Cincy → Asia: Lucas and Andrew’s Journey Continues

Looking at his network in China and mine in Taiwan, and then my materials and his background and his ability to bring products to market, think both of us are just like like evil mad scientists like, oh, what can we make? What can we make? Yeah. I think we're gonna, I don't know, bring a lot of marketing products to market. It'll be fun.

This is. Yeah. Great opportunity to expand and there isn't many individuals here in town like Andrew that has that experience in China. So in Asia and Taiwan. And so we are very excited and and, passionate about the the collaboration and what we can build.

Flywheel Social Enterprise Hub is more than a startup accelerator. We are a hub for social entrepreneurs, community organizations, and corporations with a mission to drive social changes in their communities. VYWILL help social entrepreneurs grow and scale their businesses into enterprises that have both a financial return and social impact. We call it the double bottom line. Hi.

I'm Joan Kaup, host of On the Fly!, the podcast that shines a light on the ecosystem where profit meets purpose. This is more than an ecosystem. It's a community. Today is very special because I get to share part of that community with you. I'm in conversation with two brilliant men who individually are changing the world in the most positive ways.

They met through Flywheel, and now together, they are sharing ideas, passion, and resources to do even more. Lucas Williamson leads a global team of experts at Product Refinery located in Cincinnati, Ohio. Andrew Bliss is the founder and CEO of EcoShell LLC based in Covington, Kentucky. I'm gonna start individually so our listeners have a chance to hear your voice and can put sound with names. So, Lucas, let's start with you and tell us a little bit about how you began your entrepreneurial journey.

Well, I started very early on at 18 when I launched my first business in college producing custom sports gear for mixed martial arts and wrestling. And that turned into another product business that we launched on Kick Starter in the very early days. From there, it snowballed into a very awesome career working with product founders.

You started with wrestling because you know wrestling. It's kinda like people are told authors are told write about what you know. So it kinda sounds to me like you started with what you know. You were a wrestler. Right?

Yes. I was a wrestler, and then I coached wrestling in college. And it was just this natural evolution of applying my design skills, which I was studying in college, to a business so I didn't have to go work another job.

Alright. So our audience can hear your voice. Andrew, let's start at the beginning. How did your journey begin?

Well, my entrepreneurial journey started a little bit later in life. I was in Taiwan at the time. I had done a bunch of different jobs leading up to that, and I just kind of graduated into it. My my first business was an educational publishing company that then went off into a, a consulting company and then oh, a procurement company, and that ultimately led to the business that I brought back home, which is EcoShow.

So you mentioned Asia. You both have ties to that part of the world. What are your what are your ties? Where and why and how?

Well, I was there for twenty one years, and I just moved back. And I moved over there initially to study the language in China, and then I followed jobs. I went up to Korea for a couple years, then, went down to Taiwan to visit friends and fell in love with the place. It just became the perfect place to explore that passion because it's got a great social network. It's got great health care.

Everything's affordable. The people are friendly. It's just a great island to take chances, and it just let me it gave me the the the safety net to take whatever chances and fail a few times that would be much more difficult than here. So I just landed there, and it was a perfect age at the perfect time to take advantage of that.

And, Lucas, where are you in Asia?

So my journey took me to Asia about ten years ago when I went on my first trip with a client. I'd always been fascinated with the other side of the world and the culture and the food. And when that first trip happened, it just it blew my mind in regards to, like Andrew said, the the people, the culture, the food, everything there, but more specifically because of my business, it was inherent that investing in this part of the world and building relationships in Asia was going to be critical to the success of my business and my career. And I recognized the need of having that infrastructure and that support because it is, you know, the world's factory, specifically where in China and Southeast Asia where we do a lot of our production. So I continue to invest going over there, and I have been going over there for the last ten years.

Gives you a cool perspective, doesn't it? Because you see products on the shelves over here. You see whatever any kind of random product, but this experience in Asia lets you see the underbelly of the beast where it all gets churned out and made. You see the systems and the infrastructure that need to come together to make just that one little simple product you see on the shelf. So being exposed to that, I thought, was it's just been really, really informative, especially now as I start the business over here.

