192: REPLAY 177 Colorado Teardrops Adventure Trailers
In this episode, Dean Wiltshire of Colorado Teardrops tells us how he transformed his boat building chops into beautiful teardrop trailers and built a nice business in Colorado.
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First Exposure to the Outdoors
I live in Colorado. So, it makes it easy. California. Growing up in California, we'd take these great vacations in northern California, things like that. We'd go to various, reservoirs, renting cabins and along the Russian River, that and catching fish. Then we moved out here to Colorado in the late eighties. Our sky is so blue here in the summertime, our mountains are so vibrant, the sunset, you know, that Bronco sunset, we see it almost every night. You know the deep blues, the bright oranges, it's a fabulous place to exist.
Things we talked about
Advice
Test, test test. Look up things like lean product management, it is all about throwing something out there, see if it gets some traction. If it doesn't get some traction, understand why, how can you modify it to get traction? So when we started our business, for example, we started with a rental business. Why? So that we could get a lot of opinions on our product before we started making them for sale. So test, test, test, optimize, test, optimize, test, test, which is what we've been doing for years.
Start smaller, it doesn't cost a lot to pop up a website and say, Hey, I'm selling this and just measure your traffic. But test, see what kind of hits you get and keep tweaking, tweaking it until you start to get hits. And of course, that's in the virtual world. Nothing better than face to face with people. Now as your testing, you can't ask leading questions. You have to ask open-ended questions, like did you think, you know? And you have to be okay with somebody insulting your product or your ideas. So you got to keep smiling, let it happen because you're learning, they're giving you something better than money.
Other Outdoor Activities
I'm a fly fisherman. I'm a skier, a mountain bike, a hiker.
Favorite Books/Podcasts
Favorite Piece of Gear under $100
Connect with Dean
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