Succeeding in the Shark Tank: The Concept-to-Market Process With Gabe Trevizo, Real Finds Podcast #39 Transcript
Gabe Trevizo: If you’re scrolling through X and you see, hey, this guy’s doing this, and he did this, why can’t I do it? Growing up, I knew one uncle who was an entrepreneur. That was it. Just the idea of becoming one was hard. Now there are so many examples, and the examples are real, and the path is really open to anybody. The more people see that, the more people are going to choose it, and I wouldn’t trade it for the world.
Gordon Lamphere: Welcome to the Real Finds Podcast, where we speak with voices shaping the real estate industry, entrepreneurship, and our world. On today’s podcast, we speak with Gabe Trevizo, an appraiser, serial entrepreneur, and Shark Tank success story. We dive into the life of a serial entrepreneur, how to succeed and still have work-life balance, what Shark Tank is like behind the scenes, and strategies to effectively bring multiple products to market. For entrepreneurs, today’s episode is well worth a listen. Gabe, thanks for hopping on the podcast today.
Gabe Trevizo: Thanks for having me, Gordon.
Gordon Lamphere: Can you tell our listeners a little bit about Gabe?
Gabe Trevizo: I’m an entrepreneur in spirit. I live in Gilbert, Arizona. I have a wife I met in eighth grade, so a long history with her, and four awesome kids ranging from six to thirteen. Like a lot of your listeners, I’m a normal guy who likes to do a lot of different things. I’m curious about a lot of avenues. I own a handful of businesses in different fields, and I like to stay busy, learn, talk with other entrepreneurs, network, and grow.
Gordon Lamphere: What did you do in a previous life? I’ve seen you talk about teaching and educational content on your Twitter, which is how I originally got in touch with you.
Gabe Trevizo: My background is in real estate. I graduated from Arizona State, played college baseball, and didn’t know what I wanted to do, so I fell into real estate appraising and have done that for seventeen years. I started a firm and grew it, and along the way started a few different companies. My wife’s a teacher, and we homeschool our kids, so she does the majority of that. That might be what you’re referencing.
Where the Entrepreneurial Spirit Came From
Gordon Lamphere: What inspired that entrepreneurial spirit? Was it innate, or did you have a mentor?
Gabe Trevizo: I think a lot of it is innate. I had a middle-class upbringing, but I always had this drive to solve problems uniquely, whether that was creating bug sprays growing up, trinkets to fix something I was struggling with, or turning Legos into something they weren’t supposed to be. I had an uncle with that same spirit, but as a kid, I felt like it was out of reach. I don’t know why. My entrepreneurial journey started a little later, because I fell into appraising and that turned into a company, which is entrepreneurship in a way, but more small-business leadership. I always had the itch to create, and my first real step was our product Suds2Go, which I invented, developed, and took on Shark Tank. That was the beginning of, wow, you really can do this. That was just a few years ago, and it’s opened up the world to me in creating and launching new products and not being afraid to take chances.
Gordon Lamphere: Where do you think the gap was that originally gave you pause about entrepreneurship? A lot of people listening, and a lot of my Twitter followers, don’t want to take that leap.
Gabe Trevizo: The gap lies in confidence. Listeners might think, this guy is an expert, he has it all together, he knew what he was going to do before he did it. That’s not it at all. The journey is the process, and you learn so much through it that you’ve never done before. It’s just a matter of taking that step and being willing to take the chance. The gap is really just doing.
How Shark Tank Actually Works
Gordon Lamphere: How does the Shark Tank process work? Did you reach out to them?
Gabe Trevizo: Rewind a little. My wife and I were big Shark Tank fans, so as a creative person, it was on my radar. When I created Suds2Go, lots of people said, that’d be a great Shark Tank product. We created an Instagram page for the product while developing it, to show the process, and at that time I reached out to Shark Tank’s casting director on Instagram. She was responsive, but said, you’re early, we’ll keep in touch. I thought, that stinks, but I was too early. I only had a prototype. Fast forward nine months or a year, and we had a ton of product, because we’d gone through developing, ordering, and manufacturing, and it launched right at the front of COVID. Bringing a mobile hand-washing system to market when COVID hit was dumb luck, and it took off. At that point, it was selling so fast that Shark Tank wasn’t on our minds. It was, how are we going to fulfill the demand? Then the same casting director DMed and said, have you applied for the coming season? I said no, it’s been too crazy. She said, you should. Of course we did. It’s a three- or four-step process: an application, you sign your life away on a stack of papers eight inches thick, which I obviously didn’t read all of, then interviews, then videos, then more interviews, then the executive producer interviews you, and then they decide.
