and as you would in a pool float like this it can break and so you know what we ended up doing was we took a lot of that information first of all we ended up replacing all of them that came in that people would say oh my water gun broke we'd send them brand new ones for free that's our mistake that we have to own but in addition we're saying okay what is the biggest Improvement that we can make as a company we need to improve the water gun so this this quarter I'm going into the holiday season we have a brand new water cannon coming out that's going to be I'm an add-on to the pool Punisher that people can purchase but at the same time every pool Punisher go forward into next summer season is going to have an upgraded water cannon attached to it that we have put to the test and I mean put a test like we have rough houses around and if people break it like I almost believe it's on them but we'll still we'll still take care of them and ship them out a new one.

Apurv : That's interesting good to know so how do you see the pool Punisher in the next five years?

Patrick : Yeah so some really big news I can't uh tell you know tell all the secrets about it but the company is actually expanding rapidly we have two new product lines coming out so when we think about like what is a product line to us a product line is a wild crazy larger than Life that has some form of like action-packed to it right something that is not just floating around we have two more product lines coming out this year one's coming out in um April the other one's coming out in June and pool Punisher is actually getting an improvement in the sense where we have the upgraded water can it's gonna have cup holders it's gonna have rope ties so that you can like link up between other ones and we're having two new color skus I'm releasing from the pool Punisher as well in February to prepare for the summer season so we have a lot and on top of all of that we're actually rebranding the company as a whole because not every uh not every product line is going to be a pool Punisher they're all going to be dynamic floats so I'm that rebranding we're launching that in January which is really really exciting but a lot of work.

Apurv : So what are you going to Rebrand it as? if it's not confidential.

Patrick : It is confidential and we are we're just finalizing everything what I'll say is is like again to like one thing we've learned throughout this process is you know we we named the company after the product right and a lot of people like when you first start out like you get so focused on like just that one thing you're making and it's a it's a challenge to take a step back and say okay you're really excited about this one thing but what happens if it goes so much bigger than that right like you don't want to have to you know slow down to speed up in a sense where we have to take a step back now and go through the entire legal process of restructuring the company renaming the company what happens if there's a company with the same name what happens if they have a trademark we're having to go through all these things. So it's a lot of work but the name is awesome and we're really really excited about it we did a lot of audience testing and people are just jazzed up about it so uh January January that first week of January we're doing all the the big release.

Apurv : All right good luck hope to see that so how do you come up with Innovations like you mentioned two new product lines that are going to be coming out so how do you develop them?

Patrick : So I'll be honest my co-founder and I mean we are kids at heart right which is we're actually like a lot of the the fuel behind the company comes from and it really is like this feeling of we want to give everybody that feeling of being a kid again right like being excited having fun like carefree and candidly we're always coming up with just ridiculous ideas where it was Sam and people look at us just like what is wrong with you type of thing so on the contract I wish I could just be like oh we have this like mathematical process where we look at it we don't right we sit around we go we look at like what's going on in the world right we go wow like that would be cool if we did that and we look at things like what else is on the water right that's not inflatable that needs to be inflatable right like even as ridiculous as looking at like jet skis or boats or cars or whatever it may be and we're like why can't we make that uninflatable so we just look at like things that we like like things that make us feel like kids and we're like let's do that but if I if I were to give advice on like the presidual side of it right you want to look and say you might think that you're I like one crazy idea might be the one well then go do the market research on it right on Amazon you have tools like helium 10 you have you know tools like there's a ton of them where you can go and analyze you know what sales have been historically in certain product categories go do that like see if there's a market for it right you have the ability to make risk adjusted bets which which helps you as an entrepreneur decide on where the best time and effort and money should be spent paired with always have a wild right.

Apurv : So it's a creative process you don't have a very technically structured process

Patrick : it is a creative process we we don't ask ourselves like oh like you know we don't have we don't go to the data first we go to it second because we have so many ideas we just want to understand which one's probably got the best one of uh success but never be afraid of the how you're gonna do something if you think it's a great idea there's a way to do it right like we don't look and we say wow that sounds impossible to build this this float we go okay yeah we need to do that how are we going to do it and I will tell you like the complexity of the next floats that we have releasing go beyond anything I ever thought we would ever be learning in our lives like but it is so exciting to be learning all of it and like seeing the possibility of like when it gets released we're just like oh my God like we like the world reacted to pool Punisher in a certain way they're gonna react an entirely different way to what we have coming up.

Apurv : Interesting so how do you manage your brand awareness Marketing in this competitive e-commerce category?

