To grow a time and location-independent income is the dream for so many.
But how do you actually go from zero to freedom?
Well in this week’s episode of the Brand Builder Show we’re joined by Tray Brunner who launched BambooAve just a few short years ago with the dream of doing just that.
He & his partner have since grown the brand to 7-figures in revenue whilst spending large chunks of time overseas in locations like Bali.
In this episode we dive into a few topics:
- Product: How Tray identified the product opportunity and worked with manufacturers to produce a clothing item they were proud of.
- Marketing: How Tray’s experience working at Facebook helped launch BambooAve to 300% growth multiple years running without taking on any capital.
- Team: The lean approach taken to build the brand with strength & flexibility.
A must listen episode for anyone looking to build a brand and have time and location freedom!
⭐️ EPISODE LINKS ⭐️
Ben Donovan 00:01
Hey guys, welcome back to another episode of the Brand Builder’s Show. Today we’re gonna be talking with a founder who has built a significantly sized business. And that really keen to hear the journey from Tray walk to the show today, Tray, thanks for coming on.
Tray Brunner 00:15
Thanks, man, happy to be here.
Ben Donovan 00:17
It’s gonna be good one, I love talking to founders, hearing their journey, the ups, the downs, the pains, the frustrations, the innovation. So I’m sure there’s gonna be so much to dig into here and really help people on their journey, we got a range of different entrepreneurs right at the beginning of their journey, some are looking to scale up. And so I’m sure you’re gonna have a lot to say, for everyone at different stages of the journey. To get started, I want you to give us a bit of background, tell us a bit about how you got your journey started with E commerce and fast forward to kind of where you’re up to today. And then we’ll maybe we’ll dig into some of the houses of how you did it. Oh,
Tray Brunner 00:54
yeah, exactly. I mean, it’s a long journey. But um, right out of college, I just studied abroad in Thailand, and I got a job at Facebook here in Chicago, in the US. And it was amazing. I actually worked there for two years. But I knew I always wanted to keep traveling. And so my job at Facebook was to teach people and teach other brands how to grow their business. And I would give them recommendations. And I’ll see them triple their assets and triple their revenue, pretty much overnight. And this was like in 2018. And so it kind of in inspired me to consider doing it for myself, I just came back from studying abroad, as I mentioned. And so I wanted to travel, I wanted to live freely, I would say. And even though Facebook was the best company to work for at that time, it was amazing. I still felt like I wanted to do something differently. And so January 1, I made a New Year’s resolution in 2018. And said, I want to start my own business. And so I knew one thing I’ve learned from a lot of podcasts, you just got to get started. And so I pretty much just applied all those learnings that I was learning at Facebook, and teaching all these brands to my brand. So I started men’s shorts, because I knew I just wanted to get started a simple product that really resembles what I wanted to do in life, which is travel live in Bali. And so that was our goal to live in Bali for two years start a business to do so. And I’m actually in Austin. Now four years later, I just got back from Bali two months ago. So we did the two years in Bali is amazing. A great journey for sure.
Ben Donovan 02:33
Yeah, there’s so much that I’m sure that our listeners will want to hear particularly about that, you know how you built the business remotely and lived where you live? Because I’m on Twitter. And you know, there’s so many people on there that talk about living the, you know, the traveling lifestyle, and there’ll be some challenges to it, right? Maybe it’s not as easy as everyone thinks is.
Tray Brunner 02:57
Yeah, exactly. I think for us, our biggest challenge was actually working. Because in Bali, you’re surrounded by a whole bunch of people who are just trying to have a vacation lifestyle. And that’s the reason why we wanted to live there to be more freely. And so that was our biggest challenge. And that’s the reason why we came back. We want to focus the next year to two years to build our businesses as much as we can. So maybe we can sell one of them. We actually have two businesses. And so that’s our that’s our big focus. And that’s the reason why we came back. But as far as running our businesses in Bali, it wasn’t as hard as people imagine. I mean, a lot of our roles are remote anyway, or even marketing or advertising. So we are already remote for the most part. Yeah, the only part that wasn’t remote was our fulfillment, which we have a warehouse in Wisconsin, and we had a team that we really trusted to handle that part. So we were very fortunate and and I can dive into some more details.
