CLEAN BOTTLE

I am a self help / business advice junkie.  I read all the small business blogs I can get my hands on, devour all the great business leader autobiographies, follow all the notable entrepreneurs on twitter.  There is so much information out there and sometimes it gets confusing and even contradictory.

Some people say “ask your customers what they want and give it to them.”  And then I read Steve Job’s book and he says “we never do beta testing or ask customers what they want.  They don’t know what they want.”

Some people say “focus on marketing.”  Some people say “ignore marketing and just focus on the product.  If your product is good enough it will market itself.”

If you’ve read The Lean Start-Up by Eric Ries he is a huge advocate of getting a minimum viable product out quickly and seeing if people like it.  If they don’t, then scrap it and focus on something else.  This is what the founders of Instagram said they did, to much success.  It is the “Fail Fast” mantra.  And then I read an interview from Ben Silbermann, the founder of Pinterest.  He says that at first Pinterest had very few users and that it actually took a long time to catch on.  Silbermann says that he is glad he didn’t read the Lean Start-up because he would have quickly scrapped Pinterest.

So with all this conflicting advice, who do you believe?

I’ve come to the conclusion that, while I enjoy reading all the business advice material I can, ultimately the dynamics of any business are so situation-specific that there are few business axioms that you should obey at all costs.

For me, the real value of these business advice books are motivational.  I LOVE to hear about how Steve Jobs came back to Apple and slashed all but 4 lines of products so he could simplify and focus.  I LOVE to read about Howard Schultz’s vision of Starbucks as a Third Place where people could hang out and socialize.

But the lessons that each of these entrepreneurs learned along the way are very specific to their business, and may or may not apply to Clean Bottle.

The best analogy I can use is to think of each of these business leaders as explorers.  They are hiking or sailing or climbing their way through an unknown territory.  Each one is in a different environment, in a different time period, with a different goal.  And each one is describing how they successfully navigated their way to their goal.  But what worked in maritime navigation may not apply to mountain climbing and vice versa.

So, while these stories of success are powerful, and while I have found a lot of general themes that make sense (have plenty of cash, have a differentiated offering, etc), I find the stories mostly valuable for their motivational merit rather than any specific advice they can offer.

What has worked the best for me is to find an entrepreneur that has gone through a situation as close to mine as possible.  Clean Bottle is a one product company, with a low price point, in crowded, commoditized, relatively niche industry with a few huge brand names.  We are competing not on price, but on the fact that we have one feature that no one else has.  So, I’ve spent a lot of time trying to  find companies that were in the same position and have still succeeded.

And when I find these leaders I ask them general business advice, but I also ask them specific questions like “Who is the REI buyer?” and “how much do you comp your sales people?”.  And I try to find a way that we can work together that is win-win.

For example, we are working with a drink company, HDX.  The founder, Vipe Desai, has a great track record as an executive and entrpreneur.  I picked his brain on general advice, but we are also working together.  I am putting a packet of HDX in each Clean Bottle we sell online.  And he is representing the Clean Bottle brand at various events he attends.  These kind of win-win relationships are more valuable than any general advice I could have gotten from Vipe and it is absoluately the only way small companies can compete against entrenched encumbants.

So – read all the business advice you can get your hands on.  But don’t blindly follow this advice at the expense of what you think is best for your business.

And spend your time seeking out companies in as similar a situation as you are and use those relationships to help guide you and grow your business.

Thats all from me!

Why Bother With a Training Log?

Whether you’re training for your first 10K run or trying to qualify for the USA Triathlon National Championships a training log is a valuable tool for reaching your goals.  As with many things in life, it can be easy to start a training log but can be difficult to follow through, yet if you commit to filling out a daily log it can pay off with large dividends down the road.

What is a training log?

Your training log should be sport specific (or multi-sport specific if that’s what your training for), and at a minimum should allow you to record your time spent training each day as well as free form comments to record the subjective side of training (“felt awesome today,” “left shin hurting more than yesterday”) it may also include a field for daily mileage, especially for runners.  More advanced training logs will allow you to record your heart rate, pace, calories burned, power output, weight, hours of sleep and many other metrics that will depend on your specific sport.

