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Meet Brian Galton | Chief Fun Officer

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Meet Brian Galton | Chief Fun Officer

March 14, 2022
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We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Brian Galton. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Brian below.

Brian, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Often outsiders look at a successful business and think it became a success overnight. Even media and especially movies love to gloss over nitty, gritty details that went into that middle phase of your business – after you started but before you got to where you are today. In our experience, overnight success is usually the result of years of hard work laying the foundation for success, but unfortunately, it’s exactly this part of the story that most of the media ignores. Can you talk to us about your scaling up story – what are some of the nitty, gritty details folks should know about?
Building a business requires many layers of laying the foundation. You have to have a plan on paper that you believe it=s the correct path to success. But what if it’s not? You have to have a plan B. Establish a threshold and if you do not meet your expectations then you have to have a threshold to stop the bleeding. Just like a bandage. Accept your injury and heal. You have to be willing never fail as long as you learn from your efforts and use it as power towards success. You may even need a Plan C. If there are no other plan’s then you better be 100% positive Plan A will be successful. You have to constantly be looking ahead because what may be doing well in the present may not do as well 1 year, 2 years, 5 years, and think about how much has changed in the past 10 years. You have to continually keep adding to your foundation. If 1 brick becomes loose or even crumbles; then it will be nice to know in 10 years that you have 10 bricks. So never stop building and improving.

Sunrise Paddleboards has transpired many times. Each transition I view as a brick or the foundation. Here are the many bricks we have added:
1. Paddle Board Rentals
2. Sunglasses and Water
3. Specialty Tours like our Full Moon Paddle
4. Board Sales
This in itself become many bricks starting with 6 boards and continuing to use your profits to add more.
We went from 6 – 10, 10 – 14, 14 – 20, 20 – 30, and now we have 2 warehouses with over 200 boards of all
different sizes and construction
5. We started buying accessories from Distributors like Water Proof Phone Cases
6. Eventually it made better profit to create our own/
7. Then the light bulb went off to create an entire product line of accessories and we did:
Paddles, Roof Rack Straps, Roof Rack Pads, Dry Bags, Cargo Nets, Anchors, Fins, Fin Screws, Wall Racks, Rail Tape,
Shirts, Sunglass Straps, Sunglasses, and of course the phone cases. We branded them all.
We went from buying accessories from other Dealers to selling them to the same Dealers.
8. We added Kayaks
9. We added Jet Ski Adventures
10. We created a Non-Profit “Clean Water Clean Life”

Let me emphasize to give back to your community. It is just good Karma and Do Good Feel Good.

You also must build a foundation with people, so I can go on and on about how to build and how to scale up.
It is a series of baby steps. Now, I could have 1 of any of these layers poorly perform and for it another layer will blossom, and success will continue to thrive. Activity breeds productivity.

Think positive minded, give great service, treat your people the way you would want to be treated with no surprises, and just be loyal and honest! Everything will fall in place as long as you are willing to put in the work as a business owner.

Brian, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
BRIAN GALTON CEO & Founder of Sunrise Paddleboards, LLC.

“Sweet B” is a Florida native born in Lake City, Clermont. Loving the tropical lifestyle, he continues to dedicate his passion for spreading the love of watersports, and marine life by creating various Tours, Charities and events to bring the community together! Brian is always looking for new ways to bring people together and see the bigger picture of life: “Paddle more Stress Less”!

He can be found at the shop or in the water, nearly every day of the year; with the same passion and enthusiasm as when he first started this movement in 2010. Each and every Activity has been created by Brian who is most proud of our infamous Full Moon Paddles and our Clean Water Clean Life efforts to clean our waterways. Starting with just Rentals and Tours, Sunrise Paddleboards has become the #1 seller of boards for the largest manufacturer in the world and has created it’s own brand of paddle boards and accessories as can be seen at SUPSmart.com. Brian was a Business Major at VCU and worked over 20 years in the Automotive Industry before resigning as General Sales Manager for 3 franchises. He prides himself on providing 100% Customer Satisfaction, Values, and Quality. You can also meet him conducting every Tour and even by request!

How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?
Build good credit. I started the entire company on a No Interest for 1 Year Credit Card and made minimal payment for 1 year. I re-invested and built the entire company off a very small startup cost under $5000. I was willing to go a year without paying myself, so that take’s some math as only you know how much you can survive on.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
I recall standing on my head in front of our paddle board display to get people to stop, so we could tell them what we do. You must know how many people it takes to talk with until you make a sell. then it becomes a numbers game. you must understand the numbers or make sure you get up to bat enough times to get a hit.

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