Welcome to ATTACK Energy. I’m Chris Duncan, the guy starting this bad boy.
You might be curious why one would do such a thing.
It’s pretty simple: ATTACK means something to me!
I didn’t come from much, as I grew up financially poor in the middle of no where.
My life accomplishments since then have come from one simple philosophy: Attacking life... Attacking dreams, attacking the day, attacking goals, education, fitness, health, etc... Until they are a reality. No "hoping" things workout. Straight up ATTACK mode.
“Follow your dreams” doesn’t get me hyped. Attacking a dream does. Starting a workout doesn’t excite me. Attacking a workout does. “Doing life” is uninspiring. "Attacking life" sounds fun.
Attacking life is something I think we can all get behind, so when deciding on the concept behind this energy drink, I thought: ATTACK.
We'll build the brand around courageous people attacking life, goals, dreams, and what's possible. This way we can all support each other in our own ATTACK journey.
So here I am and here you are… Attacking life together. I’m glad you are here. Welcome to ATTACK!
We have an amazing product and I’m proud of what we’ve built so far.
If you’re interested in my life story up until this point (where I come from, some struggles, learnings, and how I got to where I am), I will go into it below. Thanks for being here.
Life story starts now:
I was born a humble country kid to West Point, GA in 1989. Like most rural towns, a lot of people never leave. I lived within a 200 yard radius of my Aunt, Grandfather and Uncle. We didn’t have much and lived a pretty simple life. Our business questions were not, “How can we increase search rankings or scale sales with AI?” They were: “I wonder how Mr. Stevens is doing today at the country store?”
(My sister and I playing in the water at our childhood home)
My first life challenge was at 3 years old when I got a bad ear infection that left me with only 65% of normal hearing. Even though I was too self conscious to wear my hearing aids, I somehow made A's and B's in school. Hearing loss forced me to pay more attention to the world around me and gave me a super humble perspective on life. I look at it as a gift.
I acquired a strong work ethic from my two grandfathers who were both in World War 2 and my Dad, who pushed me in sports. I used baseball as my ticket out of town. I stole 43 bases my senior year of high school, which ranked 7th (at the time, not sure now) best all time in GA High School history.
I earned a baseball scholarship to CVCC, where we finished #2 in the nation. After that, another scholarship to the University of West Alabama, where I continued playing baseball and studied Marketing.
After finishing up baseball, I still had one more year of school to complete, no problem. But the big question was this: Where was I going to apply 23 years of competitive drive, now that baseball was over? Was I going to "Remember the good ole days" and feel depressed that my major league dreams didn't happen? Or was I going to GET AFTER IT and build a new, cooler chapter in life?
I got after it... My senior year of college was crazy and AWESOME! I took the job of managing ALL concessions for the athletic department (raised sales by 300%), took 2 semesters of 18 hours each, was VP of the Marketing club, had a full time girlfriend, worked out 5 days a week and started an ecommerce, fitness apparel business, called Hustle For Muscle.
(My good buddy Nick on the left and me on the right. In Atlanta for our first H4M photo shoot)
This was one of the best decisions of my life. While people were learning the 4 P's of marketing, I was applying them. While people were getting hammered, I was hammering a screen printing press. While people were trying to find a job, I was creating them. I learned crazy amounts about marketing, finance, ecommerce, branding, social media, risks, sacrifice, sales, startups and tons more about business. Nothing compares to experience... except maybe the willingness to experience.
I ended up earning the marketing award for my graduating class and decided to relocate Hustle For Muscle from Alabama to Austin, TX. Austin was into everything I was into: Fitness, entrepreneurship, healthy foods and the outdoors.
“Move to Austin? Chris, you don’t know anyone there. How will this work out? Do you have a job? What if this??? What if that???”
This is what I heard from a lot of people… But I had already learned a lesson from numerous previous experiences: Just jump in the direction of your heart and things have a way of working out. (I’ll write about all of these experiences in a separate post)
I can’t explain it, but every time I have made a jump in the direction of my intuition, and kept a positive attitude… magic happens. I am always taken care of. So, I packed my 6-cylinder, 1992 Chevy S-10 truck, which was sputtering badly, had only 60% of its power and needed to be put in the shop. I had very little money and two choices: 1) Put my truck in the shop and not go to Austin or 2) Attempt the 14-hour drive and leave it up to destiny. I took my chances and used some strategic drafting (riding so close behind another vehicle that the wind pulls your vehicle) behind semi-truck’s to barely make it to Austin.
