From Million Dollar Collar to Million Dollar Pieces of Advice with Rob Kessler

How I became blind at just 17 years of age.

They always want to know how I've done it and how I've kept smiling all along the way.

Well, I've just chosen to focus my attention on seeing the positive.

And on the podcast, that's what I want to do for you.

Because no matter what, you may be going through a mic, I hope to inspire you to focus on the positive.

And you know what?

I hope that I can also be a source of inspiration for you to just be positive.

Hey, what's happening?

This is the host of the podcast, Kevin Lowe, and I am coming to you today with episode number 63.

You ever find yourself in one of those situations where you need some help?

You need that buddy you can call, the guy who knows a guy who knows a guy who knows a guy, kind of thing.

You know, the guy who's got the contacts, who can make things happen.

Because while he's kind of got his hand in everything, well, that's the kind of guy who I'm talking to on the podcast today.

Because I'm joined in the studio today by Rob Kessler.

Rob Kessler is a boat captain, inventor, and serial entrepreneur.

Matter of fact, I believe Rob kind of takes the entrepreneurial spirit to a whole nother level.

I don't know that I have ever met somebody who has started and sold so many businesses.

And I feel like that's what's kind of cool about Rob, is because he's realized that you don't have to just do the same thing all your life.

You can keep progressing and keep moving forward and keep your life active and pursuing dreams and ideas that, you know, really bring you joy and get you excited about life.

And that's what's awesome about my conversation today with Rob, because, well, he's the inventor of something called million-dollar collar.

But as I would come to discover, he's also a guy with million-dollar pieces of advice.

Rob's entrepreneurial spirit started young as a kid, where he took mowing lawns to a whole nother level.

He would then go on to start assisting people with three of the biggest purchases most people will make in their lifetime, that being houses, cars, and diamonds.

But that wasn't enough, as you will soon find out, because Rob would then go on to many more opportunities to grow businesses and live the exciting life that he has today.

And well, that's what made talking to Rob so awesome.

So whether you're up for starting your own business or just want some awesome advice on life from a guy who's kind of done it all, today's episode is totally for you.

Before I get to my interview with Rob Kessler, I do want to introduce you to today's sponsor, Acoustic Athletic.

When you start taking advantage of a loophole in neuroscience to help athletes increase their sensory capacity and develop a new, stronger relationship with their senses, you in essence start violating reality and begin creating a whole new future in the world of athletic training.

Welcome to the world of acoustic athletics.

Working with athletes in a variety of sports such as baseball, football, soccer, mixed martial arts, and boxing.

Just to name a few, the trainers at acoustic athletics are able to utilize recent discoveries in neuroscience that have found that we can rewire the human brain in targeted ways that can profoundly improve human performance.

It's all about gaining that competitive edge in the world of sports.

And well, acoustic athletics is doing that and so much more.

If you're interested in what acoustic athletics is doing and what they can do for you, please be sure to check out the show notes where you will find a link where you can find out more and get in touch with the team at Acoustic Athletics.

Rob Kessler, welcome to the podcast.

How's it going, Kevin?

It's going great, man.

I'm super excited to have you here on the podcast today and feel like you've got this super interesting uh life story that I'm super excited for us to dive into.

And but before we get into kind of life today, would love to know kind of where this entrepreneurial spirit came from growing up.

SPEAKER_01: I think my dad and he just really instilled a good work ethic in me from when I was little.

I mean, when I remember being in like fourth, fifth grade, that we would get our allowance of like five bucks on Sunday night.

And then we had school lunch, so we got$2.50 a day for lunch.

So he would pay me for the whole week on Sunday night plus my allowance.

And he goes, Look, if you want to splurge on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, you ain't gonna eat on Thursday and Friday.

So I mean, he taught pretty early good money management skills, and then we never got anything for free.

So I had to cut the grass and do other chores around the house.

And so, you know, once I started cutting our grass, then the neighbors were like, hey, you want to cut my grass?

And so I always would be walking behind that lawnmower like the world was watching, and that I was gonna be the next great, you know, lawn care person, and that people driving by on our basically dead-end street were gonna say, Hey, you really cut the grass good.

I want you to come cut my grass.

And I just approached everything like that for some weird reason.

I don't know.

SPEAKER_00: Well, now any idea about how old you were when you were doing the whole the the lawn mowing of the neighborhood?

