The Reactor is Thinking

The entirety of TRIC LLC in December 2022.

A year ago, TRIC LLC was nothing more than a large box sitting in Meagan’s house full of half-broken inventory. I had shut things down for ¾ of 2022 as I finished up sea duty. I had no active partners, no inventory to speak of, and just a little over $10k sitting in the company bank account. To be frank, I was on the brink of just throwing everything in the dumpster and moving on with life. But, something tickled the back of my mind. TRIC mattered to me. Seeing people laugh when they held up a coin I designed, or grin when someone gifted them a sticker I made- it mattered. I deeply remember how hard and depressing sea duty can be, and TRIC was a unique way I could materially bolster the morale of people who I empathized with.

Fuck it, I decided. I’ll give it one more shot. On February 1, 2023- TRIC LLC was born again from the ashes… and we came in like a wrecking ball.

In the past year, The Reactor is Critical LLC has made more revenue than the sum of all the past years we’ve operated. Things rapidly grew beyond Meagan’s spare room and, for her sanity and a legitimate need, we actually got our first real office. We put multiple people on payroll, got an actually qualified accountant, invested in manufacturing equipment, and more… It’s been unreal. This isn’t to say TRIC is some money-making machine- all of this is still encompassed by a few hundred-thousand dollars that many large businesses would write off as a rounding error.

I’ve been immensely happy with what we’ve done this past year. We’ve had our shortcomings, sure- but I’ve seen our posters in Squadron buildings, our stickers hidden on the coffee cups of Commanding Officers, and sailors genuinely laughing at a fictitious reactor plant diagram I spent hours toiling on. Bringing joy to sailors is special and means a lot to me; unfortunately, the material realities of running a business do not care so much for the comforting warmth of a sailor’s laughter. They are steeped in cold, unflinching numbers.

I can’t give away our products for free, and I surely can’t pay people to make them for free either. The expansion of TRIC and everything it stands for is inextricably tied to our ability to convert such humorous efforts into tangible revenue. We did an amazing job of that this year, and I am proud of our team for making that happen.

The real question is: can we keep it up?

It’s a tough question. If anyone knows what the secret sauce is at the heart of TRIC, it would probably be me- but even I grasp at straws on how to make the lightning strike twice. The business model of TRIC thus far has been to make humorous, good-looking tchotchkes, market them using the power of social media virality, rinse, and repeat. It’s not a terrible business model, but it is underpinned by a font of ideas that is fundamentally fickle.

TRIC’s sales from Jan 1 to Dec 8, 2023. Y-axis omitted.

Sales come in wild swings that propel us forward, but the drag-down of overhead is ever-present. We might make $50,000 one month and a quarter of that the next. How much do we re-invest in new stock? How much do the owners (me, Meagan, and Mike) pay themselves? When? These aren’t insurmountable decision-points by any stretch of the imagination, but they are challenging and come with very tangible consequences if we mess it up.

I’ve learned to adapt to the realities of this, for the most part. We maintain a very lean backend that enables large amounts of flexibility in the capital we expend at any one point. We purposefully, and quickly, jump from one product design to the next, insulating us from the ever-present risk of a flopped product; however, such operating practices also put artificial limiters on the revenue we can collect. It keeps us afloat, and it makes us profitable, but it certainly isn’t stable.

All of this culminates in an unusual air of stress and uncertainty behind-the-scenes of TRIC, where we face the fact that none of us are trained business professionals- we’re engineers figuring out how to turn a consistent profit through the power of making one of the most niche & idiosyncratic slivers of society laugh and commiserate. I lean on my Navy experience to steady my resolve through the uncertainty- I’ve solved harder problems, that mattered more, in worse conditions. Papa Rickover didn’t train nukes to go into a self-deprecating panic the moment they found themselves beyond the scope of the procedures, after all.

Earlier this year, I had a truly transformative experience reading On Grand Strategy by John Lewis Gaddis, a Yale historian and professor. Among a great many things, On Grand Strategy asserts that good decisions fully comprehend the time, space, and scale at which they occur- put another way, decision without context is vacuous. Furthermore, you must knowingly reconcile your aspirations and capabilities; a desired end without a means to achieve it is little more than ill-conceived wishful thinking. (If you’re in management, go read it. Seriously.)

