#27: Building Discipline: Bubba Albrecht of Give’r Tells His Story Journey To An 8-Figure E-Commerce Business

In this episode, your hosts Emmanuel Eleyae and Grace Eleyae talk with Bubba Albrecht - co-founder and CEO of Give’r. He talks about how they got started, experimenting with different products, and how they built a community of supporters. He also talks about his mission and philosophy for Give’r and how he used self discipline to grow and sustain the business. You’ll also hear about how frugal he is even though his business has hit the seven figure mark, and his reasoning for that. In the Founder Rounder, Emmanuel talks about how changing technology has affected advertising, and to focus on things that have always worked, like building an organic community and creating quality content and copy.

Timestamps:

The Beginning of Give’r 


(0:56) Bubba explains the origins of Give’r and how he got started - he made hats for a camping trip with friends and people would ask where he got them so he made hats and t-shirts to test out selling.
(3:37) Bubba talks about success - imposter syndrome and why it’s important to define success on your own terms, as well as the importance of his team and the community they’ve built.
(7:22) Bubba talks about some of the snags when they first launched - shipping was expensive, Shopify was still new and had it’s own problems, but they still wanted to get something up and running.
(10:37) Bubba talks about how they wanted to expand and create new products, and how the optimization process was slow.
(12:26) Bubba talks about how they started experimenting with leather gloves and saw that there was a high demand for them. They were buying the gloves from hardware stores initially and kept moving up the supply chain to find a manufacturer. They expanded based on customer feedback.
(15:19) Bubba talks about their Kickstarter campaign in 2016 and how they had already tested the product and refined it. The campaign raised over $200,000 and they were able to manufacture. 
(18:23) Bubba talks about how their goal was to deliver their product to everyone who supported them during their kickstarter campaign, and through this they learned a lot about the systems and operations.
(19:43) Bubba explains the term ‘give’r’ - it’s Canadian and means to give it your all.

Give’r’s Mission and Business Philosophy


(21:55) Bubba talks about the brand’s mission and philosophy. He also talks about learning balance and how to manage a team, the importance of taking chances and risks, and asking people like Emmanuel for advice when needed.
(26:13) Bubba talks about the importance of delivering to loyal customers and how more mistakes happened when they tried to grow quickly.
(27:32) Bubba talks about how important it is to make sure there’s actually a market for your product as early as possible and that people will actually pay for your product.
(29:17) Bubba talks about balancing growth and capacity and how he turned down retailers because he would not compromise his loyal customers.

Discipline


(30:27) Emmanuel talks about the importance of discipline and how it’s better to focus on building an organic audience before running ads because everything works better when you have an organic audience to fall back on.
(32:13) Bubba talks about how his decision to not run ads was because they didn’t have the money for it, and it forced them to look at other options. He also talks about the importance of talking to customers and getting their feedback.
(33:44) Bubba talks about how building slowly worked for them. He worked 2 other jobs during the first 3 years of Give’r and that allowed him to not have to worry about paying rent or other financial strain, and it also allowed him to have breaks from the business.
(36:28) Grace and Bubba talk about the importance of discipline, and Bubba gives an example of a time they took on more than they could handle and it didn’t work out.
(38:42) Bubba talks about the importance of stability and how working other jobs gave him a better chance