Your log can be hand written on blank notepad paper, a journal that already has pre-formed fields to fill in, or even just a daily calendar.  These days many are turning to online training logs such as TrainingPeaks.com or RunPartner.com for their convenience (you can complete your log anywhere that you have internet access or a smart phone) and their advanced analytical tools and graphs that help you track and analyze your training data.  Online training logs can also allow an athlete to share their training comments in real-time with a coach.

Why bother recording this information?

It may seem tedious to write down notes about each and every training session you perform, but the more complete your log the more valuable it becomes.

Your training log will not only record your past training, but guide your future training as well.  When preparing for a specific event you can look back into your log and see what training has, and has not, worked for you in the past to help direct you to the most effective future plan.  Your log will allow you to analyze the training you have completed and see if it has resulted in your desired outcome, and if not, what changes should be made.

Your training log can also help you prevent injury.  A log will make you aware of how much you have been training and let you scale back ahead of time if you are overdoing it.  When an injury does occur you can look back into you log to see exactly what training led to this injury and thus what to avoid in the future.

Finally, your training log can provide motivation.  Often you will feel responsible to your log, and this can be enough to motivate you to get your training in, even when you’d rather surf Facebook.  Just tallying up all your miles or hours at the end of the week can give you a sense of pride and accomplishment that will help you continue strong through the next week!

Are there tips for remembering to fill out my log?

Although it may only take a couple minutes, athletes often find it easy to go to bed without having logged that day’s workout.  Here are a few tips for maintaining a complete log:

-       Make it part of your routine.  Make filling out your log the last thing you do before you go to bed, or the first thing you do as soon as you return from your workout, or give yourself a quick break each morning while at the office to fill out your log.  Find a good time to fill out your log and stick to it!

-       Don’t sweat it if you get backed up.  Often times individuals will forget to log their workouts multiple days in a row, then the thought of back-filling all those workouts becomes so daunting they keep skipping their daily log to avoid having to think back to the previous workouts, quickly snowballing into multiple weeks without logging.  If you find yourself more than a couple days behind just leave them blank and start from where you are, missing a couple days is much better than missing a couple weeks!

-       Fill out only what you really care about (or your coach asks for).  If you use an online training log there will likely be a myriad of fields to fill out, however, if all you use to measure bike rides is the clock then just fill out the ride time and a few free-form comments, don’t bother estimating distance or calories.  Too many metrics can backfire and cause you to skip logging altogether.  If you weigh yourself every morning, take your resting heart rate, count your calories, and map our your bike rides with a GPS, by all means include those in your log, but don’t force it if that’s just not for you.

-       Look back in your log every couple weeks.  Seeing the progress you’ve made can be very motivating for your training and encourage you to keep logging diligently.

Most importantly, start a log today, even if it’s just notes on a scrap piece of paper!

Scott Cole is a USA Cycling licensed coach operating out of the Bay Area, California.  Scott is also happily Employee #2 at Clean Bottle.  Please feel free to contact him with further questions at Scott@ScottColeCoaching.com

A few months ago team Clean Bottle went to Las Vegas for a tradeshow.  One night we hopped in a cab, only to discover it was being driven by the most knowledgable / chatty / inappropriate cabbie in all of Nevada.

Cabbie: “You guys looking for strip clubs.  I can tell you all the best ones.”

Us: “Uhh.  no thanks”

Cabbie: “How about hookers?  I can take you to a brothel, although its about $5,000.  Or you can just call up one for about $1,000″

Us: “Thats okay.  We are actually just looking for a place to eat thats pretty cheap and not that touristy.”

Cabbie: “Thats easy.  Go to Ellis Island.  All the cabbies eat there.”

This being Las Vegas, I thought there was an angle.  You see, cab drivers often get paid some type of commission if they bring young men to “Gentlemen’s Clubs” or drop them off at night clubs.  There are so many games that places in Las Vegas play to try to lure customers in, I was sure that this place, Ellis Island, had some type of deal with the cab drivers.  Our cab driver seemed very straightforward so I asked him.

“Why did you recommend Ellis Island?  I know with a lot of these places you guys get some type of cut if you drop off tourists.”