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I was like 10, 10, 11 years old.

So I mean it was pretty young, but I don't know.

I just I just took the opportunity as look, if I and I ended up getting three, four, five neighbors, and I was making, you know, two and three times what my dad would pay me to cut the grass doing the neighbor, so I didn't want to do his last.

But you know, it was nice when it was three in a row because I could kind of make all the wands connect.

I would do diagonals, and you know, each week would be a different pattern, and just make sure that you know you didn't get those ruts from running over the track the same over and over and over again.

SPEAKER_00: So well, that's pretty impressive for a 10 or 11 year old.

So yeah, that's awesome.

So now, so at what point then did did your real like entrepreneurial journey begin?

Like after mowing lawns?

Yeah, what does that not count?

SPEAKER_01: So after that, you know, I went to middle school, I went to high school, I played highly competitive soccer, and I ended up getting one of the older guys on the team worked for this soccer volleyball store, and he said, Hey, you should come, you know, work.

And so, you know, I went to work for that soccer shop.

Day one, the owner, Tim, handed me a key to the store, handed me a code to the alarm.

I mean, I'm 17 years old.

He doesn't know me from Adam, and he's like, here you go.

And he just from day one made me feel like it was my business.

And he really inspired us to think outside the box and to really want to be there and want to make the business succeed and made all of us, you know, high school and college kids feel like we mattered.

And I think that's what really kind of took it to the next step.

I was able to do anything in the business that I wanted.

I ended up getting into like helping with the ordering and I was doing some of the finance stuff.

I would go up there, you know, I would stayed working through college or in college, and I would go to classes all day, and I'd get a couple friends to come over at night, buy them some beer, and we would go and like remodel the entire store overnight and come in the next day and it'd be painted and rearranged.

And man, I it was just the greatest thing, just the best feeling ever.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, and I I can't help but sit there and think to myself, what a valuable lesson, even to me, for for any store owner boss is to me, you want to get your employees on board.

You you give them a chance, give them a little respect, treat them a little bit different than just an hourly employee, you know?

And and and I kind of view that similarity almost, almost, if you think about it, to to even your your dad when you were a kid of of kind of putting you in control, giving you the reins, you know, here here's your money for the week, you know, or here's you know, now nowadays, here's the key to the shop, you know, giving you putting trust in you.

And, you know, and I I think that says a lot.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, exactly.

I mean, I think the it's one of those things, it's one of the it's unspoken, but you know, it's the appreciation and the the belief in you from the get-go that you know you're capable of doing it.

I ended up going to work for my dad after that soccer and volleyball store, and I remember a number of occasions where people would screw up royally, you know, and instead of him just flying off the handle, it was like, okay, let's learn from this.

What did you do wrong?

Why did you do this?

And it was always a learning you know instance and not a you know, fear for your job explosion kind of situation.

And I've tried to do that, although I've I've got a bit of a temper, so I don't know if that if I can as good at him at that.

SPEAKER_00: Yes, yes.

We we we all can't be as good as our as our parents, you know.

So yeah.

So now at what point then did you switch over to to selling?

Because I I I thought it was kind of interesting when when I was reading and uh about you preparing for our interview, is is the fact that you've kind of helped people with some of the biggest purchases they make in their life.

That's uh, you know, homes, houses, and diamonds.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so my dad is a jeweler, he's a jeweler, so that's where I was starting to sell diamonds.

I always ended up in an industry way too young, I feel like.

So I'm 21 years old selling people three, four, five, eight, ten thousand dollar engagement rings.

And I don't know the first thing about, you know, dating and a solid relationship, but you know, it it helped being the owner's kid, my name on the card and on the sign.

So I ended up being a pretty decent little salesperson, but that's really where my sales career, I would say, started.

So I worked for I worked full-time my junior and senior year for my dad.

I also worked, went to school full-time, and was catching up from being a total slacker my freshman and sophomore year.

So I worked full-time through college basically all four years, graduated in four years.

After I graduated, my dad was opening his first store out of town.

He had three in town, and this is the first one he's gonna open out of town.

So I ended up moving about an hour and a half north in Wisconsin because he wanted somebody who knew the systems and knew the culture and could kind of parlay that and move that over to the new store.

