Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Shea Geist. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Shea, appreciate you joining us today. Let’s kick things off with your mission – what is it and what’s the story behind why it’s your mission?

It’s one of my clearer memories of childhood. My aunts and uncles took a bunch of us grandkids to the drive-in. I have no idea what we were supposed to see, but the movie playing on the screen behind us was waaayyyy more interesting. I remember walking back from the bathroom and looking up at the precise moment that Richard Dreyfus, who was attempting to pull a tooth out of a bite in the hull of a boat, was greeted by an oddly-mutilated human head popping out instead. That moment shaped my life.

From that point forward I was terrified of being in the water. No logic or reason could eliminate or even mitigate that fear. I was in the middle of the country, in a swimming pool, and still freaked out by water deeper than my waist.
Many years later, my husband, son and I visited beautiful Kaua’i. On the west side of the island is a breakwater, essentially the kiddie pool of the ocean, surrounded by huge boulders with spaces that would only allow small fish to enter. I literally had to walk back and forth on the beach for 2 days while my husband and son patiently played in the water, waiting for me to be ready to join them. On the third day I did, but I was still terrified.

A few months later, we saw the scientist who developed the technology demonstrating it on a Discovery program. We looked at each other in amazement, wondering why we had not seen a product using this technology during our vacation. We did more research and found that the technology had not been commercialized. There was no product.

After nearly 2 years of research and development, our product hit the market. Several months later, I received a message from a mother who had just bought an 8-pack of our product. Jessica described the shark bite her daughter, Violet, then three years old, had survived a few years prior. She sent me a picture of Violet, with her leg shredded, on the operating table. I could only imagine Jessica’s terror, despair, and worry, seeing her baby’s body torn open. After I stopped weeping, I refunded Jessica’s money and sent out her order.

Bathtub Beach, where Violet was bitten, had been the family’s daily playground. Jessica and her kids had not gone into the water since the bite. Jessica was also fighting to change regulations that allowed spearfishers to drag their bleeding fish out of the water through swimming beaches. When the regulation was changed and with their Shark OFFs, Jessica and Violet finally entered the water of their favorite beach. THIS is why we are in business.

Violet is a healthy, happy, vibrant kid. And she wants to be a marine biologist. In 2021, we introduced a new color in our Rio line – the Violet. It’s a happy, vibrant combination of Violet’s favorite colors – purple and pink – chosen by Violet. One dollar of the sale of every Violet goes to her college fund. We are honored to be part of Violet’s story.

Our mission is to help people leave fear behind so they can connect with the ocean. If you connect with something, you are more likely to work to protect it. We are grateful to have the opportunity to bring this technology to the world. Thanks, Spielberg.

Shea, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

After a lifetime of working in non-profits (including suicide hotlines, rape crisis centers, and educational organizations), I do something completely different. I make shark repellent products!

It sounds crazy, doesn’t it? But there is technology that repels sharks and we are the only company that is globally licensed to use it in products made for humans.

The first question I usually get is “How did you find out about this?” The cheeky answer is “in bed.” It’s cheeky but literal. My husband and I were watching TV in bed and a Discovery program demonstrating the technology popped up. We watched it in amazement and wondered why we never saw a product using the technology on our recent trip to Kaua’i. I was terrified of sharks and it definitely impacted our vacation.

After we tell people how it works (the next question), they ask how a couple that lives in KANSAS CITY – as far away from the ocean as you can get in the US – could make and sell shark repellent. The answer is…very well. KC has a vibrant entrepreneur ecosystem that is one of the factors of our success. And with ecommerce, you can sell from anywhere.

The most important thing to understand is that Shark OFF is not about repelling sharks. Of course, it really does repel sharks. I would be an incredibly sh!tty human if it didn’t. Shark OFF is really about losing fear. As a matter of fact, our tagline is “Lose the Fear. Love the Ocean.”

The reality is you are stunningly unlikely to be bitten by a shark – even though we hear about it all the time. You are more likely to win the lotto or die by cow or icicle! But that doesn’t change anything for people who are afraid of sharks. So we are here to change that. You can’t love something you fear and we all need to participate in saving our oceans. Sharks are key to clean, healthy oceans.

BTW, I love the ocean now. I spent a lot of time in it when we were testing our product. That’s the only bad thing about Kansas City. No ocean.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

One of the most important things my son has taught me is that I am made of steel.

My son, who we call Miracle Max, was born 9 weeks early. We endured a 90 day stay in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. As someone who never intended to have children, I was completely unprepared for the primal connection that would blossom from this beautiful little being and how it would devastate me to leave him with others every night.

There were several layers of trauma factoring into this experience. I had been a doula for years, an avocation I chose because my ability to be super chill in an “emergency.” My time in non-profits had honed that skill for me but living in the worst day of someone’s life every day of my life just didn’t work for me. So, I found a “positive emergency” in assisting with births. I knew riding in the ambulance to the hospital that I would not have the kind of sacred, calm birth I helped my clients experience. It took me years to acknowledge the damage that medicalized, impersonal, degrading experience created.

