00:07
Welcome to episode five of the Exit strategy podcast.
00:10
Here with Paul Tran. Paul, you're the CEO and founder of Manscaped.
00:16
Manscape, you know, native started in twenty fifteen. Manscapes started around then.
00:21
Manscapes sells products that helps men groom their groin. Is that right?
00:27
That's that's perfectly right. There there was white space.
00:31
And some of the products that you sell, just so people have clarity are the lawn mower which helps men trim their pubes,
00:37
deodorant for your balls,
00:40
you know,
00:41
like a a foot and a foot odor product as well. What's the foot odor product called?
00:47
It's called the foot duster.
00:50
It's called the foot duster. Okay. And you guys have a really cheeky sense of humor, you know, when people go on to manscaped or look at manscapes past. You know, I've read some of your tag lines. They're fantastic.
01:00
One is, I remember one because I was reading in his call. It says, when you trim the hedges, the tree stands taller.
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Who came up with that? Well, I mean, I mean, that's true. Right?
01:12
That's absolutely true. Who came up with that tagline? You know, we have a we have a really talented marketing team.
01:19
You know, we're
01:20
we're just, you know, evolved as, I can't remember exactly
01:26
where where that headline came from. But, you know, we just have a really talented
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marketing team that that comes up with these
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these really catchy sayings all the time.
01:40
Yeah, that's certainly really catchy.
01:43
Know, one of the questions I was thinking about when I was doing some research about manscaped is how often are men trimming their hedges? Do you guys have any idea? Do you guys like survey your custom about that kind of information or what's We do we do survey our our customers. And,
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it's it's actually it's between we it turned out to be much more frequent than we thought.
02:01
A lot of men or, you know, of course, in anything there's a bell curve, right?
02:06
Where
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And the bell curve, the highest frequency is around once a week to to once every fourteen fourteen days. So it's it's between,
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you know, seven and fourteen days is when when somebody,
02:20
maintenance their bush.
02:23
And what's, what's the other end of the bell curve? Is the other end once every, like, five years?
02:28
The the other end, of course, is, you know, it it follows also follows the age Right? When you're you're much older,
02:35
less incentivized to do it. So,
02:38
it's like never. Right? So the that that's that's the other side of the bell curve.
02:43
Gotcha. Yeah. And that, like,
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I guess who are the who's buying, who are buying these products? Is it is it men who are, like, hey, I wanna make myself look better? And my tree to stand taller?
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Or is it women who are, like,
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I'm tired of looking at my husband or boyfriend or partners
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looking like this,
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and so he needs to trim.
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Was he we actually have a pretty eclectic mix between men and women.
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During the holidays, it's we we open marketing much,
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much more to women. So
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we have, more of
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more more women customers than than, you know, the rest of the year.
03:22
But really, it
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the truth is that if you if you haven't groomed down there, you don't know what it feels like. Like, I, if after you groomed down that you feel it's it's refreshing.
03:34
So we we've seen that men, like,
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like, that actually start, that really enjoy it. You know, it's like,
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It's like, you know, we, like, we take we got your hair is really long, you know, and then and then you finally cut your hair. It feels really, like, it feels really relaxing and really cool.
03:52
And and I think men start are starting to enjoy that.
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You know, it's it feels fresher. It's not a stem.
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So the I I think you start getting
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used to that feeling and, and it becomes just a normal thing.
04:07
Yeah.
04:09
You're at you're you're right about a lot of that. I know, like, when I shave sometimes or at least get a barber to cut my beard,
04:15
afterwards, I just feel like I'm a new human being and feel great. I don't know what it is about that. Like,
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I I still don't understand what, like,
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like, what psychological impact that is when I'm like, okay, this guy has just cut my beer It looks good, but now I feel like I'm a new I'm a newly reborn person.
04:33
Yeah. It it's it's just,
04:35
and that's and that's what we strive for. You know, we, I mean, as the essence of the company, at the end of the at the end of the day, we just want you to feel better. You know, like, like, the way that we think about it is life is pretty rough already. You know, there's so much to do.
04:49
There's so many responsibilities.
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You know, we just wanna make your life just a little more enjoyable.
04:55
And that's truly at the end of the day, that's our that's our mission.
04:58
Yeah.
05:00
And so there's a subscription element to the business as well, aside from, like, I imagine, like, you the the hero product that you guys have is the lawnmower like, what trims hedges. Is that right?
05:10
Absolutely. So, I mean, if you if you think about it, so the the way that I have to explain it is that when you look at the female body, you realize you start from head to toe. You're analyzing. Right?
05:21
You've you realize that there's a there's a product in the brand for every single female care and need you could think of. When you go to the male body, you switch your attention to the male body. You start with, you know, you start with your head, you got all your you got your Gillette dollar shade drop your hairies. Right? You go down to the torso. You got native. You need that old spice.
05:40
When you get down to the groin, there's nobody playing in the groin. Right? That is total empty white space.
05:47
And, you know, we've got lucky, unfortunately, and we recognize that you know, three years ago. And, we were able to capitalize on that. We were to attain an amazing name. So a landscape, you know,
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right now,
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I mean, we define the category of landscaping.
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Right? So that landscaping finds that category.
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And we just we totally own this category. And,
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you know, we and what's really important for us is to create
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the best products that where the way that we think about our mission and our mandate
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is that we we don't optimize for anything other than quality. So we're not we're not optimizing for price. We're not the cheapest products. We are the best products.
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So that that's that's kind of how because there's just a lot of products out there. Right? I mean, from everything from the low end to high end, what we want we wanna focus on is creating the absolute best products.
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And that starts with a lawn mower.
06:45
So so talking about a lawn mower, which is like a trimmer for your pubes really.
06:50
And a fantastic name.
06:52
You know, we'd love to delve more into the name of Manscape and lawn mower in a minute, but, like, you know, you're on the lawn mower three point o. What did, like, how did you guys decide what went from lawn mower two point o to three point o? And what what, like, what what are you gonna put in lawn mower four point o? Like, is that a is that a
07:09
You know, is there customer feedback involved in that? Is there look, what what's going on for you guys to make those types of decisions?
07:16
Absolutely. So we have a a Facebook group and I'm gonna plug it here. It's a Facebook
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ballers group.
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And it's it's a VIP group and it's invite only you have to, you know, ask to join.
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But the this group is for our
07:32
closest
07:34
best customers
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that are interactive with us. And when I say best, it's not on a monetary value, how much you buy. It's just, you know, it's just people that like the brand that wanna interact with with myself and our and, you know, our executive team and product development team. And so we have, I think, about close to two or three thousand people in there, that are really interactive, that they love to test product So we have a great group of core,
08:01
you know, landscape fans that we can do test new products. One of the biggest things that that we do is, you know, our blade has what we call skin safe technology
08:11
and skin skin safe makes it really difficult for you to excuse my French Nick your balls. Right?
08:17
Because if if you've ever nicked yourself down there, it is the most horrible feeling. Know, that theory. I think that's what everyone is afraid of before they start manscaping is, like, that happens if I mess this up. Yeah. That is the number one fear. And I can tell you it bleeds a lot. You know, it stands in the tracks. It hurts. It hurts all day. You know, so it's a real pain point.
08:37
So our blades, we it's the only
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blade out there. Specifically
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engineered
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to trim your groin because it's not, it's not like any other area of your face. Right? Like, in some of your beard, it's pretty tough. Your face is really tough. It's really easy to trim. Right. This is blue skin with hair on it. So it's not the same experience as as trimming, as trimming your beard. It's much more difficult. So go back to your to your to your question. Now, how do we determine the difference the two point on the three point o, it's just innovating. You know, in the product pipeline, you're
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it it might take like a year to eighteen months engineer and, a great product. So we have multiple products lined up. Like, we're designing the four point o. At the same time, we're designing the five point o. We're putting thought into the six point o because we're we're a hardware company in addition to soft goods. Right? So we have our own R and D lab that we that we built out that does all the soft goods, all the formulations,
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you know, the ball, deodorant, everything else that we're gonna get into. But on on a hardware side, we have our own in house industrial designers,
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material experts,
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and, and engineers that design these and and design and think through the problems that you have.
09:51
So when we we need we developed the two point o, that was really our first mass product, with skin safe.
