Phil Shellhammer, Director of the Greenhouse Outdoor Recreation Program (GORP) at the University of Arkansas sits down with Matt on this episode of the Be Epic podcast. They discuss GORP’s mission as a business incubation program that is focused on developing entrepreneurs who are creating innovative products and services within the outdoor recreation industry. With an extensive background at Procter and Gamble, Best Buy, Sam’s Club, starting his own businesses, and franchising, Shellhammer is leading the way in guiding entrepreneurs to success in the outdoor recreation industry.
Learn more about the Greenhouse Outdoor Recreation Program (GORP) on the program website.
Episode Transcript
Phil Shellhammer 0:00
I can take all the things I'm passionate about in outdoor recreation, the enjoyment
I have of helping entrepreneurs in this very early stage, and it all culminates together
into an opportunity for me to help others. It was the perfect role.
Matt Waller 0:12
Excellence, professionalism, innovation, and collegiality. These are the values the
Sam M. Walton College of Business explores in education, business, and the lives of
people we meet every day. I'm Matt Waller, Dean of the Walton College and welcome
to the BeEPIC podcast. I have with me today, Phil Shellhammer who is currently the
Director of Greenhouse Outdoor Recreation Program for the University of Arkansas.
Phil, thank you for joining me today.
Phil Shellhammer 0:41
Thanks for having me.
Matt Waller 0:43
Phil, I'd like to talk a little bit about your background. But first, let's let everyone
know, what is the Greenhouse Outdoor Recreation Program?
Phil Shellhammer 0:51
The Greenhouse Outdoor Recreation Program, which we're going to call GORP going forward
because it's easier to say.
Matt Waller 0:55
Yeah, I love that name, GORP.
Phil Shellhammer 0:57
So GORP is it's a business incubator, right? The idea is how can we help early stage
entrepreneurs who are from idea to launch trying to solve building their business
out specifically within the outdoor recreation industry.
Matt Waller 1:12
So when I think of entrepreneurs, early stage companies, I know a lot of times they
come up with an idea that solves a problem. And they eventually have to create a prototype
and they eventually create a product or service, and then they get what we call product
market fit or customer poll, and then you have to come up with a good business model.
And then you scale. What end of that spectrum does a incubator deal with?
Phil Shellhammer 1:44
Yeah, we definitely start on that front end, right. So I like to say we start at the
problem. I have a lot of people come in with their idea. And we walk them back to
what problem are you actually trying to solve? Because it's best to come up with what
is that? The biggest problem they're trying to solve? What is the real problem they're
trying to solve? And then does the solution match that? And so we help them through
the problem piece, what problem we're trying to solve, what their solutions gonna
look like, how do you build a business model, and then through to prototype test MVP,
however, you want to call that in launch. With all pre revenue, for the most part,
I guess, I mean, we'll help some companies that are at that early stage, and they
just start taking revenue, but they don't know who their customer is yet. That's kind
of phases. Right. But for the most part, it's all pre revenue, helping them get to
launch in a faster and hopefully more chance for success.
Matt Waller 2:29
You know, Northwest Arkansas has become a place that people are actually drawn to,
for the outdoor activities. And as you mentioned, biking is a big deal. And you mentioned
climbing is kind of becoming real popular.
Phil Shellhammer 2:44
Cycling, for sure, right. I mean, we have this massive playground that's been built
around mountain biking, and the Razorback Greenway, all the different trails and access,
it's almost embarrassing not to have a bike around here, at this point where people
are riding and enjoying. But what's great is, there's so much more activity beyond
just the cycling in our area. I mean, of course, we have the cycling piece of it.
But even within the two counties of Northwest Arkansas, you've got great fishing and
you'll find other activities like, you know, rock climbing in the state where we have
some of the best rock climbing routes, between, say, the Appalachians and the Rockies.
There's nowhere else in the middle of the country to really go for climbing, that's
better than what you can find in Arkansas. And so as that sport grows, which it's
growing tremendously, we're seeing a lot of people coming in the state, therefore
the state's putting more effort on, we need to provide more access, we need to figure
out policy changes to allow for more people to be able to take advantage of this.