So I spent a year up in uh northern Wisconsin opening up that store, and I really loved the sales aspect of it, but I I get very bored very easily, and I need constant challenge and constant stimulation.

So after about a year, I was like, dude, I gotta get out of here.

And my dad's company was his his real firstborn child, although I was born before the company.

It was his his his real number one child.

And so when I said, Hey, I'm I want to come back to Milwaukee, I gotta get out of this tiny little town, he goes, Look, I don't have a spot open, so why don't you go out and explore a little bit and you know be able to bring something back to the table when you come back and you know, hopefully someday take this company over.

So I really loved cars.

I loved what my dad did to the jewelry industry, which had never been done before.

He he never had a sale, he didn't negotiate, he had the strongest lifetime warranty in the industry, still does all those things today.

And so I wondered, you know, could we do the same thing in the auto industry?

And so I went at 23 years old, 24 years old, to go sell cars, and I went to a dealership that was kind of the exclusive one.

It had Porsche and BMW, Mercedes, Saab, Volkswagen, and Mazda.

And I was a Saab salesman.

I sold cars for about 15 months, and then I started getting bored again, and I said, All right, I gotta get out of here.

And I basically dumped everything I had, and if it didn't fit my little GTI, it didn't go, and I moved to Los Angeles to kind of take a year off from life because I'd been working full-time basically since I was, I don't know, 18 years old or so.

So I needed a little break.

SPEAKER_00: Wow, yeah, I can imagine.

So so now I I did want to ask you when you're talking about the the company that your dad had.

So was that a jewelry store?

SPEAKER_01: So it was called Kessler's Diamonds, and he decided in 1991 that he didn't want to be like everybody else.

He wanted to specialize in diamonds, and so there was no watches, there's no colored stones, it was literally all diamonds, and it was very heavily focused on diamonds and diamond engagement rings because no matter what the economy is, people get engaged every single day.

So instead of selling super high-end, you know, steaks, he's like, I'd rather sell hamburgers, and so he had really great quality, beautiful.

I mean, the the cut of the diamond is way more important than the color and clarity.

They don't mean Jack.

So came at it from a totally different perspective and grew from basically the smallest jeweler in southeastern Wisconsin to the third largest independent jeweler in the country within about 20 years, and I was there for most of that growth, which is pretty exciting.

SPEAKER_00: Wow, that's so awesome! So now are those stores still still there today?

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, seven stores.

My sister is the head buyer.

I've been out of the business for quite some time, but they're all focused in Wisconsin and um and Michigan.

My dad's since retired, and there's a new you know, CEO and everybody taking over.

But he did end up when he retired, he sold the company to his employees, so it's a 100% employee owned jewelry store, 150 employees or so.

SPEAKER_00: That's pretty awesome.

That's pretty awesome.

I just you gotta you gotta love the the stories like that to remind to remind so many of us that that it's possible, you know.

Something something little can grow if you if you you treat it right, you put your heart into it, you treat your people right, you know.

So I think that's pretty amazing.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean he got inspired, he went to see Tony Robbins.

He was actually in 1991, ready to give away the business to a competitor.

He was so frustrated, he hadn't grown in 11 years, and he said, I don't even know what to do with myself anymore.

So on a last ditch effort, he bought a ticket, went to Tony Robbins, and it that weekend changed his life.

I mean, it literally changed his perspective on everything, how he thought about his business, how he thought about himself.

And you know, if it wasn't for that weekend, I don't know where we any of us would be.

So pretty amazing.

SPEAKER_00: I have heard that's been the effect of many people's experience going to Tony Robbins events.

SPEAKER_01: So I you know what I he thought it would be the greatest thing ever for me to give me that as my graduation present from college.

Okay, and it was amazing, but I'll tell you what, I was in a great place.

I was, you know, 22 years old, I was making pretty decent money.

I had two cars, a motorcycle.

Like I was I was in a really good spot.

And I feel like if I was in more in turmoil and more in, I don't know, I think it would have hit me differently than it did when I went.

Now, when I do have a bad time or I'm unsure of where I'm at, I'll go back and either read a book or listen to his stuff.

But I feel like if you're in one of those, man, I don't know what to do with my life kind of situations, far more impactful because it's giving you a reason and a and it's giving you the the help to kind of see through what you can't see through at that moment.

But I just wasn't experiencing that when I went.

