Tim Holmes, Kingdom Quest

[00:00:00] Sanjay Parekh: Welcome to the Side Hustle to Small Business podcast powered by Hiscox. I'm your host, Sanjay Parekh. Throughout my career, I've had side hustles, some of which have turned into real businesses. But first and foremost, I'm a serial technology entrepreneur. In the Creator Space, we hear plenty of advice on how to hustle harder and why you can sleep when you're dead.

On this show, we ask new questions in hopes of getting new answers. Questions like, how can small businesses work smarter? How do you achieve balance between work and family? How can we redefine success in our businesses so that we don't burn out after year three? Every week, I sit down with business founders at various stages of their side hustle to small business journey.

These entrepreneurs are pushing the envelope while keeping their values. Keep listening for conversation, context, and camaraderie.

Today's guest is Tim Holmes, the founder of Nurkl Toys, a toy company based in Columbus, Ohio. Tim describes himself as the Willy Wonka of toys, which has me very excited for our conversation. Tim, welcome to the show. 

[00:01:10] Tim Holmes: Hi, thank you for having me. 

[00:01:14] Sanjay Parekh: Only slightly better than the Willy Wonka of toys would be the Willy Wonka of actual chocolate and candy because then I could eat it.

I'm assuming your toys I can't eat, but, before we start talking about your toys. Tell us a little bit about you and what got you to where you are today. 

[00:01:29] Tim Holmes: Yeah. So I grew up in a homeschooled family, have seven siblings, two parents. We grew up traveling all over the place. I even lived in South America for seven and a half months.

We lived in a castle down there, which not a lot of people can say that. So that was pretty wild. 

[00:01:44] Sanjay Parekh: Few people, I think, can say that. Yeah. 

[00:01:47] Tim Holmes: Yeah. And, my dad, he traveled for work, he did industrial roofing at one point. Then he got into concrete, thin shell, concrete domes, which are like the strongest structures in the world.

But I grew up in the country. I grew up, as a creative. I love to build things, love to design things. And I got into extreme sports. But I also wanted to be a rollercoaster engineer when I was younger. So it was a wild life growing up. We seemed to always be moving from one place to another.

And I just, wherever we were, I'd use the resources I had to create and to design all kinds of different things. 

[00:02:24] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah. I like how you say you lived in the country, except there was this little oh, side thing of living in a castle. I got to ask you about the castle thing.

What was the coolest experience of living in a castle? How big of a castle are we talking about? 

[00:02:39] Tim Holmes: So the castle we lived in was a five story castle and the guy who built it in, Bolivia, actually in Santa Cruz, he loved castles and he actually built three of them. The one we lived in was the one where he would host guests.

And the other ones had like pools and stuff. And we lived on the third floor and I'd go into the castle towers and I'd catch baby pigeons or you'd have geckos that would run up the walls and stuff, which was really awesome. So those were my biggest memories down there. I was seven years old, so I was pretty young.

So I don't remember all the details. My dad went down there to dredge for gold. That's a whole different story. But- 

[00:03:21] Sanjay Parekh: So this was a modern castle. This wasn't like a castle from the 1400s or something like that. It was like something that was built in recent times. I take it. 

[00:03:30] Tim Holmes: Yeah, it was relatively modern.

They made it look more historical, but it was, definitely, it wasn't 200 years old or 300 years old. 

[00:03:40] Sanjay Parekh: Okay. Before we start talking about your entrepreneurial background, I got to ask about the extreme sports bit of it. What kind of extreme sports did you do? 

[00:03:50] Tim Holmes: I got into BMX, skateboarding, skiing, wakeboarding, really anything with a board other than surfing, which I had my opportunity at that and I passed it up and I regret it, but I did a lot of snowboarding. That was my big sport and we got season passes to our local ski resort. And so I did it competitively and I would always hang out in the park, doing jumps and rails slope style.

And I have, a few, I think three bronze and a couple of silver never got the gold. But, it was awesome. I did screw up my back permanently. So some things I do regret but, you can't go back and change that. So we move on with life. 

[00:04:31] Sanjay Parekh: So you didn't make it to the Olympics. I take it, because of the injuries or because of something else? 

[00:04:38] Tim Holmes: Yeah. No, I, was like, "Man, I could really go places with this." Like I was getting good, I was getting up there. I could do seven twenties, the big tricks. But, it was one of those things where my back just held me back and I've permanently damaged my tailbone.

And so I can't move up the ladder per se, but you know what? There were other things that came about. And, in a way, I'm glad that I never got to the Olympics. 

