Perhaps it was simply the fact that the product is pretty cool. Maybe, it was more the fact that the Navy SEAL behind the idea seemed to have the gumption and grit to build a massive business. Or maybe, it was the idea that this country needs more Made in America brands to drive revenue, jobs, and tax dollars within the land of the free. More likely, it was a little bit of everything that got this entrepreneur a rare opportunity to pitch his business on Shark Tank. Whatever got him through round after round of auditions and casting calls, he was somehow able to breach the shark tank. Not only that, he hooked two sharks, Mark Cuban and Kevin O’Leary (aka Mr. Wonderful) along the way. He’s Eli Crane, founder and CEO of Bottle Breacher, a company that hand crafts 50 caliber bullets into bottle openers, selling them as gifts and promotional products. He’s young, driven, and passionate about building a one of a kind empire. I recently chatted with EliCrane to find out what it takes to build an empire, create a legacy, and to breach the tank. Meet Eli Crane’s, breacher of all things awesome, and his 4 simple lessons on swimming with sharks and winning in business:
Resilience: Bottle Breacher is not Eli Crane’s first rodeo as an entrepreneur. His first foray into entrepreneurship was a business he started in the performance training space. Crane says that he loved being in charge of his own destiny, and valued the idea of building an empire that impacted people around him. The only problem was that his performance training business just wasn’t paying the bills. Shark Mark Cuban is famous for saying, “You only have to be right one time.” Eli loved being an entrepreneur but knew that he was going to have to shift. That’s when he got an idea to dig through his kitchen drawer to pull out a gift that his brother had brought back from a trip to the Philippines years earlier. It was a 50 caliber bullet made into a bottle opener. Crane pulled it out of the drawer, brought it out to his workshop, painted it, polished it, and added a Punisher skull sticker to it, which was the unofficial logo for his Navy SEAL team. He showed off his bottle opener to his Navy SEAL comrades, because there’s nothing a SEAL loves more than a cool gadget, and not only did they all love the bullet turned bottle opener, they started placing orders with Eli so that they could all have one too. And with that, Bottle Breacher was born. Crane says that his biggest piece of advice for any entrepreneur is to realize that resilience is the name of the game. If one client says no, call another. If one idea fails, try another. And when one business falls down, start another.
Recruit Your A-Team: It all began when Eli started making bottle openers for all of his friends and co-workers, but scaling a business was another story all together. He needed a team to help scale it. The first team member he recruited was his wife, Jen, who had a business degree and experience running online businesses. Eli went to her and asked if she could help sell the product online. Within a few days she came back with a plan for selling on Etsy. For the first year of their business most of their sales came from Etsy, giving them all the practice they needed to build an online empire. On November 7, 2014, Eli and Jen appeared on the Veteran’s Day special of Shark Tank. To be clear, they had already built a pretty large following all on their own, selling more than $800,000 a year in bottle breachers their second year in business. After appearing on Shark Tank, and getting backed by shark’s Mark Cuban and Kevin O’Leary, they had no choice but to scale, and to scale big time. In 2015, their third year in business, sales breached the $5 million mark. Crane says that the hardest part of their journey has been figuring out how to scale quickly. He says it’s extremely easy to drown in your own success after appearing on Shark Tank. Overnight they went from selling 130 bottle breachers on a good day to 1500-2000 a day. He says that their only saving grace was that they quickly organized a high caliber (pun intended) production, order fulfillment, and customer service team to fill customer orders the best they could. Today bottle breachers are found in several online shops including Brookstone and Amazon, and a large bulk of the sales are made right from their own website at www.BottleBreacher.com.
Stand for Something: Eli says that the best training and education has come from being a Navy Seal from 2006 to 2014. He says that it was where he learned discipline, hard work, team dynamics, and integrity. He says it was the first time he really learned the importance of standing for something. Bottle Breacher is a Made in the USA company. Eli says that choosing to be a Made in the USA brand is not the easy road. He says that you must sacrifice on profit margin to stay within America, but to Eli, keeping money and jobs in the United States is his way of standing for something bigger than he is, and bigger than Bottle Breacher. Furthermore, Eli is passionate about hiring veterans, and currently has seven on staff. He says that it is because of his own military background that he started researching opportunities for veterans, only to find that many struggle to find jobs after their service because they don’t have the business experience necessary to find work. Eli says he’s cool with overlooking the job experience because in almost every instance in which he’s hired a veteran, he’s getting someone who exudes professionalism, attention to detail, and discipline, because that’s what the military breeds in people. Eli says that when it comes to building a business, it’s important to consider what your personal and business legacy will be. Will you be known for having built an empire or will you be known for having stood up for something important? In Eli’s case, he’s going for both.
Grind: Since Shark Tank, Bottle Breacher has had more than $8M in sales. Business is booming for Eli and his team. That being said, Eli says he wakes up every single day ready to get back to the grind. He says that he and the team are focused on delivering on their promise of a totally cool product with high customer service standards. Beyond that, Eli says that they are constantly changing up their marketing, adding and deleting product lines, and venturing into new and different product partnerships. He says that one thing he’s learned about entrepreneurship is that you must always be moving forward because if you rest on the laurels of your success, there’s someone right behind you to take it all away. Eli says that he loves rolling up his sleeves and getting into the fray every day in order to constantly improve the business. He says the hard work, long hours, and constant stress are worth it because not only does Bottle Breacher’s success benefit his family, it benefits his employees, his vendors, and the hundreds of thousands of customers who are loving his products. Eli says that if you want to breach the highest pinnacles of success in business, wake up every day ready to grind.
CEO and former Navy S, Eli Crane, knows what it takes to breach not only the highest pinnacles of success, but also how to breach the Shark Tank. His intense devotion to his family and to God (Eli never makes a big decision without prayer), are the driving force behind everything he does in business and life. He says that winning in business and in the tank is simple. It simply comes down to resilience, recruiting you’re A-team, standing for something, and getting back to the grind daily.