So it was amazing, but I I just didn't get out of it what he got out of it.

But I'm still a very big Tony Robbins fan to this day.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.

That's awesome, awesome.

And and if for you listening, if you have not checked out Tony Robbins, I highly encourage.

So so yes, well, that's awesome.

So now at what point then?

So so you moved out to Los Angeles.

So at what point did like you start your own businesses?

SPEAKER_01: So I went to LA for about nine months.

I worked, I had a job right at the end, but I had a girlfriend back here and she kind of drew me back.

So I left LA after nine months and I ended up getting into real estate.

And I I would say that that was my first owned business.

So if you've ever been in real estate, you rent a desk, and I mean you may work for a big company, but you're really on your own.

They don't do anything for you, they don't help you.

There, I mean, there's some advertising spiffs and things that they give, but it it's your business to grow.

And so again, I'm you know 24, 25 years old, getting into real estate.

My friends are all buying their first houses and spending, you know, 180 grand or 100 and 200 grand or something.

I end up selling one house my first year, first nine months for$125,000,$1,500 commission.

So it was a rough start, especially when you're sitting there watching all the other guys around you that are, you know, the lady next to me, she's selling the same, you know, doing the same amount of work, selling an$800,000 house where I'm selling a$200,000 house, just making four or five times the money that I was.

So that was a little frustrating, but I ended up growing and becoming, I was in the top 10% of salespeople in the company.

It was called First Weber Group.

It's was the largest in the in the state of Wisconsin.

I was also the fastest person to ever get their real estate license in Wisconsin.

I from opening the first book to passing my test in 10 days.

Wow.

So when I get determined to do something, watch out.

SPEAKER_00: Yes.

I guess so.

Wow, that's that's incredible.

So now at what point, because I I'm excited for us to get to the business venture of the million-dollar collar.

But you also though have, and and you'll have to tell me exactly what it's about, some type of is it a tour boat company in California?

SPEAKER_01: So while I was in real estate, I started a screen printing business.

While I was doing the screen printing business, I invented million dollar collar.

And after inventing million dollar collar for my wedding, we my wife and I moved back to Los Angeles.

And while we were in Los Angeles, we bought a yacht and started a yacht charter business.

And so that is the very short, so we can go anywhere you want with that.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, definitely.

Well, that's cool.

I actually I just had the uh the order mixed up as to where those came from.

So that's cool.

So now, okay, so so let's go back then since since I messed up the timeline.

Let's go back then to leading into million-dollar collar that came out of a screen printing business.

How did those two things correlate?

I was doing real estate.

SPEAKER_01: It was about 2006.

So I had gotten hired to work on a condo project, which is like the ultimate.

You know, you've got one place to be, you've got clients walking in, and I think it was 80 or 90 units.

It was me and another lady that were managing the whole project.

This is uh got me back into kind of the retail mode, which ended up making me insane.

I hated just sitting there all day.

So this is also the same time that Ed Hardy is out there selling 80, 90,$100 graphic t-shirts.

And I'm like, well, from my soccer and volleyball days, I remember doing screen printing and helping people with that.

I have some connections.

I know a bunch of people in Milwaukee because I've born and raised there.

And well, I wasn't born, but I was raised there.

And so I'm like, well, what if we took people like I knew a bunch of artist friends, and I'm like, what if we took their art and put it on a t-shirt?

And instead of them having to sell a$2,000 painting, they could sell like a$50 limited edition t-shirt.

And so that was my approach to it.

And I was getting screwed around by all these, you know, screen printers.

It was all these setup charges and all these color changes and all this crazy stuff.

So, you know, like I usually do, I can't afford to pay somebody else, I figure out how to do it myself.

So I ended up buying all the equipment and and trying to print my own stuff for myself.

And then I just happened to tell some friends and just word spread that I was doing screen printing, and I ended up growing that business to about a million dollars in revenue before I sold it.

Wow.

And while I had the, you know, I started in my basement, I started with like a$2,500 kit.

I think I screen printed about 50,000 shirts in my basement before I finally moved out.

And so on really, really basic equipment.

I always try to keep my overhead as low as possible.

And so, you know, I grew that business.

I actually, the one thing I did that I don't think anybody else really does is I cut out every label of every shirt that ever came in.

And I either screen printed or heat transferred my label on the inside.