[00:05:04] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah. I love how you can, you say you can do seven twenties. I can't do zeros. I can't even just be on and go straight. Yeah, that's 720 degrees more than what I'm capable of.

That's pretty incredible. Let's talk about your dad a little bit. It sounds like he had a very diverse career and it sounds as an entrepreneur, what were some of the things that he did that you look back now on and be like, "Yeah, that helped me understand how to be an entrepreneur?"

[00:05:34] Tim Holmes: I would say I'm the type of person that looks at people's mistakes. And I observe and I go, "I don't want to make that mistake." And I would say my dad made a lot of mistakes in his business. And I think a lot of it was the business he was in. It wasn't like a high demand business and a lot of it was a struggle.

So growing up, we were poor a lot of the time. And with a family of 10, it was always a struggle. My mom told me some years they made 10,000 dollars a year to take care of the whole family. And there were miracles that happened, but, I was never super close to my dad and he passed away 11 years ago, but, he always said, "Don't ever have business partners."

And he had some business partners at one point and it was a really bad situation. And they ended up stealing a bunch of money from him and what not. He said, "Don't ever have business partners." And there was a point in my life where I was, I found some people and I'm like, "Oh, let's build this business together and it didn't turn out the way I expected."

I was like, these guys are awesome. Like I know my dad said, don't ever have business partners, but he's never met these guys. But you know what? The thing was my dad was right. And, it ended up being a disaster. 

[00:06:48] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah. It's hard finding the right partners for yourself. I've been fortunate.

I have a great co founder and partner now, but, there's been other times where it's been not as great and it's difficult. The ones that are not good, sit with you longer, because of the experiences with them. So I can absolutely appreciate that mentality. So, thinking about, where you are now, you did the snowboarding thing and all that stuff.

How did you get to the point of starting? 

[00:07:23] Tim Holmes: So I actually, I said when I was younger, I wanted to be a roller coaster engineer. I still love roller coasters, but that dream has faded. That's become something that I'm never going to be as far as I know. And I actually fell in love with the film industry.

So I started working in the film industry on set. I started an art department. Then I went into visual effects. So I do a lot of 3D modeling, animation, and compositing and that got me where I am today because I actually came to Ohio to work on a film on set and I got stuck here. I had five other projects that I was supposed to be working on and they all fell through when I was here in Ohio.

And so at that point, I was married. I had three kids. And I get stuck here in Ohio. I don't have a job. We're like really struggling. And, we end up meeting a guy and then I end up finding this drone company that a friend introduces me to. And they're like, "Hey, do you want to fly drones? Do you know how to use drones?" And I'm like, "Nah, I've never done it before in my life, but I'd be willing to." And so I start working for them. And they're like, "Hey, we want you to build a drone." And I was like, "Okay, I love to design. I love to create, let's do that." So I built my first drone, flew it. It was awesome. From there, I went into that and it was through that company I actually initially started the launch of my toy company. 

[00:08:46] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah. Well, so what was the idea of getting you there and being like, yeah, you know what? I want to start a toy company. What was the spark? 

[00:08:55] Tim Holmes: Yeah. So when I was working for the drone company, the guys I was working for, they're creative like me, but not to the extent that I am.

And, the guys that own the company, they were business partners. And, one day they said, "We want to design a drone cage for flying drones indoors on a small scale. There's some on the market, but they're super expensive. We want to design something cheaper, more inexpensive that we can sell."

And so they have me designing prototypes and in the process we're using, dowel rods and connecting them with 3D printed pieces. So they purchased a 3D printer. We're printing these pieces and connecting them. And in that process, there was an idea sparked. To create a connector for craft sticks, which is what our toy is about.

But we didn't think a lot about it at that time and where it would go. So it was like six months of just messing around with it, just as a hobby for me, 3D printing thousands and thousands of pieces just for fun. Never thought it would be a company or anything. And then from there I went to them and I'm like, "Hey, let's start a toy company. You guys want to join forces and start a toy company. This, would be awesome. We got to get out there and see what the potential is for this." 

[00:10:11] Sanjay Parekh: And, what was the response to that? 

[00:10:13] Tim Holmes: So we started going to local schools, to like STEM nights, to like STEM events, robotic events, and we had kids come over and play with it.

And the demand was like, it was way beyond what we expected it to be and we were just, we were blown away by it. And school teachers would come up to us and they were like, "This is amazing. I could use this in my class for this, and this." And they were just naming off all these things. And we're like, "Whoa, I didn't even think you could use it for that."