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And then the three point zero was an evolution of the of the two point zero. You know, it had a light in there because you realize, like, what, even if you're in a bathroom is really lit, You know, they're shadows. You know, so, like, the the light, it it seems like, oh, we we thought about it. Is it is it a gimmick? You know, if we put a light, but light on there, what do we deem as a gimmick? And then we actually put a light on a prototype. I'm like, oh, this is actually really useful. Because, like, you you could because you need to see down there. You know, I'm like, it's not it's not the same it's not the same experience. Because you, you know, you you gotta see down there. So putting a light on there was, made it into the three point o. The port four point o, I I don't wanna
10:36
talk about all the different features, but it's got we're really innovating
10:40
on on this experience. And I I don't we don't think that there's many companies that really looked at growing trimming and how to innovate in that area while making it safe
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easy and enjoyable.
10:53
And so going back to this Facebook group, are you gonna, like, reach out to the Facebook group and say, hey, guys. We have the four point o. Does anyone wanna try a couple samples and give us your feedback before we finalize this production? Is that how it works or, like, you know, before we launch a point? That works. And that that works all the time.
11:07
So that that is that cycle is much more frequent,
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with with our soft goods products. So,
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you know, all of our
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you know, ball deodorant and all the products that we're, where we're testing in the pipeline now.
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That is that goes out that gets tested internally.
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You know, goes all through through all the stability testing.
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And and and all of all of the employees use it. And then and then we expand it out to our,
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VIP ballers group.
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And then talk to me a little bit about R and D. It's really amazing that you can sort of have that R and D in houses independent company. We never had that as native as an independent company. And even once we joined Procter and Gamble, like, we did some R and D internally, but most of the R and D we did, like, with third party manufacturers.
11:54
How big is this R and D group? I haven't heard of, like, a startup sort of,
11:58
thinking about R and Ds or, like, you know, early on or within the first five years of their existence like you guys are doing. How big is that R and D group?
12:06
So that was back to a a firm belief of of mine.
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You know, I've always kind of thought
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I always I have always thought it was really important not only to go wide, but to also go deep.
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And what that means is you gotta you gotta know
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a lot of different things, but you just can't you just can't be a what was there's there's a saying? What was saying,
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you know, a,
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Jack of All Trade with Master Of None. Right? I I don't think an entrepreneur
12:36
can be like that. Think on on to be to be really successful, you not only have to go wide, but you also have to go deep. But you gotta be a master of a lot of things.
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So Yeah. With that with with that that belief,
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you know, we always we we made sure that everything was done in house that we never hired an agency. And we don't use any agencies for anything. All video production is done in house. All media buying is done in house. R and D is done in house.
13:03
Oh, my god. So no agencies.
13:06
How how so look, the the technology that you guys build out, you guys have your own developers. You guys launch a TV commercial, you have your own in house production agency make it. You have your own in house creative agency decide what it is, and then your own in house, like, agency or your own in house employees
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combine. Cut it up as well and edit. Yep. That's insane. How big is the entire team then?
13:26
Right now, we're about seventy two employees.
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So we're not that big. Okay.
13:31
Yeah. That is not that big.
13:33
And pretty amazing based on, like, the amount of content that I see coming out manscaped. So you guys are certainly productive at creating content.
13:41
And when did you guys hire your first R and D employee then?
13:46
Well, I mean, just like like many other startups in in in the CPG space, you know, we we use contract manufacturers
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So, you know, we we use a third party lab to create our first products. But I think in about about
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a year, probably fourteen months when we started really building out our own R and D lab.
14:05
Wow. And hired a first R and D research chemist.
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And you know, it it was we knew that we had to retain this knowledge and really understand it,
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you know, from top down. So having in house, we got to iterate very quickly, and we didn't like this. Let's change it. And so we're, like, what would take
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you know, what would take weeks from from from working with a lab? Because, you know, we work with labs before. You gotta send them send them, you know, send them a brief. They send you samples. Sure. And then you send them back and forth. It just Yeah. The the cycles are just way too long. Right? Yeah. So for us having a aiming a team that we can work with hand in hand,
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is it was was just really accelerated that.
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Gotcha.
14:51
Okay. Let's start talking a little bit more about, like, the early days of manscaped. So, before this R and D R and D team exists before you guys are sort of developing lawnmower four point o.
15:01
You know, you guys are working on the original products.
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Manscape gets on Shark Tank at some point.
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And at some point, like, you know, you're on Shark Tank. You're working on the original marketing for the for the, for the company.
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Is, do you guys call the first do you guys call the first product you release a lawnmower one point o? It was not the lawnmower. Yeah. It was called the loan power. Okay. Gotcha. Yeah. And, look, how do you guys
15:26
yeah. Tell me a little bit more about how this marketing strategy developed because certainly, like, You know, I think everyone is familiar with the Dollar Shave Club, like,
15:34
like, commercial or video, initial video that really launched that brand. And how spectacularly successful it was, you know, how Michael Duobin saying, you don't need Roger Federer to endorse your razor blade you paying Roger Feder or to shave?
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How did you guys get started in terms of your marketing strategy?
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So you know, we we first started to be
15:56
we knew that this is something that was good for men. Right? It it it helped with being, you know, it's it's hygienic and it's huddliness.
16:04
Right? Yeah. So we started off,
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with
16:07
messaging in that way. Like, dudes, you guys should do this because
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It's good for you. You know, you'll feel better.
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And none of that none of that resonated.
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Right?
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How long did you try that type of marketing for that was like more serious and less cheeky?
16:24
Probably for
16:26
three months.
16:28
Okay. And how much money did you have to spend in those three months to be like this isn't working out? Do you have to ballpark it? What is it? Ten thousand dollars or a hundred thousand dollars?
16:36
No. I think we could spend probably fifty thousand dollars on marketing Okay. To realize that that that that didn't work.
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And then,
16:44
Yeah. So so then tell me about the evolution, then what happened?
16:47
Yeah. So then, you know,
16:49
being scientific, no, it it just didn't gravitate to anyone.
16:52
You know, so then we, so then we, we just, we basically changed gears. I'm saying, you know, like, we, we knew,
16:58
that there was a market for this, and there was white space. We knew that we had we had to crack it and figure out how to communicate with men because communicating, like, in my past, I've I've I've had startups that
17:09
focus primarily on women,
17:12
in skin care. Right? And,
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and perfumes and colognes, and you know,
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even in SAS and other things. Right? But but we needed to understand that we had to get to that tipping point of understanding how to communicate with men.
17:26
In this way. And we realize that, you know, dudes aren't talking about this. Like, they don't stand around the water cooler and be like, hey,
17:34
your hair looks so great today. What you use, was it a volumizer?
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Like, what kind of condition are you using? Dude, don't do that. Right? Yeah. They don't talk about skid and care. They don't talk about deodorants
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or hygiene. Right?
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But they'll talk about funny things. Right? Things that were hilarious that,
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that,
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that entertains them. So that we started creating our first video, I remember,
17:58
was a video because it was towards the end of year, and we had produced this video
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of, of Santa Claus,
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trimming.
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So, it was in it it was it was in an apartment
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and,
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Ryan Fiore,
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our, our,
18:17
VP of marketing was the one that actually dressed up as Santa.
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And he's got his Santa pants down on his ankles,
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and the camera is just tanning. And it looks like snow
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falling down.
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Right? And then as you pan out, you sand his legs.
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And and that's as a snowing, you hear this like buzzing sound. That's like,
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so that sort of you're seeing a code. It's it's kind of snowing indoors because it was like inside
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inside
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the house. So as your, you know, and then we had another person was like,
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Catherine was was sprinkling,
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you know, the, these
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fake white hairs that, on, onto the ground, and we were, we were pulling back the camera that was panning back, panning you can see Santa's legs.
19:05
So that that was the, that was kind of the first video that we that we shot. That was the first time you moved from, like, was that the first, like, move you had towards the cheeky sense of humor from being serious about, like, hey, this is good. You. It's gonna make you feel better. Yeah. That was that was the first one. Okay.
19:23
Let let me talk a little bit more about the fifty thousand you spent where that didn't work well. Where did you end up spending that fifty thousand over those, like, three months to be like, let's test to see if this,
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you know, if this concept has any legs. Cause, you know, you have a product that you know consumers want. You're trying to find the right marketing channels and the right marketing you know, messaging,
19:43
to go out with that. That marketing messaging is what's failing. Where did you spend that fifty thousand dollars? Look. I I think I think this answer is gonna be kinda def a de facto answer across many, many startups, especially in the early days. You spend it on Facebook. You spend it on Google. And and that is just the reality.
