The Unexpected Path to Purpose: How BauerOur Found Its Identity
Earlier this year, all YOU BauerOurer’s helped raise over $6,000 for Cystic Fibrosis in support of my friends, The Doyle’s, who have a daughter with the condition.
**A Little Backstory:**
BauerOur has always been and always will be a passion project for me. I started it, without any prior knowledge of podcasting. I love talking to people (new friends or old), I love challenging people, and I am deeply interested in what makes each of us unique.
For the longest time, BauerOur didn’t have a clear "differentiator" or "competitive advantage" (for my business folks). The intent was never to get rich or famous; I just always felt it was a "productive" way for me to connect with old or new friends.
Fast forward two years, and we’re about 50 episodes in.. At the time, I wasn’t doing a whole lot of marketing on social media. The reason being, a lot of us (myself included) are addicted to our phones, and I often talk about that on air. I wanted to put my money where my mouth was. This also took any pressure off of guests and I quickly realized it didn’t make a huge difference in how many people listened.
So, I thought to myself, "I need to come up with a new marketing plan."
**Income the Merchandise:**
I started by ordering 100 sweatshirts and titled it my "First Edition." The First Edition represented so much to me. It was for the first people to support my passion project, and I always wanted to stay true to those who first supported me. So, I built a website, posted the sweatshirts, and naively thought they were going to fly off the shelves.
I think I had one website sale in the first 24 hours (shoutout to my friend, Jay). Man, what a kick in the gut.
At this point, I had already doubled down and ordered hats to go along with the sweatshirts.
So I pushed harder and harder to sell. I carried a box of sweatshirts everywhere I went in case someone wanted to buy one.. People I saw regularly (and even some one-offs) who heard I was selling them were purchasing, but sales were slow. This brought me to realize, I had a brand, but barely. I had a talk show with no real identity.
**In Come the Hats:**
Maybe it was fear of only getting one sale again, maybe it was my business acumen speaking, or maybe it was something larger than anything we can articulate.
I had already mentally committed to taking a full loss on the hats, so I thought, "Maybe I’ll pass them out to friends and family? Maybe I’ll donate them to a homeless shelter?"
None of these ideas "made sense" in my brain, and I needed to do something that did.
Whether you’re religious or not, something or someone put the idea in my heart to do a random act of kindness. This is when I thought of the Doyle family and how their daughter was born with Cystic Fibrosis. Being a father of two (at the time), I couldn’t imagine how hard it must have been to receive that kind of news. So I called my friend Gareth (Doyle) and asked if he had any interest in coming on the show to talk about CF.
I offered to donate a portion (I think we originally said 50%) of the profits to the CF Foundation.
Gareth, quickly got on board. Whether I donated anything to CF or not, he just wanted to get the word out about CF and saw this as an opportunity to do that.
When I started doing the math, 50% of the profits just didn’t make sense to me.
It wasn’t enough.
I had already “mentally committed” to taking a full loss on the hats, so why not, go all in and donate everything?
So I did…
In result—people bought in.
There was a multitude of fellow humans sharing, liking, and commenting— to help sell these hats.
And sell they did…
Hats, sweatshirts, we sold just about every piece of merchandise I had.
The Doyles couldn’t stop saying "thank you" and were so excited about the opportunity to get the word out about CF.
It hit me like a brick: this is what it’s all about, and this is what it has always been about—helping people in any way I can.
**We Found Something:**
Whether it’s a listening ear or a charity partnership, helping has always been what BauerOur is about. The goal has never been to get rich or famous, so why not try to help?
BauerOur now has guests pick a charity, and we donate a portion of the money towards the charity, of the guest’s choice.
To those who have been there since the beginning and those who are new, thank you, thank you, thank you. Thank you for listening, purchasing, sharing, commenting, liking, and talking to people about what we are doing.
I don’t care how we grow; I just want everyone to be involved. The more people aboard the ship, the more we can help.
Love you too 🍊