I gotta piggyback that. I mean, just critical as a product designer, being able to understand the intricacies in the end to end process only made me better at my job and understanding the processes. But it was also this, like, escape from the matrix, you know, on the Western side of the world. We're on the other side of the, you know, other side of the planet that most of the people here in Cincinnati are never going to experience and see. And so it was an edge, and it proved very look valuable and, you know, fruitful for my business as we continue to grow and date, you know, establish further relationships.

Mhmm. Definitely.

Go go with that a minute. Escape from the matrix.

Well, there is a consumer society that we live in. In the day to day, we are conditioned to order our stuff from Amazon and get it in two days. People really don't understand all the steps, thousands of steps for one little product and the amount of people that have to touch that product from procurement to materials to quality control to the machine and injection molded for example, or if you're cut and sew. There's could be 50 steps on that sewing line for one tool belt. And well, as a designer, we have to understand that process downstream to make viable, scalable and profitable products for our customers.

And so it's just inherently crucial that we understand holistically what's going on and you just don't unless you're on-site understanding what's going on at the factories, what are those challenges, like how do we get materials, You know, all of that stuff plays into your bottom line and the overall success of the product business you're launching.

You know, that's a really good point because you both work with physical in my hand products. Not not technology, not something in the cloud, but something that's really right here. I can see it, feel it, touch it, put it on the shelf. It's a different kind of beast.

Our experience abroad too, though, helps. Like, in kind of a silly metaphor or something. Like, I I used to say when I used to work in restaurant world a lot in hospitality, and I loved that I was on the I was a line cook. I was I was bartender, busser, like, every position at a restaurant up through, like, fine dining captain. And I loved that experience because it let me really understand how to run the restaurant business correctly, just knowing every little single piece of that.

And this is the same thing. So we've hours in factories abroad, and we know from actually finding raw materials to putting them into the factories to see how those are done up through shipping it over here and then every step of that, having experience with it, I think helps both of us get a good overall scope of what our business needs to do and accomplish. We don't have a lot of questions or there's not a lot of things that are left unchecked because we can kinda get a fuller scope of it.

I knew I liked you because we're we were both line cooks back in the day.

Oh, really? Yeah. I gotta I gotta admit the man. Was in front of the house. I I bragged more about them being on line cooks because you guys were cooler.

I couldn't do the couldn't do

the waiter job up front. They put me in the back of the That

was probably a smart idea.

I was good. It was good. Fun fun times back in the day.

But I was as a front of the house guy, I was like to take care of the guys in the on the on on the line, especially when I was a bartender because then I always got free food at the of the night that the other waiters did not.

To Andrew's point, it is really valuable to understand that entire process because, well, we're working with physical product founders that may or may not have, you know, the understanding of that system and and the pieces to the puzzle. So I I joke, but it's real. I mean, a lot of my job as a CEO working with these new product founders is my job is to manage emotions and set expectations. Mhmm. And I can't do that if I don't know those intricacies and can forecast and deliver, you know, the the information, the knowledge, the steps, the even the comforting, like, it's gonna be okay.

This is what is going on. You know, back to that, to this. It's not my fault, but it's my problem, and we have to navigate and manage that. And that's certainly something I think I've learned and grown, over the years as the business has grown.

Understandable. So what have you guys learned about doing business by doing business in Asia? And how would a founder decide if it's right to expand Asia or vice versa from Asia to The US? How how does that work in your mind? What are some of the fundamental learning curves, and how might that change?

I think getting your head out of the matrix is a good start because what it does is it forces you to operate an entirely different system. I mean, it's not just a different language, but things mean, even in Vietnam, it's still a cash society in a of ways. You've got to get things done by paying the right person. I'm not I don't want to say bad things about Vietnam. It's a great country.