Ben Donovan 03:59
Yeah, the questions are piling up. So I’ll be well for sure. You said we did you start the business like with a partner, a business partner?
Tray Brunner 04:09
Yeah, so long story short, my business partner is my girlfriend. We met studying abroad in 2016 when I was in Bangkok, so love Southeast Asia. That was the reason we went back. She also worked at Facebook with me. So we’ve been doing this the whole journey learning advertising, learning how to grow a business. And we started two businesses together as well.
Ben Donovan 04:30
Yeah, nice, man. What’s the other business?
Tray Brunner 04:33
It’s called vibe interior. It’s this art behind me, actually. So we sell canvas art in the US. We’re going to be launching internationally actually next year. And we’re really excited about we partner with artists around the world and get exclusive rights to their art to sell. And we just tried to focus on the highest quality canvases with their art and making sure that we can kind of you know, expose them even more.
Ben Donovan 04:58
Yeah, that’s awesome man. They Yeah, let’s talk about Bamboo Ave. Then the E-commerce brand that you started men’s shorts, you said, is it still just men’s shorts or you expanded from there?
Tray Brunner 05:10
Yeah, so I’m actually wearing a t shirt that we launched this week. Bamboo Ave started again, we just wanted to start the business. And I first came up with the idea of a waterproof pocket. And I knew like that will be so hard to do. So I said, let me just start with regular shorts. And so we started off as swim trunks at first. After the first year, we did a survey to our customers. And we found out that they’re wearing them for everything they say, I lounging them, I walk my dog in them, I go get groceries, errands, whatever. And so we really started to pivot to this everyday short, and it actually resembled what we want it to be as a brand anyway. And then COVID came and it really doubled down on people wanting our shorts for working from home just hanging around the house, especially as they’re stuck in the house, which really helped our growth boss helped on our brand vision and what we want it to be. And so now this year, we launched T shirts. In January, we’re launching joggers, and in March, we’re launching our women’s line that Mariah will be handling.
Ben Donovan 06:14
Yeah. Yeah. Nice, man. Awesome. And just for like context as much or, you know, you’re willing to kind of say, well, what kind of size is the business up to now?
Tray Brunner 06:24
Yeah, so are we pretty much tripled every single year so far? And yeah, we’re in a better seven figures now.
Ben Donovan 06:33
Awesome. And there’s loads I want to talk about, I think product development would be great to talk about marketing, how you’ve done that, obviously, the Facebook time would be great. Team wise, how you built the team, and then fulfillment as well. These are the kind of the main things that really stuck out to me that I think would bring a lot of value to, to our listeners. So first and foremost, product development. Where are you making these products? Is it China? Is it overseas somewhere else? Where are you getting the meat?
Tray Brunner 07:00
Yeah, so all of our products are made right now in China. We when we lived in Bali, we tried to produce there, it just didn’t make sense for our business to import export laws, there are taxes, we focus. One thing I mentioned for Bamboo ave, and we focus on being as sustainable as possible. And so we someone may assume that were made with bamboo, because we’re called Bamboo Ave, it actually was just a catchy name that we loved when we travel the first time. We’re actually not made with bamboo. And the short story behind that is bamboo is not that sustainable. It’s actually one of the least sustainable materials to put his fabric to make it super soft. It takes a lot of chemicals and waters. So what we did instead is we found an alternative and something that I think is even better. So we’re may work recycled, or upcycled coconuts and recycled plastic bottles. And that combination makes really soft fabric, quick drying, odor resistant. And I think it’s the best product for us. And it still keeps that tropical feel, in my opinion, that coconut instead of bamboo. And when we go when we’re living through Bali the whole time, it was pretty cool. Like Well walk the beach, we’ll see a whole bunch of upcycled coconuts right there. Plastic bottles on the beach. I mean, that part wasn’t cool. But it was cool knowing that our shorts are helping to reduce that.