For us it was a little different, because it was still the middle of COVID when we pitched, so Shark Tank created a bubble at the Venetian in Vegas.
Gordon Lamphere: Not a bad place to hang out.
Gabe Trevizo: That was the coolest part. We were quarantined at the Venetian in a suite, just my wife and I, for about eight days. They tested us for COVID three or four times, and in between we pitched to the Sharks.
Gordon Lamphere: We only see five or ten minutes on TV. How does the pitch actually work? As someone who works with PE and venture capital folks, a pitch is usually longer than five minutes.
Gabe Trevizo: The truth is the Sharks have no idea who you are or what your company is before you walk in. When we submit paperwork, they ask for all our financials, so if you get a deal, the packet is ready for your investor. They’re very clear: when the doors open and you walk down that hallway, if you mess up, don’t stop. There’s no restart. It’s almost like they’re hoping you screw up for good TV. That’s all they told us: stand on the X, the cameras zoom around you, they yell three, two, one, start pitch, and if you mess up, keep going. You do your intro and your skit, which is a minute or so, and then what you don’t see on TV is that it’s really chaotic. The Sharks are all individually miked. On TV it seems docile and organized, but they talk over each other and argue. You’re answering one Shark’s question over here and another one’s asking something over there. We were in there just under an hour, maybe fifty or sixty minutes, and they crunched it down to nine. Nothing is scripted, but the pitch is completely edited. There’s a lot of cutting and pasting: I said that, but not in answer to that question. It’s a mixture of real life and reality TV.
Gordon Lamphere: I have a friend who was on The Bachelor, and he says, I’m not that terrible. It’s always funny to hear what reality TV actually is. What was the value you got out of Shark Tank? Some people talk about working with Robert or Mr. Wonderful or Mark Cuban, some about the network, some just about the views.
Gabe Trevizo: There’s a misconception that companies that get a deal on Shark Tank have made it. Even for me, I thought, once we get there, we’ve made it. That’s not the truth. We got a deal with Robert and closed it, not the same deal that was on TV, but we closed a deal. The real value is, number one, exposure for your company. Number two, the network of entrepreneurs. It’s a lot like X. Over the last few months, I’ve put a lot of time into networking on X, meeting people and helping people, and that network grows if you put in the effort. With Shark Tank, there’s a private Facebook group for all the entrepreneurs who’ve stood on that carpet. You had to have aired to be in it. You can go in and ask, does anybody have a lead for this? Has anybody worked with this Amazon company? Is it worth it? There’s a lot of value there. Exposure and the network are the two biggest.
Taking an Idea to Market
Gordon Lamphere: Why I actually followed you was that you talk a lot about going to market, the process of taking a pioneering idea and bringing it to market. How do you do that?
Gabe Trevizo: With Suds2Go, I had zero product background and zero marketing background. I had real estate background. So I learned through the process. The first step is determining market demand. There are different ways: you can 3D-print prototypes and share them, not with friends and family, but with strangers. Be bold, walk up to where your product might fit, a playground or a parking lot, and ask, what do you think about this? Once you determine there’s demand, the next step is industrial engineers and designers who make the product manufacturable, because you might have a great idea, but if it can’t be manufactured, it won’t work. They design the CAD files, and then you go to manufacturers, most likely in China, unfortunately, because that’s where stuff is made. Then you make sure the margins make sense: this is what it costs, this is what I can sell it for, and you factor in marketing, shipping, and fulfillment, all the costs you don’t think about. You think you’ll make it for this and sell it for that and clean up. Not how it works.
