This episode of SANDCAST: Beach volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter, features Chris Meade, one of three founders of the four-way volleyball game, CROSSNET, that has exploded since its founding in 2017.

In this episode, we discuss:

• How the idea of CROSSNET was hatched, in a 4 a.m. brainstorming session with the founders
• Convincing a manufacturer to take a chance on three kids with $15,000 in their savings accounts
• Taking the leap to leave a six-figure job at Uber to launching your own company
• How CROSSNET has gotten into thousands of schools and is now being retailed in major stores such as Wal Mart
• The impact it has had on the sport of volleyball
• The next steps for CROSSNET, including getting it into Canada, Australia, and, yes, swimming pools

Thanks as always for listening to SANDCAST, the No. 1 beach volleyball podcast in the world. This episode is, as always, brought to you by Wilson Volleyball. They make the best beach volleyballs in the game, hands down, and we’d love it if you could support them. Head over to Wison and use our discount code, Sandcast-20, to receive 20 percent off all purchases! Yes, we do get a kickback, but we see it as a win-win – you get a discount on the best balls in the game, we get a little extra love!

We would also love it if you could check out our new YouTube channel! Bourne and Mewhirter are expanding the podcast, adding extra episodes and features on YouTube, so check us out and make sure to subscribe to get the latest updates!

If you haven’t seen it yet, our book, Volleyball For Milkshakes, is for sale on Amazon! If you are a fan of the show, you’ll be a fan of this book, as it adds lessons and stories from our guests in a fictional tale based around the Outrigger Canoe Club, where Bourne learned how to play the game!

Thank y’all so much for supporting the show. We couldn’t do it without you.

SHOOTS!

Chris Meade is the co-founder of CROSSNET, the world's first four-way volleyball game. CROSSNET combines elements of the childhood game four square and volleyball in a competitive game to 11, win by 2. CROSSNET is now available at Walmart, Target, DICKS, Academy Sports, Amazon, and 20+ other retailers. To learn more about Chris and CROSSNET, visit the site below.

crossnetgame.com

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If you've been to the beach lately, you might have seen what looks like two volleyball nets stitched together in a square. It's a game called Crossnet, it's like volleyball and four-square combined and it's taking the world by storm, growing like crazy! 

Just a few short years ago though our guest, Chris Meade, and his co-founders had an idea with $10K they could scrounge together. This isn't just an inspirational story though. This is a story about the tactics used, specifically around social media and advertising to propel growth, and I mean GROWTH!! 

Crossnet is shipping 500-1000 units a day and growing. They didn't just get there by having a great idea, they have been strategic every step of the way. 

Get the notepad out! In this episode we'll dive into what exactly they did to fuel their insane growth.

Some of the topics we discuss are:

• Specific tactics to grow traffic by platform (Facebook, Instagram, Snap, LinkedIn etc) 
• How Crossnet collect and leverage email to drive traffic / sales 
• How Crossnet leverages User Generated Content to the extreme to 10X engagement on social media
• Crossnet has made mistakes along the way too, what can you learn from them
• How referral marketing has played into their growth strategy

Think you can’t come up with a million dollar (or TEN MILLION DOLLAR) idea sitting around with your buddies? Think you can’t build an 8-figure business and have a ton of fun doing it? Think you can’t build a business like this in less than three years?

Then this episode is for you!

Chris Meade -- twenty-something co-founder of the 8-figure game company Crossnet -- was a kid with a dream when he, his brother and a friend conceived of a new take on beach volleyball. With nothing more than a fun idea and some determination, they got prototypes designed, started selling individual games through viral marketing and are now on track to do over $15 MILLION in revenue in 2020.

In this advice-filled episode, Chris breaks down many of his companies processes in detail. He starts by giving a step-by-step plan for finding overseas manufacturers to prototype, build and package your product -- incredibly inexpensively! He tells us how to do it, how much it costs, how long it takes, and then provides some pro-tips to keep you from making some big mistakes -- and not getting taken advantage of -- in the process.

Chris then talks about how he and his partners were able to start selling the game using viral marketing techniques, social media, and their own sales funnels. From there, he goes on to provide some great advice for how to keep your product and marketing expenses low (including some tips on things that can be negotiated that you probably don’t realize).

Make sure you listen for the single most important skill an entrepreneur needs to be successful. Chris discusses how he used that skill to get sales, to get his product on the shelves of the national retail chain, Dick’s Sporting Goods, to get a partnership with one of the largest sporting manufacturers in the world, and ultimately to get a partnership with a professional volleyball league that will allow his company to grow and expand beyond imagination.