I loved all my time there, and it's a booming economy, it's a great place to be right now. But a lot of times, things are still done with cash in hand. I mean, you have to know how to do things like that and be okay with it. But at the same time, you go to Taiwan or to Japan, and things are even the ethics are off the charts even compared to America. So you've got both sides of those things, but even then, inside of each culture, you've got different ways that in the Confucian society or this type of society, you you interact with people differently.

You have to learn how to navigate that. So what how that informs me now back in The States is I learned to operate in different subcultures, like, wherever I am. I I can operate pretty well because I've learned to adapt. Just having adapted in a few different countries like that, it it I think it helps overall your your ability to operate in different, yeah, cultures over even domestically over here.

I think there's a point of the definition of sophistication, you know, a human being that can navigate and thrive in many different tiers of society. There's a very different cultural framework in China versus The United States.

That's something so much nicer than the way I said it. I was trying to say that.

You don't you don't you do you don't do certain things in China. You don't communicate certain ways, but there's also the flip side of there's things that I would do in China with our partners in Asia that I wouldn't do in The States to make sure that things get done. Not saying in a bad way, just just how you go about things versus you're not. Right? It's it's, nuances and the ethical frameworks that are just created by business.

But that's important to understand.

And did you learn these things because someone mentored you or because you just learned it from your own mistakes and experience?

By fire. It was I had business school by fire every time.

Definitely fire. I mean, there's I have a lot of great advisers and but I I think going through the motions and learning, failing, failing forward, failing again, falling in my face, getting, you know, gut punched and slapped in the cheek, and then realizing, okay. Fix. Fix. Fix.

Improve. We're fine.

Like, for me, the adviser like, my advisory board for my company helped me now to disseminate all that chaotic all those chaotic lessons that I've learned. How do I then translate that into a functional business here in The States? That's what that adviser's that's what the advisers helped me do is is how to channel that energy and channel that knowledge that I gained into more constructive ways, how to up yeah.

Joan, to your point in regards to deciding, you know, where to build, where to set up shop. Right? Think there's a critical piece that I start with in every product development or product strategy which is I'm not here I'm here to build a viable and profitable product business for our clients. I don't care where we make it. My my goal, my charge is to build a supply chain that can scale.

So the reality is we have infrastructure domestically in North America. All over the world, there's many, many factories that can make all the products that we're producing, but the efficiency in the systems and the quality at scale is in China. And so at the end of the day, it, you know, turns out to be that is gonna be the the the route that we're gonna take because we're working on making a 100 or a thousand or 5,000 units at max for whatever Gizmo gadget I'm developing. And the economical the most viable economic path is Asia most times out.

But you do say you're worldwide. And, Andrew, I know while you were involved with Flywheel's cohort, you went to Amsterdam. Am I correct?

Yeah. I was I was What's that? There was a sustainable packaging summit I was invited to go to and introduce my eggshell solutions because it was focused on sustainability, and they were intrigued by the material. So they invited me to go over there. I got to set up my own little booth, and it was great.

I took a week off from Flywheel with their applause and their support, and I got to go over there and represent EcoShell. It was great. And I got to learn because I had never been a businessman in America. I had to come back and learn how to do that, and then to be able to then go to Europe and figure that out too, it was exciting to this day, and it was a really, really beneficial trip. I picked up Nestle as a client.

It really worthwhile and great too, though, because it was also validating because you're sitting over there in Taiwan. You think, I think I can make this work. I'm going to move back home, I'm really going to make this take off, and I think this is a viable solution. I'd studied it. I mean, I knew it was because we're doing really well in Asia already, and I was just bringing it back over to North America.

But at that time, there's still a lot of question marks. You don't know if it's gonna work out, and so I get to go to Europe, and I speak in front of a room of a couple 100 people. And afterwards, people are asking me lots of questions, signing up as clients, and it was just really validating. Like, okay. This is working.

It was nice.

Tell our listening audience how they can find out more about EcoShell.