What I’ve learned since Suds2Go is that it’s awesome to have partners. I just posted today that I’m launching a popcorn spray, and I got the first bottle samples of Popcorn Perfect, right behind my head. I’m doing that with a manufacturer partner. He does the manufacturing, I do the branding and creative, and it’s been so much easier than doing it by myself and learning as I go. A lot of it is finding somebody who’s done it, reaching out, and asking if they’d be willing to help. People want to help. I get a lot of DMs from people sending ideas, and I’m a curious entrepreneur, so I give honest feedback, and I’m excited for people. You just have to take those steps and go for it. We only get one life.
Gordon Lamphere: What I’ve found on Twitter in the real estate world is that people are incredibly open, especially when you’re not directly competing, to give ideas and help, sometimes for free, in exchange for ideas. So to anyone listening, reach out and DM that person. The worst that happens is they don’t respond. What’s the biggest difference you’ve found between building a real estate business and a product-based business? The personality traits that make a service business succeed can be vastly different from a product business.
Gabe Trevizo: My appraisal business is very client-relationship based. A lot of the characteristics overlap. You need good communication, you have to service clients well, listen to their needs, and do what you say. That’s the biggest thing in any business. If you say you’ll deliver on Monday, deliver on Monday. If you do that and deliver quality, whether it’s an appraisal or a Suds2Go bottle, and you meet or exceed expectations, you’ll succeed. That’s the most common element between product and service. There are differences, obviously. A product business is much more about branding, how you’ll attract buyers, and where you’ll find them. My service business has grown organically through relationships, and that’s different.
Managing Time Across Businesses
Gordon Lamphere: How do you manage your time growing all these businesses at once?
Gabe Trevizo: This is probably not what I’m best at, because I’m a creative mind with a little ADD, so I have a lot of irons in the fire. What I’ve learned recently is to hire offshore assistants who handle things I don’t need to handle. I learned from X and from meeting entrepreneurs like me that it’s super important to buy back your time. If you can pay someone to do something you’re doing, do that instead of wasting your time. I’m at the beginning of that journey and excited about it. But to answer your question, I focus most of my time on whatever business is making the most money and try to streamline it. For the other businesses, I might have two or three projects each, and they get replaced as I knock them out. My appraisal company gets the most focus because it has employees who rely on it and daily client relationships. So I prioritize.
Gordon Lamphere: How do you set that priority? A business at an early stage might require a lot of time and make no money, versus a later-stage business making a lot of money without much time.
Gabe Trevizo: I have X hours a day I can work. I start with my appraisal company, because it has legitimate deadlines. All my other companies have checklists, but if I don’t get something done today, it’s there tomorrow. It just delays progress, which I hate. So I deal with deadlines first, then move to what’s next most important. I focus on what I have to get done, then what I’d like to get done and need to get done for the other businesses.
Intentional Fatherhood
Gordon Lamphere: What originally drew me to your account was your talk about intentional fatherhood. I’m a father with a very young kid, and managing time is challenging. Every morning at six a.m., he’s awake, and I went from being a night owl to a morning person like that. How do you manage your time as a dad with several kids and several companies?
Gabe Trevizo: I was very specific when I started my company: I have hard times. At five o’clock, I’m done. That doesn’t mean my phone is off; China is opposite us, so if I’m doing something with China, it’s at night, and I try to do it after the kids go to bed. But at five, I’m done with my appraisal work. I work from home in a detached guest house, and I can see my house right now. At five at the latest, I walk over there. No phones, no emails, nothing with appraisal. I wake up early and come in at five every morning to do whatever’s important, whether that’s appraisal work, Suds2Go, or my other businesses. I walk back over at seven thirty, hang out with the kids, have breakfast, come back at eight thirty, and work until five. Sometimes I go over for lunch. And on weekends, I don’t work. I’ve made it a habit. That time is theirs, and I don’t want to steal it from them. Weekends, no go. After five, no go. Monday through Friday during work time, it’s all go, as hard as I can.
Branding and Knowing When a Product Is Right
Gordon Lamphere: You’ve done branding about as successfully as anybody we’ve had on. How do you develop strong brands and maintain them?
Gabe Trevizo: Branding is interesting, and not something my background is in. I ask a lot of questions and share with a lot of people, friends and not friends, to get honest feedback, and I take it to heart and adjust. I’ve always been pretty good at developing names. Naming is something I’m good at, catchy names for products. For design and logos, I rely heavily on designers and what they do well, then I pick and help them change it if needed. I have an eye for something that stands out, and then I believe in it.
