Hangin’ with Jase Bennett
When Jase Bennett and I connected, I think Mt. Vesuvius may have erupted yet again. So many connections with each other and yet we only met a few weeks ago in person. Jase is the ultimate entrepreneur. He has created so many businesses and has done so many things to spread light into the world. Whatever Jase creates, he puts his full heart and soul into it. Jase has an amazing philosophy behind business. Whatever he creates, he makes sure to always have two different businesses going at the same time.
When one supersedes the other, he sells off the first one and jumps into his new one. He is all about creating things that make him come alive. He loves to share goodness in all that he does. Currently, he and his beautiful wife Rachel have created a very successful YouTube channel called The Ohana Adventure with a bit over 3 million followers. His children have their own YouTube channels as well, with many followers as well. Jase is a gatherer and a connecter. He knows how to build things up and finds an insane amount of joy in doing so.
I could go on and on about what he is creating, but it’s better to let the podcast speak for itself. Enjoy!!
About Jase Bennett
Jase Bennett is a husband to Rachel and father to six children, originally from Utah, born on February 14th, 1980. Jase was raised as a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and is the son of Randall K. Bennett and Shelley Dianne Watchman. Jase is one of four siblings. His father Randall is a General Authority Seventy of the church and has been since April 2, 2011.
He and his family now live in Laie, Hawaii, where they are enjoying a lot of success with a YouTube channel called The Ohana Adventure. As an entrepreneur and family vlogger, he has had success in various industries, and his family vlogs have amassed more than 1.1 billion views. The vlogging channel has grown and grown since originally being created by Jase and Rachel in December 2015, and now his children have YouTube channels of their own now. The six Bennett children are named Klai, Rykel, Shae, Wyatt, Evelin, and Cora.
Bennett attended Skyline Business School from 1995–1998, and then attended Utah Valley University in Orem for a year, in 2002, both of which helped to hone his entrepreneurial spirit. In 2001 Bennett was part of one of the fastest-growing sales teams at Mountain State Mortgage, and he helped with the expansion and growth of one of the fastest-growing internet companies in the country, as well as in the Salt Lake City area. Bennett worked with the FHA division of Mountain States Mortgage, where his main role was recruiting, training, and managing over twenty loan processors and officers. In this role, he would routinely close over a million dollars each day.
His next job role was in 2002, where he became an integral part of Prudential Utah Realty, working as a real estate agent for two years. The company itself was one of Utah’s top brokerage firms at the time. Wanting more for the family, and to have a business of their own, Jase and wife Rachel moved to Laie, Hawaii, in 2004. They opened Ohana Video in Laie that same year, a business specializing in video rental and sales. They then opened Ohana Memories in 2005, having those businesses for five years. At the same time, Bennett joined Staples Realty in 2005 and then became a partner in the company in 2008. In total, he has been a partner in the company for thirteen years.
During 2009 and 2010 Bennett was regularly rated and ranked in the top one hundred real estate agents in Hawaii. As a result, and showing he clearly knows what he is doing in the industry, he has helped and taught hundreds of people to be more financially literate with the end goal of helping them to be homeowners. Jase does this alongside Richie Norton, the founder of the Empower Laie Project.
Jase Bennett has had a number of accolades that show just how successful he has been as a mentor and entrepreneur. In 2011 Bennett was recognized as one of the “Top Forty Under Forty” brightest young businessmen by the Pacific Business News. He also earned and was awarded the Aloha Aina in 2010, which is the People’s Choice Award given out by the Honolulu board of Realtors. As another string to his bow, Jase founded longboard company Jaseboards North Shore Hawaii, of which he was president until 2016. Longboarding is a passion of his, and this was a great way to combine something he loved with his expertise in business.
To create something that the whole family could be involved in, the Bennetts started The Ohana Adventure on YouTube, documenting their lives in Hawaii since 2015. Jase describes himself as the “chief idea officer” for the channel, and it has grown and grown in popularity. The channel gained 100 million views in under six months, as well as getting 2 million new subscribers in just two years. Making money to get to play with their kids was the goal behind The Ohana Adventures, and with 3.54 million subscribers at present, the goal is definitely being achieved! Four of the Bennett children have channels of their own, each successful in its own right.
The Bennett family are still active members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and the family has recently been part of some of the filming of season two of “The Chosen,” a series of short movies set around stories from the Bible, to be released in April 2021.
Jase Bennett Podcast Transcription
Charan: All right, should we do this, dude?
Jase: Let’s do this.
Charan: All right. Hey guys, welcome to the Lemonade Stand Podcast, I’m your host Charan Prabhakar, and this is my good friend, Jase Bennett. And this is a very, very special podcast because we are on location in Dallas, Texas. And what are we doing, Jase? Why are we here in Dallas?
Jase: We’re sitting in a hotel room.
Charan: Yeah, that’s it. We were thinking we could either go and do this thing in Utah, or we could be in a hotel room in Dallas, Texas.
Jase: They’re way better, they’re bigger hotel rooms-
Charan: [crosstalk 00:01:52].
Jase: Yeah, they’re bigger.
Charan: Yeah. Everything’s bigger in Texas. Also we are here because we are going to be, I guess, extras-
Jase: Yes, so extra.
Charan: … on the set of “The Chosen,” right? And that’s why we are growing our facial hair out. Jase has been growing his for-
Jase: I think I’m on day six.
Charan: He’s on day six, I’m on day 90, and it’s barely showing up as you can tell.
Jase: It’s looking good though.
Charan: Is it looking all right?
Jase: I like it.
Charan: Thanks man. No, it’s actually been a couple of weeks, but we’re very excited. And for those that are listening and you can’t see us having facial hair, just imagine that we have like a full-
Jase: Mountain men.
Charan: Mountain men.
Jase: Flannels, axes.
Charan: Yes, absolutely.
Jase: Can you smell the pine? I can smell the pine.
Charan: I don’t even know what it is… I don’t know if they have pine where I come from in India, but you can probably smell it somewhere. But, Jase, thank you so much, man, for joining me on this podcast. This whole podcast, this whole journey is all about people’s Lemonade Stand Stories, right?
Jase: So cool.
Charan: And how people got to where they are in life right now. And it’s interesting because… I just want to give a little bit of background to the audience about you. First off, I have heard of you for a long time; the funny thing is, we barely met a few weeks ago.
Jase: Yeah.
Charan: But yet we knew of each other for some time, right?
Jase: A long time.
Charan: A long time.
Jase: Yeah.
Charan: And so, it was kind of like we were instant best friends, so much so that a few weeks after we met, we’re both in a hotel room in Dallas.
Jase: Yeah. Sitting on the couch.