Patrick : yep so it's really interesting we I own and I own other companies as well and full Punisher originally started as like I said like it was like a release for us to like want to be kids again and and what we realized was is like we didn't really know what we were doing to begin with and we didn't really have a plan we just wanted to build a product for this like for the enjoyment of the process and getting it out there and saying we did it and we got lucky the first time we got lucky in the fact that like we made a good product we didn't get like we made a great product that people wanted and it took off right there was a virality component to it now what we realized this is like we can't just like sit back and expect that to happen again right no matter how great the product is that's poor business planning so we have to look at and say what were the things that happened right we have data now it's like what were the things that happened that took this product viral where were people talking about it okay how can we now replicate that exact same storyline if you will but strategically right how can we make sure that happens again or at least bet like circle of wagons on making sure that any type of virality takes place for this next product well are there brand Partnerships we can go to are there like are there Reddit channels that we need to be on are there um different news outlets and product Outlets that we need to be talking to even before the product comes out and be you know circumnavigating like making sure all of them are ready to go when the product launches so we look at and say okay we have a niche market right we took pool floats which is a huge category and we boil it down to like where do we long right we belong in the quadrant of high end action like Dynamic unique products like that's our Niche right we're not trying to say we're going to own the entire pool Market the pool full Market we need to own that right and you know we look at and say okay who are those people we look at the data of who's buying our products who's viewing it who's commenting on on social media where are those people going and then we make sure that we're getting in front of those eyeballs essentially like you work backwards once you've already been there once you already like took off then you look backwards and say how did you get there and then you create your map that way.

Apurv : Interesting and do you do any kind of paid marketing or paid promotions?

Patrick : yep so we do paid social on Google Amazon we'll be launching into like brand partnerships newsletters things like that that we'll be paying for you know what we realize is like I put less of an emphasis on like the whole like and maybe this is contrary to popular opinion but the whole like influencer marketing side of things we haven't had a ton of success with the social side we've done well defensive Google searches I like eventual defensive brand keyword ad buying we've done well with um so that's like going for things like pool Punisher pool inflatable tank like any any of those types of things we won but I think where we're gonna get a tremendous amount of wins are looking at who are brands that want to be associated with a company like us they have an audience they have an email list how can we get in front of those eyeballs what can what unique offering can we provide to those people.

Apurv : Interesting

Patrick : so I think people need to start exercising and they're going to realize this in the next especially in the next coming years is that people need to start exercising their mind to not just say okay I made a good product I'm going to shove some Facebook dollars at it it's no no I mean I made a good product how can I be extraordinarily unique to say I I don't have to spend anything on Facebook the best product is the one that has to spend the least amount of ads and can sell out right so like think about the ways in which you can get your product in front of as many eyeballs as possible without having to spend truckloads of money and just saying oh my real ass is this my a cost is this like that's not how great companies are made it's not like you put a ticket a coin in you get tickets out it's how can we uniquely go to market and position ourselves to win without just banking on the fact that I have to hand money over to some social media machine.

Apurv : Got it makes sense so you want to improve your word of mouth no virality.

Patrick : yep absolutely and people like if you make a fun product or a good product a good product and you have who your Niche is go to business owners in that Niche go to other brands in that Niche and be and be like hey we want to partner with you right like they get excited about that they want to be a part of the story it's a value add to them and like I just don't understand why people like there's nothing to be afraid of in that right like no one's they're not gonna someone need so much of the times like people like oh they're gonna steal my idea they're gonna run like no these people have their own companies they have their own businesses that they need to run you're not you're not fun unless it's like a direct competitor but it's like they have their own responsibilities that they have to adhere to like this is either a value add or a value detracted from them and let them decide.

Apurv : Got it could you give me an example of a complimentary business?

Patrick : yes yeah so like sunglasses sunscreen I like uh candidly alcohol Brands um which gets us loaded into hot water we're trying to figure not hot water but we're trying to figure out how to do that, you can think about apparel company so like think about like Chubbies for instance right um think about like Tipsy Elves if you're familiar with them like for us it's what's outlandish what makes you feel like a kid again what are you buying or wearing or having to you know have around you when you're out in the water and out in the sun right that's how we're thinking about it right so like take your product take your company what surrounds what do people need to have in order to have or use your product go to those things.

Apurv : so for the listeners of this podcast would you want them to wait for your new product line or would you like them to try out the product and why should they try it out.