Ben Donovan 08:18
Yeah, that’s amazing. So there’s no cotton or anything like that involved. It’s all of these, you
Tray Brunner 08:25
No cotton, it’s essentially it’s polyester. Yeah, instead of using the standard materials that they use for polyester reuse or recycled plastic bottles and upcycle coconuts.
Ben Donovan 08:37
Awesome. Have you visited your manufacturers?
Tray Brunner 08:40
No, but we will in March. We already have a planned visit as long as that China continues to open up the way that they are. Yeah, we’re going in March. We haven’t been able to our first year we were too small to do it. And then the last two and a half years, it’s been COVID. And they’ve been close.
Ben Donovan 08:58
And you just using one manufacturer for everything.
Tray Brunner 09:02
No, we have probably four to five manufacturers right now. Yeah. That was a big thing that we really wanted to focus on. I think a year ago, maybe two years ago is diversifying a little bit. Yeah. We’ve kind of had bad scenarios where a product is not where we want it to be. And you need more suppliers to kind of hold them all accountable. Yeah, definitely. One thing that we’re thinking about for the future as well is especially in the US, you have I’m sure you deal with it in the UK as well. There’s different relationships between different countries and making sure that we have little rest to do with that as well. So we’re trying to find suppliers outside of China as well just in case something bad happens.
Ben Donovan 09:45
Yeah, I think the last couple of years obviously has shown us that diversification is so important in terms of location suppliers. I mean we once had a supplier go AWOL on us, you know, like my main contact was, she got pregnant she’s Did you be off for two weeks, he was actually off for four months, couldn’t get hold of anybody else at the company, just absolute nightmare. And, you know, just showed me then in there, how important it is to diversify. So yeah, absolutely doing the right thing there for sure. In terms of clothing, just for anybody that’s listening and may want to produce clothing, we talk a lot about, you know, physical products, like, you know, that are maybe more traditional products, but clothing is a bit of a different ballgame. What are some of the things that you’re having to do to really build a quality product, obviously, like tech packs up front, quality inspections at the back end? What kind of things you do in in that process to really make a good quality product?
Tray Brunner 10:44
Yeah, you’re right. So I think the biggest learning that we learned over the last three years, three and a half, four years now is one, don’t rush the process. Do not rush it, if you rush it, you will run into errors all the time. Number two is make sure you get a production sample. There’s many times where we launched products where we didn’t get the production sample, in our scenarios, because we have custom fabrics. So for us to actually get that production sample, we need to order the fabric was take 60 days, and you already made the order, make sure you get the production sample. That is really key. Because we ran into a lot of situations where when we didn’t, things didn’t work out with the fabric, we’ll see through whatever the case is. So those are the two biggest lines that I have for clothing, manufacturing, but quality control is by far the most important part about this. And making sure you have a partner that really understands the quality that you want to deliver is extremely important. Sometimes, actually, a lot of times when I speak to new suppliers, they’re always trying to cut corners right away. They don’t understand that we really want to be sustainable, they don’t understand we really want high quality. They think that we’re just saying good efforts. And so they try to cut corners, you need to be really clear with them that you really care about these aspects, and that they need to make sure that they carry out as well. Otherwise, it will be a short term partnership.
Ben Donovan 12:09
Yeah. And then the in terms of that relationship, then with the manufacturers, that productions sample, sorry that you were talking about the that would be a case of getting the design to them, getting them to make it up exactly as it would go out to the customer and then just send you one unit of that for you to check.