Charan: Sitting on the couch. But it was cool because my friend Devin Graham, who was also on this podcast from earlier, was talking to me about Jaseboards, and his buddy Jase Bennett was in Hawaii, and they were doing, like, longboards and whatnot. And then, later on, my buddy, Corbin Allred, who was also on the podcast, was talking about Jase, and I’m like, “Is this the same guy?” Because-
Jase: He’s kind of all over the place.
Charan: He’s all over the place. It’s kind of crazy. And then, we finally got to meet, and you’re like, “Dude, you’re the guy in that movie, ‘Last Man(s).'” And I’m like, “Wait, I am. How did you know me from that?” And then, one of your best friends happens to be a really good friend of mine as well, Joe England. So, there were all these instant connections, and crazy, crazy things, but-
Jase: We had to trust each other.
Charan: We had to; we had no choice.
Jase: Way too many people said that we should meet up.
Charan: Yeah, absolutely. And so, we did. Well, I’ve always learned that relationships grow really fast when you’re on trips together, so here we are. [crosstalk 00:04:12].
Jase: Trips or traumatic events.
Charan: Absolutely.
Jase: Let’s not do the traumatic event part; let’s do the trip.
Charan: Let’s do the trips. But know that there was a pandemic, so I guess that’s a traumatic event.
Jase: Yeah.
Charan: Yeah [crosstalk 00:04:22].
Jase: And we’ve both been tested recently-
Charan: We got tested.
Jase: Negative is the new positive, and we’re both negative.
Charan: Yeah. Well, two negatives make a positive.
Jase: Oh, that was so good.
Charan: Dang.
Jase: That was so good.
Charan: You’re very welcome.
Jase: I hope there’s, like, a [inaudible 00:04:34].
Charan: Yeah. I’ll have to add that in there. But anyway, the Lemonade Stand Podcast is all about people’s Lemonade Stand Stories, their first foray into business. And for a lot of kids, it is starting a lemonade stand, right? And how that experience went for them. So, as I’ve gotten to know you a little bit better, I’ve known you just to be an incredible entrepreneur at heart, you just love it, you breathe it. So, let’s go back to when you first decided, “Hey, I want to start businesses.” Were you a little kid? Did you do stuff when you were a kid?
Jase: I was a little, little kid.
Charan: Cute little guy.
Jase: Actually, Joe, if he’s listening, and I hope he is, he still owes me $100, because he bet me that by the time… I think I was 35, that I would have had a normal job, and I said, “Never.” I still have not had a normal job, and I still have not got my $100, but that’s okay.
Charan: Oh, man.
Jase: That’s okay.
Charan: Joe should be listening to this.
Jase: I hope so.
Charan: Yeah.
Jase: No, little kid, Southern California, really poor neighborhood, kind of down and out, my dad was going to school, and pencils were a thing.
Charan: Yeah.
Jase: Not just like the yellow No.2, all of a sudden the vending machine had NBA and NFL pencils, and they were more expensive.
Charan: Now, are you talking about pencils you put in the sharpener, like mechanical pencils?
Jase: Yeah. No. Pencils you put in the sharpener-
Charan: [crosstalk 00:05:51].
Jase: … full on, little logo wrapped around with an NFL team, like Dallas Cowboys, 49ers. Then there was… I never saw a Clippers pencil. Sorry, Clippers, but the-
Charan: You knew that the NBA liked to write with pencils.
Jase: LA Lakers, right? So, we would go down to Tijuana as a cool fun family thing, we’d go down there, and there’s a really good taco stand, and we loved it. We loved going down there. So, we went down and I saw… This person had a little roll of pencils, and I looked at my dad and I said, “Hey, dad, those are like the cool ones all the cool kids get, could I buy these and sell them for more to the kids at school?” He’s like, “Yeah? You want to do that?” I was like, “Yeah.” He didn’t make me take a loan… I make my kids take loans out for me if they want to start businesses.
Jase: My wife and I had our daughter take a loan out… later story, but for her little business, she wanted to start when she was like 10, 12. But anyways, so I take those pencils back, and I’d sell them for… What was it? It was less than the vending machine, but 5 cents a pencil more than I got them for.
Charan: Oh, wow. Okay. A huge deal.
Jase: And so, for a second grader, I had cash, man, I was doing good.
Charan: Of course.
Jase: So, that was my first foray into import/export.
Charan: Dude, fantastic.
Jase: I was muling my own products over the border without paying taxes or duties; it was a great time in the world.
Charan: Oh my gosh. Yeah. That’s great. We can’t live like that anymore these days-
Jase: No.
Charan: But that’s unbelievable. And did you feel like the pencils were going pretty quickly? Was your product disappearing very, very fast?
Jase: Oh yeah. I became like the pencil hustler on campus; it was cool.
Charan: Campus or the elementary school?
Jase: That turned into… It ended, moving to Utah right before I went into junior high school. And so, then, we’d keep on going back to California to see family and friends, and we’d go down into Tijuana, so I brought back a black garbage bag full of knockoff sunglasses.
Charan: Oh my gosh.
Jase: But Joe, actually, our friend, had a pair. He bought a pair of these off of me. And I wouldn’t tell people they were real, I was like, “No, you guys, these are totally fake, but they’re really cool.” And so, I’d sell these knockoff sunglasses to my junior high campus, so I was the sunglass guy in junior high.
Charan: Oh my gosh.
Jase: All sorts of little things where I’m like, “Hey man, if I can buy it cheap and sell it high, now, would I do knockoff products anymore?” No, I would not. But it was really fun in junior high to be like the cool kid with all the different Oakleys, and Arnettes, and what? VonZipper just come out. Anyways, a bunch of sunglasses. Then, I realized knockoffs weren’t good, because the pencils were knockoffs, sunglasses were knockoffs.
Charan: Sure.
Jase: I was a shyster. So, then I started making snowboarding pants.
Charan: You made snowboarding pants?
Jase: Snowboarding was a new thing, I had gotten a snowboard… What was it? 1990, I think.
Charan: Oh, wow, okay.
Jase: And all they had is really skinny ski pants, they weren’t fashionable for-
Charan: No, not for a-
Jase: … a young dude, the one to hit the slopes on the-
Charan: Of course not. That’s why I wouldn’t snowboard until the pants became cool.
Jase: See-
Charan: [crosstalk 00:09:01].
Jase: So, finally, I made pants that were cool. No, but I ended up taking… They had Home Ec classes, and I worked with my counselor to figure out how many classes I could take of Home Ec, because all the other guys didn’t want to take Home Ec classes unless they knew about girls at that point. Some of the smart ones were there, and they knew what they were doing. But I took, I think, it was five Home Ec classes-
Charan: [inaudible 00:09:24].