“Yeah you are right, with a lot of the clubs and stuff we do.  But I recommended Ellis Island because it is the best.  Amazing food, amazing prices.  There is a reason that all the cab drivers eat there”.

The comment left me shocked.  And I still can’t get it out of my mind.

As a marketer I am constantly looking for “the angle”.  I’m looking for a way to get people to buy my product.  I run around in a giant Clean Bottle costume in France.  I go on reality TV to pitch the bottle.  I post funny photos of my family.  I do all of this hoping to get publicity and spread the word.

But it wasn’t any angle that made Ellis Island so popular.  It was the product.  We went to Ellis Island the next day and it was truly remarkable.  Great food and great prices.  This was the reason Ellis Island was so popular, not from any marketing gimmick.

Sure – marketing techniques can work.  And there is value in doing them.  But there rarely is any one event that will take a product and make it the next Facebook or Google.  At best, creative marketing can give you a temporary pop in sales.

So what I like to focus on, and what I tell other people to focus on is the product, not the marketing.  Create a product or a servie that is 10 times better than anything else out there and reasonably priced.  Obsess over it.  Don’t compromise.  Then the marketing is easy.  We live in a day where, if you have a truly remarkable product, people can tell other people about it so quickly, and news can spread so rapidly, that the marketing will take care of itself.

Product.  Product. Product.  Its the hardest thing to do, no doubt.  But it is really the only thing you have control over, so it is the thing you should spend most of you time focusing on.

And by the way, next time you are in Vegas, check out Ellis Island.  And tell them Dave sent you!  I’m trying to work our a referral fee with them

$1.25 micro brews and amazing food. 'Nuff said!

There are two kinds of people in the world: those mostly interested in helping themselves and those mostly interested in helping others.

Bill Walton is one of the latter.

If you all don’t remember, I met Bill back in February 2011 at a NBA game.  I knew that Bill was a cyclist, so I mustered up the courage to ask him if he had heard about Clean Bottle.  I was pretty nervous to approach Bill.  After all, Bill Walton is a Big Deal.  He is an NBA Hall of Famer and iconic NBA announcer.

I sent Bill a few bottles, expecting never to hear from him again.

I ended up with a great friendship with one of the most selfless people I know.

Here I am showing Bill the photo of Bottle Boy to prove I am not just a deranged fan.

Instead of getting expected radio silence from Bill, within a few days of me sending him bottles he sent me an email thanking me.  You don’t know enthusiasm until you’ve met Bill Walton.  He just didn’t tell me he liked the Clean Bottle, he wrote “I LOVE MY CLEAN BOTTLE”.  And the more I sent him, the more effusive he became in his praise.

During the Tour de France I emailed Bill to ask if he had seen me running along the road and if he was playing my “Spot the Clean Bottle” contest.  Not only did he tell me he had seen the contest, but he also offered up memorabilhia and NBA tickets as prizes for the event!

Once I got back from the Tour I kept in touch with Bill.  He mentioned that a charity he works with, the Challenged Athletes Foundation, was doing a 2 day, 200 mile ride near my home in the Bay Area. He invited me to come along.

On this ride I really got to know Bill and his story.  6’11″ and running on hardwood floors do not mix very well.  So, Bill has a lot of wear on his body.  He’s had 36 orthopedic operations and his back and both ankles are fused.

You wouldn’t blame him if he sat at home all day moping around.  Not Bill.  Not only does he ride 100 miles on a regular basis, but he approaches each ride, each day, like he is a child riding his bike for the first time.

It really was amazing to watch.  Each morning, each rest stop, each evening, Bill would raise his arms and shout “I get to ride my bike.  Today is an AMAZING day”.  Here I was, lost in my own worries, thinking about the future.  Bill’s booming voice shook me out of all that.  His attitude reminded me to stop worrying about my problems for a minute and step back and soak in the beautiful ride, the beautiful scenery and the amazing people I was with.

"I get to ride my bike!!"

Bill is incredibly busy, but he always makes time to encourage me and support Clean Bottle.  Its amazing, because he has absolutely nothing to gain from everything he does for me.

I’ve also gotten to know Bill’s wife, Lori, as well as his sons.  They are unbelievably kind and generous as well.