Patrick : yes I mean I I encourage everybody to get one. um you know obviously like it it is uh we want more Smiles on more people's faces at the end of the day right and everybody who has gone in and purchased a full Punisher I'm ideally on our website actually that's the only way you'll have access to it because Amazon has its own gated situation but people who who have purchased our customers who have purchased pool punishers are going to be the first ones to have access to all of the things we have coming out and I will tell you this is that we're going to sell out just like we did at the pool Punisher when it came out when this new product gets released how we're coming tomorrow it will it will sell out in arguably like a day or two and what what we're trying to do is say okay who deserves the access to this thing at the beginning well it's the people who believed in Us in the first place right and so go grab a pool Punisher it's a ton of fun and you'll be having the first access as to what we have coming out.

Apurv : so how's the journey to now in terms of product success sales the learning curve overall?

Patrick : yeah so like I say this all the time is like everybody wants to go and start their own business be an entrepreneur and they have to realize it's not it's not just as simple as as building the product right we've made almost every mistake in the book I literally have a 10-page document called mistakes we've made right and all it does is bullet points on every single mistake we made in launching this product and I will tell you it's like the journey is not easy though it may be fun and you might be seeing dogs on the doors it is it's never easy because you're always beating yourself up over like ah why not do this why not do that and when you're starting it while you have other businesses and you only have two people doing it it gets hard right because you're like you're you're having to flex muscles that you're not necessarily good at like I'm not a web developer right we had to make a Shopify site we launched on Amazon that was a mistake right we should have started off with a website and so it's like the journey and the life cycle of it is you come up with the idea you release what you think is a good product you'll learn that there's mistakes in the product you take that feedback and you build a new version of the product simultaneously you're having to build the support system behind the product customer service the websites the marketing The Branding the content the entire ecosystem around it wall you're still learning right and so you kind of go through this phase where here's you like building the product you get a little bit of bump like you're excited you release the product you get a big bump and then you pulls down because you're like people are like oh this is no good or there's these issues and then you have to move very quickly to fix the issues and build that ecosystem around and then it starts to take off again. um does that answer your question?

Apurv : yeah that makes sense and the most important point I think is learning from your mistakes so you since you documented them so that is very important but I'm a little bit curious why did you mention that actually releasing on Shopify or Amazon was a mistake?

Patrick : - yeah so releasing on Amazon was a mistake because we did it first right and so what ended up happening was is like Amazon is and I'm a huge fan right like it's a love-hate relationship but Amazon is perhaps one of the most intelligent businesses ever made because imagine a Facebook that was locked and gated and owned everything right like you don't have access to anything you don't know who is buying your product, you don't know like you have no clue. right and so for us like we were people were buying we didn't know who they were where they were like how to Target people like them it was all within the Amazon ecosystem and we had within three months we had 400 fake versions of our products pop up on websites making fake websites emailing Amazon saying it was their product even though we had a patented trademark on it I mean we've been through things that people won't even imagine like it's we it is incredible I think in all we ended up having 848 fake companies and products pop up on markets ebays fake websites, web websites we didn't even know existed and even to this day there's still fake versions of the pool Punisher on Amazon because there it's it's just a fiasco but if we would have launched with our own website and we we would have gone viral the way we did we would have saved hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees that we had to pay to Amazon because people were buying without us spending ad dollars they were just buying it so like we were paying what was that like 27 after you take their FBA and their Amazon fees in total of every single product sale without any AD spend and so you take 27 back on you if you they're going to your Shopify and you're getting the customer information and you can talk to them you can email them you can engage with them so I wish we would have done the Shopify first but um that's been our biggest lift this year is building out that new site and the new site for the rebranded company.

Apurv : interesting but I guess it's a good sign, though I know it's not a good sign that you have big products coming up but you have something nice there remember is

Patrick : when people replicate what you're doing it's the finest form of flattery right like they it means you've done something well and you need to play defense at the same time you play offense and there are resources out there that can help companies like like us and we we use you know we have tremendous resources and Partnerships in place that people are assisting us getting past this curve but you know I'll say if you're trying to do something just easy and you you have other things going on in your life you just want to test to see like is this a good idea Amazon's a decent route right like that we can't knock it because it allowed us to get a product to Market without having to build a website right in hindsight 2020 sure but we have put in all the additional effort and built the website yes but I'm it if the Amazon is the easiest way to get a product out to the market and get visibility for it.

Apurv : makes sense so thank you Patrick so much and thank you for listening to this podcast we hope you enjoyed it if you have any suggestions for future products or guests please let us know until next time goodbye.