20:01
But what I what what I do wanna say about that is, like, all new entrepreneurs out there,
20:06
don't don't get a false sense of confidence
20:10
that you are your cap is so low.
20:14
You know, you're you're doing so well on Facebook
20:17
that this is going to scale infinitely
20:20
because you start running those numbers. Right? You're like on Facebook and like, oh, man, my cap is twenty bucks.
20:25
If I if I dump, you know, two hundred million dollars into marketing, I wouldn't make this much. Yes.
20:31
It doesn't work that way. It doesn't work that way. There is a Facebook and a Google wall
20:36
and I'm sorry. I'll use it in different Facebook
20:39
ceiling. You're gonna hit that ceiling, and it's gonna hurt.
20:43
And a lot of a lot of entrepreneurs need to realize that early on. We will work really fortunate that we realize that early on.
20:50
Because you gotta think about it. Facebook is really, really good at targeting.
20:54
I mean, Facebook and Google, these guys are data powerhouses. They know how to target and find the right buyers for you. But they're if your if your market if your total addressable market is this big.
21:06
Yeah. Right? You're you're gonna hit that ceiling pretty quickly. You know, so you have to really think about how to broaden
21:12
your product appeal,
21:14
and into to make sure that you are addressing
21:18
a very large total addressable market. Like, your addressable market, like, eventually, you're gonna have to market to men
21:25
or women or both. If you're if you're still doing like fine tune targeting,
21:30
you know, looking lights and you're trying to extract every value, that's you can't steal it. I think that I look, I I what you said definitely has a ton of, is is absolutely correct, like, at Native, you know, we saw a two dollar CAC in twenty fifteen, a four dollar CAC in twenty sixteen, a six fifty CAC in twenty seventeen.
21:50
So one, even looking at that two dollar pack, it basically more than tripled over the course of two years. But and we saw those, like, there were multiple ceilings we to. There was a ceiling at two hundred thousand dollars. There was a ceiling at five hundred thousand dollars. There was a much denser ceiling at a million dollars.
22:06
And trying to push against those ceilings took a lot of time and a lot of effort and a lot of, like, right messaging. And you're absolutely right from an audience targeting perspective as well. Like, lookalike audiences,
22:16
absolutely crushed it for us for a really long period of time until we hit one of those ceilings. Like, you know, we used the lookalike audience of one percent, which looked like, you know, two million people.
22:25
And then, you know, you start expanding that to two percent and three percent, and then all of a sudden, lookalikes don't work anymore. And then you at some point, you're just like, I'm targeting all women, and then I'm you're targeting all humans that exist on earth now. Because in reality, like, not everyone is gonna buy something when they see a Facebook ad. Right? Like,
22:41
you know, Facebook does a great job of segmenting their audiences. The like, you know, they have let's say there's they have three hundred million people in the United States. Something like eighty percent of the people that are on Facebook generally won't click ads and make a purchase from And so everybody is competing for those twenty percent of people who do buy things online. And so you're, even if your total addressable market is this big, in reality online, it's this big because,
23:05
you know, there's just fewer people buying things that are online.
23:08
Absolutely. Absolutely. You gotta get to if you wanna build a truly scalable business,
23:13
you gotta eventually
23:15
figure out how to get off of platforms.
23:17
You gotta be if you're able to get off of online,
23:20
I mean online should it's it's always a part of your marketing mix, your marketing strategy, right? But it should never be a hundred percent. Like,
23:28
as soon as you can, know, you gotta you're gonna go through withdrawal symptoms of getting off platforms, but you're gonna start diversifying your your your your your your your marketing, or it's just never going to scale.
23:38
Like, for for us, we're we're everywhere now. We we we have figured out how to and and this is what we're we're very fortunate. We have a really talented marketing seeing, you know, but we got off of Facebook and Google probably last year. And I went when I say off, I mean, we really diversified
23:52
from it. Yeah. One of, like, one of our big channels is still is still YouTube. Right? Because a lot of people spend their time there.
23:59
We're one of the biggest spenders on Hulu
24:01
where we have a massive TV budget.
24:05
UFC sponsorship.
24:07
I mean, we respond to the UFC,
24:10
where we we haven't been really announced yet, but we're gonna be the one of the exclusive sponsors of the San Francisco forty niners.
24:18
You know, so Wow. What does that mean? If you're an exclusive sponsor for the forty niners, what does that mean? That means that I think that next year when you go to v by stadium and you go into any of the bathrooms, you're gonna see our
24:32
our signage on top of all urinals.
24:36
That's gonna be. I mean, the the great thing is that's what we that's those those some things we crap. Right? It's like Yeah. How many how many companies out there can actually buy that ad, the ad unit. Right? Like, like, who who's gonna buy that ad unit? Like, Apple's not gonna buy add unit on top of urinal. Right? But it fits so well for us and it fits our cheeky tone
24:56
that it that it works for us.
24:58
Right? So, like, what are you doing right there? You you're, like, you you're thinking about it. Right? So, you know, when we when you see an ad that says has a finger point down where the turbulence has got bush. You're like, you know, you're standing right there. You can kind of evaluate and think about that.
25:13
Okay. I wanna talk much more about this. I wanna talk a little bit about the past as well, but before we get off this topic, how much ballpark the cost to me for a San Francisco forty or sponsorship.
25:24
Is it six figures or seven figures?
25:26
Or five figures?
25:28
Oh, it's definitely not five figures. Yeah. I know. It's I I can't imagine it's five figures. So give give me a ballpark, because, you know, like,
25:35
let me give you a couple examples. You know, we interviewed Kara from hint water
25:39
like a couple weeks ago, and she told she told me how she bought a Super Bowl commercial for under one million dollars.
25:46
We interviewed Andrew, who's the CEO of this company called him, which is like a, you know, men's sexual wellness company.
25:53
And he bought urinals over the, you know, over Giant Stadium.
25:57
Give me an idea of what, like, just ballpark the cost for me. You don't need to give me the exact number. Is it high six figures, low six figures, mid six figures? Is it seven figures? Give me some, you know, at Native, we were running,
26:09
you know, a very lean budget. But by the end of by by the time we were, you know, doing over a hundred million dollars, we had a pretty sizeable marketing budget. We were spending money on TV ads on billboards in New York City. We spent we're gonna spend a million dollars in twenty twenty or we were going to before COVID really hit. On bill I'm sorry, on subway ads in New York City in twenty twenty.
26:28
And, you know, that included, like, station takeovers, which cost, like, low, very low six figures, and that included some, you know, photos and subway trains, which cost, like, about forty thousand dollars. What does a forty nineers exclusive sponsorship get you Are you gonna go are you gonna do you have a booth? Are you gonna go to games? And give me the price? Or give me a ballpark of the price? I would say it's, you know, it's it's
26:51
in the six figures.
26:53
Not not not to the seven figures yet, but definitely in the six figures. Okay. And does it include a bunch of tickets? Or am I gonna see you at a bunch of, forty nine Earth games? Yeah. I mean, the forty niners are just a phenomenal team management wise. There's just so awesome.
27:07
We got to go to the Super Bowl with them.
27:10
We were NFC playoffs in, you know, in in the in their box. It was, okay. Fantastic.
27:17
Okay. Let's go. Let's to rewind a little bit and go back to the Santa Claus commercial. So you guys have, you know, it's been three months. The seriousness, it wasn't working. You were spending on Facebook and Google, burned fifty thousand dollars, didn't love what happened. You've sort of pivoted now. You're running the Santa Claus commercial
27:33
or, like, you you've got the Santa Claus video. What do you do with it? You're like, you know, it's really funny. It's cheeky. It's super interesting. It's time relevant because it's winter. Nobody's ever heard of Santa Claus trimming his pubes, but that's really funny.
27:46
What hap what do you do with that commercial? And when do you realize that cheeky sense of humor makes sense?
27:52
So
27:54
I would I would answer that in in two parts. So the the the first the first part
27:58
is
28:01
once again, you run it on Facebook and Google. Right? That's that's the first thing. So you so you you run it on you you run it on on on what we write on YouTube.