Thank you Bill for everything you’ve done for Clean Bottle.  But more importantly, thank you for being such a great example for how I should lead my life.

Ride Clean!

Bill has given me so much encouragement, I wanted to return the favor. So I surprised him on one of his rides.

Hey guys – here are the winners!  I will be emailing each person.  Unfortunately all we collected was an email address, so we don’t have each person’s full name, so I am just putting the first part of their email address below so you can see if it is you.  But we will also be emailing each person as well.

Thanks for playing – I can’t wait until next year!

When you watch the Tour on TV you only see part of the actual event that is Le Tour.

About an hour and a half before the riders come through there is a large caravan that drives by.  The caravan is basically a parade of companies that have paid to advertise at the Tour.  There are hotel chains, soft drink companies, grocery store chains.  Even the Luxemburg Tourism Bureau has a few cars in the caravan.  They all drive by with crazy floats, blast music and throw trinkets to the fans.

One company, Etap Hotels, throws out an orange head scarf.  Maybe it was the sun, maybe it was the wine or maybe it was the noxious fumes that were fermenting in our van, but one day I decided that the head scarf would double as a great mini-skirt / euro trash bathing suit.  I undid the knot, put it on and voila!  It worked.

So, to entertain ourselves, Reed, Alan and I would dress up in our head scarves / euro-trash swim trunks and dance for the caravan as they went by.  Their reaction this silliness was priceless: some would gasp, some would laugh uncontrollably, some would start dancing in sync with us.  It never got old.  After a few stages the caravan began to recognize us and our legend grew.  Just as Bottle Boy was the entertainment for the Tour viewers, our alter ego, “Party Boy”, became the entertainment for the caravan.

The most ridiculous part is that, because we were so outlandish, the caravan would usually shower us with the trinkets and samples that they throw out.

We made it rain.

Some people will do anything to get free stuff!

We didn’t need any of the stuff, and even if we did we couldn’t bend down to get any of it!  So we would just leave it on the ground.  Quickly, the kids near us would realize this and they’d gather near us like pigeons waiting for bread crumbs.  Picture it: two half naked guys, dancing for the caravan, with a bunch of kids scurrying around them.  My parents would be proud.

Reed still may want to run for public office some day, so we left him out of the photo, but here is Alan and I doing our thing.

Thanks for reading!

Today Alan and I travelled to the Col d’Angel, the first climb of the stage.  We were planning to drive up the back side, down the climb and park on it, but when we got to the foot of the mountain we were told by the French Police it was closed.  It was too late to drive around so we camped out for the night.

As we set up our tent we heard a guitar playing and saw people singing around a camp fire.  Not ones to miss an opportunity belt out a few tunes, Alan and I grabbed a bottle of wine from the car and headed over.  There was a group of about 10 people gathered around, including the two French Police officers.  Hey, maybe the French Police aren’t that bad.

We sung a bunch of songs and even led the French in a spirited rendition of God Bless America.  The French Police had to run off every now and then to stop cars that tried to go up the mountain.  One time, one of the officers even gave his jacket to a lady in the group and had her run up to the car and stop the person!  We all laughed when that happened.  I was seriously considering getting the Bottle Boy costume out and putting the French Police jacket over it.  That would have made for a good photo.

Us with the locals

We had a good night, but because we were on the backside of the climb we had to bike 6 miles up it with our costumes.  Alan and I ground out the climb, which took us well over an hour.  It was so windy we were blown over twice.  And it was COLD.  Alan even put on the Bottle Boy gloves for warmth.

Alan trying to stay warm!

We descended about 3 miles, where it was open enough for us to run.  So after we ran we had to climb ANOTHER 3 miles in the howling wind and cold.  What a day!

We are now off to the Galibier, the last climb of the Tour for us.  Its been a long trip, but hopefully you’ve had some fun watching us.

Thanks for Reading!

Today Alan and I headed into Italy to camp out on the climb leading into the town of Sestriere, which hosted  the winter Olympic games.  The French Police were hot on my trail so I was happy to be across the border for a day.  That should be one rule in the Bottle Boy handbook: whenever possible, run in a country other than France.

Alan was pretty knocked out from the saddle sores he has been dealing with so I did a ride by myself.