So they were giving us these ideas to play off of and expand what we had that we're working on. And from there we're just like, "Okay, well, let's see if we can get a patent on this and just take it further." 

[00:10:54] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah. That's an interesting story there. And I think that happens a lot more than we realize or recognize where the founders have come up with this idea and then customers end up taking that idea in a direction that you never thought was possible and expands your marketplace. Was that for you, sounds like it was accidental, but once you started seeing that, did you try to harness that in any way for yourselves?

[00:11:27] Tim Holmes: Yeah, I would say it definitely was accidental in a way, but I think it was destiny. I think it was God. But yeah, so we came together, we said, "Let's build this company, let's see what the potential is. Go out there, talk to more people." We didn't even know what our target market was.

So as we got out there and started going to the local fair or the state fair, actually, and in different places, we found out our biggest audience was the school systems. And that was like the first place we started going.

And so they had their drone company that they owned, and now we're going to become all partners in this toy company. And so that was a little bit of a process of saying, "Okay, what's this going to look like? Who's going to get what percentage, et cetera, et cetera." And started walking through this process. And I think at that point is when red flags started to pop up between me and my business partners. 

[00:12:21] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah. In terms of what were the red flags for you? 

[00:12:26] Tim Holmes: So a lot of their business practices were not ideal. For a successful company, like they would make between 700,000 and a million dollars a year in their drone company. And at the end of every year, they'd be completely broke because they couldn't manage their money. They would throw it at ridiculous stuff and whatever they bought, they would put in the closet. They'd buy something for 20,000 because they thought it looked cool and they'd throw it in the closet, never use it, and then sell it for like super cheap later on, on a marketplace or they wouldn't sell it at all.

And it just sit in the closet and go to waste. And, they threw money at eating out a lot and a bunch of different things that just, it was bad business practices. They were doing some stuff that was on the edge of illegal. And so I began to think to myself, "If I'm business partners with these guys and they do something that ends them in prison, and I'm a partner, I'm going to end up in prison too."

And I can't do that. 

So that's, I don't want to get into all the details of it, but there were, there was some stuff, it just wasn't good. And I would go home to my wife and I would be really frustrated. And my wife was like, "You can't do this. You can't come home with this attitude." and so I began to see what this was turning me into. They became greedy for money and I was not greedy for money. I'm like, I just want to change the world. I grew up broke. I didn't have the money to buy Legos. I want to provide a building toy product for kids who don't have money for this kind of stuff.

Be able to provide a product for low-income families and make the world a better place. I want to inspire people, and that was my goal. Well, yeah, you have to make profit in a business. Obviously you have to make profits. Give it away for free. But, they got very greedy. And even though I invented the product, they wanted most of the money from the toy.

And like I said, I don't necessarily have a problem with that, but they started to control the whole thing and they were taking away any say I had in it. And I was like, "You need to go this direction." I did 95 percent of all the work and it was killing the whole company. One guy was refusing to do any of the work and he wanted a third of the company.

And we're talking about over a period of a few years, and it was rough. So I spent about a year, talking back and forth with an attorney. I had a number of friends, especially friends in business that had successful companies that I went to. And I said, "Hey, these are some of the situations I'm dealing with, my business partners. Do you have any advice? Am I crazy? And I would ask my wife that sometimes I’d go home and I'd be like, am I crazy? Am I thinking, too deeply about this?" And I kept getting confirmations from people, especially the attorney. And after about a year, the attorney finally said to me, he said, listen, "I've been doing this for 40 years. He said, if you continue down this road, it will destroy your family. It will destroy the company. He said, what they are doing is very destructive. It's not healthy for anyone. And it's going to end up in a horrible, situation. He said, you need to get away from that, partnership. You need to step away."

And because I was on the patent, I have rights to the product and all this different stuff. I also had some money into it. And, so one day I decided, okay, today I'm going to step away, so I wrote him a letter. I had my attorney review it.

And, he said, "Yeah, the letter looks good." And it was trying to leave with as much peace as possible. And I told him, you know, I said "Nothing against you guys. I just, for the betterment of my family and who I am and all this different stuff, I just need to step away, from this partnership."

That's it, go my own direction. They were not happy about that because I was doing 95% of all the work, and because of that, everything on their end fell apart. 

[00:16:22] Adam Walker: Support for this podcast comes from Hiscox committed to helping small businesses protect their dreams since 1901. Quotes and information on customized insurance for specific risks are available at hiscox.com. Hiscox, business insurance experts.

