Caleb Musser is the founder of Craftom and president of the Musser Company.
Craftom is a B2B software platform that allows companies to brand, personalize and ship any product, to anyone, working from anywhere. Craftom grew over 800% during the pandemic of 2020 with the release of its remote shipping product.
Musser is a marketing company that specializes in integrated ABM campaigns. Craftom and Musser customers and clients include numerous Fortune 500 brands and professional sports franchises. Musser started the Musser Company at age 25 with $600 and has bootstrapped both companies. Prior to his entrepreneurial endeavors, Musser was the director of sponsorship sales for a Nascar Cup team.
What were the top 3 mistakes you made as an entrepreneur, and if you could start over what would you do differently?
Team
I thought I could build an incredible company by myself. It may seem ridiculous, but at one point, my actions demonstrated that I thought I was the main act and everyone else was just the supporting cast. You can’t build an incredible company without incredible people. You need a team of people behind you who can bring their unique perspectives and expertise to the table and apply it to your business so that you can focus on the parts of growing a business that you do best. It’s impossible to build a great company without a great group of people to support it. I’ve spent the last six months especially focused on building the right team to help my business scale long-term.
Strengths
I should have hired an “integrator” sooner. I ran my first company for five years and it only achieved moderate success. I believe it’s because I tried to run the entire company, instead of focusing on my strengths – vision, innovation, sales, and marketing. With Craftom, our integrator (or operator) runs the areas of the company where I’m weak. Not only has this improved the operations side of the business, but it’s also given me the bandwidth to focus on the areas where I excel, namely vision-casting and business development. When you combine superpowers and focus on your strengths, it’s amazing what can be achieved. Since hiring a Chief Operations Officer to act as integrator, our revenue has increased over 800%.
Revenue
I should have been more open-minded about our revenue model from the very beginning. I used to shun the non-sexy ways my company could make money. This is was very dumb and arrogant. If there’s a gap in the market, first plug it and then figure out how to package it and scale it later. Craftom began as a corporate gifting platform, and then when COVID-19 hit we quickly pivoted to allow for remote gifting. After months of shipping out gifts to people’s homes, I realized that businesses ship much more than just gifts, and the pandemic has complicated shipping for many companies. From there we began to branch out into laptops and IT equipment, employee gear, and even more typical direct mail. These products aren’t as fun to ship as AirPods or customized whiskey sets or bottles of wine, but they still matter to the companies that need to ship them, and it’s a great way to provide a better service to our customers and increase our revenue.
If You Could Start Over, What Would You Do Differently?
If I were starting over, I’d focus on building a great team from the start. I know what my strengths and weaknesses are, so I would set the company up in a way that I can focus on what I do best and leave the rest to a great team of experts I know I can trust. I’d quickly build up a team, then use that team to scale the business and hit our revenue goals faster.
Caleb Musser Founder of Craftom
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