Eco yeah. We're at ecoshell.eco is our website, not ecoshell.com. Those are some walnut people doing great stuff, but we're the eggshell people at ecoshell.eco. And you can also find me personally, Andrew Bliss, on LinkedIn.

Thank you. Alright. So you get your two minutes of fame here, Lucas. Tell us about, your product, your company, and how we find you.

Product Refinery is a service provider for early stage product founders working in physical goods. We support them in design, development, supply chain construction, and supply chain management. You can find us at productrefinery.co, and you can connect with me on LinkedIn, Lucas a Williamson.

Thank you. You mentioned Andrew, you mentioned a, advisory board. Do you both have advisory boards? I mean, some some of our startups think, gee, that's a really good idea. And some of our startups think, wow.

They just get twisted up in my business, and they are high maintenance, and I don't want it. Are you are you operating as a for profit or nonprofit, and do you have an advisory board? Andrew, you can go first.

We're hopefully for profit. Hopefully a lot. Like, I like to have an advisory board because there's a limit to what I can do to the company myself. I've taken it as far as I can go myself right now. I can understand all the different areas that I need to know well, but there's experts in each of these specific areas that I don't have the time to become an expert in all of these.

So having them on my team with vast experience to kind of guide me just saves so much time and and the learning curve is so much faster. Like, if I can say people that are on the team, I've got she's Chatterjee from Procter and Gamble, the VP of product development who joined, and I'm thrilled to have him. Tricia Morris was on my she my flywheel coach, and she's been great with go to market. Nick Kramer, who I met through Blue North, and Mark Davis, who I think is one of the on the board here, he's my financial guru. And then I've got even a plastics expert, Tim Notter, who's just been in the plastics industry for twenty years.

I just feel so confident going forward with them kind of guiding me, so I don't think they'd get in the way. I think when founders I think that's a mistake if you think that they get in your way because I've ruined businesses in the past when I tried to control everything because I thought I could do everything better than than than giving out than than relegating tasks, and I've ruined businesses because of that. So I think you need to get out of your own way. You need to let experts guide you and tell you how to do things better.

Lucas? Yeah. You know, you have more brilliant minds on a project. I think you're gonna go further together to Andrew's point. For us, we don't have a specific set public board of advisors.

We have been in business though for seven years now. And what I have is a network really a core small team of three or four mentors that I have used for the last ten to fifteen years in the space. So we chat I chat with them really on a quarterly basis slash more so as need when the fires or the critical inflection points happen in my business that I just, to Andrew's point, need that advice that is I'm not familiar with. I think it's really critical to understand and be self aware of your skills and knowledge and, you know, that lane as Andrew mentioned because then you can fill the gaps. I joke with my team, but, you know, I joke on I can't wait till I can fire myself.

This isn't necessarily applicable to the advisers, but again, those advisers are those early team members that are gonna support you fractionally. And then you're gonna be bringing on those, you know, c suite levels, which may be the advisers at some point, may not. But you've got to have that team support you in those critical aspects of the business that you're weak in, and being aware of that is critical as an entrepreneur.

And being open to their advice too and learning how to utilize them and talk to them. Like, I always joke I should never go to therapy because I would be horrible at it because I would just convince the therapist that I'm fine and that maybe he has problems. So I would never use them correctly. I would say what they wanted to learn. So for this advisory board and even my lawyer, I had to learn how to like, I'm not performing.

I'm not getting their approval. I'm asking them for help so I can just be 100% authentic and direct and and open, and it's so much more functional when you do it that way as opposed to not look at these people as like, oh, I really got to impress them, but like, oh, these people can really help me, And I it's wasted an opportunity if you don't, like, let all the work show.

You take every everybody's advice as a grain of salt too. Right? Yeah. Their advisers, they're not the board of directors that are driving the business. So they're here to give you, you know, different perspectives and and maybe push that status quo, which, you know, for me, I I appreciate my mentors that I want advisor.

He's very blunt and truthful with me most times, and that's exactly what I need, that's what he's there for. It's to tell me what I either need to hear or don't wanna hear so I can take action and move forward.