Jase: … and it was all sewing, everything they would teach about sewing, and so I made all my pants during school-
Charan: Smart.
Jase: … and I’d sell them at the end of the day. So, 80 bucks would cost me about 12 to 15 bucks for the fabric. I’d sell them for 80 bucks.
Charan: No way.
Jase: And so, they were shells, waterproof Cordura, and I even got really cool with the designs on the side, I’d embroider our little label at the bottom. And I’d sell them at the end of the day, and I mean, it’s like 65, 70 bucks profit, I was like, “Now-“
Charan: Now you’re [inaudible 00:09:54].
Jase: Peace out, pencils.
Charan: Yeah. I mean, listen, you can’t be a pencil pusher for the rest of your life.
Jase: I can’t.
Charan: No, [crosstalk 00:10:01].
Jase: Wow. This is-
Charan: Dang, how many of those?
Jase: [crosstalk 00:10:06] Those are two A-class puns.
Charan: And English is not even my first language, guys, so Jase, you got to catch up, buddy.
Jase: Okay, I’m in.
Charan: No, here’s the thing. It’s cool that you had that mentality from such a young age of just being able to create something with the resources that you have and be able to put it out there for a bit more of a profit, right?
Jase: Yeah.
Charan: And it wasn’t like something that was intuitively taught to you, it was just something you just kind of knew, is that right?
Jase: Well, at that point, I wanted to go and get a job, because all my buddies-
Charan: Sure.
Jase: … were working at Subway. And they were talking about how much fun it was, and they’re having sandwich-building competitions, and this, that, and the other, and I was like, “Dad, I need to get a job.” He’s like, “Why would you get a job? Look what you’re doing.” And I would help him on the weekends. I’d go into his orthodontic practice, and he would make molds of people’s mouths, he would take the impressions, and then I’d let it all stack up, and on the weekend, I’d turn on some music, I’d go in, and I’d grind them all down to fit into boxes. He did that… Wasn’t standard for an orthodontist, it’s a little bit of a rat hole, but for… So he would do that so people wouldn’t sue him. So, he’d take an impression of the before, an impression after, some people would say, “Oh no, look, you didn’t change my teeth.” So, that was my other job.
Charan: Right.
Jase: So, I did work for my dad, but it was on my own time, on the weekends when I wanted to. And so, I said, “Dad, I need to get a real job.” And he said, “Why would you go and do that? Look at all the cool stuff you’re doing. You get to do whatever you want. Go make a couple of pants while you’re in class, sell them, and you’re making more than your friends.” I’m like, “There’s no way, they have real jobs.” Well, then I asked my friends what they made, like $7.50, $7.25 an hour.
Charan: Yeah, right.
Jase: I’m like, “Wait a second, holy crap, you have to work for 10 hours to make as much as I make with one pair of pants that I can make during school, and get a grade for it? Never. I’m never going to leave doing whatever I want to do.”
Charan: Yeah. But that’s such an interesting lesson you learned from so young, right? Where you start realizing, you’re trading time in for money.
Jase: Right.
Charan: Right? When you’re doing like a regular job. And so, “Hey, if you want to make a lot of money, dude, you have to find a job that pays you a lot of money per hour, or salary, or whatever it is.” Or you’re sitting in your own terms and saying, “Hey, I’m going to create something with resources that might not cost me a ton of money to make.” But then, once you sell them, you can make a ton of money for doing that.
Jase: Yeah. It was such a rare product.
Charan: Rare product.
Jase: People didn’t know what to charge for it. There was no competition, so I could charge whatever I wanted.
Charan: You’re familiar with the red ocean/blue ocean-
Jase: Oh, yes. Yep.
Charan: And I love the analogy. Can you go ahead and explain to the viewers? Because most of these listeners, they might not be familiar with that. So, do you want to explain to that a little bit?
Jase: I’ll do a really bad job, because I did the Cliff-notes version of the book-
Charan: Yeah, no worries.
Jase: So, what I end up calling that is “scarcity mindset or abundance,” and so there’s scarcity or abundance. Are you making your product out of scarcity or out of abundance? And abundance-minded, you can charge whatever you want to charge, you can do whatever you want to do, because you know the people that will want, that will find it.
Charan: Yes.
Jase: And they’ll find value in it. If it’s scarcity, it’s what I then call “race to the bottom.” It’s, well, how little can we charge? Where can we cut this out? Where can we cut this out? Cut, cut, cut, cut, cut, cut, until you… You might have gotten it into Walmart, but you’re bankrupt and you have to shut down, because you actually made no profit at the end of the day.
Charan: You devalued your own product.
Jase: Yes, totally.
Charan: And that’s a real thing that happens because… I’ve seen this time and time again, where people price their product out and it doesn’t sell, and then they’re told, “Could you just raise the money a little bit more?” And then, they raise it more, and then it sells massively, because people are seeing, “Oh, well, it costs this much more, so it’s got to be valuable.” There’s a psychology factor behind it all, right?
Jase: Yes, absolutely. Well, we did that when we were just at the store. I actually didn’t even look at the price, I looked at the name brand, and I went off that, I didn’t even actually-
Charan: Yeah.
Jase: I actually still don’t know what I paid for those two items we just bought. But it’s because that brand delivers to me, it’s been consistent, and so I just stick with them, and I didn’t even look at the price tag.
Charan: Right.
Jase: And I’m not the world’s richest man, I’m not even anywhere near that, but I still didn’t look at that. And my wife actually gets really mad at me… She’s actually sitting over there right now-
Charan: This is very exciting, shout out Rachel.
Jase: So, I have to be very, very careful right now. This is-
Charan: Hopefully, she’s not hearing a thing that we’re saying.
Jase: Yeah. Well, she asked me to go shopping, she said, “Get me this list.” I get her the list, and I go home. She’s like, “How much was it?”
Charan: Oh, that [crosstalk 00:14:36].
Jase: “I got you your list.”
Charan: Yeah, the list [crosstalk 00:14:38].
Jase: Yeah, I got you your list. It wasn’t get me this list and have it be less than $32, it was-
Charan: Exactly.
Jase: Anyways. So, fast-forward there, the next one, maybe I’m not as proud of, but it was still done while I was at school, but I might not have been in school. So, I would have people… I was known for the sound system I had put in my vehicle, I had a little bit of expendable income-
Charan: Of course.
Jase: … for a teenager with… Didn’t have to pay for anything. I ended up putting a really crazy sound system in my vehicle, I got known for that, and then, people said, “Man, who did that for you?” I said, “Me.” “Can you do that for me?” “Yeah, yeah, yeah, let’s go meet at the Car Concepts, or whatever the car audio place is, we’ll pick out all your stuff, you buy it.” At first it was 100 bucks, then I started charging 150. And so, during school, I’d show up to school, I’d go to my first class, I’d sneak out-
Charan: Perfect.