Tray Brunner 12:29
Exactly. So the production sample, usually what they do is they actually create two of them, they keep one they sent one to us. And if we say yes, that’s what we want, they use that as the reference for all the production. So it’s really important that you get production samples and usually all suppliers do production samples, but they may not send them to you. So understanding that process and making sure that you understand it, I need to see what the final product will look like before I decide to actually order this product. And it’s some products might be easier than others but when you do custom products and you make your own tech packs and things like that, you need to make sure that you get that production sample. Yes, you do not want to wait until you get 50 boxes in the mail and say well I don’t like this
Ben Donovan 13:12
Yeah, and you are getting just one per style or you’re getting one of every size or
Tray Brunner 13:20
so for us we sell shorts and we do designs of different colors next year we’re doing 20 to 30 different designs I recommend of every style not every size but if we’re coming out with 30 different designs make sure you get 30 different designs in the production sample the meaning or the main reason behind that is because like they can be see through that was a big issue that we have with ours what we do with the lighter colors, they can be seen through the fabric that’s exactly the fabric may not fit or hold its shape the way that you want it to. And so you just need to make sure Yeah,
Ben Donovan 14:02
yeah and is it because and then in terms of once you’ve done the production run Are you doing anything after everything’s made or what you’ve approved the production sample so you’re pretty happy to proceed without doing any any further checks?
Tray Brunner 14:15
Yeah, once we approved the production sample, it’s pretty straightforward wait for the shipment to come in. And that’s the easy part. Then you have to start getting ready for the launch obviously photoshoots and things like that but that’s about it.
Ben Donovan 14:30
Yeah, the minimum order quantities for clothing is it similar to sort of normal products you know? 2 3 5 100 How much you haven’t order.
Tray Brunner 14:41
I think MOQ is 250 500 Depending on your fabric you using different things like that. I know our fabric for instance, since it is a custom fabric is way higher, which we can still use that same fabric across 20 different designs but the MOQ has increased a lot.
Ben Donovan 15:01
Yes. Good. Awesome. Okay. And then I’d love to sort of talk about marketing, how you got it going the brand. How did you get those first 50 100? Customers? What What was the strategy?
Tray Brunner 15:13
Yeah, so I’m very privileged because when I worked at Meta, they actually gave us $250 per month to run an ad credits. So but that really helped us out at the beginning, because we knew nothing, we just wanted to kind of get started. And so we use that 250, my 250 and rise to 50. So 500 total, for the first few months just to get started to really understand, I will say that that wasn’t enough to actually grow, we had to put our own money behind it. But we started our business. I believe we invested around five to 6000, total for inventory. And after two months of running, Facebook’s are made as money, we were able to have some type of cash flow at least. And since then, we never put any more money into Bamboo Ave
Ben Donovan 16:03
series. Yeah. Wow. That’s impressive man to use Bootstrap and not have to put more cash in for some of them has grown so much. Is that down to good margins?
Tray Brunner 16:16
Good margins. Just getting lucky. I say that. It that like we have been lucky. We’ve got we’ve been fortunate. Obviously, company with obviously it comes with a lot of hard work. I would say it’s not as easy as it used to be. I think that’s the reality all across the world from what I hear. So if we were to repeat this right now, we may not get the same results for sure.
Ben Donovan 16:39
Yeah. How has your marketing strategy changed over the last couple of years?
Tray Brunner 16:44
Yeah, so when we first started, it was just Facebook ads to the product page done. And hopefully we have a good cash flow. In the last two years, it has changed so much as changed from, you know, landing pages, putting a lot more effort into what the ads look like. It’s just not as easy anymore. You have to actually be a marketer now, yeah. And so actually like that, I, I don’t think I’m the best marketer, for sure. Like, I learned so much from Twitter, and all these other marketers. But I feel confident about our future in 2023 As far as diversifying, so we spent about 50% of our budget already on Google not happened this year, before this year, we were only we were 99%. Facebook, yeah. So that we made a big shift already to Google. But my next year, I want to even diversify even more direct mail. I want to organic focus on organic, more that kind of TikTok in shorts and reels, these platforms are really rewarding brands for just being consistent. I really want to double down there. And yeah, my whole focus is just making sure that if there’s a channel that we can reach new people, that’s leverage that, especially with marketing costs going up into the roof. The other part that I’ll add to how we’re changing our marketing is putting a lot more emphasis on before we run an ad, rather than the ad itself. So this is making sure that we have the whole funnel built out such as landing pages. So if we’re having an ad regarding these are the best work from home shorts, making sure that we have an ad and a landing page that flows together. So it’s maybe these are like click funnels, I’m not really too familiar with a click funnel or whatever. But it’s a better funnel that we’re trying to do next year, and making sure that it’s a tailored in a cohesive experience.