Gordon Lamphere: How do you know a product is good? When is it right to believe in it, and when do you say maybe this isn’t the one? How do you know something’s a market fit?
Gabe Trevizo: With Suds2Go, we didn’t know, because it was a novel product. There was nothing like it. We patented it; I have the utility patent. Leading up to it, I’d always had ideas, and I’d share them with my wife and she’d say, that’s stupid, don’t. But when I shared Suds2Go, she said, I would buy it. That gave me confidence: here’s a woman with kids, the target customer, saying she’d use it. From there I took the idea to people similar to her, ran polls on Facebook, and paid cheaply for ads to a landing page I built with the concept, to see if anyone was interested. People were. That was the driving force. With the products we’re launching now, specifically Popcorn Perfect and another product with the same partner, he’s a manufacturer, so he knows who’s filling what cans and how many. His whole thing is, there’s a huge demand for this, you’re good at branding, let’s do it together. That makes it a lot easier, because the market research is done. We know the demand is there. Now it’s a matter of branding better than the competitor, and since my partner manufactures, we can beat them on price too.
Gordon Lamphere: Could you tell us more about the food brand? Chicago is a big food town, and beyond deep dish, some pretty large food brands are headquartered in the Midwest.
Gabe Trevizo: We’re launching a buttery-flavored popcorn spray. Honestly, I’m not a big popcorn fan. But when Ryan, my partner, came to me and said, there’s one competitor, they don’t do it very well, and they sell a lot of cans, that sounded like an opportunity. So we looked at what we could do and what it would look like, and went for it. I’ve never been in food. It’s a spray, so it has a shelf life, but not weeks or months. It’s a learning environment for me. But I like the challenge, I’m confident in me and in Ryan, and the environment is ripe for us to come in and disrupt the little competition there is.
Gordon Lamphere: How do you know when a product is underperforming? What indicated this was a niche you could jump on?
Gabe Trevizo: You’re right, if you look at their numbers, they’re not underperforming. They’re doing very well. They just don’t have competition, and for me that’s a big bullseye: a product doing very well with nobody else competing. Then you look at their branding, what they’re selling and how, and we saw an opportunity. They’re doing really well. We’d just like some of that pie too.
Applying Entrepreneurship to Real Estate
Gordon Lamphere: Let’s circle back to the real estate pie. You have a unique look at the world from both entrepreneurship and real estate. What have you applied to the real estate world from entrepreneurship?
Gabe Trevizo: Doing things differently. I know a lot of appraisers, and a lot are single-person shops. They don’t want to teach or add new appraisers, because they don’t want to bring in competition. I’ve looked at it differently. I’ve trained seven appraisers, and four still work in my company. I’ve approached it with a mindset of abundance rather than keeping it all for me. Entrepreneurs in general are people who do things differently, and I pride myself on being different. I’ve applied that to my business.
Gordon Lamphere: Where does that abundance mindset come from? So many brokers and developers spend half their day keeping other people out rather than building new products or improving services. Do you think we could have more of that in real estate?
Gabe Trevizo: I don’t want to speak in generalities, but I think people with an abundance mindset enjoy competition. I’m not worried about one of my trainees taking my business, because I have a system and relationships that work, and it’s not my job to keep them from their own success. I don’t focus on who’s coming up behind me. I focus on what’s ahead of me and what I can accomplish through my own work. A few of the guys I trained went on to start their own companies, and one is still a very good friend who calls me three times a week asking what he should do in a situation. I’m more than willing to help, because he’s a friend, and why not?
Gordon Lamphere: How do you train folks in real estate? One of the biggest gaps we see is poor training. How did you develop those processes and train seven appraisers?
Gabe Trevizo: You have to be super intentional at the beginning. They’re college-educated people, but it’s a different language, and everything is new. It’s a lot of patience, three steps backward to take a step forward, and you have to be willing to make that investment for the company. The last one I trained was before my new companies, when I had more time. It’d be more difficult now. But you have to be intentional, patient, and willing to know your business will struggle for six months, knowing that investment means you take five steps forward in months seven through eighteen, because you have a new person pulling in the same direction.