Jase: … and then, I would install the stuff sitting in their car during the next two, sometimes three, periods of the day if I had all the stuff.
Charan: You need to have a good quality in there.
Jase: And I didn’t leave school campus-
Charan: No, you were there.
Jase: … I just wasn’t in the building. So, my kids don’t know about that story as much yet.
Charan: Tell that to them after they’re done with school.
Jase: Yeah, once they’re done… Well, we homeschool, so my kids can do that anyways.
Charan: Yeah, they are. Well, it’s interesting, because all of these scenarios that you described to me are things that you personally like to do. You wanted those pencils for yourself, right? Or you wanted snowboarding pants, so you can go snowboard. You wanted a cool sound system. It was something that you wanted to do for yourself, and you made it into a business.
Jase: True. I always turn passion into profit, but then I don’t like the passion. So, I’m actually selling my fly fishing company right now because I don’t have fun fly fishing. I’m all thinking about, okay, I need to film a video and I need to market this, I need to do this, I’m like, “No, no, no, this is one of my sacred things. I shouldn’t have done that.” It was really fun, it was really cool, and I have unlimited fly fishing gear now, which was great.
Charan: Sure.
Jase: So, I need to be more careful about doing that now, because it’s true-
Charan: That’s the thing.
Jase: … that’s what I do. I’m like, “Oh, I love doing this, other people love doing this, let’s find a way to-“
Charan: Well, see, it’s interesting because there’s a lot of people who are in it to… They want to make money doing whatever, and they pick the safe route. They’re like, “Well, we’ll go and do this thing because we know that it’s going to make some kind of profit down the road, or it’ll make a good type of career.” And they have their lives that they set up for themselves, they want to be a lawyer, or a doctor, or whatever… And nothing wrong with that if they truly wanted to do that. But if it’s one of those situations where they didn’t really want to do it, they just were like, “Well, yeah, it will be a good safety net, it will be a good thing,” I just can’t live like that.
Jase: Yeah. And I don’t think you’ll have the passion to take you over the bumps that it’ll need to actually have that make the income you would need-
Charan: No.
Jase: … to actually enjoy it again, right? To get over that-
Charan: Sure.
Jase: Over that hilltop. Maybe not mountaintop, but hilltop. Yeah, no. If we fast-forward, if we want to keep on this timeline, but let’s go up five, six, seven, eight years, all of a sudden… Well, maybe that’s only three or four. Living in Hawaii, my wife and I had a retail shop, and it was a video store, like physical, like DVDs, cassettes… Actually, this was still when there were cassettes. It was mostly cassettes when we bought it.
Charan: Wow.
Jase: Actually traded a Hummer, an H2 Hummer, it’s not the real Hummer, but an H2 Hummer and 15 grand in cash for a video store in Hawaii-
Charan: Wow.
Jase: … because my wife and I really wanted to move out there. We way overpaid for it; the guy had cooked the books.
Charan: Oh-oh.
Jase: So, it made not $77 a day; it made $7 a day.
Charan: Oh boy. Yeah.
Jase: And so, I had to start selling used cars that I’d buy from The Kidney Foundation, out in front of it, to actually pay our bills.
Charan: Oh, man.
Jase: That’s so bad.
Charan: The truth of it is, you have to do whatever you can to survive, right?
Jase: Yeah. Yep.
Charan: That’s what you guys were doing.
Jase: That’s what we were doing. So, we kind of have this thing. Actually, if I put some… Here’s something you can actually take and apply, instead of just my crazy story. Jim Rohn said… He’s the guy that Tony Robbins went and listened to when he was younger, and kind of transformed Tony Robbins, or he took Tony Robinson in and really-
Charan: Helped him up.
Jase: … yeah, helped him a ton. But he said something I had read in his book “The Art of Exceptional Living,” Jim Rohn, Idaho boy, potatoes, entrepreneurial genius, but he said, “Work full-time on paying your bills, and part-time on building your fortune.”
Charan: Okay.
Jase: So, I always… We had talked about this earlier today, I always have… Or actually, in Boston, when we’re on that-
Charan: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Jase: I always have two things, I’ve got the main thing, and I’ve got the side hustle that I think can beat the main thing. As soon as the side hustle makes as much as the main thing, I sell it, I exit, I toss it.
Charan: You toss the side hustle?
Jase: No, the main thing.
Charan: The main thing, okay.
Jase: As soon as the side hustle… So, it’s this stair step… And so, from high school and the audio, there’s about six steps in the stairs that my wife and I took. And so, now all of a sudden, we had a video store in Hawaii, but it wasn’t making any money, so the main thing really was the used cars. And then, as soon as the video store made as much as used cars, I got rid of used cars, just had the video store. Then, I got my real estate license, and I’d sit in our video store, and I put a big old board up on the glass wall, on the front of the business, and everyone looked by and looked for local listings and houses, and so I’d talk real estate from my video store.
Charan: Wow. That’s amazing.
Jase: Because everyone came into our video store, I’m like, “Hey, let’s-“
Charan: Yeah.
Jase: So, I started selling homes from a video store.
Charan: It’s amazing.
Jase: Real estate then was doing better than the video store, so we tossed the video store, and then it turns into when the entrepreneurialness got a lot bigger. I wanted to make something that people could actually touch, and hold, and feel, and enjoy. And I went into Costco and I just sat in Costco, and I watched people for hours. You like watching people, right?
Charan: Dude, I love it. It’s the best.
Jase: [crosstalk 00:21:01].
Charan: You got to.
Jase: Watching people is great, especially some people. But I’d watch people, and I wanted to see what they were buying, and this Costco, everybody was walking out with those foam Wavestorm surf boards, literally, cart after cart after cart, and I was like, “What can I make that’s cool like that?” And I went through this whole process… But that people can buy, and I was driving home and I was like, “Man, I don’t know what I can offer that would be that cool, that would be different, but cost-effective enough that I could mass produce it, and to make a profit.” And I pulled into my buddy’s driveway a couple of days later to pick him up to go surfing, and I drove over his son’s skateboard and snapped it. So I went and made his son a new skateboard.
Jase: I tried to find them at yard sales; stores, way too expensive, were nasty; so I made him a board. And he asked me, he said, “Jase, was that fun?” He’s like, “You’re glowing because you made him this board.” I was like, “Dude, that was so much fun. I had a blast.” He’s like, “Why don’t you turn that into a real thing?” I was like, “I don’t know man.” And I started thinking about it. And then that conversation was over.
