Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Gavin Umstead. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Gavin, 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?
My resilience stemmed from my overtly optimistic perspective of myself. As far as I can remember, and still today, I have this underlying knowing that I will be successful. I’m not sure what successful looks like, but I know I will get there. On top of that though, I look back and see the challenges that I’ve gone through and simply think very few things can be worse than that. Even if my business is a complete failure, It’s not the end of the world. I am still healthy and blessed in many ways. So having that point of view, puts fear really low on my list of emotions.
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?
A bit about myself first. My name is Gavin Umstead And I have always known I will own a business. When I was in my preteen, I would say one day I want to have a skyscraper with my business’s name on it. In my youth that meant asking for a legit cash register for Christmas I am having a hotdog stand nearly every weekend. I would say I got my entrepreneurialism from my father, watching him by old fishing equipment, and reselling it online on eBay for profit. This man every Saturday and Sunday dad would take me and my siblings to the yard sale to go treasure picking looking for things that we can make a profit on. I remember my dad letting me use his eBay account to sell my first fishing reel. Watching the bid auctions so way over the price that I paid for the reel, It was in this moment I knew I wanted to be doing this for the rest of my life.
Now onto my business called The Mook.
First off I want to to say The Mook is a fishing lure! The Mook was created by my father Burt Umstead. Once he began retirement, he started using his time testing handmade lures to find the best results. Eventually he landed on The Mook with our signature Clickerz. Although, he didn’t share his secret fishing lure for years!
Two years ago I Have graduated with my business administration degree for a while and I get a phone call from my dad. I was at work at the time, but I just happened to be on my lunch break. This is when dad tells me about his secret lure and gives me the ins and outs of the success he’s been having with The Mooks. Dad mentions I think I’m Sitting on something we could sell. My immediate response was let’s try. Let me do more research. After a couple days, we made 20 replicas and put them on the shelf in a local tackle shop called Ernies Ski and Tackle. This store has been posting pictures of my dad catching these big fish on Facebook using the lake and everybody has been wanting to know what he’s been using. Well, once the word got out that the lures were going to be inside the shop they sold out that first day. From that moment on, it was just a green light to get started.
It’s now been two years since we opened we started with one design to three designs and now we have 12 designs in our Original 1.5 inch Mook lures. After a year of advertising attempts, our biggest feedback we’ve gotten was. I wish you had a larger size. So after working out some of the logistics, that’s exactly what we did. We now have six different 2.5 inch Mook lures! Even with more new designs coming out just before the holiday season!
One of the greatest parts about running this business is hearing our customers stories. We had stories of people catching their personal best fish or even their first fish using The Mook lures. That positive feedback drive my motivation as well. We are now in 13 shops across the US with our farthest one being in New York! This whole experience has just been a dream come true and I’m hoping one day this can become my full time job. I want to say thank you for everybody who has use the Mook louvers and especially for sharing it with your friends and family. You know Someone who loves fishing send them to The Mook!
Mooklure.com
There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
I believe the skill of research has been very important. As eager as I was to start, doing market research was extremely useful. It will help you in the long run. Going along with that, setting goals. Write out what your end goal is. Then you can work backward and break down how to achieve that. Then it’s key to revisit this goal regularly. Has it changed? Another one would be, “take the first step”.
I was astonished how many times a simple phone call I was nervous to make, turned into something incredible.
A way to know if you have a calling for owning a business; when sales are down and you’re discouraged, do you still want to work on it? Even when I’m bored, I still find myself wanting to working on The Mook.
What is the number one obstacle or challenge you are currently facing and what are you doing to try to resolve or overcome this challenge?
One of my biggest obstacles right now is getting my lure into more shops. I am trying to overcome this by simply asking customers to share the lure with their favorite tackle shop. There is a card in every package. The power of word of mouth reviews, has shown it self more prevalent than I could’ve imagined.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://Mooklure.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mooklure/profilecard/?igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==
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