We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Hunter Suchsland a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hunter, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Before we get into specifics, let’s talk about success more generally. What do you think it takes to be successful?

I think success is achieved through constant work, the right attitude, and an undying passion for what you are doing. It seems like everything you see online nowadays is promoting instant riches and the quickest way to make a fortune. What nobody wants to discuss is the daily grind, sacrifice of sleep, and mentality you must have to make your story worth hearing. LS Lures is a company that started with $50 in a college class and through this process of grit and sacrifice has turned into something truly special. We have found that doing something that furthers our business every day, no matter how big or small, can have huge results overtime. This daily grind is something our customers and the retailers we sell to notice and appreciate. It keeps us relevant in a constantly changing world, keeps our quality top notch, and promotes steady healthy growth. Our daily hard work formula has helped us win the University of Nebraska’s Business Venture Contest, Numerous awards within the College’s ENGLER program, grow our sales each year, and start selling to the company Scheels. Success is earned through hard work and determination; and while LS Lures may not be where we want it to be yet we believe our formula will get us there. The joy is in the journey, and success is achieved one day at a time.

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 back background and context?

LS Lures was started in the $50 business class offered by the ENGLER program at the University of Nebraska Lincoln. The goal of this class is to throw students into the world of entrepreneurship and force them to learn how to start a company and make money as soon as possible. The course emphasizes finding real world problems and designing a product or service to solve this issue. Cade and I took this course in 2020 when COVID 19 was at its peak and while it was throwing the world for a loop it helped us come up with our company very quickly.

Cade and I are both hardcore bass fishermen and have been dabbling in lure making our entire lives. We fish tournaments all over the country and spend as much time as we can on the water each year. One of the baits that we rely on the most to put fish in the boat every time we are on the water is a skirted Bass Jig. Covid 19 caused severe delays in overseas shipping where most of these big box brand jigs are manufactured causing their availability to decrease significantly. This, paired with the fact that these jigs manufactured overseas have inconsistent quality and are cheaply made helped us to have no issues deciding what we were going to do. We were going to make American made bass jigs and cut no corners to provide the best jig possible that we want to use and that tournament anglers like ourselves can count on.

Tournament bass fishing is all about the little details. One mistake or equipment failure can cost anglers fish and thousands of dollars in payouts. All of our jigs are hand poured, hand painted, and hand tied around the best materials that we can put into our baits. As I said above, we spend a ton of time on the water and wanted to craft baits that could stand up to anything we put them through. We focus on making a premium product with colors and designs that both fish and anglers have not seen before. We cover all varieties of bass jig styles, buzzbaits, spinnerbaits, bladed jigs, and terminal tackle to offer our customers anything they could need on the water. Our customers can fish with confidence knowing that they have a unique product fish don’t see 3o times a day and one that will not fail them when they do hook into that big one or when there is money on the line. While we have our own designs we sell online and to retailers we also do custom work for our customers looking for something especially unique or just a color we don’t offer.

Since our start in 2020, we won the University’s Business Venture Contest, placed 10th at Bassmaster College Nationals using our baits exclusively, watched our customers and ourselves cash more checks at tournaments than we can count, and have started selling our product to the company Scheels. We have been extremely blessed to sell our product online to folks all over the United States and can’t begin to imagine how many fish have been caught on them. We are so proud of the brand we have built and the relationships with our customers that has came with that. The stories our baits have created are priceless and add an unspeakable value to what we are doing and striving towards.

Can you tell us the story behind how you met your business partner?

Cade and I met the first day of College orientation in 2018. We were both in the same tour group and immediately hit it off. I had a shirt with a bass on it and nobody else in our group was from small town Nebraska so we stuck together. I can’t say either of us paid much attention throughout as we were having a step brothers “did we just become best friends” moment. We had all the same hobbies, lived 30 miles apart and didn’t know it, and were both die hard bass fisherman. At lunch we that day we decided it was a good idea to see who could eat more which resulted in Cade losing his lunch in the bathroom for about 10 minutes and giving us a story we will never forget. After that day Cade and I ended up on different campuses for the next two years. We kept in touch but didn’t spend a ton of time together until we both walked into the $50 business class our Junior year. The rest is history. From then on Cade and I earned the nickname “the night owls” for the ridiculous amount of time we spent after hours in the ENGLER workshop making baits. We fished our senior season together qualifying for MLF nationals twice, winning our state Bassmaster tournament, and lastly going on to place 10th/132 of the nations best college anglers at the Bassmaster nationals Championship. Cade and I are now roommates with an upgraded space to work on our craft and one heck of a story to tell.

Are there any books, videos, essays or other resources that have significantly impacted your management and entrepreneurial thinking and philosophy?

There are three books that immediately come to mind that have had a tremendous impact on how I think and how we run LS Lures.

1: Profit First by Mike Michalowicz
This book emphasizes paying yourself first as an entrepreneur and working your entire business plan around your needs. It lays out the entire process in a very easy to understand manner and sites many success stories and ways you can tweak it for your business. Too many entrepreneurs put the company first only saving what is left for themselves at the end of the day which never seems to be enough to survive or grow wealth.

2. E-Myth Revisited by Michael E. Gerber
E-Myth breaks down why most small businesses don’t work and what to do about it. It breaks down how to create successful business systems that don’t require you in order to function. Its analysis of successful systems is very useful and has helped us tremendously.

3. Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki
This book was a great read for further developing the entrepreneurial mindset. Robert breaks down the two ways there is of thinking about everything and offers very key insight into the lives of employees and entrepreneurs. Much like the other two books this has helped us with our business strategy and further increased our passion for what we do every day.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://ls-lures.company.site/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ls_lures_/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClEab9UsfLAuxsHPtLxlF3w

Image Credits
Credit Bassmaster for pictures in Nebraska Jerseys