Check her out, and subscribe to the BiggerPockets Business Podcast so you won’t miss our next show!

Links from the Show

• BiggerPockets
• Girls (HBO)
• Uber
• Alibaba
• Aliexpress
• ShipMonk
• Shipdaddy
• ShipBob
• Shopify
• BiggerPockets Business Podcast 01: How to Turn a Hobby Into a Booming Business (Then Get Your Life Back)—The BiggerPockets Story With Joshua Dorkin
• DICK's Sporting Goods
• SCHEELS
• Academy Sports Nationwide
• LinkedIn
• Okendo
• Wilson
• FreeUp
• BiggerPockets Business Podcast 41: Outsourcing Your Way to Millions with Nathan Hirsch of Outsource School

Check the full show notes here: https://www.biggerpockets.com/bizshow73

Chris Meade is one of the three co-founders of Crossnet, a business started in September 2017 that hit over $2m in sales in 2019. Crossnet is a business based on a game the 3 invented in order to escape the 9 to 5, which they’ve grown in a low-risk, life-friendly way! Since Covid-19 struck sales have quadrupled giving Chris and the Crossnet team a supply, and customer service challenge. Plus a massive marketing opportunity. in this candid chat Chris shares lots of detail about how they've coped with it all including their Facebook Ads and email strategy, which includes how to get your email sign up rates to over 10%.

CrossNet Game began as a crazy idea dreamed up late at night by two brothers and their best friend.  But ideas are a dime a dozen.  Chris and his brother Greg and co-founder Mike turned their crazy idea into a wildly popular product and a rapidly growing company.  So what is CrossNet?  It’s 4-way volleyball.  Put another way, if volleyball 4 square had a baby, it would be CrossNet.  And it’s amazing.

This is a phenomenal story about how to launch a product from total obscurity into a sensation.  We talk about how the product came to be, how the founders successfully boot-strapped everything initially,  and how a combination of playing volleyball all day on the beaches of Miami plus Facebook Ads fueled their launch.   Here’s a look at what we discuss:

• How their first “prototype” and first test market let them know they were onto something big
• Why they packed their bags and moved from Connecticut to Miami to launch CrossNet
• Creating the snowball effect - doing lots of little things well and watching success and momentum grow over time.
• Their first brand ambassadors and their first influencer…all by accident (but still duplicatable) 
• Their most important sales channels
• How they view Amazon
• How they are using events (pre-pandemic) to grow the brand
• Getting their product in 5,000+ schools
• Getting into Dicks Sporting Goods, Academy Sports and more
• What products are next for CrossNet and how they plan to grow (including running YT ads with OMG Commerce…)

In "How To Collect and Leverage UGC," we sit down with Chris Meade of Crossnet to discuss how he uses social media to collect and leverage User Generated Content (UGC) to drive sales of his revolutionary game, Crossnet. Chris talks to us about how he started out, how he dipped into retail and wholesale, and even how Crossnet has made its way into Gym Classes across America. 

To learn more about Crossnet, visit: https://www.crossnetgame.com/

To learn more about the Messenger Mastermind team, visit: https://www.MessengerMastermind.co/

Chris Meade is a young Co-Founder of a company that has scaled to multi-millions in sales. He and two friends invented CROSSNET, the world's first four-way volleyball game.

This unique game took his local market by storm, and is now available at Walmart, Target, DICKS, Academy Sports, Amazon, and 20+ other retailers. CROSSNET is also found across many schoolyards, parks, and beaches in the world.

Chris, along with his brother and childhood friend, invented a whole new sport and they call it CROSSNET. CROSSNET is a merge between the recess favorite four-square game and volleyball. And, it's popularity is spreading like wildfire. It's gone from being just a fun idea between three friends just under three years ago, to a multi-million dollar business, to now... a million dollar+ business per month. If you haven't heard of this game, you need to check it out. It'll bring back all the nostalgia and motivate you to get outside!

To follow CROSSNET:

• Instagram - @crossnetgame
• Facebook
• Twitter

Nowadays, more and more companies are sourcing their online content from content created by their customers. User-generated content has become the lifeblood of online and digital marketing because besides being miles more affordable, who else would you believe about a certain product besides other people who’ve bought the product? Chris Meade is the Co-Founder and Chief Revenue Officer of the game CROSSNET. Jaren Orton speaks to Chris about the beginning of their business, and how they made it big by sourcing user-generated content. Have you begun tapping into the wealth of user-generated content out there for you to use?