071: Be Willing To Grind with Nate Lawrie, CEO, Brazyn Life

“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.  

• 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

Full Show Notes