When I got to Austin, life didn’t waste any time testing me. It wanted to know if I was serious. My truck broke down after two weeks and I tore my right knee ACL for the 2nd time, the next week. Despite these setbacks, I hustled hard to land a job. Less than a month after arriving in Austin, Greg Brown, VP of Sales of Together Mobile, made me a job offer I couldn't refuse…
(My small truck compared to Greg's. This was an ongoing joke haha)
I joined the startup tech company, Together Mobile as the 6th employee, with a pay of $80k and 40k shares of equity in the company. I was told I had one mission... recruit big name meetings. My first day of work was in a man cave with 3 former VP’s of different big time businesses and an original Apple member: My new coworkers.
I was 20 years younger than everyone. Equipped with a vision, MacBook Air, and an Android... I landed meetings with: Nike, Converse, Billabong, LEGO, Cabela's, American Airlines, Urban Decay, Fossil, Tory Burch, PETCO, Orbitz, Avon, Allegiant Airlines, Tilly's, ZARA, Columbia Records, and many more. I even exchanged six emails with the shark they call Mark Cuban. What more could I have asked for? I came from humble beginnings and now straight out of college, I was doing business with some of business’s most powerful people. Everyone back home thought I had “made it.” But I didn’t feel that way. I was bored with the job and wasn’t getting fulfillment from my work. I wasn’t happy. I thought:
I’m making dang good money, I love my coworkers, but I’m not happy. Now I understand the saying, “MONEY CAN’T BUY HAPPINESS.” How do so many people go through life disliking their job? How can they spend 45 years feeling like I feel?
I needed to make a change. I needed to find the courage to risk leaving the financial stability (something I’d never had in life and had finally attained) of my job, for a risky, unstable, adventure toward a different path my heart was pulling me toward.
I learned a truth: The world doesn’t run on money, it runs on COURAGE, everything else follows. Courage has been running the world since the beginning of time. Courage can buy you anything: growth, accomplishment, love, freedom, purpose, peace of mind and even money. If people would just show more courage in life, in the direction of their heart, they would enjoy it a lot more. I’ve always had a passion for social entrepreneurship (entrepreneurship with the purpose of bettering the world) and had a revealing moment one night while reflecting at Bull Creek Park.
I should create a tool that helps people (including myself) show more courage in life.
At that moment, I felt the best, most euphoric and blissful feeling I had ever felt. It was 1,000 times better than any home run I had ever hit. It was totally different than when I received my first email from Mark Cuban. It was like someone put their warm hands on my heart and started massaging it. The feeling was so strong and deep on so many levels, that I started tearing up. I knew I had found a direction for my path in life. I got to work immediately. The idea was so heavy on my heart, I couldn’t focus at work. I eventually realized I couldn’t halfway do both and was not about to give up this blissful feeling, so I left Together Mobile, along with my nice pay and equity. I loved everyone there, but as Paulo Coelho said, “It’s the possibility of having a dream come true that makes life interesting.”
So, I started an apparel company called COURAJ. It’s courage spelled with a J. The J represents your Journey.
Fast forward from then to now:
- I’ve been solely supporting myself with my own businesses for 10 years.
- I’ve been all over the country selling COURAJ shirts. There’s a COURAJ shirt in all 50 states and even other countries.
- Myself and a few entrepreneur buddies started a house called Entrepreneur House, where we all lived together and supported each other towards our business goals. 6 people, 3 story house, infinite fun.
- I used the gym connections I met through COURAJ to launch a software tool to help gyms get more members. 200+ gyms use it.
- I’ve taken my paddle board to some cool places and gone on some cool adventures, including: Getting arrested for paddle boarding around the Statue of Liberty (video) and paddling around icebergs in Iceland (video).
- In November of 2022 I got the idea to launch an energy drink. My goal then and still is: Create the coolest, most epic, most inspiring energy drink company to ever exist, while having a huge, positive impact on the world.
As of me writing this in February 2024, ATTACK Energy is set to launch in mid/late 2024.
As you can see, I’m nothing special. I’m just a man who didn’t come from much, but consistently attacks his goals with a positive mind, patience, and faith. We all have something special in us. We all have dreams worth attempting. We all have lives worth LIVING. The only thing left to do is to go on the ATTACK.
Thanks for reading. Time to attack some dreams…