28:10
And what you what you're tracking for at that time is, like, how am I how much am I paying per CPM and per click? Now what am I what am I what is it costing you to deliver traffic to the website? Yeah. Right. And then and then when when they get to the website, then you then now you're you're, you know, you have you have to make sure that you're really observant
28:28
and performing a lot of conversion rate optimization. Right? You gotta make sure that your your that lead closes when they get site where you present them with the right offer. So the first part of, let me answer your question is, yeah, we got that video.
28:41
We're testing. We're running it on on Facebook. Running it on YouTube
28:45
and,
28:46
and we're we're tracking how much it's costing us. And remember at that time, we weren't broad yet. We're still Okay. We're gonna we're gonna advertise to men. That's eighteen
28:56
to, you know, twenty five. It's gonna run this video with this call to action. And then there's, you know, we're running thirty five to forty with this video or this different call to action. And then it's all gonna drive to the website.
29:07
So then, you know, then, of course, you're calculating or what what are my CPMs, what are my CPAs,
29:13
and and more importantly, my my CPCs And then and then when they get to the site, that that's when you really start doing a lot of work, like, like offer testing. Like, what what do I need offer, whatever we need to say.
29:25
Because early days,
29:27
really, really early days, what you what you're looking for is when you're looking for us, our our signals,
29:33
right? And you have to be really
29:35
in tune with your entire marketing strategy to understand these signals.
29:40
Right? And what what I mean by signals is early on, I set up three three pillars of what what is important to our male audience. And this is very early on. Right?
29:50
It it it was, you know, when when you turn the bush, it's the the truth dance taller. Right? That was that was an important motivation factor for them. Yeah. Right?
29:59
Use the right tools for the job. Right? So if you're gonna if you're gonna do this, don't hurt yourself because Yeah. That that was a really important marketing message that really got them
30:10
that that really got me to understand it. So we could we distilled
30:14
down, you know, this really big concept of don't Hey, guys. Don't cut yourself because that's crude to say. Right? So it it it really just became, if, you know, use the right tools of the job. Right? So when you trim the head is the tree stands taller, it tells you, okay, well, but then that that works
30:30
Right? You you kinda equate and you kinda understand that there's a there's a benefit,
30:34
right, outside of you just feeling good because for us, we we knew that ultimately We want it to be a much bigger brand of encompasses,
30:41
you know, masculinity
30:43
and,
30:45
the empowerment for men. We didn't want it to just be a growing a growing business. Right? That was that was never the that was never our intention.
30:53
We wanted to empower men
30:55
but to get there, we have to figure out what what what we what men were receptive to. Right? So that's where that know, if you trim the bushes, the true sense taller, and then got that right away. Right? You got they they got why they should do that and how they would and, you know, receive this power, or it's it's not this power. We receive this
31:14
feeling of,
31:16
empowerment.
31:17
Right?
31:18
And then after that, it was all it was all I used to write tools for the job. Because
31:22
don't don't cut yourself, don't hurt yourself. But that was that was the that was the big learning
31:28
that that cost probably
31:31
two hundred thousand, quarter of a million.
31:33
To really learn.
31:35
And it's
31:37
it's really kind of philosophical when you're talking about marketing in this way, you know, but, like, to spend that much money just to learn these two key things.
31:47
And most people, like, a lot of people, like, they're not marketers,
31:51
they're not they're not they're not really in tune with, with their audience, that might just pass them. You know, I was like, then ElDoh, I didn't really get that. But we tested a lot of marketing message and realized that that those two things combined together really resonated.
32:06
Really got meant to understand
32:08
why you should do this, the need, and why you should use dedicated tools that we created,
32:13
to solve this problem. So I think any any startup, I think any startup trying to build a brand and not just like a SaaS platform where you're just selling utility. Right? Your SaaS platform, you're selling utility. This, you know, we solve your problem like this. Right? But but to to really build a brand in a CPG,
32:30
a highly competitive CPG space, you have to distill your marketing message to be so fine tuned,
32:37
that that it really resonates with a broad audience.
32:40
So you tested,
32:42
can you give me the examples of, so so the two that worked were, you know, tree stan's collar used the right tools the job. What were some of the marketing messages you thought might work and ended up not working? Do you remember any of those?
32:55
I can't remember. There was so many.
32:59
We we had, like, we had a a bunch that, that there was, I think, there was a ten on that made it a short list
33:05
of,
33:07
of, of, you know, almost like, you know, you know, fuel fuel fresher or something like that. Right? It was one it was one of them.
33:14
You know,
33:16
you know, make sure you're clean and ready all the time. And it was it was a bunch of different
33:22
along that vein.
33:24
But it just didn't resonate. You know, it was just like it it just didn't click. With with dudes.
33:30
And and that's what you're searching for. As as marketers
33:33
are trying to market any product, that's what you're searching for. You're searching for the the with this how to sell your product in one simple statement to under for the fact your audience understands it and sees the need instantly.
33:46
Yeah. So you spend two hundred thousand dollars sort of testing that messaging on Facebook and Google. You know, yeah, I really liked what you said earlier, which was, once you get people to your website, you have to, optimize offers as well. I feel like too often people are like, great. What is my CPA and my CPA is? What is how is my how good is my spoke ad, and what they don't look at is how good is my landing page?
34:07
Am I convincing people once they get to my landing page that, they should buy this product that it's a good value and that they should buy it now and not two weeks from now. And I feel like, there the, you know, those are two sides of the same coin, and both are gonna dramatically impact CPA. Right? Like, you can say, hey, tree stands taller,
34:25
on your Facebook ad, and, like, you know, the flip side of that coin, the landing page can be used the right tools for the a full landing page, it's like buy this, trimmer because, you know, your your balls aren't the same as your face. It could be a very different,
34:38
type of CPA.
34:40
Yeah. I did a lot of entrepreneurs.
34:43
And
34:44
it's
34:45
that see, that's that's where I go back to, you know, it's it's difficult
34:50
to
34:51
it's difficult to hire an agency unless you got a lot of a lot of money Right? And I still, you know, you're venture funded, and that, you know, we weren't at that time.
35:01
You know,
35:02
and so it wasn't
35:04
unless you had a lot of money, you wouldn't be able to buy enough time of an agency
35:10
to actually come up with these things. You know, two. So if you if you're an entrepreneur, you could get a really phenomenal product. You've spent years building this product. Like, I would say,
35:20
take that take that leap. Like, don't be shy because at in my core, at the half of my career, I was technologists. Like, I I didn't I didn't do CPG.
35:30
You know, I I wasn't I wasn't a branding guy. Yeah. I wasn't a marketer. I was I was a technology. So I built SaaS platform. And software.
35:37
So I would say that don't be shy, take that risk and and do the marketing because you're the only one that really understands the value of your product. Like, to try to communicate that with an agency,
35:50
it's it's gonna, it's gonna, it it it's really, really hit or miss. Unless you've got a lot of money and you're and you're paying for a lot of their time,
35:58
it just it just I have seen it, not work out very well.
36:02
Couldn't agree more. When we were when native was growing, the entire time we were an independent company, I ran all paid ads.
36:09
After we sold the business, I still ran paid ads until probably, like, six months ago or something to that effect or, like, you know, maybe eight months ago at this point I was just like,
36:18
this is the backbone of the business. This is how we're growing. This is one of the reasons we're growing very quickly, and I don't wanna outsource that to somebody who, you know, by necessity, like, you know, is is an agency by definition, and there will be agency costs as a result of that. They won't care as much. Don't care about the business. They won't be looking at the metrics as quickly as I am or as frequently as I am, and they won't be iterating on different test on messages. Like, if this is a skill that I have this is a skill that's important to the company, I should get good at the skill, or I should at least understand the skill.
36:47
And so, like, you know, one of the things that you mentioned was you need a lot of money in order to hire these agencies in order, like, you know, to get them to do good work.
36:56
Going back to what you guys did, you guys spent fifty thousand dollars, and it didn't really work out with a serious messaging, two hundred thousand dollars, and you realized what messaging did work. How were you able to afford this stuff? Is early on, you were bootstrapped.
37:10
Yeah. I mean, we were bootstrapped for and we grew organically for a very, very long time.
37:17
And how we're, you
37:20
know, with through through prior successes, you know, you gotta you gotta you gotta gamble and, and
37:26
and reinvest.
37:27
You know, that I I that's the I would think that's the best way to,
37:31
to talk about it. And, you know,
37:36
fundraising
37:37
and and and spending investor dollars,
37:40
it has its it has its price. There is there is a there is a cost to that.
