“If you’re going to start a business,
you have to be willing to grind.”
– Nate Lawrie
On this episode of The Pivotal Leader, Gina Trimarco interviewed Nate Lawrie, CEO, Brazyn Life. Nate played 8-years of professional football in both the National Football League (Buccaneers, Saints, Bengals) and United Football League (Sacramento Mountain Lions), before retiring after the 2011 season.
A self-described “NFL Grinder,” Lawrie fought through numerous injuries throughout his pro-career which led him to rethink many of the products he was using to take care of his body – wanting tools that were more convenient to use without compromising functionality.
In 2015 Nate launched a new business called Brazyn Life. Brazyn Life is dedicated to helping people achieve their fitness and health goals through innovative, high-quality, and travel-ready recovery and fitness tools. Brazyn’s launch product is The Morph Collapsible Foam Roller, a premium foam roller that folds flat making it easy to use at home, the office, the gym, or on the road.
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Podcast Topics Include:
- Service providers or professional athletes are their own product
- How Nate developed, created and released his first product
- The benefits of using of using a foam roller
- Nate takes up through the process of how he went from just having an idea to creating a collapsible foam roller for mass production
- The nuances of launching a successful Kickstarter campaign
- Nate’s shares his experience on Shark Tank and the aftermath following the episode airing
- The challenges of launching a new project; raising capital, taking risks and manufacturing of a physical product
- Finding the right people for your team and also relying on a little bit of luck
- How startup life can be extremely overwhelming, but yet so rewarding
- Pulling from peer groups for support, valuable knowledge and guidance
- Being an “NFL grinder” and how it’s applicable to starting a business
More About Gina Trimarco
More About Pivot10 Results
More About Nate Lawrie & Brazyn Life
- Website
- Twitter & Instagram: @brazyn_life
- Shark Tank episode
Nate graduated from Yale University in 2004 with a degree in political science. He has completed NFL-sponsored executive education programs at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, University of Pennsylvania – Wharton, Northwestern University – Kellogg and Babson College. Born in Indianapolis, IN, he now resides in Santa Barbara, CA with his wife and two young children.
The Pivotal Leader is a production of Pivot10 Results, a strategy and training company that helps businesses shift from people problems to performance results.