Ben Donovan 18:39
Yep. Do you use Shopify?
Tray Brunner 18:42
Yep. Shopify.
Ben Donovan 18:45
You mentioned Google ads, are you running like shopping ads, or AdWords or what I use now?
Tray Brunner 18:51
P max. So p max pretty much replaced the shopping ads this year, I believe. And basically, you just set it up and you let it run. Basically, you put a target row as there’s not too much you can do as far as optimization. You just have to keep refreshing it and giving it new assets when you think the time is right. Yeah.
Ben Donovan 19:10
Nice. Good. And then you mentioned about sort of social media and stuff like that. You’re you haven’t put much into that yet. But you’re going to do more of that soon.
Tray Brunner 19:20
Yeah, so I mean, yeah, to be honest, organic, or TikTok is really hard to allocate resources to. For us we when we lived in Bali for four months, we actually had a teammate with us and he was making TikToks and he did a great job. The problem is we we don’t have anyone that good anymore. And he was a one. Partner, teammate, employee for sure. And so when it comes to TikTok you really want at least for our brand, we really want to have a genuine experience. We don’t want to just post trendy stuff on TikTok. We want it Tell the journey of Bamboo Ave and tell why we’re here, why we matter why they should buy from us and also just show like that we’re real people behind it. And so what that means for us is, we need someone to actually be a part of the team to do that. But however, we don’t know the results that will come from it. Yeah. So we don’t want to hire a full time person for this, if we don’t know if it’s actually going to result in any sales. So we’re trying to balance that it takes a lot of time to film, edit everything. And so we have some editors who do this, but it just takes a lot of time. So we’re trying to figure out what the workflow looks like. But it’s something I’m really hoping to double down on. And we’re already starting now.
Ben Donovan 20:39
Yeah. Nice. You mentioned that team, which is one of the the other things I wanted to get onto with, you know, seven figure brand, what is it? What does your team look like?
Tray Brunner 20:50
So as myself, Mariah were like the main full time employees, we have a few virtual assistants, virtual assistants, because they do a lot more work. But they’re essentially virtual assistants. And then we have a customer service team. In Wisconsin, we have a team of three to handle our warehouse. And missing Oh, we have a lot of agencies that we work with email marketing, media buying affiliates, all that. So we’re pretty remote Overall, though.
Ben Donovan 21:23
Yeah. Yeah. So you would work with an agency first on, say something like email marketing? Let’s take that as an example. Rather than hiring in house you would initially start with an agency and look to hire in house later down the line? Or, or do you think you’ll stick with an agency long term?
Tray Brunner 21:41
I think every business reaches a stage where it makes sense to bring in house, I think email marketing is one of the ones that go a little later because to hire, to bring that in house, you need someone a designer, you need a strategist, and you need someone to actually set it up. So those are three different roles. So it doesn’t make sense, honestly, at the agency pricing. It’s better for them to do it all. But some roles we are looking to bring in house such as media buying, we would love to have someone on our team that we think is skilled and experienced that can grow both of our brands. That’s one thing that we’re really trying to find. It’s kind of hard to it takes a long time to find the perfect person for video buying, though.
Ben Donovan 22:28
Yeah, yeah, definitely. What what is your day to day look like, as you know, one of the main operators in the business?
Tray Brunner 22:36
Man, it’s all over. Be honest. I tried to have one thing I really try to focus on is having specific days. So Monday, Wednesday, Friday, I’m focusing on acquisition Tuesday, and focus on growth and other channels. Thursday, I’m focusing on a product and just branding overall. So I try to we try to silo our days to make sure that we have some focus some routine. But so many things go up fulfillment problems. There’s so many things that come up in our day to day life that we realize, like when we take vacations these days, it’s it’s not even a vacation we’re trying to find there’s always some fire to deal with.