37:44
Right?
37:46
And I think I think very often that,
37:49
gets overshadowed
37:50
by the glitz and glamour of fundraising and closing around.
37:54
And that's where I would I would advise
37:57
entrepreneurs
37:58
that, you know, closing because right now when you read the news, right? Like, every closes around and everyone's cheering. There's a lot of PR around it. It's like,
38:08
dude, that's just the beginning. And you don't know how much those investors are gonna be on your ass all the time.
38:14
You know, how how to spend that money, and then you get into a point where,
38:18
you're you're starting to spend frivolously.
38:21
You know, it's like, I I guarantee you we had a million dollars in the bank. We wouldn't have spent two hundred thousand dollars. We would have spent half a million testing. Yeah. Right. You
38:30
so I think it's it's a silico trap
38:33
to raise money way too early.
38:36
Because number one, that's when you lose the most amount of the the most of your company, right? It's early on. Most dilution. Yeah. Most amount of dilution. You look back and you're like, oh my god. That was crazy.
38:47
Right? But then,
38:48
but then, like, it makes you it makes you not as strict with with yourself and and with your budget.
38:58
Absolutely. I couldn't agree more with all that.
39:02
You know, we we raised, like, fifty thousand dollars, and it was a great sign that we were onto a successful business. We raise that at Native, we raise fifty thousand dollars at, like, a five million dollar valuation,
39:11
probably four months into the business, and then another two hundred fifty k maybe within the first year.
39:16
And those were, you know, the re the reason that I did that early on, the business was working. I wasn't, like, in reality, we didn't even need that two fifty k. Was just like, I wanna make sure that there's external validation that what I'm doing here is right. I think that was the primary reason. And the secondary reason was that I was like, I'm in San Francisco, and this is what everyone here does.
39:35
Everyone raises money as a sign of success. There's this great tweet I saw. I don't remember who tweeted it. And someone's like, raised ten million dollars, and you get invited to every party in San Cisco, sell your business and make ten million dollars crickets.
39:47
Like, people somehow celebrate the fundraising more than they do actually the successful exits, which doesn't make any sense.
39:53
Well, look, what scale were you at when you did raise your first few checks?
39:58
And,
39:59
you know, I wanna make sure there's some disclosure here. I was one of those checks at some point.
40:05
What scale were you at when you raised those, first few checks? Well, those first few checks, we I mean, we were
40:11
we were beyond the eight figures,
40:13
right, when, when, by the time we raised those those first few when you said you were beyond eight figures, you mean you were like north of ten million dollars, not north of a hundred million dollars.
40:21
Correct.
40:22
Okay. Correct. Yeah.
40:25
And those and those few checks, the, you know,
40:29
the impetus behind those was to bring on talent like yourself. Right? I mean, we we we called it a a sweetheart round,
40:38
or sweetheart note because we wanted to bring on amazing talent. So There weren't ME VCs in in that note. It was it was everyone that was
40:47
pretty much hand selected from a group of friends. Know, so, like, like yourself, like Nick from Drive, and, like, from these amazing,
40:56
individuals,
40:57
that could really contribute to to the business that can have the experience,
41:03
and and then, and that we wanted to actually call and talk to, you know, We'll call. I'll call you when you're in China and we'll talk about things, you know? So,
41:13
you know, so that that's that was the
41:15
that was the reason why we we we raised and it wasn't because of need.
41:20
And has that been helpful?
41:22
You know, we we raised money. We raised five hundred thousand dollars at native.
41:27
About half the investors, I would say, were really helpful. Like, people that I could call and be like, hey, this is a problem I'm having. Have you had it before? You know, we we, like, Nick was the first episode of this podcast.
41:39
Actually helped me with a bunch of trademark stuff or he at least made me think about trademark stuff early on.
41:45
There were there was a one of our investors was an executive at Facebook who's really helpful at, like, helping us just get access to the right people at Facebook that we needed.
41:54
Another was just like a call voice who, you know, was a VC and had sort of seen a bunch of things happen in San Francisco. And so it was like, when when I called him up, he's like, his name's Paul Ferris from Azure. And he's like, hey, Moies. This is how to think about things. You're panicking too much. Have the investors that you sort of let in those, sweethearts
42:11
have those sweethearts been helpful?
42:13
I was yeah. Absolutely. And I think you you nailed it on the head with about fifty percent.
42:19
Okay. It's like, like, about, like, even even when you hand select these a group of investors. Yeah. Everyone's got their own lives. Right? Everyone has their own focus.
42:27
So of when you hand select, only fifty percent will be really valuable. So imagine if you don't hand select them, and it's just a a group of a bunch of different people that the value out of that will be dramatically
42:39
lower. Right? So,
42:42
yeah, fifty percent. I can call anytime.
42:44
And and I I I wanna say there's gonna you gotta manage expectations. Right? Everyone's got their own ever stuck their own jobs, right, just as investing in your company doesn't mean that you have, you know, ten hours a week of their time. Right? Sure. You're gonna manage expectations. Right? So it's really key decisions. Hey, I'm going through this.
43:01
What do you think? You know, you don't need manufacturers in here, what whatever. It's like, set out a broad email and,
43:08
you know, hey, anybody can help me with connecting with this person, that person. That's where you can get really rapid responses
43:14
and, and they can be really awful.
43:16
Yeah. Okay. Let's do a little bit of fast forwarding. You've raised this money from a bunch of sweethearts, including myself.
43:22
You've, spent two hundred two hundred fifty thousand dollars, on Facebook and Google with the Santa Claus commercial, and you're like, okay, I'm not gonna talk about anything. I'm not gonna be I'm gonna be less serious and be more cheeky with my humor because that's what's resonating with consumers.
43:38
At what point do you start getting off Facebook and Google? Like, you know, I I think the most, one of the most impressive things I about manscaped
43:45
is the diversity of channel acquisition, like YouTube is a really hard channel for people to scale.
43:51
So, like, you know, Hulu, we've tried on Hulu, like what Native has been on Hulu ads wasn't nearly as successful as you guys.
43:58
How do you guys test? How do you guys well, first, first, help me understand your largest channels of customer acquisition. Is it YouTube? Is it still Facebook? Or, like, what is the largest channel still? Well, it it it depends.
44:09
I mean, Facebook and Google is still a very large channel. And between, I mean, between
44:15
YouTube.
44:15
I mean, I'm
44:17
to Google
44:18
and and Facebook is a large channel, right? Because Facebook,
44:21
encompasses both of their assets. It's Facebook and Instagram
44:25
is very, very large channel because forget about Instagram. Everyone talks about Facebook. Sure. But Instagram is a huge channel. So that's where a lot of spend goes.
44:33
You know, the other spend is on on Google. Of course, there's AdWords, right? There is GDN.
44:38
There is so many different ad units that you guys have, like, most, you know, start up,
44:43
entrepreneurs have even haven't even considered
44:46
right, on, on the Google platform. And then there's YouTube, which drives a tremendous amount of traffic. And that's, but I should say tremendous amounts of views, not necessarily traffic, okay, because,
44:58
there's so much inventory on YouTube.
45:01
It's just it's so hard to
45:03
Like YouTube is so hard to crack.
45:06
Okay. Let me ask you in a different way. If you had to choose if all of these channels were gonna be regulated by the FTC and all of them were gonna be shut down except one. Which one would you want to continue to exist?
45:19
It depends on when. It depends on when now. I would say Google. Today. Yeah. You'd say what? You'd say which? Today with Google. Okay.
45:26
And then help you understand a little bit more about YouTube. Are you guys doing pre roll ads Rob, you guys doing, like, influencer based ads on YouTube.
45:34
We're doing pre roll ads. We're doing influencer ads. We're doing,
45:38
user generated content.
45:41
We're doing I mean,
45:43
we signed we have a a team of five
45:48
in our influencer
45:49
department.
45:50
And all they do is work with influencers.
45:53
So
45:55
it gets to a point where,
45:58
you know, you have to keep grinding
46:00
and there's a tipping point where you're where you're like, everything starts to gel. Because all of these channels lift everything.
46:07
Right? Like, you can't, you can't just be on Facebook and be successful. You gotta be on Facebook on Google and Hulu on everything else to actually to actually scale massively.
