BUCKED UP THE #1 PRE-WORKOUT BRAND: 9 FIGURE EMPIRE IN 10 YEARS || RYAN GARDNER || EPISODE 084
4/30/202650 min
Ryan Gardner founded Bucked Up in 2016 and has been the managing partner and CEO ever since. Under his supervision, Bucked Up has gone from a local supplement brand to the #1 best-selling pre-workout, available in over 100,000 stores worldwide.
Back in 2001, Ryan and his twin brother Jeff built a successful internet marketing company, promoting everything from supplements to biz opp to lead generation. By 2010, their affiliate network (with only 3 other employees) was earning over $25M+ annually in revenue. In 2015, they saw that social media was the future and decided to start their own social media agency. After over a decade of promoting other people's products, Ryan and Jeff realized it was finally time to put their talents to work promoting their own.
Ryan purchased the domain name DeerAntlerSpray.com in 2013. Not long after, Ray Lewis made headline news when he was accused of taking the spray before the Super Bowl. Sales exploded overnight. Sure, he was in the "Right Time...Right Place," but without Ryan's smart, hard work, he would've missed out on all that success. Shortly after the Super Bowl, he managed to get Deer Antler Spray into GNC and sold thousands of bottles a week for the next two years. Ryan, with the help of a GNC franchise owner, came up with the idea to launch a pre-workout. Despite some skepticism from family, he purchased BUCKEDUP.com for $1500 and named the first pre-workout "Bucked Up." With a great logo, flavor profile, the right ingredients, and a non-proprietary blend, the company started making waves in the supplement industry and never looked back.
This episode Ryan talks about his journey and the start of Bucked Up how the business structure works, affiliates and partners and the vision for the next 10 years.
Timestamps 00:00 Introduction 03:37 How The Journey Begun 08:06 Brand Name Challenges ️ 10:48 Athlete Selection 13:20 Ambassador Payments 17:14 Company Growth 21:17 Networking Importance 24:13 CEO Involvement 27:32 Learning From Failure 30:03 Intuition in Business 32:50 Bucked Up Future 38:43 Next Athlete Partner? 42:06 Soccer/NFL/ NBA 45:35 Brand Equity Focus 48:47 Affiliate Program
Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsRyan Gardner· Guest0:00
Essentially, we were born and raised on a farm in Clearfield, Utah. So going from a farm to running a multi-hundred million dollar company, you know, it's been quite the journey. But, you know, we did everything from sales floors, we learned how to produce leads, drive traffic online. We had our own affiliate network- Mm-hmm ... uh, you know, where we had, you know, 1,000 publishers driving traffic for different products or services.
KG· Host0:26
Mm-hmm.
Ryan Gardner· Guest0:26
And then off to the races with doing our own thing, and that's what's led us to Bucked Up. Nice to meet you. I'm Ryan, the CEO for Bucked Up. We just wanted to call you, tell you how much we appreciate you.
KG· Host0:39
Because it's our mission to give you the absolute best pre-workout out there. Let's go.
Ryan Gardner· Guest0:44
[upbeat music] Supply of Bucked Up vitality. Let's go.
Speaker 20:53
Ryan Gardner founded Bucked Up in 2016 and has been the managing partner and CEO ever since. Under his supervision, Bucked Up has gone from a local supplement brand to the number one best-selling pre-workout, available in over 100,000 stores worldwide.
Ryan Gardner· Guest1:09
And then we started going to expos, and we saw that pre-workouts were really popular. And we were like, "Well, what is a pre-workout?" We didn't even know.
KG· Host1:19
[laughs] Okay.
Ryan Gardner· Guest1:20
So... But we are marketers, right? So, and we were consulting and telling people how to run their business and kind of how a website should look and how the branding