So it would just say, my company was called nude, N-E-W-D, which stood for nothing else will do.

So it was nude clothing, and then I had nude custom printing.

And so, you know, my mission statement basically was built into the name nothing else will do.

I always provided the highest level of service.

If you've ever ordered t-shirts before, stuff always comes in late.

People, you know, companies always miss deadlines.

I never missed a deadline in nine years.

I remember uh screen printing a set of shirts for a friend of mine for a leukemia walk.

And halfway through, I'm like, God, this word leukemia doesn't look right.

I found out that I spelled it wrong.

Oh no.

And I had to go drive an hour and a half south the next morning because they were due the next day, to my distributor to pick up like.

90 shirts to match to go and finish the job.

Got home, printed them, labeled them all, and then the other thing I would do is individually fold every single shirt.

So if you've ever had to order shirts before, they always bundle them in a dozen.

You grab one, it becomes a big, huge mess.

Each one was folded individually.

So you grab a shirt, they were all stacked by size or really easy to distribute once you got them.

So just little things I would do.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, that's awesome.

But I think I think those little touches like that to me are what make you know like small businesses and stuff really awesome.

And so I think that's pretty cool.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and the other thing I I I hate I hated being nickel and dime.

So I would just give somebody a price.

I need 25 shirts, two colors, here's the sizes.

It's like, okay, the price is seven bucks a shirt or eight bucks a shirt or nine bucks a shirt, whatever the number was.

It would just be this is the price.

I didn't screw around with setup fees and cleanup fees and all this other stuff.

I just gave you a straight up number.

I ended up actually charging more than I think other places did because it just felt simpler and cleaner and more honest.

But that was always my approach.

I hate I hate Nickel.

Just tell me what the price is.

I don't I don't want to do the math.

SPEAKER_00: Exactly.

And I think sometimes, you know, as as people as business owners, you have to sometimes step outside of the business owner, the entrepreneur side, and step into the customer.

And nobody wants to go in and say, see a price, and then know that when they're ready to check out that, okay, well, now we need to add on this charge and this charge.

Just give me the price, and the price is the price.

So so no, I think that's awesome.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I always try to look at things from the customer's perspective because I am a customer, you know, the rest of life when I'm not working and selling, I'm a customer too.

And, you know, how do I want to be treated?

SPEAKER_00: So exactly.

Exactly.

So now do you do you still have the screen printing business?

No.

SPEAKER_01: So I ended up meeting my wife while I was doing that.

She modeled for me at one of my fashion shows.

But we'd met on the beach and we got married.

And it's because I was in clothing, I had come up with this idea for a million-dollar collar on my wedding day because my shirt looked terrible.

So we decided to move to Los Angeles after I took her out for a trip for her birthday, and we sold the company.

We decided on her 30th birthday, and I said, When do you want to leave?

And she said, By my next birthday.

And so in one year, we sold my my screen printing business.

We sold our house, we sold our car.

We had a little ski boat that we had gotten, sold everything in less than a year, and we're in the in the car moving out to Los Angeles 362 days after her birthday.

SPEAKER_00: Wow, that's pretty awesome.

That's pretty awesome.

So now, so then what happened once once you guys moved to Los Angeles in your entrepreneurial journey?

SPEAKER_01: So we got to LA, we had the money from the sale of the business, and my wife, she had her own little gym.

It was a small group and personal training gym in Milwaukee.

She started it in the park after work, after her corporate job, and ended up quitting her corporate job after just doing this for about four or five months over the summer.

And so we had this gym.

She was modeling for major brands like who is it, Matrix.

And she was actually not in the insanity beachbody videos, but when they ended up doing this training courses for trainers to do the classes in their in their gyms, she's on the cover of the DVDs on a bunch of Beach Body stuff.

She worked for Woodway treadmills.

Um, so she did some major fitness stuff modeling.

So we thought, oh, we'll get a job at Beachbody or something out there.

She had no idea what she was going to do.

I had already invented Million Dollar Collar, and I told her, I said, look, you have enough, we have enough runway for you to go 18 months.

Neither of us have to make a dollar for 18 months, and we can figure out our lives and really have an opportunity to just go after whatever passion we want.

So I was all in on million dollar collar.

We ended up meeting a guy who was a stunt man, and Linda's like, dude, this sounds awesome.

