Before Dave Goodman was the bearded, apron-wearing entrepreneur who received a $125,000 deal from Mark Cuban on Shark Tank, he was a rock-and-roll drummer kid living in New York City. Following years of training at Juilliard and the Curtis Institute of Music, Goodman began a career as a classical pianist, conductor, and composer, going on to start his own orchestra. “Once you start working for yourself, it’s hard to work for other people.” Unfortunately for Goodman, working in the music industry also led to intense stress and health problems, and after a few years he had to step away from the scene and take time off in order to recuperate.
For Goodman, however, “taking time off” meant immersing himself in fields such as economics, neuro-linguistic programming, hypnosis, mythology, and aviation. As part of his health recovery, he also became a raw food vegan and lost over one hundred pounds. “That’s how I discovered Asian coconuts. I put them in smoothies, drank the water—coconuts became a part of my diet.” The only problem was, there was no easy way to open these coconuts. “As a musician, I didn’t want to throw a knife at my fingers all day.” Goodman began dreaming up the design for an easy-to-use tool to open coconuts, but it wasn’t until 2012, after he’d sold his apartment in NYC and he met a blacksmith in Austin that he began to create a prototype.
“It took over 100 tries to get the prototype right. There was a huge learning curve. I didn’t know anything about metallurgy, marketing, branding, trademarks, distribution, or logistics.” In the same way that Goodman taught himself his other disciplines, he spoke to over 300 manufactures, trying to land on the best design for a coconut opener and most efficient manufacturing process. He presented his prototypes at a medical device expo, consulting with experts in an entirely different field who helped him refine his design. He spent thousands of dollars creating a pirate hat logo, only to move to a more pared back, original image after working with a brand expert. “That’s the advantage of being a novice: You’re willing to be wrong. There’s no right answer at the end—you’re making the right answer up as you go along.”
Coco Jack launched in December 2013, and sales started flowing in right away. By the start of 2014, when an intern with Shark Tank reached out to Goodman, his coconut opener was already selling out. “I was ambivalent about joining. The judges can publicly humiliate you. They can destroy your company.” Still, the exposure for being on the show was too good to pass up. Goodman had never seen Shark Tank before, so he watched every episode and prepared three to four answers for every question the judges asked. On a bleary morning in March, Goodman, running on three hours of sleep, showed up to shoot his pitch.
“It’s all real. I had no script. I could have done cartwheels for an hour and a half.” Though Coco Jack’s segment lasts only six minutes in the aired episode, any viewer can tell even in that time the charisma Goodman holds over the room. He is confident without being cocky, passionate but also informative, and to top of it off, he’s stylish and wears a great beard. Goodman actually received two offers for investments, but he felt a stronger connection to Cuban. “I really admire Mark. In the little contact I’ve had with him, I’ve learned a ton.” Though the two shook hands on the show, Goodman had to negotiate with Cuban’s team for the next six months. Unfortunately, the two sides were not able to come to an agreement and parted ways—something that is actually quite common for deals made on Shark Tank. Nevertheless, Goodman’s glad he went through the experience. “We got a really big spike in sales. We still see a little bump when it re-airs. The other day at a restaurant, someone said, ‘I saw you on Shark Tank.’”
After Shark Tank, Goodman ran into a problem. For all intents and purposes, this was a good problem to have: Coco Jack didn’t have enough inventory to cover high demand. “We could really blow up if we had units. We wanted to sell on Amazon, go on Good Morning America, Ellen. We’d been trying to get the money to stock up on inventory, but it was very hard for young company.” Most debt options weren’t feasible, as they offered 36% interest rates or required more than expected sales numbers from Coco Jack. “Bond Street was easy to work with, serious, and incredibly thorough. They didn’t treat us like formula and paid attention to specific issues.” Unlike most lenders, Bond Street understood Goodman’s catch-22 situation: He couldn’t post big numbers if he wasn’t advertising, but he couldn’t advertise if he didn’t have enough product. Goodman accepted a three-year small business loan from Bond Street.
Goodman is now looking forward to working with Bond Street again. He wants to expand his small business to offer Coco Jack branded coconuts. He wants to partner with companies like Toms and Whole Foods to bring Coco Jack to developing countries, where coconuts are a primary source of sustenance. In America, he wants to ingrain Thai coconuts into the culture. “People don’t know about coconuts because they don’t know how to open them. But they are so delicious.” The future of kitchens is changing: Coco Jack openers are finding their way in.
Quick Fire:
One book every entrepreneur should read: I read a lot of blogs. Marginal Revolution is a fantastic blog. Anything by Megan McArnold. Sane and sober and very reality based.
Three favorite small businesses:
- UpWork, because it helps 10s of 1000s of people get exactly what they need to make extra money and to start their businesses.
- Power Patent, because I would not have started my company without them.
- The Teaching Company (now The Great Courses). Its model may be becoming a bit outmoded, but their content is some of the best anywhere. Timothy Taylor’s and Darren Stalloff’s courses were life changing for me.
Best Invention in the past 5 years: This drone that carries a person around. The banana slicer. There is also the hovering skateboard that Audi is making and all of these Minority Report style gizmos. Maybe the best is the mind control device you can sync with your products and devices to turn them on and off with your mind. Man, we live in the future.