We were lucky to catch up with Vance Zahorski recently and have shared our conversation below.
Vance, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Coming up with the idea is so exciting, but then comes the hard part – executing. Too often the media ignores the execution part and goes from idea to success, skipping over the nitty, gritty details of executing in the early days. We think that’s a disservice both to the entrepreneurs who built something amazing as well as the public who isn’t getting a realistic picture of what it takes to succeed. So, we’d really appreciate if you could open up about your execution story – how did you go from idea to execution?
It all started with a 1/4oz plastic cutting ring that straps on your finger. My idea came to me while surf fishing in Florida when I caught a shark. When I got the shark on the beach, it got tangled up in my heavy braided fishing line. I wanted to release the shark safely and quickly so I ran to my tackle box to grab my knife. However, my knife had fallen in the sand and I stepped on it. After getting the shark back into the water and attending to my injury, a rush of frustration hit me. I had spent more than 20 years using dangerous knives, rusty pliers and worthless fingernail clippers. I even chipped my front right tooth on two occasions trying to cut line. That was the moment when I realized there has to be a better way to cut fishing line. On my drive home I brainstormed the best way to efficiently cut line and determined the solution was to simply wear a ring that could cut fishing line. I immediately stopped at Home Depot and found JB Weld for the ring body. I then affixed the cutting part of a dental floss cutter onto the JB Weld hand made ring. After less than an hour I had a working prototype and simulated how it would work using a thin diameter fishing line. After I made my first cut, I knew it was a million dollar idea. I pitched my new line cutting ring idea to my wife and told her “I want to go for it and bring this idea to life”. Her response was “I believe in you”. I spent the next few months learning about everything to do with patents. I found my patent attorney through Yelp and Google reviews. I researched engineering firms after learning about design files required by factories to start production and settled on an out-of-state firm that would work with my start-up budget. After a long and exhausting product development phase I finally had a working prototype and got the ring into production.With sales under my belt, I decided to chase my dream of making it on Shark Tank. I used my Kickstarter video contact and together we made our own episode of Shark Tank. I dressed up as each shark in front of a green screen and made my pitch. I used a Saturday Night Live format and embellished each shark’s persona. (the video is still on YouTube) After the video editing was completed, I filled up a big box with 100 grand candy bars, fake money and put the thumb drive containing the video on the top with a note that said “If you want to make some real money, watch this”. I was later contacted and interviewed by a producer from the show. After that first interview, six months went by and I never heard from them again. I had almost given up when a fellow entrepreneur friend of mine called and said he was flying in to Dallas to a Shark Tank an open casting call. I was at a fishing expo in Houston at the time. I asked if I could crash on the floor of his Air B&B single room. I immediately packed up my booth and drove from Houston to Dallas. The next day we both gave our two-minute pitches and ultimately that is what got my foot through the door. In November of 2016, my Shark Tank episode aired to approximately 10 million viewers. I was the fourth person to pitch on Season 8, Episode 9. After the show, it took 10 months to close our deal with America’s favorite shark (an absolute legend and genius) Daymond John. Only 40% of deals typically close. In February of 2018 Daymond invited me to go on-air on ABC’s show The View as one of his hot new businesses. The media exposure from both shows played a role in our rapid growth, along with creating some of the most innovative cutting solutions in the fishing industry. During Covid in 2020, I purchased four dilapidated commercial buildings that had been abandoned for 10 years. It took eight 40 cubic yard dumpsters of rotten debris to clear out the buildings. When renovation was complete, I opened up a retail location called Line Cutterz Fishing & Outdoors. Once the other three buildings were fully renovated, we leased them to tenants creating another new revenue stream. I’m proud to say that now Line Cutterz and sister brand Thread Cutterz are sold in 12 countries through retail and on Amazon. We have landed two large OEM deals with other manufacturers who put our cutting tools on their products. We custom print business logos on our cutting tools and have sold them to some of the largest businesses in the world like Honeywell. Our sixth patent is pending, and we have two more products in the works. My dream is to handsomely compensate my employees and change their lives forever for their dedication and unwavering belief in Line Cutterz. It’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when it will happen! It’s amazing to know it all started with a ring made out of JB weld and a dental floss cutter #chasingdreams #onelifeonechance
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your background and context?
I’m Vance –the founder and product-developer at Line Cutterz, LLC. My friends will tell you I am a hustler yet I would describe myself as a passionate dream chaser who is self taught (thanks to the internet). I am a passionate fisherman who loves family, friendships and entrepreneurship. I also love woodworking and cooking. My passion for fishing started at four years old which is when I was introduced to fishing by my grandfather on his dock in Chetek, Wisconsin. From the moment I felt a tug on my line, I was hooked. Although it took many years to find a career in the fishing industry, it was bound to happen eventually. Ironically, stepping on a knife created the spark I needed to create my own business. Additionally, passion has played a major roll in virtually every aspect of our growth. From product development, to social media posts, to customer interactions, Line Cutterz is more powerful because of passion. In fact, four of our customers have actually tattooed our logo on their skin! Line Cutterz is so much more than just a product or brand. As cliche as it may sound, Line Cutterz is a lifestyle. Line Cutterz also represents chasing the American Dream and living life to the fullest.