Jase: And then all of a sudden, I thought, “Wait a second. Those surfboards at Costco are only coastal.” There wasn’t standup paddleboards yet. Those boards are only coastal; they are limited to Hawaii, California, Oregon, even a little bit, because their summer is so short, Florida, Texas. I went, “Wait a second…” South Carolina. “I could go all over the US if I could make a skateboard that Costco would buy.”
Charan: Wow. Okay.
Jase: So, I went back to my friend’s house, I told him the idea, he goes… I said, “But that’s crazy, I don’t even skate.” I could skate, I skated as a little kid, I had my Powell-Peralta board, I had my Stevie Cab board… Anyways. And he said, “Jase, you have to do this.” I said, “Do I?” I said, “This is just another crazy stupid idea.” And he said, “Let me ask you one thing…” Here’s a Jeff Bezos question, he said, “Would you regret not doing this when you’re 80?” And I said, “Yeah, I would absolutely regret not at least trying this.”
Charan: Of course. Yeah.
Jase: So, fast-forward, two years, lots of fails, lots and lots and lots. Every shop in Hawaii telling me they wouldn’t carry the boards, all sorts of crazy stuff going down. Then Devin Graham comes out to Hawaii, and people say, “Jase, you’re crazy, this guy is crazy, you do all this other stuff and he’s doing cool YouTube stuff, you guys need to get together.” So, Devin and I met, I showed him a whole bunch of locations, we shot a bunch of videos together. I was in a bunch of his videos, he was in some of mine, and all of a sudden, my YouTube brand started to actually push these boards.
Charan: Wow.
Jase: And so, I figured, if I can sell 100 of these via Twitter and YouTube, I can sell 100,000 via everything else.
Charan: Sure.
Jase: Well, my video then.… I had just made a video. I went into Costco to negotiate with them; they had told me no so many times.
Charan: So many times.
Jase: The guy hated me; he was sick of me. But I went in there, showed him this YouTube video, and then when we went back, the video had gone viral.
Charan: No way.
Jase: And so, over… I think it was over 100, over 200, I don’t remember what it was, but hundreds of thousands of views between the time of meeting with him, walking the warehouse, and then coming back.
Charan: Oh my gosh. So, that’s a very short amount of time [crosstalk 00:24:28].
Jase: And all of a sudden, he’s like, “Wait a second, so you are legit.” And I was like, “Yeah,”
Charan: Of course.
Jase: So legit.
Charan: Yeah. I mean, I’m not quitting, that’s how legit I am.
Jase: Yeah.
Charan: Yeah.
Jase: So, then he gave me one road show trial in their Costco, so I bought a flat-screen TV. I cut down a bunch of my YouTube videos and then bought a bunch of banners, made some wood stands and told every single human I knew through Facebook messenger… I created a normal… Like a cut-and-paste, a copy-and-paste, but then I would type something personal about them on top of it. It took me hours and hours and hours and hours and days, and I sent it to all of them, and I sold out. I told them I’d give them a free shirt. So I made some really cheap shirts with my logo on them. I said, “Anybody who comes down that I know and buys a board for me at Costco, I’ll give you a free shirt.” And I just stuff in their purse. Costco didn’t know about this. So I sold out of everything that weekend.
Charan: No way.
Jase: It was crazy. We sold out of everything.
Charan: How much were your boards selling for?
Jase: $99 for the… Oh, actually, I didn’t have that one when I first started. So, $169 and $219.
Charan: Okay. And how much did it cost to make a board?
Jase: About 30 bucks, and about 48 bucks.
Charan: So, how many boards did you make? I mean, because it’s not like… You were doing it, right?
Jase: At this point, I had already outsourced it overseas.
Charan: [crosstalk 00:25:56].
Jase: So, they were making them for me.
Charan: Oh, good.
Jase: Yeah. I did not take a handmade board for myself, that was the lots of failure, and lots of people telling me no. I realized, oh, I actually suck at making skateboards-
Charan: [crosstalk 00:26:05].
Jase: Let’s have a factory that knows how to do it, do it. So then, got the legit boards done, and sold, I don’t know, tens of thousands. I mean, we were in Costco for seven years and we sold… I don’t even know, actually.
Charan: That’s crazy.
Jase: I couldn’t count them. I could, if I really wanted to go back, but I don’t. That’s not my thing. I like forward motion, so I’m just like, “Keep going, keep going, keep going, keep going.”
Charan: Oh, man. That’s so amazing. And is that kind of like when you decided, “Hey, I want to start making YouTube a thing.” Is that around that time?
Jase: Yep. So after Devin moved back to the mainland, I made a video, it went viral, made another one, it did really well. So, then I started finding a way to create positive controversy. So, I’d take a van and I would drive over my boards and they don’t break, because the way I made them with bamboo and maple wood, blah, blah, blah, blah. They wouldn’t break. So, I’d drive a van over it, and then I’d hop on it and go and skate it. So, everyone was like, “You can’t do that.” But it was a positive controversy-
Charan: Sure.
Jase: … so it drove comments, interactions on the video, and YouTube at that time loved that, and weighed that very heavily into their algorithm. And so, then, if you want to get to the pitfalls yet-
Charan: Yeah, let’s do it.
Jase: … here comes one. Business partners are very hard to figure out on my side, from them figuring me out, because I’m crazy, all over the place-
Charan: All over the place, having fun.
Jase: A million miles an hour.
Charan: Right.
Jase: Right? And so, then you have the logic-based, fact-based, data-driven individuals, and that was our partnership. And finally, after seven years, we both realized we just couldn’t.
Charan: You couldn’t do it anymore.
Jase: And so, in a good way, but I exited the company, I organized everything so the whole thing was fairly automated to one laptop. I said, “Here you go. There it is.”
Charan: There it is.
Jase: And I went back, and I had helped my wife get into starting a YouTube channel, and then I stepped back and she created an amazing YouTube channel way better than my skateboard one.
Charan: Awesome. Love it.
Jase: Right? Because that’s what women do. They take what men do, and they make it way better.
Charan: Way better. Way better.
Jase: So, all of a sudden, we had this rockin’ YouTube channel, it’s not quite making as much as the skateboards were, but close, and it had only been a year and a half.
Charan: Awesome.
Jase: And all of a sudden I went, “Wait a second, honey, this is that next step.” And so, I exited and went all in on doing YouTube with her.
Charan: Wow.
Jase: And then-
Charan: And how long ago was this, would you say?
Jase: That was 2017.
Charan: Okay.
Jase: Yeah.
Charan: Okay. So, that’s not even that long ago, honestly.
Jase: No, no, it’s not. And so, we both went all in on that, and at the same time, because of… You have a thing where it’s lemons to lemonade, right?
