We were lucky to catch up with Everett Jesse recently and have shared our conversation below.
Everett, thanks so much for taking the time to share your insights and lessons with us today. We’re particularly interested in hearing about how you became such a resilient person. Where do you get your resilience from?
I believe as you fail you build resilience. I have a much longer list of failures than I do accolades. I have failed in pretty much forms of the human experience – business, relationships, athletics, etc. Each of those failures came with a choice, do I keep moving or do I quit. People don’t like admitting this but sometimes the right answer is to quit. Sometimes there is no answer and it take a minute to heal and learn from the failure before you can make a choice. These failures, whatever the result, are necessary. There is no growth without pain or adversity, we do not evolve when things are comfortable. Resilience is built out of failure. Each time I have failed and managed to pick myself up, learn and continue it has gotten easier. I have become more resilient.
Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
I am an avid outdoor lover. On the typical weekend I can be found hiking, mountain biking, kayaking, trail running, and recently a bit of canyoneering. Its important to stay hydrated on your adventures and for me I enjoy the convenience of using a hydration backpack. What I did not enjoy was having to maintain the hydration backpack. The bladders are notorious for getting funky real quick. I would do what everyone does, prop the bladder open after my adventures with the odd tool or toss it in the freezer. The problem is that my place isn’t that big and having a back pack one place and the guts of the pack another place drying wasted space and made the place look cluttered. I thought “why can’t you just put this thing back in the pack.” I then realized, “If it is inefficient to bring the air to moisture maybe it is more efficient to bring the moisture to the air.” I have a background in earth science and engineering and the concept on how to accomplish bringing the air to moisture popped into my head. I started testing materials and eventually created a functional product.
I called the product BōnDry and sold it through my company Fossil Outdoor Inc. which is presently going through a rebranding to Ancient Trail. Ancient trail will continue to sell BōnDry as well as many planned adaptations of the technology and it is going to be releasing its own hydration packs, outdoor gear, and apparel. We plan on releasing the new products close to summer 2024.
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
I think that one quality that I have learned is to be appreciative of advice, and to listen to what peers and customers are thinking about my business. This is a learned trait for most of entrepreneurs. The first thing someone will say after learning you are an entrepreneur is, “Oh you know what you should do…” This can be fairly abrasive because it feels like a slight against what you are doing or suggestive that you don’t have control of your business. As I learned to listen I realized that they are just trying to help and honestly there have been good ideas which I am using or plan to use. Listening to customers has really improved the experience around the product and built some great reviews.
Another tool I use is looking at my business as a raft in river. I can generally control the the direction, but don’t have a lot of control on much else. Be ready to put your oar in the water and accept iterations. Be willing to adapt and settle into changes and remain as flexible as possible. Its the best way to get through the chaos and see opportunities. If you are too stubborn you will have a really hard time.
Last bit of advice is to be relentlessly grateful and show that gratitude. Be thankful for your friends, peers, investors, employees, and especially your customers! Don’t let hubris convince you that you succeeded by yourself. You didn’t you are doing what you are doing because you learned from others – be grateful for it. You will succeed because of others – be grateful for it. Be loud about that gratitude.
Is there a particular challenge you are currently facing?
Our number one obstacle are knockoffs on Amazon. Nobody really knows what a BōnDry does by looking at it, so we have to spend money to educate them across social media. They visit our site, then normal American buyer behavior has them go to Amazon. They find our product and then they find the knockoff which seems to outsell us 2 to 1. This absolutely murders our return on ad spend. Unfortunately, Amazon will not do anything until we have a patent. Which has been a very slow process.
I should offer up that we manufacture our product in the USA out of sustainable and ethically sourced materials, so going into a price war is not an option.
In addition to patent protection we are moving forward with several strategies 1) redo the packaging so it is more shelf friendly, so it can be sold in physical retail stores. Although I like the current packaging because of its earthy feel, it needs to be able to show what it does from 10 feet away and it doesn’t – mistake by me 2) Become less reliant on the product by introducing new products. 3) Move off of Amazon – yeah you read that right- if I could go back in time and stop myself from participating in Amazon sales I would. It was the worst decision I made for the company as a US based manufacturer. Unfortunately, we are handcuffed to it at the moment but that will change.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.ancienttrail.com
- Instagram: @ancienttrail
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/fossiloutdoorinc
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/64640906/admin/feed/posts/
- Twitter: @fossiloutdoor
- Other: TikTok @fossiloutdoor