So, if TRIC’s aspiration is to generate revenue more consistently without the constant binges and crashes akin to a nasty opiate habit, what new capabilities must we establish or expand to do so? Furthermore, do those capabilities make sense within the time, space, and scale our business operates at? Do they keep in line with our sailor-oriented values?

There is, frankly, a lot I could write here but that adage comes to mind- nothing is a priority if everything is a priority. I’ve narrowed down the 3 strategic focuses for TRIC in 2024 to the following:

This is easily the most banned sticker in the United States Nuclear Fleet. I thought SFEA was a fluke, but then we got Hot Rock merch… Which I also thought was a fluke, until we stumbled on Mobile Churnobyl. My point that you never know which ideas are going to take off, and so sometimes the best thing to do is just have a lot of ideas.

Core Competency #1 – Versatile Production. The most immediately present barrier TRIC faces with our business model is that we must maintain a large amount of operating capital to restock inventory, and the return-on-investment of capital is not always worthwhile. We can lessen our risk by using the same base-level units to make a variety of products- tumblers, mugs, posters, t-shirts, and more can be printed with a multitude of different designs. TRIC should invest in developing the ability to print on a wide variety of high-quality blanks and rely on making good designs to convert the investment into profit.

Core Competency #2 – Parallel Design Creation. TRIC technically only has one dedicated artist to the organization, and she does wonderful work. However, due to the stressors of our day job, we have a cultural behavior of spending weeks on designs that could be turned around in just a few days of work. It is, perhaps, too lofty of a goal to hire an artist for TRIC as their primary day-job. However, it is much more feasible for us to maintain a pool of part-time artists and have them all working on independent projects. This enables rapid design development and product prototyping; if you sift through enough bilges, you’re bound to find something that a sailor wants.

Core Competency #3 – Persistent Brand Awareness. Despite the many shortcomings of Meta Analytics, I have gleaned a key metric from it- approximately 80% of our sales can be directly linked to an advertisement we posted. 80% of our orders come from seeing an ad, clicking on the link, and making the purchase. Ipso facto, we are missing out on 80% of our sales when we aren’t posting ads. This isn’t to say that we should flood our media channels with advertisements blindly- but people are only aware of our products when we make them known. TRIC must ensure that potential customers are aware of our products, even beyond the launch of new designs. Furthermore, we should strive to make our ads organic and humorous in and of themselves. We shouldn’t depart from our core mission just because we’re selling something.

So, can we keep it up? That remains to be seen. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t nervous about this next year. It’s entirely possible that 2023 has been a fluke of a good year and that all this time and effort we’re putting into keeping the business running in 2024 is, well, a low return-on-investment. Perhaps our time would be better spent elsewhere.

But, despite the anxieties, there is a certain magic in being vested with the full responsibility and authority of an organization. If TRIC goes down in history as a dumpster-fire of half-baked ideas and out-of-touch memes, then where else do we look but the mirror? If TRIC grows into something great- then why should we look anywhere different? Life is too short to spend it avoiding all the risk. You can’t reach new heights by trotting down the same beaten paths, after all. I want to build a business that makes the nuclear navy community brighter, bigger, and better. There isn’t a procedure for that.   

No matter how TRIC turns out this next year, I’m thankful I get to try. Words cannot express the depth of my gratitude to each person who reads this post, the 5500+ people who have believed in us enough to take a chance on buying our products, and anyone who has left so much as an encouraging comment behind on our social media. It matters.

Thank you for reading, and I hope you wish us luck.

Wayne

P.S. Some of you may have noticed a startling lack of frosty sweet treats mentioned in this post. That was deliberate. Mobile Churnobyl plans are moving in the background, and we are soon to make a large announcement regarding it. Mike has threatened me with a slow, painful death if I say too much, so I’ll leave you with this- if you’re serious about wanting to bring this new business to life and willing to invest to make it happen, shoot me an email at ceo@thereactoriscritical.com. We’re building the team.