Charan: Right.
Jase: So, leaving my life’s work was what I felt like… Entrepreneurial age of seven years, I didn’t realize that was a thing until after, but seven years, all of a sudden, no more everything. It was named after me, I was the face of it, I was all over the world for it. I was competing in these downhill longboard competitions for it.
Charan: Oh my gosh.
Jase: All of a sudden, it’s gone, and I’m a family vlogger. Wait a second, that is not as sexy as I wanted that to be.
Charan: Yeah. There’s nothing…Yeah [crosstalk 00:29:28].
Jase: Now, behind the scenes, yes it is.
Charan: Yes it is.
Jase: But for the entrepreneurial Jase, the Jase of Jase Sports, the big shot realtor in Hawaii, all these crazy things-
Charan: All that stuff.
Jase: And so, my business partner… Well, I had my manager from the skate company, and when we were doing the whole transition, he and I talked and I said, “Man…” We had a friend Richie Norton, and, goodness, my manager, TFN, and I kind of brought all three of us together. And I went to Richie’s house for a Thanksgiving and we were talking, he goes, “Jase, I’m always talking to entrepreneurs that need stuff. You have been to China and all over the world sourcing stuff, you have tons of connections, let’s start something to where we can make stuff for all these entrepreneurs that are talking to me.” Because he had a book that had done very, very well, bestseller. And I said, “Okay, the only way we can do it is if I pull that manager that was at Jase Sports and he is an equal third partner.”
Charan: Sure.
Jase: And so, what was interesting is, Richie was loading us with tons of epic people, epic entrepreneurs with incredible ideas, and were making their products for them, creating complete supply chains, end-to-end solutions-
Charan: Making the merchandising type stuff to people’s needs?
Jase: Yup. What? There’s this yoga Instagram lady, and I mean, we were making hundreds of thousands of bras and pants-
Charan: Leggings and stuff.
Jase: … and leggings, and then mats. Anyways, all that kind of stuff, tons and tons of different items for them. But then our YouTube channel started to crush even more so, and so all of a sudden, I’m speaking at YouTube events, and then I’m asked to speak at YouTube events on creating products.
Charan: Wow.
Jase: And so, now all of a sudden, this company gets lifted up by our YouTube channel, and now that is what I do. I make products for digital creators-
Charan: That’s so crazy.
Jase: And make epic fun videos with my kids and travel the world.
Charan: What I love? Is you’re like the king of pivoting, I feel.
Jase: I love pivoting. And it can give people whiplash, but I don’t feel whiplash.
Charan: Well, here’s the thing, and this goes to your kind of fun personality where it’s like… Some people have such emotional attachments to certain things, so if it crumbles, so do their spirit, and they’re just gone, they’re done. But you have this resilience about you, where if something happens and things change, and things twist, you’re like, “Okay, cool, what’s the next thing? What’s the next thing?” And YouTube is notorious for changing their algorithms, right?
Jase: Every other month.
Charan: Every other month there’s a new algorithm. And so, it’s crazy, because you have to constantly navigate that landscape, and figure out, “Okay, well this has changed, so what do we do now?” And so, now you’re like, “Hey, well, let’s just make sure we have a merchandising attached with it, so that… That’s a whole other source of income that will continue to be there if YouTube continues to do its thing and fluctuate, and yada, yada, yada.” Right?
Jase: Yep.
Jase Bennett Talks About His Greatest Source of Joy
Charan: No, that’s awesome, man. And really appreciate you talking to me about all of that stuff that you’ve gone through, but I guess in all of these things that you’ve been kind of going through, what has brought you the greatest source of joy?
Jase: Spending time with my family, I think, and I know that’s not everybody’s high point for them, but I think… My dad always talks to me now, because he was very entrepreneurial, he was a doctor, but he told me once, he said, “Jase, I only have ‘doctor’ in front of my name, really, because people will give me loans for real estate.” He was really into real estate and investing in real estate,; they did really well with that. But not until after I was 16, until I was 16, no. He was always gone working and doing all that. And so, he still to this day, when we’re just together, he goes, “Man, I wish I wouldn’t have traveled as much. I wish I would have spent more time with you guys. I wish, I wish, I wish, I wish, I wish.”
Jase: And I’ve heard that from a lot of people. And so, I decided, you know what? I truly am still a kid at heart, I really am. Some people joke, they’re like, “Oh, yeah, I’m 12.” No, no, I really feel like that.
Charan: Sure.
Jase: If somebody is playing basketball, I love going out and just shooting hoops with them. Or if somebody is skating, I’ll grab a board and go skate with them, or anything. And so, my goal, before I even really knew it was my goal, but it was, I wanted to get paid to play with my kids.
Charan: I love it.
Jase: If I could get paid to play with my kids, which is what YouTube did for us, but our company [inaudible 00:34:00] were so remote that… I did a bunch of emails before you came over here, and I got it done, and I don’t have to sit at a desk, I don’t have to be in a cubicle, and I think that’s the greatest thing about 2020. You see other people are like, “Yo, you can’t talk good about 2020, it was so bad, and people died.” And I was like, “Why not? Find the good.” Find the good, talk about the good, promote the good, because stuff sucks no matter what-
Charan: Sure.
Jase: … why talk more? It’s like, you’re hurting yourself twice. You live through it, and now you’re going to dwell on it? It’s terrible.
Charan: That’s the worst, right?
Jase: Anyways, so 2020, so many people went mobile, and were able to work from home. And for some, that wasn’t great, some, they really had a lot to learn about that.
Charan: Sure.
Jase: But man, I know there’s people out there that are adoring being at home with their family, and that’s my favorite thing.
Charan: Well, it’s all about making memories, right? And making memories with the people that you love. Back when I was in college, I was so concerned about getting good grades and stuff. I had so much fear about not getting good grades, as if that was the answer to all of life’s problems at the time.
Jase: Right.
Charan: If I got good grades, I’ll be okay.
Jase: And I was really worried about grades when I was upside down, with my feet in the air, in cars, tweaking speakers, while everyone else was in class, dang it.
Charan: [crosstalk 00:35:20] Dang, man, I’m really worried about the grades, as I get these awesome stereo systems going. But what’s crazy though, is like, now I look back, and I think, “Man, why did I worry so much about that essay, or that one final? Or the one that’s… I mean, it was great that it taught me perseverance, and it was great, because I really worked hard and I learned the value of that aspect of things, but making those memories with friends, those are the things that you remember, right?
Jase: Yeah.
Charan: And same thing with your family, right? Making memories with your family. And like you, I actually had an amazing 2020. It was hard, of course, that we had some tough times for sure, and lost a lot of good people, so it was very, very tough. But at the same time, I found tremendous joy. I found tremendous joy because that year was the year that allowed me to reset, and allowed me to find who Charan authentically is, right?