I am a big beliver in organic growth so I have instilled a completely organic growth strategy from the beginning. One small example, I have personally made 5,558 Instagram posts which equates to posting one time a day, 365 days a year for 15 years. We have never paid to get followers and we have a combined 100k folowers to date on Facebook and Instagram. Also, I do not pay our brand ambassadors. I simply encourage our super fans to join our team who promote with passion and zero expectation of compensation. Our director of sales, Darran Greene, was once a customer and follower and now he runs our sales team.
I also believe it is imperative for CEO’s/startup entrpreneurs/business owners to stay connected with their customers. In today’s world, customers and followers want to be a part of the journey. They want to know who the people are behind the brand. For this reason I stay in constant contact with our customers and followers. From the very beginning, I personally loaded up my vehicle to work trade shows from Rhode Island to Florida. I literally left my family From Jan – March for 5 straight years during prime fishing expo season. This has allowed me to personally meet, greet, share our story, and demonstrate Line Cutterz products. This “boots on the ground” approach has led to b2b opportunities, has helped us grow our promotional staff, has built and strengthened our customer relationships and has helped build our team.
When I was just starting off, I told my wife and friends that I would be on Shark Tank and they smiled and probably thought I was crazy, yet I got it done. Today, I am convinced Line Cutterz will be the Yeti Coolers of the cutting industry and I am confident our team can make it happen thanks to hustling, passion and dream chasing. #passioniseverything
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
A message to those of you just getting started. Entrepreneurship is not for the faint of heart. Those who have “made it” will often show up on social media and at speaking gigs to share their wonderful stories about how wonderful entrepreneurship. Many speak about how amazing it is to be your own boss, to take risks, to create your own destiny which are all facts. But what they don’t usually talk about is the toll entrepreneurship takes on mental health, physical health, relationship health, and what the financial and emotional cost was to get them to where they are. For most of us, it takes a relentless resilience that cannot be described, only lived, once you enter the world of entrepreneurship. To give an example, a few years back, my brother and I were operating Line Cutterz out of a 2,400 sq ft pole barn located on my personal property. Hurricane Harvey flooded our entire neighborhood, and we had a choice to evacuate or stay on site with no running water. If we lost electricity, all of our inventory would be destroyed due to mold. If we stayed we could keep an eye on our inventory and try to evacuate by boat if the power went out; so we stayed. We ended up moving our inventory to a room in the attic along with my two daughter’s twin mattresses. We made a makeshift label printing station so we could print labels and package orders. Since there were no USPS pickups due to the flood, we loaded up a big green plastic bin with orders and kayaked the packages to the closest highway to meet up with a friend. They drove our packages to the nearest open USPS location and the orders made it to our customers. We stayed in the attic for ten days before the water started receding. This resilience kept Line Cutterz in business and solidified our motto of #whateverittakes.
Can you open up about how you funded your business?
The majority of legitimate start-up businesses require a significant amount of cash to get started. When I started off, I thought I had a good understanding of how much cash it would take to get Line Cutterz off the ground but it went faster than I could have ever imagined. Logo development, patent searches, patent filing, engineering, sampling, tooling, packaging design, and production are a few of the many start-up costs involved. My wife and I decided to sell our home, my guns, my prized green egg smoker, our boat and pretty much everything we had to get started. We ended up needing about $15k more to get our first order into production so my wife and I created a Kickstarter campaign to raise the final amount needed to get my first order into production. Cash started coming in which we re-invested back into the business to keep it growing. We sold through the first shipment quickly via online sales and trade shows and that’s when I realized how big our opportunity was. I approached ABC’s Shark Tank to pitch my product and ended up landing, and closing, a deal with Daymond John which was a non-equity deal that took 10 months to close. In the future we plan to raise capital to fund our expansion into entirely new markets in addition to continuing our trajectory in the fishing and crafting markets. In our case, holding on to equity has put us in a prime position to raise capital. The groundwork is laid, the concept and execution has been proven, and we have an unbelievable team and winning recipe. There truly is no limit for innovative cutting solutions in today’s world. They increase efficiency, reduce injury saving businesses millions of dollars and the best part is they are inexpensive.The future looks bright for our Line Cutterz team! #hardworkpaysoff
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.linecutterz.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/line_cutterz/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/linecutterzllc
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/line-cutterz-llc.
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/line_cutterz
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/linecutterzllc
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/line-cutterz-fishing-and-outdoors-west-columbia?osq=line+cutterz
- Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@line_cutterz
Image Credits
ABC’s Shark Tank, ABC’s The View, Amber Kelley Photography,