I was also determined to breastfeed to give Max the best possible chance of flourishing. He never really developed the suck/swallow/breathe reflex that is required for breastfeeding, so I pumped. I had to take galactagogue (a drug that stimulates milk production). The only one available in the US is a severe depressant, but I was determined. So, we layered on an antidepressant – to which I had a very adverse anxiety response – even thoughts of self-harm.

When we finally left the NICU, Max had a gastrostomy tube. While it successfully kept him fed, Max vomiting happened at least twice a day. We were fortunate to have it removed when he was 2.

All these challenging experiences have given me three great gifts. Miracle Max is now a happy, healthy, funny, kind, smart teen. But the memories of the nightly walk back to the Ronald McDonald house through a desolate parking garage, leaving my heart in the NICU, are never that far away.

I have absolute certainty that my husband and business partner, Geoff, just freakin’ shows up when life is hard. With strength and love. He drove hours to work and hours back to the hospital so we could be together in the NICU. He even threw me a surprise birthday dinner and put up a real Christmas tree while Max was still in the hospital.

And finally, another certainty. I am made of steel. We survived and have thrived. When things are challenging, we remind each other that it’s not the NICU. We can handle anything.

Do you sell on your site, or do you use a platform like Amazon, Etsy, Cratejoy, etc?

Our biggest market is Amazon – THE frenemy. If you are in ecommerce, you almost don’t have the choice to not sell on Amazon. The upside is access to the second biggest market in the world (Alibaba is the largest). Using Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) can make your life easier and streamline some operations.

Now here’s the “run screaming” list. And, really, if you can, run screaming.

-Unless you are a large brand, you have NO voice in Amazon. Like “none, nada, nee, non, niet.” It’s no in every language. It’s impossible to get help with an issue. Even if you manage to contact someone, you will get a canned answer and your issue will not be addressed. You must be indomitable (thanks, thesaurus.com) to get anywhere and ready to dedicate lots of time getting there. For example, Amazon lost about $3000 of inventory sent in for FBA. In MID-MAY. I am still fighting to get reimbursed.

-The seller interface was originally designed in 1942. How do I know? Because only something designed in 1942 could so utterly lack ease of use and functionality. Good luck figuring out where to change information. There are probably 4 different places it needs to be changed. But there will be no direction about where those 4 places are. Unless you know the search terms for each of those 4 places and to look in 4 places and what impact that information has on those 4 places. God forbid your business changes addresses.

-You also have to know which notifications you want sent to you. New order, returns, delivery issues, customer messages, inventory issues, and many others have independent notification settings. You may not know that you don’t know when something is happening because you didn’t know that you weren’t being told. There is more than one kind of return. Some returns negatively impact your seller rating. They are listed in a different place. You can object to the determination that your rating should be negatively impacted by the reason the customer returned your product. In general, it’s returns for product quality, product description, or delivery date. To prove your delivery arrived on time, you send documentation TO THE CUSTOMER (not Amazon, to whom you must provide the information), who has no idea why they are receiving tracking documentation on their order. You don’t upload it in response to the rating issue on the platform where you were maybe notified of the issue if you know where to look.

Are you running yet?

-The customer is never wrong in Amazon’s philosophy. And they never lie to get free stuff. Or lie to get free return shipping. Or lie about not receiving their order.

-We have no choice but to accept returns of clearly used products. Our product is consumable. Once it is used, it cannot be sold again. The use is obvious.

-The customers are Amazon’s customers. You have no information on them unless you fulfill your own orders (FBM or Fulfillment by Merchant). You are forbidden to contact them except through Amazon. The email address and phone number are temporarily assigned by Amazon. If you do FBM and use shipping software, that shipping software is required by Amazon to redact the customer information from their/your records after the sale. This is purely transactional and of little long term benefit to your business. You can pay Amazon to remarket them but…

-It is expensive. Everything is expensive – especially for the quality of service provided. Random charges and fees are removed from your sales proceeds. You are forced to buy into services you don’t want or need. It’s impossible to undo some changes – like opening the market in Mexico or Canada, then closing them when the sales don’t even pay the monthly account fee. You are forced to lend Amazon a portion of your sales proceeds for 2 weeks. They call it an “Account Level Reserve” and are ostensibly holding your money to cover returns. It is really Amazon getting operating cash to use for free. Most industries pay banks for floating operating cash.

If you want to spend hours digging around in the forums or obsolete FAQs, you might find an answer (or at least company in your misery), but you won’t get any help or explanation from Amazon.

Screaming yet? The lesson is this…if you can put your resources into building your website and funneling traffic there, do that instead of investing in building your Amazon chains.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://thesharkoff.com
• Instagram: thesharkoff
• Facebook: thesharkoff
• Linkedin: thesharkoff
• Twitter: thesharkoff
• Other: [email protected] 855-44-SHARK Did you want links above? I can provide those.

Image Credits
Rebel Jones Photography Geoffrey Geist