Jase: That’s cool.
Charan: And that’s a powerful, powerful place to be because, so much of your lives, you’re living a narrative that’s not necessarily your thing. It’s just some expectation that was put into you, and when you can reset and dive back in and think, “Wow, that was never really what I wanted to do, I did it because maybe the world expected it from me, my parents expected it of me, or maybe I created a story that said, ‘That’s what you should be doing,’ but it wasn’t really what my spirit wanted.”
Jase: Yep.
Jase Bennett’s Advice to His Younger Self
Charan: So, I think 2020 was a great year to dissect back and look into that. But if you could, I guess, look back at the younger Jase, let’s say the one that’s like-
Jase: He’s crazy.
Charan: Yeah, he’s so crazy, now much different than this Jase.
Jase: Yeah, no.
Charan: No.
Jase: Perhaps just shorter.
Charan: Maybe he’s a little shorter, the one that’s getting into pencil pushing, what would you tell that Jase?
Jase: Man, see, my personality doesn’t have tons of regret, which is a good and a bad thing, right?
Charan: Sure.
Jase: Because we should learn from the past and move forward. I think that one… Not to care as much about what other people thought. It doesn’t seem like I care, because I kind of do my own thing, but I really, really… I took way too much stock in what other people thought.
Charan: Sure.
Jase: And there’s a lot of ideas I didn’t do because other people said they were stupid, and I didn’t try, and I didn’t pursue, because other people thought they were idiotic. The snowboarding pant thing, I actually stopped it, because people were making fun of me that a guy could sew that well, right? It could have been Rusty, it could have been O’Neills, it could have been Burton, right?
Charan: Sure.
Jase: It could have been any of those things if I had not actually cared so much… I actually have never talked about that before. But yeah, I think if I would… And I think this goes for anybody, when you have an idea, when you have things like that, there are crabs that try to pull you out… If you’re that crab reaching out of the bucket, there are crabs that will pull you right back in. And they pull you back in not because they don’t want you to leave, but they’re trying to protect you from what they think is outside of that bucket. And so, they have good intentions, but very, very horribly placed good intentions.
Charan: Yeah. I remember the same thing. My dad used to say the same thing when I wanted to be an actor, right?
Jase: I can only imagine.
Charan: Because the thing was, growing up in a culture where it’s like… The esteemed career is being a doctor, or being a lawyer, or something of that profession, right?
Jase: The ones that you get a paper on the wall.
Charan: You get the paper on the wall, you get the diplomas-
Jase: Got it.
Charan: That’s what [crosstalk 00:38:57].
Jase: I don’t know a bunch about those ones, but I do see the papers on the wall.
Charan: Yeah, 100%. And I’ll tell you, I knew from an early age… Well, especially as I started going into college, I took classes and stuff that could potentially lead me down that path, and I realized how quickly I hated it. I just hated it so much. And I remember thinking, “Why am I forcing myself to do this?” And in the back of my head, it was always acting, it was always acting. But my dad was so against that, and I was-
Jase: It’s one in a million, it’s one in a million.
Charan: It’s one in a million. You’re not going to make it. Why don’t you find something a little bit more realistic? Those were the ideas, right?
Jase: He’s trying to protect you, great intentions.
Charan: Completely. And that’s the thing, it’s like… Here’s the thing. I’m so grateful for my parents. I love what they’ve done for me, and all the things that they have guided me through, and doing, and they’re speaking from their own world perspectives.
Jase: Yes.
Charan: And they have nothing but love and care for you. I know my parents definitely love me and care for me, and they’re speaking from their perspectives, because they lived in that kind of boxed life, that sheltered life. So, when they saw me go and be an actor, and especially when I was getting roles as an extra and stuff, they’re like, “Charan, this is not going to help make your career and whatnot.” But, man, have they changed their tune? You know what I mean? Things have changed and they’re like, “Wow, he’s actually doing it.” And I realized, oh, my gosh, my worst enemy was myself, what I let be a part of my story [crosstalk 00:40:34].
Jase: It’s interesting, because some people make fun of the parents changing their tune, like, “Oh, that’s so cliche.” Oh, yeah, now all of a sudden, they support you. It’s like, no, they supported you the entire time, they were just very worried about it in the beginning.
Charan: For sure.
Jase: And now they see that you’re doing good with it, great with it, epic with it, whatever it is, but at least they’re like, “Oh, oh good.” Not all parents will change their tune like that. I was supposed to take over my dad’s orthodontic practice, that was what I was going to do. That was what we called “the plan.”
Charan: Sure.
Jase: And I was living in France doing my service mission, right? In France for two years, and you call your parents before you come home, tell them your itinerary, when you’re getting there, and I called mine, and he said, “So, you’re ready for ‘the plan’?” And as I’m nodding my head “yes,” I said, “No.” And he went, “What?” And I went, “Yeah, I have no idea what that was. Let me figure this out.” When I came home, I explained it to him, not very well, I’m sure, I’m not a very articulate person, and he totally supported me, which he could have flipped his lid, because that was his retirement plan.
Charan: Sure.
Jase: Right? It was me to take over it… Anyways. And so, they were always supportive. I was never an A student, wasn’t my thing, I didn’t care. I never really cared that much about beating other people, or being the top of the list, I wanted to have fun. And at a 3.0, I was good enough that everyone left me alone, and I could still have fun. So, I kept a 3.0 all the way until my senior year, when I started doing car audio, it dipped below two point, to 2.8, that was still graduate worthy-
Charan: Yeah, of course.
Jase: … and I was like, “Hey, I learned how…” Because a lot of school is to learn you how to complete stuff, and finish tasks, and kind of stay in line, do your thing… Which I totally understand and support. And so, somebody argued with me once, I said, “No, I had to get that car audio system set before the end of the day. I had to get this finished before the end of the day.”
Charan: You learned.
Jase: I had to hide from the security guy. It was a stressful situation. I learned lots of skills at the parking lot.
Charan: Yeah. Your education was complete in school but just not in the orthodox way.
Jase: Just not in the normal way that I could actually use that to go to school to do other things, but that was never… I’m much more of an open outside… and there’s a lot of place for those people in the world. And I think that’s where Einstein, right? “Judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree.” I was that fish and that was my tree. And I was like, “I just don’t want to die on the branch.”
Charan: Sure. [crosstalk 00:43:06].
Jase: It’s great for other people, doctors, technicians, all those people, it’s so good for them. And we need them. When I go to a doctor, I’m very excited that they know their stuff. But I would love for them to respect and be so grateful that I’m the guy making all the yoga pants for his wife to wear, but he doesn’t know it.