And she started training and went six days a week and started training and became a stunt woman.

She's uh she's a Hollywood stunt woman.

She's actually in Colombia right now.

She left uh a couple days ago, got a call, and the next day she was on a flight to Colombia.

So she's uh super badass, and yeah, yeah, she's my better half.

SPEAKER_00: Apparently, you said, I mean, did you already have an idea that she would be into something like that?

I mean, that seems crazy.

SPEAKER_01: Well, you know, because she's in fitness, she wanted to do something physical.

She didn't want to be a trainer anymore.

And so, you know, we were looking at opportunities, and I mean, it just kind of serendipity.

I mean, she number one, she's always thought she wanted to be on camera.

And number two, you know, we the only people we knew were like the kids that leased us our apartment building, our apartment in Los Angeles.

I mean, I was 37 or 8 when I moved there.

She was a little younger.

These kids are in their 20s, but I'm like, look, it's all the only people we know, they know everybody in the apartment building.

If we get to know them, they'll get to lead us to who we need to know in the building.

I mean, it was a 650-unit apartment, so it was a huge, huge complex.

Yeah.

And so we were out walking the dogs one day, and this guy's like, What are you gonna do?

And she's like, I don't know.

And he's like, dude, I know one of my former tenants was a stunt man.

Do you want to meet him?

She's like, hell yeah, let's go.

We met him and worked out with him one night, and he told her all the horrible things about the industry, you know, bruises and long hours.

And she goes, Sounds awesome.

What's next?

And then he introduced her and she started training.

And every time somebody would say, Hey, I want you to do this, she would go do it and go back and say, Hey, I did what you said.

And they're like, What?

Nobody ever does what uh you know I suggest.

And so she would just do it.

And then we ended up meeting another guy, and he was friends with the lady that doubled Trinity on all the Matrix movies.

And so she's this super like famous stunt woman.

Oh, and she's like, Oh, yeah, you go do this, this, and this, and go talk to this person.

And, you know, a week later, Linda would report back and be like, Hey, I went and talked to so-so-and so, and I did that.

She's like, What, really?

And so she just busted her butt.

And I mean, I think the one good thing she had was she had no worry about a bill.

Like, we had she's very good with the finances.

I would be broke as a joke if I didn't have her, but we had enough money that she could, you know, her competition had to go to a job at some point or go make money or go, you know, try to earn some cash.

She could go to every single training, she could go to every single event, she'd go to hustle sets, she could do whatever she needed to do to get into the industry, and she busted her butt.

And in five years, she's got more credits than most people do in eight or ten years.

SPEAKER_00: Wow, that's pretty awesome.

And and all I'm sitting here thinking to myself is I kind of see why the two of you uh fell in love with each other.

You guys sound like I'm seeing very good similarities here.

SPEAKER_01: So yeah, we had uh when we first met, we were actually both dating other people and very unhappy, and we kept talking about you know where we want to go and what we want to do, and our dating was like overnight because you know I complained about my girlfriend, she complained about her boyfriend, and we would know exactly what not to do because if you listen to what the other person was saying, you knew exactly.

So, I mean, yeah, it's crazy.

We it it happened really fast and been together for 11 years now, and wow, it's pretty amazing.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, that's that's so awesome, man.

So awesome.

So now tell me about million-dollar collar.

What is this?

SPEAKER_01: So I got married on the beach in Jamaica, casual wedding, toes in the sand, no tie.

I had a full suit on, but no tie.

And I had this brand new, freshly pressed Express 1MX dress shirt.

And I remember putting that thing on and standing out there in the sun and just adjusting my shirt constantly.

And before, you know, I could even say I do, I know that my shirt looked like a sloppy mess.

And we actually brought the photographer with us.

So, you know, he was a friend of ours, he took like 2,500 photos that day.

And so the next day we're like flipping through photos.

I'm like, God, my shirt is so jacked up.

What this sucks.

And so on the biggest day of my life, my shirt just let me down.

And so I came home and I tore apart a dress shirt and million-dollar collar.

The best way to describe it is it's think of a collar stay that goes in to keep your collar from curling, except it's nine inches long and it goes down the front of the shirt where the buttons and the holes are.

There's always two layers.

That part of the shirt's called the placket.

There's always two layers in the placket, there's always two layers in the collar band.

