Welcome to the sixth episode of On Aire with Team Jensen: The Art of Industrial Real Estate.
[Intro – Host: Team Jensen]
Host: teaching you the art of industrial real estate this is on air with Team Jensen [Music]
Host: all right we’re back welcome to episode six of on air the art of industrial real estate and today we have a guest on with us Matt Baysinger from swellspark Matt thanks for coming on with us appreciate it
Matt: always a pleasure to hang out with you thanks man it’s a fun time
Host: well excited to have you on you have a lot of cool things you’ve been up to over the years and uh I know we’ve really since I started seven years ago I think we’ve been connected… I’m kind of curious swellspark I think a lot of people probably don’t even know what what it is and so I’d love for you to kind of talk about that and how it enables you to do all the cool Concepts around town
[Matt’s Origin Story & Early Concepts]
Matt: I grew up in Colorado have been in Kansas City area for about 20 years now went to the University of Kansas… I started my first company back in like customer facing back in 2014 that was called Mass Street soda little storefront retail on mass in Lawrence and uh it kind of took off really quickly. Traveling with my wife in Tennessee we saw an escape room in 2015 it was this brand new concept no one had ever heard of it… thought that Kansas City needed it and thought that we could do it really well and so I picked up my partner Ryan… Breakout KC open in 2015 at that point kind of stepped away from education permanently and went full force into entrepreneurialism.
[The Birth of Swell Spark]
Matt: in 2017 we started Bladen Timber which is our ax throwing bar and that was when kind of swellspark had to begin because I would walk in to you know maybe a podcast or walk into a networking thing and they’d be like oh it’s the breakout guy and then the buddy would like punch he’s like no this is the blade and Timber guy you idiot… so we created swellspark as kind of the operating company to oversee at the time both of those… swellspark is kind of a Perpetual startup engine. We have this industrial 36 000 square foot um you know our headquarters in Kansas City in the West Bottoms area and so we actually pre-fabricate almost everything that we put in our stores.
[Navigating the Pandemic]
Host: share with us how you managed through covid with all this public-facing business
Matt: I remember having a conversation with my buddy Andy Rieger… I told him pretty early on I was like hey man you see there’s this distillery in Portland they’re doing a hand sanitizer… within four days they were making hand sanitizer. The issue that they were running into is their location over in call it the East bottoms is not easy to get to… we had all these empty storefronts and we have a whole company that’s built off of pre-booking appointments right and so I was like hey man if you get it to me I’ll get it in the hands of the people. We did 500 bottles in 30 minutes right because we put it online we had folks pre-book sold out… we became I mean we were probably the biggest hand sanitizer distributor you know maybe in the world for like three weeks… that was what allowed us to keep the lights on and pay rent.
[Developing New Concepts & Real Estate]
Host: was the blade and Timber concept something you saw elsewhere that you brought to Kansas City
Matt: yeah so all of it yeah I know um I mean a lot of people think I’m creative I’m not um you know my role is to see Concepts and take them and try to make them better… we saw that Nashville ax throwing bar first one we saw was in Toronto you know a bunch of Canadian Lumberjacks drinking beer and throwing axes… mini golf started to see a Renaissance in the UK in 2017 2018… we just bought um you know this Lawrence store that we’re opening today… on August 31st in an hour and a half is the first time we’ve done it on the dirt that we own and so I think as far as a future facing model real estate ownership is a huge part of what we think that we’ll be able to do.
[The Future of Kansas City]
Host: are there anything you have coming up that you’re excited about that you can talk about… you know like the downtown Ballpark and stuff
Matt: Kansas City is really interesting… to see even like the type of rent rates that we were getting eight years ago compared to what our renewals they want those to be at… this city is changing I think in a really good way. Growing up in Denver and seeing what Coors Fields Coors Field did to downtown Denver gets me so excited for what a new stadium could do for Kansas City… in 2001 there was no point for a high school kid to go to downtown right… now like half the time I’m around town I’m going north or east right and like because that’s where it’s at.
[Entrepreneurship & Advice]
Host: what would be your you know not that you’re asking for a bunch of competition but you know younger entrepreneurs out there that are wanting to chase a dream similar to that… what would your advice be
Matt: my advice almost every time for the younger Generations is like just start you know… build your minimum viable product make sure people actually like it… you have time or money and if you don’t have a lot of time then you need a lot of money if you have a lot of money then you’re gonna have to put a lot of time… just freaking do it.
[Wrap-Up]
Host: well I really appreciate you coming on with this… if someone wants to work at you know at one of your spaces or even come to work at swellspark what’s kind of the best way to reach out or go
Matt: swellspark.com uh the website not swells Park… and uh we have contact forums career I’m matt@swellspark.com if anyone ever wants to reach out… we love to work with great people and work alongside great people as well so uh if you’re in the Kansas City area or if you want to be or whatever um I’m easy to find yeah
Host: yeah well thank you.