Ben Donovan 23:14
Yeah. The you mentioned about photoshoots as well. The you had one last week, I think, how do you like prep for those? Do you try and do loads of products at one time and do photos and videos? Or do you have any kind of tips on that side
Tray Brunner 23:32
photoshoots are our best days, we love that in Bali, we actually had a studio that we went to for every shoot, they had a staff already there. And we worked with them and they did everything from photography, there was no editing really needed because the lighting was just that perfect. So if I was a small business and or if I was just starting up, I never really invest into studio time, especially for shooting product and making sure that you are representing your brand in a good way. There’s a lot of times that you should definitely hack it though, if you can find a clear wall. There’s Canva these days where you can actually make it look realistic. And I even hired somebody on Fiverr recently to edit our products. I didn’t know they needed to be edited, edited, but then I hired him. I think I paid like $50 and he made our products look from like ugly to like, the most amazing, and I didn’t even know that was possible. So with the photoshoots though, we totally love this process. And as far as the planning, we do it ourselves. We really try to focus on that’s our Fridays or whatever day we do branding and we try to focus on what kind of photoshoot will be effective for us. The studio shoots are really just focusing on a product and making sure that our website looks amazing. But the outdoor shoots are more about what is what are we trying to communicate is our brand.
Ben Donovan 24:53
Yeah, yeah, a couple of last things just want to try and cover firstly, you mentioned They’re like website. What are you? Is there anything special you’re doing on your website? Product pages, landing pages you mentioned earlier? If someone’s just starting a new brand and wants to really get good conversion rates, is there anything in particular that you’re doing with that?
Tray Brunner 25:17
Yeah, definitely first starting out, I think the main thing that you should focus on is call to actions. I read the book, building a story brand, I believe. And he really talks about call to actions. And that book really transitioned us from failing, I was saying the first like three months to turn it around and actually profiting on every profiting everyday. Basically, it came because we knew how to advertise on Facebook, but we didn’t know how to market and that book really taught us how to do so. So if I was starting off, or if I have a website, the main thing I’ll focus on is make sure you have enough call to actions. And secondly, and maybe even more importantly, making sure that you are actually communicating why they need your product, and not just telling them the benefits of your product. So talking about like, instead of just saying it’s soft, tell them why that matters. So this is the most comfortable product, you’re aware, instead of saying it’s just soft, because you need to kind of tell them exactly why it matters to them.
Ben Donovan 26:22
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Awesome. And then in terms of fulfillment, you mentioned about a team in Wisconsin warehouse. Did you think like from the outset, that was, did you play with the idea of using like a third party logistics company? Or you just went all in on a warehouse? What was? What was the process behind that?
Tray Brunner 26:42
Yeah, so our warehouse isn’t too too big. So it wasn’t too big of a thing. Basically, I live in Chicago, and I’m from Wisconsin. And as we were moving to we lived in to loom and lived in Bali, we were like, Okay, what do we do next, we didn’t really consider three POS because our be our long term goal was to have our own warehouse with our own office. And just having kind of like to show the office, I have this really cool community of employees. That still is our goal. But one thing I have been looking into recently, since I just moved to Austin, and with this climate right now with everything, crazy expensive, especially warehouses here in Austin, because you have all these big tech companies is what does a three PL service look like? From when I did a analysis last year, I was just trying to see if we’re doing okay, regarding our warehouse, our warehouse was actually cheaper. And that’s because in Wisconsin, it’s like 60 cents per square foot. But when you come down to Austin, it’s like $2, or $1.50 per square foot, it kind of changes the narrative. So right now, in Wisconsin, it makes sense to have a warehouse. It’s fine, we get to go there, we get to have a team. In Austin, we’ll we’ll see. I’m actually doing that analysis again tomorrow to see if that’s something we want to do. And regarding our own life, too, we I talked about how I want to be free and I want to travel. But we came back for the next two years to really focus on our brand. But since I’ve been here, I already miss traveling. And so using it will be a huge benefit for us if we did want to continue traveling.