I think that sort of authenticity is really important when we collaborate. I know I can call you out on anything and vice versa. And a lot of times around the board around the business table, around the boardroom, you speak in a very polite way or you have to and that's a very important part of the business culture. I'm not saying to get rid of it, but when it comes down to the nitty gritty of getting a product out there and getting your inspiration out there, getting your idea together, sometimes you don't need to be so friendly or so polite. You just need to be honest, and and you need to be with people that you respect and trust enough to be honest with, And you're and it's a give and take, and you can't you you have to have a thick skin sometimes.

Exactly.

Yeah. Well, you know, I I talk to students, entrepreneur design students, and one of the biggest things I speak to them is, like, you have to be able to take constructive criticism. I love it. It stinks when a client comes to me with the heat and like drops the hammer, but I go to my team, I'm like, this is motivating to learn, to grow, to get better. Unfortunately, I think design school forged that in me where it's like, can take the heat and I understand what a what a constructive critique is.

And so I I do try to put that back in and expect that from people, clients, advisers, and my team. Like, I don't I don't want you to sugarcoat anything because that's not helping anybody get better and that's not pushing us towards success.

You both talk about collaboration and I think that's really a big part of how you advance your business. Is that a learned skill? Did Flywheel help with that in any way? How do you how do you pick and choose who you want to collaborate with?

So first, you know, Flywheel was a was the matchmaker for us, connecting together, Andrew and I, in the ecosystem. I sat in on one of his pitches. So he was, you know, in Flywheel maybe a year or two after me, and now we're collaborating. I think the premise or the question here on collaboration is vital. You need partners, joint ventures, channel partners, advisors and support to bring an idea business to market, period.

You're not going to do it alone. So if you think you are, well, you might be the one of 1,000, but you go further together especially in the Cincinnati ecosystem. I am of the, you know, I am of the mind that, you know, we're all living in one large sandbox, you know, and we have to work and collaborate together. This is globally, right? We live in a global economy, we live in one planet that, you know, align synergies for mutual prosperity is how we all win and elevate our life.

Yeah. That's very elegant way to say that I think it's a great support network for our own kind of mental illness because it's just we find each other, we meet each other, and it's just like and it's it's great to find a kindred spirit sometimes and support each other for that. Aside from the the benefit to the business, the personal development. I mean, you've gotta learn to own the role of founder. You've gotta learn to walk that walk and not have impostor syndrome anymore, and to to get validation from the people you're collaborating with just really helps.

Also, to remind each other sometimes, like, man, you should really just go work out. Remember your health. Remember this. Because we understand what it's like, not just doing the business, but to to be a human and to be successful as a human being, not just as a founder. So to find people that are on the same track to, like that you can still form friendships with at the same time, it kinda helps you personally as well as professionally.

You know, in this day of digital age and virtual calls and AI, I think we're seeing an evolution of humanity gravitate back to just personal connection and, like, authenticity, as you said earlier, Andrew. And, like, I love you know, he said kindred spirits, like, we're both have that relationship and that connection to Asia and products. And so for me, I love also having that because it's invigorating in an ecosystem and back to how do we grow together. Right? We you can't you gotta have those support systems to lean on and to ask for advice and and also just connect with, like, yeah.

You're struggling too. Okay. We're all in this. I'm not crazy. It's not the only one here.

All right. Get back to work.

That's one of the reasons I love that I found my footing in America through Flywheel, which I've loved the whole experience is when I was in academia and even educational publishing, most of the people were nice. I mean, they were just trying to basically be good people and do good things. When I entered the business world, though, I was naive to it. I didn't know that there were just generally bad people out there. And in the business world, it cuts a wider swath of humanity.

You get some bad characters, and you have to learn how to deal with it. But coming through Flywheel, it's a safe space with nice, kind people that are supportive, and surrounding yourself with those types of people are just it's really I don't know. It's it's it's a better way to launch a business.