Being in a country other than France has its advantages from a criminal prosecution standpoint, but it makes it even tougher trying to communicate.  Just when I had started to pick up some French I now had to speak Italian.  Now all my “Boungers” became “Boungernous” and my “Mercis” became “Gratsis”.  I did get a proper Cappuchino though, which was nice.

Also in Italy I had my first Clean Bottle sighting!  I had gotten back to my car when I saw a guy, I believe his name was Michael, biking by with one!  Last year I made a promise to myself: “I am going to get on TV every day and make Clean Bottle so popular that when I come back next year I will see someone using one.”

Next year I hope to see even more of these!

It was honestly an emotional moment for me.  It is a really hard feeling to describe: Clean Bottle is something I had been putting my heart and soul into for 3 years to get it right before I launched it last year.  To see something that was once an idea in my head, now in use halfway around the world, is a very special feeling.  It lets me know that, in my own small way, I’ve had a visible impact on the world.  I’ve made a mark.

To all of you aspiring entrepreneurs out there I have a message: launching a new product or service is UNBELIEVABLY difficult.  Chances are you will fail.  But you HAVE TO TRY.  You can’t sit back when you are 70 with regrets that you didn’t go for it.  And if you do succeed, even in a minor way like have with Clean Bottle, it will be one of the best feelings in the world.

That day I ended up running with the riders as long as I ever have.  Maybe it was the adrenaline from seeing Clean Bottle in use, maybe it was the gentle grade, maybe it was that there were no French Police to shove me in a ditch, but it was a long run.  And hopefully Clean Bottle will have a long run as well.

Thanks for reading!

Team Clean Bottle is really limping to the finish.  Reed flew out today so we are without our French speaker.  Alan has saddle sores so bad that he needs to see a doctor and my computer just died.  And to add insult to injury, the French policy motorcar pushed me into the gutter as I was running with the riders today.  After he did, he shouted something to me in French an put up two fingers.  This could mean a few things:

• It is the French sign for giving someone the birdie
• He is exasperated by the fact that there are two of us
• He is giving me my second and final warning.  I also got chewed out yesterday as I was running

In any case, I am ready for tomorrow’s rest day.  And I hope the motorcycle police guy doesn’t follow the Tour into the Alps, or my next post may be from a French jail.  Which, by the way, is looking a lot better than the van I have been sleeping in every night.

Au Revoir!

We camped out last night at the base of the Col d’Agnes, the second to last climb of the day.  The morning of the stage we walked into town to get some coffee.  In France coffee is a sit down affair.  No Starbucks here.  You go into a restaurant and they serve you.

Reed, our only French Speaker, was in the bathroom when the waiter came by.  Alan asked for coffee by saying “café” but he didn’t know the word for milk so he did a hilarious pantomime of him milking a cow’s udders while simultaneously mooing.  We may not learn much French on this trip but we are going to be AWESOME at charades by the time this thing is over.

We are becoming famous in America with the Bottle Boy costume running around on TV every day.  But we are also becoming equally as famous with the caravan that proceeds the race.  Think of it as a long parade of companies that make giant floats and entertain the fans by throwing free trinkets at them and blasting music.

Every day when the caravan goes by we stand on the side of the road and dance our tails off.  I think they are beginning to recognize us by our disheveled appearance and horrible dancing. The caravan rewards us by throwing A TON of items our way.  I am now the proud owner of 80 key chains, 30 hats, 12 pocket ashtrays (yes you read that right) and 15 shirts. Today Reed chased after the Vittel (water company) caravan and asked the driver for her phone number, which she obliged.

After the stage we headed to Narbonne, an awesome town near the Mediterranean.  The town square actually had a nighttime criterium race going on at one side of the town square, and a country music dancing show on the other side of the town.  These Narbonnians really know how to party!

We ate dinner at a restaurant that served meals in the middle of the town square.  I had gotten my dancing in for the day, but Reed wanted more, so in the middle of the meal he asked a group of Algerian ladies sitting next to us to dance with him.

Tomorrow is a flat stage, so we are heading to the only hill of the day.  Wish us good luck with our dance moves and running!

Au Revoir!