So a tailor or anybody with basic sewing skills opens a couple stitches, slides this in, sews it back together.

Once it's in, it lasts the life of the shirt.

You never have to think about it, you never have to worry about it.

And it gives structure to the front of the shirt.

The weight of the collar is what collapses the placket.

This prevents the collar from collapsing the placket when you wear a tiless dress shirt.

SPEAKER_00: Wow.

How simple yet brilliant is that?

Yeah, I mean, it took three years to figure out.

Yeah.

Really?

That's why I just started to say what in the world was the process like for you, you know, kind of going through testing in different designs.

SPEAKER_01: So I came home from Jamaica.

The very first shirt I had cut open, I shoved a piece of like thin cardboard down.

And I knew cardboard wasn't going to be, you know, the solution, but I was able to show my new bride, and she was like, Oh my God, I get what you've been complaining about all these years, you know, because we'd go out and she'd be ready to go.

And I'm still ironing the front of my shirt like an idiot, trying to get the front to look, you know, symmetrical and not collapse.

And so I came home, you know, we we started with cardboard.

Obviously, that wasn't going to be the solution.

And so I just started going through my house with every plastic I could find.

I mean, I literally cut a mini blind, I cut a milk carton.

We had these like flexible cutting boards.

I was cutting those up, trying different designs, different patterns on different shirts.

And that was the hardest part was actually figuring out the material.

I would wash and dry and test and iron the shirt would be fine.

And then I'd send them to the dry cleaner, it would just melt.

And so I finally ended up talking to the owner of a dry cleaner, and he said, Yeah, we flash press it like 450 degrees.

And so even these normal high heat plastics on the market, they melt at 275, 250.

So that's why they were failing and melting to the shirts.

So I ended up having to develop the material in partnership with the plastics company to get something that was lightweight, it's flexible, it's rigid enough to hold up the weight of the collar, but soft enough to be sewn through, and it can handle up to about 700 degrees.

And so it's more than double the heat that dry cleaners use.

Because I would hate to sell you a$2, you know, set of million-dollar collar and have to replace your$100 shirt.

So uh that's just not a good business plan.

So that's why I took my time and made sure that this material was right and I wasn't gonna ruin anybody's shirt.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, but I mean, like I said, it's such a it's such a simple concept, but it's just it's brilliant.

And I love that.

Yeah, it's really simple.

I love how easy it is.

Yeah, of course.

I think that's just so awesome.

So awesome.

So now for somebody who's listening, they're interested in this.

I mean, so is it something that you definitely recommend that they they need to have a tailor or seamstress that who will actually install it?

SPEAKER_01: I mean, you need somebody with basic sewing skills.

If you can sew a straight line for one inch, it that's all you need because you're only opening a few stitches.

So my mom taught me to sew during this process because it just cost me a fortune to keep sending these to the tailor to have them sewn in.

And so, you know, I I ruined a hundred shirts, so there's probably 150 or 200 different iterations of the design and and styles and things like that.

So my mom taught me how to sew.

I still do shirts all the time.

I do uh we have a VIP service where you can mail me five shirts.

I do the install myself, so it's really, really easy to do.

It most tailors tell me it's only putting a button on is is easier than what this is.

And we do have a map on our site of about 600, 650 dry cleaners and tailors that we work with that know how to do it, but every order comes with the very simple three-step instructions.

There's a video on the website.

It's really, really easy to do.

So, like I said, basic, basic, basic sewing skills.

SPEAKER_00: That's awesome.

Awesome.

So, now last question about the million-dollar collar.

The name million dollar collar, is it did it come from a million-dollar idea, or you're gonna look like a million bucks?

SPEAKER_01: Who doesn't want to look like a million bucks?

Exactly.

I was just wondering.

I was wondering.

I'm a very big believer in the name explaining the business and never, ever, ever, ever using my personal name because I like to start a business, grow it, and then sell it to somebody else.

And I can't sell Rob's collars to Mike or Kevin.

So I never ever use my name in the business.

And I learned that from my dad, who you know used his name in the business.

He goes, I wish I would not have done that.

It's the only thing that I I regret doing.

So if you are gonna start a business, think big, think that it's gonna grow, think that someday you're gonna sell it.

I mean, people buy businesses for$10,000 and$10 million and$10 billion.