And to bring more of that tourism around the sport into our state.
Matt Waller 3:42
You say these programs are 12 weeks, right?
Phil Shellhammer 3:44
Yeah, the core incubator program, which is the application based one. Yeah, that's
a 12 week program.
Matt Waller 3:49
As opposed to the a la carte?
Phil Shellhammer 3:50
Yeah, that's right.
Matt Waller 3:51
Is this the first cohort?
Phil Shellhammer 3:52
It is? Yep.
Matt Waller 3:54
So you've got four companies in the first cohort. Could you give an example of one
of them?
Phil Shellhammer 4:00
Well they're all so different, right? We have, we have one product company, we have
one that's that would be considered more of a local services business. And then we
have two more digital businesses. Let me give you the quick version of each one, right.
So our product company is in rock climbing. It's called Lacaida Ropes and the founder
there, his name is Pedro. And he's basically trying to solve a new way to make climbing
rope for people. And he's got this new process around the design of the rope that
makes it a more safe tool for climbers, as well as a more personalized experience.
And he's got a, just a great model of where this product company can go. Sitting next
to him in our, in our cohort is a husband and wife team named Tyler and Morgan, who
created Encore Bike Rentals. At Encore Bike Rentals, it is what it is. It's a local
service of renting bikes. They started with the mountain bikes, they've gone to more
traditional mountain bikes now. And they're getting some great traction simply because
they're a great service business. They'll deliver the bikes where you need it, when
you need it and pick it up when you're done. So you don't have to come to their shop.
They're gonna bring it right to you in a white glove kind of service. And then we
have two business models that are more digital. One of them is a two sided marketplace,
right? This is called American Hunt. And their thought process is, how do we connect
landowners to people who want to use that land for outdoor rec activities? They started
with hunting, but there's a variety of other activities that people could do on their
land. And so how do you connect those landowners to people who want to use the land.
And the fourth one is called Trail Tours and Trail Tours, founders name is Mark. And
Mark has basically created a GPS enabled audio tour of your mountain biking trail.
So as you go and experience trail for the first time somebody is in your ear, helping
you decide which way on the loop you should drive because all the locals go this way,
or to give you safety recommendations, because you're about to go over this hill.
And on the other side, it turns right sharply. So be ready for that so you don't fall,
really taking the locals and taking that experience and providing it to you through
the app is what his goal is.
Matt Waller 5:52
All four of those are really interesting. And one thing that's interesting about it
is let's take the service company, the bike rental company, you know, that's not a
scalable business, per se, usually, might be. But a lot of times it's not thought
of as scalable. And I think it's good that you all are looking at both scalable, and
what would appear to be non scalable businesses, because sometimes non scalable businesses
are scalable.
Phil Shellhammer 6:25
The grant that paid for this was from the Walton Family Foundation. And between the
Walton Family Foundation and the University, as we were talking through this, it was
a massive party for our community to make sure this wasn't just about scalable businesses,
many incubators and accelerators are all about, can we be a billion dollar businesses
out of these? Right, we didn't want to just focus on that. We wanted to help the local
mom and pop shop, the small business services businesses that we knew we need to build
around here, around this amazing tourism, and groups of people that are coming here
because of our great outdoor rec activities. So we knew we needed to build up as well.
Now, that's not to say we're the only ones doing that, right. Think about the ASBTDC
has been that for years, and they're phenomenal at it. In fact, we try and bring them
in as much as we can, because they're so good at helping small businesses, ramp, build
and then continue to sustain their businesses to be successful. All we try and do
is take the assets again, similar to OEI we take the assets and the tools that we
know they already have, like, try and get our companies connected with them. And then
overlay on top of that. What is outdoor rec specific look like? And how can we help
them from outdoor recreation specifically through mentors? Or through the other tools
we have to provide for that.
Matt Waller 7:30
The acronym that you used for that.
Phil Shellhammer 7:33
The ASBTDC?
Matt Waller 7:33
Yeah, you said that pretty quick.
