EE517 - Mentor Moment: Ryan Casey - Build the Brand Before You Build the Business

Welcome to this week's Mentor a Moment. One of the biggest myths in business is that you need funding, a perfect product, or a polished plan before you start. Ryan Casey built C11 Recovery with none of those things. In this conversation, Ryan shares how he turned three pairs of recovery boots and a few plastic storage boxes into a huge global business. If you ever thought, "I'll start when I have more money, more time, or more confidence," or the old adage, "When the time is right," then this episode is gonna shake your whole foundation of what you think. Enjoy. So give me the first kinda six months, then, of C11. How did you go from the Instagram page coming soon to your first couple of clients? 'Cause that's the piece I love breaking down for people that are listening, who they go, "I'm just like Ryan. I have an idea. I wanna get going. How?"

So we had no money, absolutely no money. There was no investment. There was no bank account that had money there that we were gonna kinda... We had zero. C11 launched, that Instagram page was made with, like, zero. No money, no funding. So we then, I had to then have a think, how do I create a brand with no money? How do I build what I want to build with no money? So I knew the most important thing was to start gathering a following. I needed everyone in Ireland mentioning C11 Recovery. So it started with a recovery box, a plastic Tupperware. This was my kinda idea to get the brand out there, get influencers, get kinda elite sports people talking about C11 Recovery. I knew the recovery truck and my kinda main project was coming down the line, but I hadn't got, like, I couldn't afford to go out and buy a van or buy ice baths or anything like that. So I had three pairs of Normatec boots at home. From my time playing with the Kildare Hurlers, I kinda had gathered up three pairs of Normatec boots. That's all C11 started with, was three pairs of Normatec boots.

What are they, for people that have no idea what they are?

They're compression boots. So essentially, it's like having a sports massage on your leg. It's a brand in the US. There's loads of amazing brands that have come out since, uh, but they were kind of one of the first, and I had three pairs of them. Um, and it was like, how do I get these to people now? So I went to Choice, and I bought three plastic Tupperwares. I then went to the local label printer, got the logo, C11 Recovery, stuck it on the lid, put the compression boots in, put some Epsom salts, foam rollers, massage guns, anything that we could afford, anything that was a small purchase, and then we just start reaching out to people and saying, "Hey, we've got this recovery box. We rent them out for three days. Would you like to try it?" And just like that, I got my little brother. So he was driving around in a little Volkswagen Fox around Dublin. He'd pick up a recovery box off someone, disinfect everything, go to the next person, and we just drove around like crazy for those three to four months with just three recovery boxes. That's all it was. That's all we had to our name, and people used to say to me, "You boys had boxes everywhere. I used to see you here, and then you were down in