So never, never think about, you know, not think about the fact that it could go and sell some at some point.

So even my wife's gym was called the transformation rope.

It wasn't, you know, Linda's fitness gym.

Everything's got a name.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.

No, I love it.

I love it.

Make it make it individual and and and like you said, think big, think big picture.

We know we never know, we never know what something can turn into and what you know what a year, five years down the line is gonna lead us to.

So I think that's that's super smart.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, our boat business grew because we both love being on the water and we wanted to buy a yacht and we couldn't afford to just buy it and have it sit there and and use it, you know, periodically.

I knew we were gonna do a charter business.

And so the name of the boat was Bella.

It's called Bella Boating.

And I'll tell you what, it's grown faster, it's more profitable, it's more successful than most of the businesses that we have started because we're really passionate about it.

And so if you're passionate about something and you're gonna start a business, that's what's gonna get you through the tough times, is the passion.

It's not the money.

And this boat makes us it earns way more than we ever thought possible.

We were hoping that we could do enough charters in a month that it would just pay for the boat and we'd have basically have a free boat, and it turned into a full-fledged business.

We're actually in the process of selling right now.

So, I mean, it's it's wild.

And your passion can take you anywhere.

So always think long term on that.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, I totally love that.

I love that.

I think I think so many times in in life where we are taught to think logically, you know, it's always the, you know, think, think with your head, not with your heart.

You know, I I understand there's there's reasonings behind those statements, but I believe strongly in what you were just talking about, a passion.

Having your heart in something, to me, is what's going to give you that drive to keep going.

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01: I mean, the passion, if you're in it for the money, I mean, there's a famous story about the Wright brothers when they were trying to invent the airplane and manned flight, and they had no money, they just had passion.

And there's another guy that actually got money from the government.

I can't remember what his name is, but he got money from the government and he failed.

The Wright brothers came out first, and he literally didn't even continue on the project once he found out that somebody else had delivered and come up with flight, he just walked away.

And so if you don't have the passion, those days that you're questioning your life decisions of why did I start a business or why am I doing this, it's the passion of why you got started that's gonna get you through.

It's not the dollars and cents, that's for sure.

SPEAKER_00: Absolutely, absolutely.

Well, well, I don't know.

Million dollar caller, million-dollar piece of advice right there.

It's seeming like a million dollars is the theme right here.

So we try.

That's right, that's right.

Well, well, Rob, man, I want to thank you so much for coming on the podcast today, sharing your entrepreneurial journey that I hope can maybe inspire somebody else who's got an idea, a dream, you know, to just go out and get it.

And I think one thing that I took away from our conversation today is also the fact that, you know, don't feel like what you're doing today is what you're gonna be stuck with your whole life.

You know, you can you can do something, find success in it, and then move on, you know, to something else.

And I think that's what's really I find really awesome about your story.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, my wife and I, we've, you know, we we get into things for a few years, three to five years.

We find something that we're passionate about.

We actually like to find a niche, grow a business, and we're we know that we are terrible at hiring people.

So I don't want to get into that.

We we want to run the business while we can still manage it.

And once it gets to a point where it's unmanageable by us, we like to sell it, take the cash, and go figure out something else.

And it always seems like the next idea is coming up just as the one before it is starting to fizzle for us.

And so my wife just came up with an insanely ridiculously good idea that we're gonna be putting our our passions behind shortly.

But so yeah, I mean, it's just um that's just who we are.

Some people get a job and work their whole lives, but you know, there's nothing that says there's no like certain path anymore.

You can do whatever makes you happy.

And you know, we just moved again after five years.

We're in Atlanta, Georgia now.

So just do whatever makes you happy, man.

You only got one shot at this life.

That's awesome.

SPEAKER_00: Well, well, Rob, thank you, man, so much for being on the podcast.

And for those of you listening today, I hope that today's episode just kind of gets you fired up to take on take on life, to go out there and and you know, just kind of grab the bull by the horns and and you know, and you you you're in control of your destiny, you know, so so don't let it control you.

And Rob, thank you for being a guest on the podcast.

And for you listening today, I appreciate you tuning into the podcast and look forward to seeing you next week.

And that's the lowdown with Evan Low.

I hope today's episode inspired you, motivated you, and excited you to get out and enjoy life, no matter what obstacles may be standing in the way.