Arkansas, Small Business and Technology Development Center.
Yeah. And so did you know about them before you were,
Phil Shellhammer 7:41
Well, I knew about them before I was in this role, for sure. That's because I started
a couple of businesses myself. And so Mary Beth and team there, I had reached out
to them early on.
Matt Waller 7:49
They're really terrific.
Phil Shellhammer 7:51
They're awesome.
Matt Waller 7:52
If you think about it, most wealth creation, and job creation in the US is from small
businesses, not necessarily scalable businesses. And every community needs good small
businesses, if they can scale great, but we need all kinds of businesses. But boy,
I could see the benefit of that service where you it's telling you,
Phil Shellhammer 8:16
Trail tours, the audio tours.
Matt Waller 8:18
Yeah, because if you, if you go on a few paths around here, you realize you it's helpful
to have. And I think if you're new too, to the sport,
Phil Shellhammer 8:29
If you're new to the sport or new to the area, right, the benefit of being able to
be like a local, there's so many different, you know, places where you want to be
like food, for instance, right? When you go to a new town, a new area, you want to
know where the locals go, you wonder where locals eat. Well, in this case, he's taking
that same concept and saying, We know you want to ride like a local, why would you
go and waste your time trying to follow a map or stop all the time on your mountain
bike, if you're coming to visit for us for just a couple of days, we want you have
the best experience possible. And so put the experience, put the map basically in
your ear and use your phone and go experience the trail and don't have to stop and
question or worry about crashing, not knowing what's around the bend. We're going
to make sure you're you're covered that it's that's a great model to help people.
Matt Waller 9:11
Can that tool also help you pick the appropriate level of difficulty?
Phil Shellhammer 9:16
I'm sure it can. I don't know if he's put that into all of his trail tours yet or
not. But it absolutely could simply from a difficulty level or this is you know that
that first voice that comes to your head can talk about the trail overall, to make
sure you're aware of what you're getting into. This is a black and here's how it runs
that kind of thing.
Matt Waller 9:35
What was the one you mentioned about it was like a Airbnb for hunting?
American Hunt.
When you described it, I thought of like an Airbnb.
Phil Shellhammer 9:44
And that's actually how he describes it sometimes. Like it's like an Airbnb for hunters.
Matt Waller 9:47
And it seems like a really good idea because it's so hard to know where to go. And
what's, and I actually did, I looked at it online and looked at the app and I thought
it was neat, because some of the providers, you know, provide you with a nice place
to stay and help you hunt, you know, there's different levels of service when you
look through them. But what a great idea. You know, I know, when we moved here, as
my kids were getting a little older, I was never a big hunter in my life, but I wanted
them to experience it. And it was not, of course, now, when I first started looking
at this, a lot of them were hard to find online, too. But it was hard to know where
to go.
Phil Shellhammer 9:56
Absolutely. If you're a experienced hunter, but just new to an area, right, you don't
need someone to tell you how, right but you need a space to go. And the biggest problem
in public land can be oversaturated with people. And so if you wanted to go to a private
place, then you need to know the person. If you're new to the area, you don't know
the owners, you don't know the people who know, who owned the land that would be willing
to let you go there. It's by far one of the trickiest parts of the business too, right?
Because you got to give that comfort level to the landowner, as well as the person
going on the land that they're both going to take care of the opportunity.
Matt Waller 11:05
Neat idea. The first one you mentioned,
Phil Shellhammer 11:08
Lacaida Ropes.
Matt Waller 11:09
Lacaida Ropes, what are the ropes?
Phil Shellhammer 11:13
Their model is basically, personalization of the rope. So many times the ropes that
are out there now, they don't match the needs of what the the climbers have, but it's
the only option they have for them. Safety is by far the biggest need for a climber,
any climber. And so his model, and what he's working on designing out right now is
how do you create ropes that are more safe and more personalized at the same time
for that climber, and super exciting, like, his excitement around what he's doing
in this particular industry. Just being at the time he's in and where he's at right
now, it is going to be a fun business to watch, because he's gonna go way beyond just
the rope. And we just we see a lot of lot of opportunities with where he's gonna go
with it.