46:17
So we realized that on very, very early on. So this year is a big push us to kind of be
46:24
be everywhere, including billboards,
46:27
and we got, like, we got twenty billboards out there now
46:30
you know, urinal ads, like UFC fights. We were at the Connor MacGregor fight, but a car in NASCAR.
46:36
So Wow. Yeah.
46:38
So so tell me how you structure your team to handle all that then. Do you guys have, like, is is one person that's working on YouTube also working on Deepagram, or is there somebody who's dedicated to YouTube? Somebody who's dedicated to UFC fights and somebody who's dedicated to NASCAR?
46:53
So there there is there's an out of home, director.
46:57
Joey, Quebec, he's this phenomenal.
47:00
And
47:01
you you really
47:03
I I I think the way that to answer you, the first part of your question is how do you structure?
47:09
You gotta find the best people.
47:11
The best people will bring in the best people will bring in the best people. You know, so it's so important
47:17
as
47:18
as an entrepreneur
47:20
to
47:21
to build the team. Right? When you're the one one of your primary jobs as a CEO
47:26
is to build team, right, to lead the vision and build team. So
47:31
bringing in your your the right generals
47:34
the right key people with the leadership team will automatically
47:39
start to bring in the right people on the next layer. Right? So
47:44
you know, Ryan and I have been working together. Ryan has a VP of marketing, has been working together for almost a decade now. He brought in Joey Coveak. Is phenomenal.
47:53
Joey, you know, did a lot of the marketing for movement before they exited from from the ground up.
47:59
Then he brought in Nate Singer,
48:01
the to to hand to handle Google,
48:04
and YouTube. And then we brought in Natalie Hoffman to handle a radio
48:09
so and then she was phenomenal.
48:11
She got us on,
48:13
Howard Stern and all these, you know, all these amazing pot guest.
48:19
And then, and then they brought in Lauren on the marketing side, and Lauren does all of the influencers build out the influencer team.
48:27
So it sounds like you have,
48:29
directors for each channel, though, as opposed like, you know, you have a YouTube somebody who manages YouTube, somebody who manages out of home, somebody manages, Instagram, and Facebook. And that's sort of how you structured it under a VP of marketing. Correct. And then how I would structure for startup, though, but for startup, though, I don't want to I don't want you to think that how that's what you need to start. Right? You don't need that to start. You gotta do everything to your home. Right? Like like in the beginning, like Ryan and I were on YouTube every single day, like, clicking through refreshing,
48:59
like, a thousand times a day to see metrics Right? That's how you start. And then when you when you reach critical mass, that's when you bring in someone to handle, when you go on and you pioneer the next channel.
49:10
Yeah. I I think that's a great, thing to mention. Like, I I feel like a lot of people wanna be, like, wanna be in seven different marketing channels when they launch their business. And it's hard to be an expert. You know, I've rarely met people who are good at Facebook and Google ads.
49:23
And people are like, yeah, I'm gonna try and run Facebook, Google, snap, Pinterest, and TikTok ads when I launched my business. And I'm like, you're not gonna be able to measure look, you're gonna forget everything that you've ever done. By the time you're looking at TikTok
49:35
you know, which is your fifth channel today, you're gonna forget what your Facebook ads look like. And so it's really hard to be a master of so many channels right out of the gate. You know, I'm a big fan of sort of going deep on one or two channels or three of you are able to,
49:49
and becoming a master of those, and then hiring people once you're sort of able to, once you understand the metrics behind those, and you've built some of critical mass and know how to, like, you, you know, you understand the next
50:00
three to four months of the trajectory of that channel. Mhmm. You gotta master. You gotta master before you move on.
50:06
Yeah. Absolutely.
50:08
And then how do you think about budgets when you're doing this? So is there like a quarterly meeting for budgets or an annual meeting for budgets where you're like, Okay. Influencer team, you get twelve percent of our budget. Radio team, you get ten percent of our budget. How do you guys think, or are you, like, sort of, like, know what? Influencers, we're willing to spend up to thirty dollar tax, spend as much as you can until you hit thirty dollars.
50:28
You know, how how do you think about that? I mean, now we are, I mean, to be, to be honest, now we are. Right? Like, we're we're much more,
50:37
systematic now. We're much more organized.
50:39
But the first two years, let's let's be honest. Nobody gets set budgets in the first two years. They're still learning so much. You're still growing so much, and it's still so fluid that, like, you know, dude, we just we just
50:51
launched this channel with this video, the the the CPA is still well gotta go balls out. Right? And then Yeah. And that's the only thing that matters over the course of the next eight weeks is this channel. Everyone else be quiet. This is the channel that's gonna make our business. Snap. Yep. Yeah. And so so, you know, I I don't wanna I wanna make sure that the listeners are and and the entrepreneurs out there. Don't get a, you know, don't think that you need to have budgets in place on that. You know, in in the early days, you just gotta make it work. That's all you gotta do. You gotta make it work, and that's all you gotta focus on. Yeah. In the early days, it's always audibles. Right? Like, every day is a new fire that you have to put out and the rare days where you don't have fires and can sort of focus on marketing gotta go with just what's working and not, like,
51:33
and not dogma. You can't be like, you know what? Facebook were or, like, you know, YouTube worked for Paul at Mansgate. I'm gonna spend money on know, people come up to me and they're like, hey, Facebook work for you guys. I'm how how should I get Facebook to work for me? And I'm like, look, Facebook work for us. It, like, you know, will work for us. Almost certainly will not work for you. We had a specific use case. You know, we were on there at a different time than Facebook is today and like,
51:54
know, we were spending a lot of resources on Facebook. For you guys, the content that you have and the cheeky humor is much more amenable to video than it may be to like a quick mobile,
52:02
you know, photo And so, it's just a different channel that works. And, like, people cannot get caught up on the dog of others. They have to call audibles when they get to the line, see what's working and spend their time and resources there. Absolutely.
52:15
What did you guys, like, fail at? So, like, you know, certainly you it sounds, you know, and maybe it's a bad maybe fails a bad word. You know, at Native, we failed at a ton of staff operations for a really long time until we hired a stellar operations person,
52:29
finance forever.
52:31
What did you guys fail at? Like, you know, certainly the, like, not doing the cheeky marketing was tough. Did you guys have operational supply issues because these things can't be easy to make. It's not like you're, you know, with deodorant, you wanna make more. You probably can do it in you know, a week, like you need a week of heads up, maybe two weeks.
52:47
These are, you know, hardware components,
52:50
that that cannot be made in a day or two days. It's not mixing ingredients together. Well, I mean, some of your products are, but a lot of them aren't,
52:57
you know, what were the things that you guys struggled with to make, the business success.
53:01
Absolutely. Right. So, I mean,
53:05
I'll I'll answer it in a kind of an all encompassing way. Like, if you if you're in software in SaaS, then you don't have to worry about, you know, making stuff. Right? You're, you gotta, you gotta worry about them having enough servers, but now there's clouds, you know, we don't have to worry about that anymore either. Right? So that's why software is so can be so lucrative and you get that you get the right win. But but for hard
53:27
physical products,
53:29
and operation, supply chain, you know, it it it's it's a lot of work. So if you're gonna ask me, I'm I'm exactly with you. Like, we failed in operations.
53:40
It we failed multiple times in operations. Meaning, what was one of the give me an example of a disaster you guys had.
53:46
Disaster.
53:47
So Or, like, one of the things that you failed at in operation specifically.
53:51
Yeah. So we had we we were on a run rate. We had projected,
53:56
inventory
53:57
for the entire Q one.
53:59
Right? We we bought it. We have it in stock. It was November. We're like, well, we're good. And we bought so much inventory.
54:06
We're like, we're good for the next quarter. Well, this is November.
54:09
And we're like, wait, we're good until we're good until April. And that's that's how much inventory we had
54:15
by December sixteenth and sold out
54:18
all inventory.
54:19
And we're like,
54:20
oh, crap.
54:22
It was it was crazy. You're like, everyone
54:26
and our families were in the warehouse packing.
54:29
New, like, new inventory to send out.
54:32
So that was definitely a failure. Yeah. So we we we we we we ship
54:36
late to our customers,
54:38
which means, you know, they they weren't happy with us. That that means that's a fail for us that we wanna delight our customers all the time.
54:46
And, you know, that that really that that sucked. And that that didn't go away, by the way. Like,
54:52
that that happens all the time.