[00:16:33] Sanjay Parekh: Let's move into some questions about stress. We've been touching upon this because of what we've been talking about in these difficulties and these challenges, but how do you manage the stress then for yourself of, that situation as well as now being on your own? Even though maybe in theory you were almost on your own before too, but how do you manage the stress for yourself?

[00:17:04] Tim Holmes: Well, I will say until I had business partners up until that point, I never got stressed. I never had anxiety. That just wasn't me. And for me, before I left the company, I came to a really low place in my life. Like I felt like my life was headed in a wrong direction and things were really rough for me, especially with my family and everything that was going on.

And the only hope I saw was crying out to God. And so I did that one day on my drive home from work, I was like, "God, you like, I don't even know if there's hope for me. What's my purpose in life and all that." And that night when I got home, I called my mom because my dad passed away a number of years ago.

And I said, "I need answers. I feel all this guilt and all this weight of who I am as a person because I was never good enough for my father and all this different stuff." So there was a lot of things connected from my past that I feel like were tangling me up in my situation. And so my mom just said, "Man, you're looking at it wrong. This is how your dad actually loved you." And she explained some things to me that I had been seeing completely wrong. And when she did that, like that night, everything broke for me. And I just, I spent like an hour on the phone, just sobbing with my mom. And, after that point, I feel like God just, he came and he gave me peace.

And so a lot of these anxieties, a lot of these fears, a lot of this pressure left. And I was basically like, "Man, I don't care if I lose the company. I don't care if I lose my family. Like I wasn't saying it in the sense, man, I just don't care." It was more like, yeah. I have purpose in life now, like I have a reason to live so I could be homeless and be completely happy is where I was at, which was amazing.

And so God started to restore some things in my life at that point. And, I have since I left, because it's been about four years, my old business partners have threatened to sue me. They've sent me cease and desist letters. And those attempts have failed, which I knew they would. Like I said, that year I spent talking to the attorney before I left, we talked about what if I left the company, what's that going to look like, can they sue me?

And we went through everything. And, because I'm on the patent and because of a whole bunch of other stuff, because I did everything right and they didn't, then they can't really do anything to me. They can threaten me. They can try to make my life miserable, but they can't really do much.

[00:19:38] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah, and I think that's a good piece of advice that you've got there in that making sure that you go out and seek advice from people that have the experience. As entrepreneurs, we don't spend 40 years working through legal problems for other folks. And it's useful to get somebody like that's advice.

Even if it costs you a little bit of money, because they've got that experience, just like we have experience being entrepreneurs, and thinking about innovation and things like that. That's why people come and seek us out. So, you've got an interesting business in a toy business, right?

And honestly, if it's a toy business, it could blend into all of life because it's fun, right? Fun becomes work, work becomes fun. So how do you set boundaries for yourself, to make sure it doesn't bleed into all of life, right? Because you could be sitting at dinner designing toys because honestly, it's fun.

But how do you, prevent that? Or do you prevent that? 

[00:20:41] Tim Holmes: Well, I'll start by saying this. I love what I do. Like I said, I'm a designer, I'm a creator, so I love it. But a while back me and my wife made an agreement because I would work long hours. I just put a whole bunch into this, and in a sense, I was a workaholic.

And so I said to myself, I've seen other people go through these situations and it doesn't end well, they end up not being able to get sleep at night. They end up losing their family and all these different things because of a need to balance and what not. And so me and my wife came to an agreement and I said, no matter what, I'm going to stop work by 7 PM every night.

And so I started doing that. I started acting upon that and it was good and it was working. And aside from that, I said, I'm going to take the whole weekend off Saturday and Sunday. So no matter what happened, no matter what I saw, I would take time off and I would spend that time with the family and try not to compromise as much as possible.

There were rare occasions where you have to go to an event and it's on the weekend and you take the product. But other than that, I created a system where I could hold things together and it worked out well. So that's what I've been doing, as far as balancing that out.

[00:22:01] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah. Well, what happens for you when you come up with that, brilliant flash of insight? And it's one of those off times where you're not supposed to be working because that, I think that happens to all of us as entrepreneurs, right? We don't intentionally think about work and then the flash of insight comes, at that point.

So how do you handle that? 

[00:22:20] Tim Holmes: I just, I put a note in my phone. And I drop it. So it's usually because I can sit there and I can think about it and I can go over it again and again and like just obsess over it. But it's easier for me. I've trained myself is to just put a note in my phone and leave it and then check it later.