Ben Donovan 28:20
Yeah. Yeah. What does the future hold? That was kind of my next question. So what are the plans for Bamboo ave and for for you as an entrepreneur, what’s the next five years looking like?
Tray Brunner 28:31
Five years? Wow, that’s far. Next year, our big focus is kind of diversifying a lot more on our products as well. So we’ve only sold shorts and a lot in the last three years. So the focus now is to launch more products, launch more designs, our customers are asking for it. But it also helps us out and making sure that we’re not holding inventory for one SKU for the whole year long, because we over pivoted, so therefore, what we’re trying to do next year is really diversify. Learn what everybody loves. We’re launching joggers. We’re launching T shirts, we’re launching women, we’re launching other fall products next year, and then use 2024 to really double down again, right now we don’t know what’s happening in the market with the talking about recessions and things like that. So for us, we think it’s the right move for us. We still grow two times next year. And do it in a smart, smart way in our opinion. 2024 Double down unless we had a worse economic situation.
Ben Donovan 29:34
Yeah. Do you think you’ll sell the brand at some point?
Tray Brunner 29:39
That’s something that I’ve thought about more recently. I think I listened to his podcast maybe six months ago and he was saying everybody has a price right? For us. We always said no, we won’t sell this. We have two businesses. So we said we’ll sell via interior and and that will make us I guess, financially stable for a long time. And we’ll keep Bamboo ave if just as a passion project and keep it growing in it, there’s no reason to sell because we have no financial reason to. With that being said, I would love to just travel for like three years and not do anything. So we’ll figure it out. Right now. We’re not planning to sell Bamboo ave
Ben Donovan 30:20
us. Good stuff, man. Well, is there anything that I haven’t asked you yet that you think would be useful to share with everyone about your journey? You know, tips, any last kind of knowledge bombs you can drop on us?
Tray Brunner 30:36
I think the biggest thing is just get started do it. I think what we’re trying to build Bamboo ave is about it’s a clothing brand for people who are intentional with life who don’t live a cookie cutter life, like yourself, like myself, making sure that we don’t follow just what our parents told us to do. Go be that doctor, that plumber or whatever, do whatever you want to do. Yeah. And so with that being said, Just do whatever makes you happy. That’s my biggest advice to anyone.
Ben Donovan 31:01
Yeah, man. Well, you’re an inspiration. Tray, you’re living so many entrepreneurs dream traveling the world building a business. And you’re super humble as well, man, you know, really humble. And it just shows though, that you care about what you’re doing. And yeah, exciting future ahead for Bamboo ave. I’ve I’m very sure that.
Tray Brunner 31:20
Thank you. Thank you.
Ben Donovan 31:21
Good stuff, man. Thanks for coming on the show. And where can people find out about Bamboo ave and other things that you’re doing? Where’s the best place to connect with you? I mean, do you do too much yourself? Like outside of the businesses, social media and stuff like that? Or? Yeah, so
Tray Brunner 31:36
I’m trying to build my TikTok right now. Nice. I only have 100 followers. I just started. So you can follow me at Tray Brunner, I think and TikTok at Tray T-R-A-Y. Brunner B-R-U-N-N-E-R most you can follow our bandwidth account, which I think has 11,000 followers at band Black. And yet, those are places on that now. Not too much on Twitter. Yeah,
Ben Donovan 32:03
cool. Well, we’ll get the links in the show notes as well. And so people can jump on and follow you. Awesome. Alright guys. Well, welcome. Welcome. Thank you for listening to the show. It’s been a great episode. I’m sure you’ve got lots of what Tray said there. Definitely check him out on TikTok, check out Bamboo ave get yourself some nice, comfortable sustainable shorts. And we’ll see you in the next episode real soon.
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