54:55
All the time. Like, when you're scaling,
54:58
you can never predict how,
55:01
it, like, how it started would do would do, you know, a read things would things would just pop. And,
55:08
you know, influencers
55:09
would do, would do, would launch their videos. Things would just pop. And it was just,
55:13
it's just really difficult manage all the channels. Because now we we we we're only channel. Right? So we're not just a subscription. We're not just a D to C company. We're, you know, we've got Amazon. We've got D to C. We international, and we've got retail. So now we're working with, you know, a lot of all of our retail partners. You're you're planning with them months and months. Like, it retails a different beat. It's not DDC. You're planning a year in advance at all times.
55:38
Yeah. I think I'd,
55:39
I didn't understand how hard it would be until Native got into retail. Like, You know, we scale that we have the same problems you did in terms of, like, running out of inventory. In twenty fifteen, we were making five hundred units of deodorant a week. By twenty seventeen, we were making twenty one thousand units a day, and we were still, like, selling out, like, you know, if you bought your deodorant on Thursday. It was either made the day before or the day after. It was like it it's not like we had a lot of inventory. But once you sell into Target and Walmart and, like, large brick and mortar stores, you know, their their their first order could be, you know, five three hundred thousand units or twenty thou fifty thousand units. And all of a sudden, the just in time inventory that you had always reliant on is no longer sustainable.
56:20
Yeah. Absolutely. It it gets it gets really difficult as as your view starts to expand also. Yeah. Yeah. So tell me about some of the retailers that you guys are in. You guys are in Target today. Any other retailers?
56:31
We're in Target,
56:33
Best Buy And we're really gonna focus on target and Best Buy because that had we feel that that's where,
56:39
our audience lives. You know, we have a lot of great,
56:42
retail partners.
56:44
But we're gonna,
56:46
for for the time being, at least for twenty twenty, we're really gonna focus on targeting. That's why.
56:51
And is,
56:52
does your online site make up the majority of your sales, or do target and Best Buy make up the majority of your sales?
56:58
No. D2C,
57:00
web e commerce mix up the majority of our sales.
57:03
And is there, like, cyclicality
57:05
to the business you know, it's really interesting that you said by December sixteenth you had sort of sold out. I imagine that people are buying this product for Christmas. Is there another bump in sales for instance right before Valentine's Day?
57:17
Yeah. Valentine's Day, Father's Day. Any gift giving holiday?
57:22
We see above because that's when women buy us gifts for men. And then of course, holidays. Right? That's when we women really buy us as as gifts for men. But then men are also spending on themselves.
57:33
So, you know, Q4 is definitely huge. Just any other e commerce company, you know, Q4 is huge for everybody.
57:40
Yeah. I well, I mean, the Q4 is, like, for Native, it was actually probably one of the worst quarters in part because, like, dear you tend to wear more deodorant in the summer when it's hotter out. As opposed to the winter when it's cold out. And, you know, some people give deodorant as gifts. In fact, a lot of people do a lot more than I suspected. But, like, you know, if I gave you a deodorant as a gift, I think you'd be like, well, This is nice, but, like, okay, and this is, like, a pretty mediocre gift. I mean, if I give you a package of Manscape, it'd be a very different product, like, you know, it's obviously a higher price point and a great, like,
58:08
a much nicer gift. I wonder if men ever accuse, like, men who get this as a gift from their female partners.
58:15
I would if they ever accuse them of being like, this is a gift for yourself. Like, when I buy lingerie for you, it's a gift for me. This is a gift for yourself. I wanna You know, we we haven't pulled haven't pulled our customers, but,
58:25
that that that might be the case.
58:28
But we have a lot of, you know, unboxing hear ins that people,
58:32
unboxing reactions on, on,
58:35
Instagram and TikTok. That's been pretty fun.
58:37
Did you work your way up, when it came to influencer advertising? Did you start it like micro influencers and work your way up to, like, you know, A list celebrities or were you like, you know, let's go big right out of the gate and get the Kim Kardashian or Tom Bradys of the world to try this product. You know, we we still haven't gotten with celebrities.
58:55
Like, we have not tapped and and celebrities yet. So we're,
58:59
we're talking, but we went we went with,
59:03
amazing
59:04
influencers.
59:06
So a first influencer that we ever bought on was Jose,
59:09
Zuwiga,
59:10
of teaching men's fashion.
59:13
He's phenomenal. The dude is the dude knows his stuff.
59:17
He's,
59:18
you know, yes,
59:20
he really knows men's hygiene and grooming.
59:24
And so we tapped him as one of our first influencers,
59:27
and we still work very closely with him to So so I guess, like, was your budget right away going after, maybe the celebrity is a bad example. Was your budget right away sort of saying, hey, let's put ten thousand fifty thousand or a hundred thousand dollars to test among different influencers
59:41
to see what works and what doesn't,
59:43
or would you like, I'm ready to go with an influencer that has five hundred thousand people. That may not be an leopardy, but it's certainly a large Instagram celebrity. Yes. So, you know, but I I think if you're gonna test influencer market,
59:55
testing micro influencers will give you a really bad data.
59:59
Because it just there's just not enough reach. Right? Yeah. You gotta you gotta test with enough reach to have
01:00:05
it's a it's a good sample. Right? The the more data you have, the better the better results, the better data you better,
01:00:11
the better you can conclude on your data. Right? So You know, I think I think at that time, Jose had like four million
01:00:18
followers or on on on YouTube. And that was that was the that was the right amount for us to really do a good test.
01:00:25
Wow. Alright. So you're looking for guys who already, like, rather large on YouTube, but before you, spend money there. Is that still the case? Are you still sort of focusing on those people that have a million plus or are you willing to go down now to people who have ten thousand plus for subscribers?
01:00:38
Now it's now our influencer team evaluates
01:00:42
each influencer attend to influence a partner. And we what we evaluate for
01:00:47
primarily
01:00:48
is authenticity.
01:00:50
And, like, like, like, if you if you've got thirty thousand followers or thirty thousand fans or whatever that is, you know, on each of these platforms.
01:00:59
And in your Instagram, all you do is pushing product that you're not the right influencer for us. Yeah. You know, we we want you to actually
01:01:07
test our product
01:01:08
you know, really use it and be a fan of it. Right? Because that authenticity
01:01:13
comes out because we, as a brand, really value authenticity. We wanna have a really authentic voice.
01:01:20
And that's that's really important to our brand. And so how do female influencers
01:01:25
sort of project that authenticity? Is it sort of talking about,
01:01:30
you know, their partners or how how do female,
01:01:33
you know, users project that authenticity?
01:01:35
Well, it it it depends. Usually, it's, the way that they, the way that they do it, it
01:01:41
it depends on which platform. Right? So on on Instagram, we're just taking pictures of it as as endorsing it.
01:01:47
And many times they're taking pictures with a partner. As, like, you know, you guys because Instagram is a very photo based,
01:01:54
you know, platform.
01:01:55
Whereas on YouTube,
01:01:57
it's mostly couples. Right? It's
01:01:59
the if it's if it's a a woman Instagram or a female Instagram, they would be they would pair it up with their partner, right, and and and talk about the product.
01:02:08
Because there's so many ways you can talk about this product. Right? And men can talk about how great it is, how it doesn't hurt you, how's the right tools for the job, right? And, and how, how, how much how much better it makes them feel.
01:02:21
Women
01:02:22
talk about it as, hey, you know, you give this to your men,
01:02:26
and it makes them feel much better. It makes you like it more. And, you know, so we leave it up to them to kind of put their own spin on it.
01:02:35
Gotcha.
01:02:36
Okay. It is, you know, we're almost out of time. So I just wanna ask a couple more questions. You know, the business has changed dramatically since you went from that serious advertising, and it was you and Ryan sort of refreshing YouTube. To today.
01:02:48
You know, you're sponsoring
01:02:50
for the NFL teams and NASCAR teams, and that's pretty amazing.
01:02:55
Where is it like, what is your goal with a business? I think that, like,
01:03:00
you know, do you wanna work here for twenty years? Is there an exit strategy in the net, like, you know, a five within five years? Or, like, what it like, where do you wanna go with the business? You know, This is, like, the business that you've created is right in the wheelhouse of a lot of CPG companies. Right?