So I have an app that I use for that. And it's called wonder list. I don't think it's around anymore because it was bought out, but I still use it. I never got rid of it. And so I'll put my ideas in there and just return to them later when I'm ready. 

[00:22:58] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah, Wunderlist was a great app, a great to do app, like so many of those to do apps that are great and then they get bought and then they disappear.

But, it's interesting that you're still able to use it, even though the service is gone. Yeah, that's good stuff. Last couple of questions here for you. This question, I think we already know the answer, but I'm going to push you to give me a different answer. If you could go back in time and do something differently, what would that be?

Let's leave the business partners aside. Because we know definitely, we know from the sounds of it, you would have done that differently. 

Is there anything else that you would have done differently and maybe not even about this company, maybe just life in general, is there something that you would have done differently?

Like growing up, maybe not focusing on roller coasters as much, or, I don't know, something else. 

[00:23:47] Tim Holmes: Yeah. I've pondered this question a lot and the problem with me is I get so deep into thought about things. I'm like, there's, a thousand things I would do differently. 

But I would say probably the biggest thing I would do differently is change my mindset, because having the wrong mindset can really halt or stretch out a lot of things. And so it's all about how you see yourself. And if you see yourself as a failure, if you see yourself as someone who can't do it, or you see every complication around you, just crushing you, then you're probably going to be crushed.

You have to see yourself succeeding. And, so it's a lot about the mindset. 

[00:24:34] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah, I love that. Okay, last question for you. If you were talking to somebody who's thinking about taking that leap and launching a side hustle or a full-time business like you did, what advice would you give them?

[00:24:52] Tim Holmes: Money is hard to come by when you're starting a business. That's one of the things, as far as starting a side hustle, one thing I tell people a lot already is, there's a lot of people out there that will try to take advantage of you. And I'm not necessarily referring to business partners. I'm referring to people in general.

And I've dealt with a lot of people that are like, "Oh, take my online class or do this or do that." I'm not saying online classes are bad at all. There are some good ones out there, but what happens is if someone falls into this, mindset of, "Oh, I have to follow this system or I have to do it this way."

If I followed every system everyone wanted me to follow when I started this, I would have given up a long time ago. You have to find a way to do it that works for what you're trying to do. In trying to get investors for this company, I followed the system and I couldn't get one single investor.

It was one day I decided, "You know what, I'm not going to follow the system. I'm going to do it this other way." And when I did, I had investors coming in one right after the other, and we got more than we intended to get from investors. But following the system, it didn't work. Now systems, great. I'm not bashing the system, but sometimes in certain situations, things work differently.

And everyone swears by a system, but not everything in the world is built off the exact same system. So just for, I would say that's the most powerful advice for starting a company is know that just because one system is successful for someone else, doesn't mean that system's successful for you.

[00:26:26] Sanjay Parekh: That is great advice. Tim, this has been fantastic. How can our listeners find and connect with you online? 

[00:26:34] Tim Holmes: Yeah. So our product is on nurkl.com, which is N U R K L.com, nurkl.com. They can also go to Facebook, Instagram, Twitter. We have our product on there. Our company is called Kingdom Quest. So that's our company Kingdom Quest LLC.

And the reason our company is not called Nurkl is because we have other products we're going to be releasing down the road, which is amazing. But this is our kit. We currently sell, it's 525 pieces. It's the Nurkl adventure kit. You can build all kinds of stuff in there. It's a craft stick connector kit.

And we're going to be expanding it. So it's going to be amazing as we continue. Now, I know at the beginning, you said it ain't chocolates because we call the Willy Wonka of toys, but I just want to say we have plans to possibly have chocolates in the near future. So just keep that in mind.

That's a thing we're working on. That could be a ways down the road, but we got a number of things that's going to be awesome. 

[00:27:30] Sanjay Parekh: I am looking forward to eating your products at some point in the future. Tim, thanks so much for coming on today. I really appreciate it. 

[00:27:37] Tim Holmes: Thank you, Sanjay. 

[00:27:39] Sanjay Parekh: Thanks for listening to this week's episode of the Side Hustle to Small Business podcast, powered by Hiscox. To learn more about how Hiscox can help protect your small business through intelligent insurance solutions, visit Hiscox.com. And to hear more Side Hustle to Small Business stories, or share your own story, please visit Hiscox.com/side-hustle-to-small-business. I'm your host, Sanjay Parekh. You can find out more about me at my website, SanjayParekh.com.