So you do share an authentic enthusiasm and joy for your work. Can you talk about some of the ideas that you're thinking about pursuing together?

Yes. So Andrew in EcoShell, as he mentioned, has a, additive to traditional plastic injection molding materials. So instead of using virgin, you know, raw plastic, we're taking recycled plastic and adding in, you know, a half or three quarters of his eggshell material to create an injection molded product. On my end, I am designing and making those injection molded products. So one of the ones that we're really excited about right now is preparing to launch on Kickstarter, and it is essentially an eggshell grinder, sterilizer device.

Think about on your kitchen counter, sits next to, you know, your your sink and your other appliances. It processes and stores eggshells after you crack and use them. So we are really excited because it makes perfect sense to use an eggshell additive to provide a sustainable piece of material and positioning for this client brand. And that was really one of the first pieces that connected me and Andrew in the value of for my business, I wanna provide our clients with sustainable options. And he is, you know, selling and and building a sustainable materials business, so it's a perfect synergy.

Just like the eggshell connection. But I think also, we also thought, like, looking at his network in China and mine in Taiwan and then my materials and his background and his ability to bring products to market, think both of us are just evil mad scientists like, oh, what can we make? What can we make? And so I think we're gonna, like yeah. I think we're gonna, I don't know, bring out a lot of products to market.

It'll be fun.

This is. Yeah. Great opportunity to expand, and there isn't many individuals here in town like Andrew that has that experience in China. So in Asia and Taiwan. And so we are very excited and and, passionate about the the collaboration and what we can build.

Before we step away from the microphone, guys, what do you want to tell angel investors who are on the fence about investing in emerging social impact businesses?

Honestly, like, it's it's I would just ask them, like, kind of impact they wanted to have on the world and what sort of lasting effect they want to have on the world. It's easy to take a quick cash grab. I mean, that's great, it feels good, and you can provide for yourself. But if you're wanting to have a lasting impact on society and some of the businesses that we've come into contact with and Flywheel alone could have lasting impact for generations. And do you want to support that?

I mean, it's immortality in a certain kind of way as opposed to just personal wealth. And, you know, I'm a man. I'm getting a little bit older too, and I'm thinking, like, what kind of impact do I want have? What is going be my legacy? And so I'm saying if you've if you've have some experience to you, if you're if you've got some money together, why not think about your legacy?

Why not think about having a lasting impact as opposed to just your own, you know, filling up your own coffers?

I think to take it one step further, when we think when I think about angel investors, I go immediately to a, you know, regional community, city, you know, greater city area and their impact. Of course, you have angel groups that invest, you know, tri state or regionally, nationally. But to Andrew's point, like, is your vision for your impact with agent invest? I would guess or assume that a lot of them want to have an impact in their community locally. And a big part of that impact is going to be social enterprise because they're the ones focused on actually doing something for the community.

You know, everybody else is focused on the $500,000,000 unicorn exit. And so, you know, put your money where your mouth is. You wanna see your community grow and build social enterprise and these founders that may not be chasing profits, but they're chasing impact and solving an amazing problem, know, you're going those dollars are going to really get to go to work. I'm just so grateful to come back home and to put my business here in Cincinnati because the whole region has just been amazing to launch a business through.

I think I was looking at some other cities, and I think in bigger cities, it wouldn't be as supportive. Like, it wouldn't be as happy for your success. Here in Cincinnati, I think a success for your company is a is a success for the region, so people applaud you and lift you up. And I think it's just a great community to be part of, and I think it's a really great ecosphere to be to be launching businesses through.

Thank you both. We celebrate you immensely. We celebrate your success. Thank you for doing it here in the greater Cincinnati region. Thank you for taking the time to talk with us today.

Thanks, Joan. Thanks, Appreciate you fly well, everybody.

On the Fly is produced by Joey Scarillo with music composed by Ben Hammer. Recorded at 1819 Innovation Hub in Cincinnati, Ohio, courtesy of the University of Cincinnati.