The Final Four
Gordon Lamphere: We’re getting to the end, but we have the Final Four, four quick questions that help us learn more about you. First, one of my favorites: where do you see entrepreneurship going over the next ten years?
Gabe Trevizo: I think it’s going to grow. As a society and a culture more connected than ever, opportunities and examples are seen more frequently. If you’re scrolling through X and you see, this guy’s doing this, why can’t I do it? Growing up, I knew one uncle who was an entrepreneur. That was it. Just the idea of becoming one was hard. Now there are so many examples, the examples are real, and the path is open to anybody. The more people see that, the more will choose it, and I wouldn’t trade it for the world.
Gordon Lamphere: The world is so much flatter than it was. I’m a millennial, almost thirty-five, and even in my short life the world has flattened so much. Do you think real estate will evolve? It’s one of the most antiquated industries around. Will the entrepreneurship vibe come into real estate, or will it be a last holdout?
Gabe Trevizo: I think it will. There are definitely disruptions coming into real estate. I have crazy ideas I think would work, and I know people are working on ideas in residential, at least, which is where I live. I’m sure in commercial too, I just don’t know it as well. Within ten years, real estate transactions and the way they process are going to look way different.
Gordon Lamphere: We’ve had a number of folks on already doing that. Now, going back to high school Gabe, what would you tell yourself?
Gabe Trevizo: I’d tell myself to buy Bitcoin.
Gordon Lamphere: That’s not the first time we’ve heard that.
Gabe Trevizo: In all reality, I’d tell myself not to waste time. I feel like I wasted years, because I didn’t get serious about life and my career until I was twenty-eight or twenty-nine. That’s my one regret, not starting earlier. I have good friends in one of my X groups, kids who are twenty-three and just crushing it. You’re going to be a stud in another fifteen years. So my advice to young Gabe: Bitcoin, and start earlier.
Gordon Lamphere: Great advice. We’ve had some great book recommendations. What book would you recommend to a young entrepreneur?
Gabe Trevizo: You got me on that one. Surprisingly, I’m not a huge reader. I have such limited time that reading is for the beach.
Gordon Lamphere: I feel the same way. I’m a big audiobooks guy. As brokers, we drive around and see a wide range of properties, and it can be audio or a podcast. It doesn’t have to be this podcast.
Gabe Trevizo: The most recent one referred to me that’s on my list is Buy Back Your Time by Dan Martell. That’s the next book I’ll read, because the person who referred it is somebody I really respect.
Gordon Lamphere: So you can buy back your time and then read another book. Now the one question I won’t let you get out of, and the whole reason for the podcast. On X and LinkedIn, the most important resource is connections, and men and women in the arena tend to know people doing equally incredible things. Who should be the next person we reach out to?
Gabe Trevizo: I’ve got a list. Depending on what you’re looking for, Alex Purcell, the laundromat guy, would be a really good guest. Alex Forbes, the cabinet guy. Shannon Jean is awesome; he’s a super experienced entrepreneur with unique perspectives on a lot of niche ways to make money. Parker Cox, who has Pavago, an offshore staffing agency, super smart guy. Dan Magazzo, a young kid who’s an awesome entrepreneur. Mike Higgins. There are a lot of dudes on X you should talk to. I just ran through my closest group there, and all would be worthy.
Gordon Lamphere: We’d love to have them on. One last question: what’s the best way for somebody to reach out to you?
Gabe Trevizo: DMs on X are probably best. If anyone has questions, especially about products or entrepreneurship in general, I’m more than open to spending a little time and offering anything I can.
Gordon Lamphere: Gabe, thank you so much for hopping on the podcast today. We’ll have to have you on again to hear more about Popcorn Perfect.
Gabe Trevizo: That’d be cool, man. Thanks, Gordon.
Gordon Lamphere: Thanks again to Gabe. If you enjoyed the podcast, please give us a like, a follow, or a review. Your subscriptions and interactions truly matter and help us continue to get quality guests. You can find us on YouTube, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. I’m Gordon Lamphere with the Real Finds Podcast. Thank you for listening.
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