Matt Waller 11:54
Well, you have quite a background yourself. You started your career for several years
at Procter and Gamble, you were at Procter and Gamble four years, Best Buy for five,
you were Director of Strategy and Business Development at Best Buy, and Sam's Club
for almost 10 years, you were a Vice President of several different things, Merchandising
Solutions, Regional Merchandising, Pricing. And on top of that, you have started a
business of your own. And you also own a franchise.
Phil Shellhammer 12:26
Correct.
Matt Waller 12:27
So you, you really are well suited for this kind of role.
Phil Shellhammer 12:32
It was hard to find something that just better fit where my interests were. I did,
I started my own business, and I bought a franchise. And so I was basically starting
two different businesses here in this area. And I got super deep into understanding
entrepreneurship, understanding the tools, the community, there's the whole ecosystem
entrepreneurship around here. And then I was helping other entrepreneurs as they were
starting to build their businesses. And I, I loved it, I was having a blast, because
I could take all this experience I've had from these great companies I've worked for
before. And it's kind of this great education I've had throughout my career, and help
apply it to somebody who is trying to figure this out for the first time. And if I
take the tools of what I'm trying to go through and building my own businesses, I
could sit there and help them solve what the biggest problem was, how do I make this
business model work? How do I think about pricing? Right? Because that's the expertise
I kind of had for my, my career, how do I help them. So then this role comes through,
and I can take all the things I'm passionate about in outdoor recreation, the enjoyment
I have of helping entrepreneurs, at this very early stage, and it all culminates together
into an opportunity for me to help others. It was the perfect role for me.
Matt Waller 13:33
Where is GORP going? What's the future? You've got your first cohort of four, and
it's in a 12 week cycle. What's the future?
Phil Shellhammer 13:42
It's still early, right? April 21, will be the end of our first cohort. We know we're
going to run two cohorts a year. And so the next one comes in the fall between now
and then what we're really trying to think about is okay, we're seeing a lot of success,
right? If we were to measure success for us, we would basically say, are we helping
the entrepreneurs in our program, learn faster, get more prepared and be more prepared
when they hit launch to be more successful, so you give them the best chance possible.
We're seeing that already, we can see the metrics that are showing that. So now the
question is, how do we provide more of that? How do we put more of that out there
for more entrepreneurs to take advantage of? And I think the answer is it's still
TBD. Right? There's a variety of ways that we could do this, we can grow just by increasing
the number of entrepreneurs in our cohorts, right. And so we took four the first time,
maybe we can grow it to a larger group, you get to the point where an accelerator,
or incubator has too many companies. And so we'd have to keep it you know limited,
but maybe it's eight to 10 companies instead of the four we have now. But you can
also grow in other ways. We can grow by expanding our reach outside of just Northwest
Arkansas and bringing in either regional or even national companies or entrepreneurs
that are interested in joining companies because there are so few of these incubators
out there. That might be a good way for us to grow as well. But a third way is we're
building a platform right now of tools that are specifically around outdoor recreation.
And these tools hopefully will be replicable enough that we can help even other communities
within our state or elsewhere that have the assets of outdoor recreation within them
to replicate what we're doing for their local entrepreneurs, for them to be able to
take entrepreneurs who want to build startups in the outdoor rec space, but don't
have the tools or access to tools we're providing here. How do we provide that and
replicate that to other communities, even within the state of Arkansas? So all those
are opportunities and possibilities. We're still figuring out which way we go and
how it works.
Matt Waller 15:30
Well, thank you, Phil, so much for joining me today. And thank you for leading GORP.
It's really exciting to see how it's coming together.
Phil Shellhammer 15:39
Thanks for having me. I'm really enjoying being here.
Matt Waller 15:41
On behalf of the Sam M. Walton College of Business. I want to thank everyone for spending
time with us for another engaging conversation. You can subscribe by going to your
favorite podcast service and searching BeEPIC. B E P I C.