Charan: He doesn’t know that.
Jase: Like, “Oh, you’re an entrepreneur. Oh, so you’re one of those guys that really actually does nothing and is just in lots of debt.” “No, actually, I make a lot of the stuff that’s in your practice here and you have no idea.”
Charan: That’s the beauty of it, man. That’s so great. Yeah. I can think of so many applications I’ve learned going to school that wasn’t actually part of schoolwork-
Jase: Yeah, totally.
Charan: … but it’s like life skills, right? I was actually in college when this happened, but I was taking an internship class, and I took marriage, family, human development in school, and truth be told, I did that because that was the closest way to graduate. I knew that if I took that, it was the least amount of classes, and I could graduate and do what I want to do, which is film.
Charan: And so, for one of the courses, it was an internship, and they gave me a list of all these places I could intern at, and nothing excited me. Nothing was like, “Oh my gosh, I can’t wait to go and intern there.” But they also said, “Hey, if you have your own idea of a place you’d like to intern at, come and present it to the dean, and we’ll see what we can come up with.” And so, I’m looking at it — marriage, family, human development — and I’m like, “How can I make this work?” And so, I went in there, and I told her, and I convinced her to let me teach snowboarding as my internship.
Jase: Oh my gosh.
Charan: And she’s like, “Wait, what’s the argument?” And then, I’m like, “Well, listen, here’s the deal, we’re talking about families having wholesome recreational experiences through snowboarding, through the means of snowboarding, it could be whatever-“
Jase: When there’s a will, there’s a way.
Charan: “But through the means of snowboarding, I want to help people have good wholesome recreational experiences, help them have wholesome communication with each other as they’re learning a new skill.”
Jase: Did you pull a tear out and go full acting on her and really get emotional with this?
Charan: I think I even used my Indian accent.
Jase: Oh my goodness. This is incredible.
Charan: Anyway, she looked at me, she’s like, “I am totally going to let you do this.” And then she said, “Have you ever thought about being a politician?” And I’m like, “Absolutely not, but I will do this.” And so I ended up doing this internship, and it was funny because at the end of the year, they had us do this portfolio of our experience, and all these papers that we wrote along the way. And I’m like, “I’m just going to make mine a big joke; I’m almost ready to graduate.” And so I made mine the biggest ridiculous joke. My “headshot” was just a picture of me looking off into the sunset.
Jase: Yes.
Charan: It was so ridiculous, right?
Jase: Yes.
Charan: My main quote at the bottom was like, “To do is to be, to be is to do, dooby, dooby, doo.” It’s so dumb. It’s so dumb, right?
Jase: I think that needs to be mine now.
Charan: But here’s the thing-
Jase: That’s going to be my Instagram profile.
Charan: Here’s the thing, the best part about it was, I’m showing this to my friends and they’re just dying laughing, they’re like, “I can’t believe you actually made this as your thing.” And I’m like, “I know, this is going to be the biggest joke.” And she looks at it, the dean, and she’s just like, “This is brilliant.” I’m like, “What are you talking about? What is happening right now?”
Jase: You’re authentic.
Charan: That’s exactly what it was [crosstalk 00:46:18].
Jase: Oh really.
Charan: That’s exactly what it was. She was like… No, honestly, she’s like, “I know you think it’s kind of fun and stuff, but here’s the deal, I look at this and I want to get to know you better.” And I’m like, “Oh.” And she’s like, “This is why it’s so great, it’s because it’s so real, and it’s so you, and I want to get to know who you are, just who created this.” And she’s like, “I want to keep it, can I show it to other students?” And I’m like, “Sure.’
Jase: Dooby, dooby, doo.
Jase Bennett’s Advice to Future Entrepreneurs
Charan: Yeah, dooby, dooby, doo. So, it was amazing. But the trick is being authentic, right? And so, I love what you’re saying about even just things that you learned in school, which weren’t necessarily technically academia, but it’s like the things that you learned that really help you along the way, and persevere, and all those things, and then being authentic. So, it’s awesome, man. Well, any last thoughts? Any last words to wrap up on this podcast? This is going to our young listeners, future entrepreneurs, so any advice to them that you’d give?
Jase: I’m going to take your dooby, dooby, doo, mix it with the Nike and say, “Go do it.” If you have an idea, do it. Now in this day and age, with crowdfunding, I mean, there honestly is no excuse anymore. Because before, if you wanted to make something, you had to pay for $100,000 mold to make that widget. So, barrier to entry was very… I mean, it was the Great Wall of China to get through, to be able to make a product. And the retail model made it that way as well, because, well, if you want to sell it, you didn’t have a website, you had to get it into Walmart. But to make a sample, it was going to cost you thousands of dollars. And so, nobody could really get into that space, if it was physical products.
Jase: Now, Kickstarter, GoFundMe, all the different… Indiegogo, you can… And actually, people are trained enough, I help YouTubers right now. We do pre-funding on their Shopify site-
Charan: That’s awesome.
Jase: Because if the customer knows them already, and follows them, because they’re a digital creator, they’re going to say, “Hey, this is going to ship in six months. If you buy it now, you get it for half off.” And people are giving them their money.
Charan: It’s so awesome.
Jase: And now, they’re making a product without even having to use any of their own money. So, digital products, same thing. You can go on Upwork and have somebody help you make a who-knows-what digital product, they can make you your own super awesome website to do whatever you want with it, you can have them help you make… Or you can get a ghost writer for not very expensive; they can help you write your own ebook that you can stick on Amazon for free. And all of a sudden, it’s a bestseller. There is just no excuse to starting something today, so do it, try it. And if the trial doesn’t go very far, add some oomph to it, and then you can triumph, and you can crush it. So, that’s what I say.
Charan: I love it, man. Well, that’s, I think, the best way to end this podcast. But no, thank you seriously for coming on, and chatting about these types of things, because-
Jase: Yeah, this was fun.
Charan: I really feel like creators are so needed nowadays, and the world is greatly disserviced if you don’t come alive and create.
Jase: Yeah.
Charan: So, I think you got to go and create, you got to do your thing.
Jase: Yep. I agree.
Charan: Awesome. Well, thanks so much, Jase, I appreciate it.
Jase: Yes, this rocks.
Charan: All right. Take care.
Jase: All right, bye.
Charan: Thanks so much for listening to the Lemonade Stand Podcast, and we hope you enjoyed this episode. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast on whatever platform you use to be alerted when we release new episodes. We’d also love to hear your feedback, and then reviews, and if you or someone you know has an awesome Lemonade Stand Story, please reach out to us on social media and let us know. Thanks so much, and have a great day.