01:03:17
It's almost like, like, there's a lot of competition for the Gilettes of the world from Harry's and Dollar Shave Clubs of the world. This is going up this is, like, in the same industry, but going after a very different type of category or niche.
01:03:29
And you're uniquely positioned and so sort of one of the few companies in that space.
01:03:34
What do you wanna do?
01:03:36
Yeah. The way that we think about that is,
01:03:40
we don't, we never,
01:03:41
like, or I personally never
01:03:44
create or build a business
01:03:47
for the sole purpose of of exiting,
01:03:49
with with that in mind.
01:03:52
I I just feel like if you if you create a success business
01:03:56
that transcends,
01:03:58
you know, fads or,
01:04:00
you know, that that can be multi generational.
01:04:03
That's a potentially multi multigenerational,
01:04:07
then then, you know, be potential
01:04:09
acquirers
01:04:10
just come. It's it's natural.
01:04:13
So that's kind of how we that's kind of how we think about it. Let's build a really successful business. And so when we when you look at back at in the last forty, fifty years,
01:04:24
there aren't many brands that are able to,
01:04:28
be multi generation
01:04:30
multi generational.
01:04:31
Right? I mean, you look look at, like, head and shoulders. They've Sure. Generations upon generation right? Gillette generations upon generations.
01:04:39
Pantin,
01:04:40
there aren't that many brands are able to actually do You've mentioned all Procter and Gamble brands. They're gonna love that.
01:04:49
No. I mean, there's there's a whole bunch. Right? There's there's, a lot of beautiful beautiful brands also.
01:04:54
Right?
01:04:55
But they're
01:04:56
there's there's there's not that many that actually have the unit economics
01:05:01
to be able to
01:05:03
to transcend. What what I mean by that is it's it costs a lot of money. It costs a lot of money to build a brand. It is really expensive to build a brand. And if you're trying to
01:05:15
sell a shampoo,
01:05:16
in which, you know, at at retail and you're trying to build a business that way, there's no way you have enough margin to actually build a brand. Right? It could because you don't wanna take twenty thirty five it's twenty thirty years to build a brand. Right? Sure. You want you wanna be able to spend fifty million dollars on marketing.
01:05:33
Right? Or and then grow that to a hundred million dollars on marketing
01:05:37
for five years, six years. Right? And really have a global brand And then, and then you then you start harvesting. I mean, that's that's that's kinda how we see it. Right? You have to spend the money up front. You have to You have to pay your dues, right, and and build that brand. I really understand your audience. Bill, create amazing products within those five to six seven years. And then after that, you can just really start harvesting.
01:06:03
So that's kinda how we see building a brand we we believe that with our our unit economics,
01:06:10
because, I mean, this we we recoup the tech on the first time
01:06:15
So beyond anything else,
01:06:17
many You're profitable on first unit sale.
01:06:21
We're profitable on first unit sale. So we're able to recycle that cash very, very quickly.
01:06:28
So that's how we we've been able to scale so quickly without any institutional funding.
01:06:33
Right? So,
01:06:35
I, and I think there's not that many companies that are able to do that.
01:06:39
And because there's virtually no companies that are able to do that, especially that, like, there's companies that are able to do that today. Get to four or five million dollars in revenue. Unfortunately, no companies are able to do that at the at fifty million dollars of revenue. That's why theaways in all birds of the world have raised capital.
01:06:55
Yeah. Yeah. We're we're very fortunate that we, you know, we're we're able to get know, beyond nine figures
01:07:01
in Yeah. In in revenue without institutional
01:07:04
capital
01:07:05
and and, you know, to have that kind of unit economic. So that allows us So we believe that that really helps us,
01:07:12
you know, be multi generational. We're gonna grow this thing.
01:07:16
We're launching internationals. We we're we're already Australia, Canada, UK, it'll be all of Europe.
01:07:23
You know, and within the next three to five years, be a truly global brand.
01:07:27
And then it's you know, it's all for harvesting.
01:07:30
Let's let's but what's really interesting beyond that is,
01:07:34
the way the way we think about it is we're purely incremental moist. You know, there's there's no portfolio
01:07:40
company in growing care. And we're probably the last frontier in male grooming.
01:07:45
Agreed.
01:07:46
Yeah. It it's it's really amazing when, like, it's not like you're competing with Gillette. You're in the same category, and we're a PNG and a quirer of man gate, you would sit within their grooming category, likely, but, like, it's not like you're cannibalizing Gillette sales.
01:08:00
Exactly. You know, we if anything, we can we can help it. Right? We're we're truly incremental to the top line revenue. Right? And and if you look at men's,
01:08:10
men's hygiene in general, it's definitely growing. But it's not growing as fast as our category.
01:08:15
Yeah.
01:08:17
Yeah. And that not only is it growing. Like, I mean, your category is merrily growing because of you. I think that, like,
01:08:22
you know, people rarely realize that. Like, when native launched into Target, we grew their deodorant category, something like eight percent. Or ten percent, the first year and rarely do, like, like, you know, Target hadn't seen that in a really long time. The men's, you know, below the waist grooming category, isn't growing quickly and you're riding those coattails. You're the reason that it's growing quickly.
01:08:44
You know, we're seeing very similar data with with target all So,
01:08:48
great partner. Great to be working with them. They're phenomenal.
01:08:51
Yeah. Love target. They're they're just they're just phenomenal partners.
01:08:54
But we're we're seeing very similar things with them. Like, this this category hasn't been innovated, and it's a brand new category. You know, and we got lucky with the name Manscape that we define the category.
01:09:05
Yeah. Yeah. Fantastic name. Okay. One last question, because I I put on Twitter. I said, you know, I was interviewing you, for a podcast. What should I ask you. And someone from your own team actually asked me to ask you this. And they said, have hall guests how many gallons of Boba tea
01:09:21
the Manscape team has consumed in total.
01:09:25
You want me to guess?
01:09:28
So so the the reason behind this is my, my wife loves Boba.
01:09:33
She just she's addicted to Boba. So she got the entire company addicted to Boba So I would say many, many, many hundreds of gallon of boa. Okay. If you have to give give me a number, because I'm gonna tweet at this guy and be like, Hey, is this right or wrong?
01:09:49
I would say,
01:09:52
man,
01:09:53
because we we order Bobo almost every day. I don't know. I gotta be like, a hundred
01:09:58
and twenty gallons.
01:10:00
Okay. No. You're it's definitely more than a hundred twenty gallons. If you wanna remove it every day, that's for, like, eighteen ounces, There's seventy people on the team. Probably forty of them are getting Boba. No. It's gonna be Yeah. Our b our Boba budget is ridiculous.
01:10:14
That is that's a great that's a great, like, line item to have in a budget when you're, like, doing a P and L and sort of showing it to your board. You're like, this is how much we're gonna spend on both of this.
01:10:25
Paul, this was fantastic. Really love,
01:10:28
you know, that I really love what you this conversation. I think you've, you know, aside from one of the things that I've realized about you is that aside from having this incredible vision for the company and sort of understanding where you fit within the CPG space,
01:10:41
You also have these humble origins and you have, like, the perspective you you still remember the perspective you had when you launched the business and were struggling
01:10:50
trying to get the right messaging out, trying to understand, you know, how to get production up and, like, understand what entrepreneurs are going through when there's still much smaller businesses.
01:10:59
I feel like,
01:11:00
very few people have that perspective, and it's so refreshing to hear because I think that a lot of people who are building two, three million, four who are at a two, three, four million dollar run rate, you know, don't necessarily wanna talk about stuff that I brought up, which was like, how do you think about budget? You go back and you're like, look, budget is what we think about today. The first two years, we called audibles at the line every time we went up there.
01:11:22
That was really great. I love how you mentioned that because it makes me realize that sometimes I've forgotten what it was like to be in the trenches,
01:11:29
and it makes me miss those days. So appreciate you sort of bringing that up and having that, like, you know,
01:11:36
in the trenches type of mentality. That was fantastic.
01:11:40
Oh, thank you. I I really appreciate that. I I think deep down at heart,
01:11:44
I'm an entrepreneur, and I'll always be an entrepreneur. You know, we we, I I think it it's a it's a special breed and I I celebrate all entrepreneurs out there because it it takes guts, you know, to go out there and to sacrifice every single day,
01:11:57
to follow your dreams. It's it's not easy.
01:12:01
Couldn't agree more with that. Takes a ton of guts know, you gotta stand up to your family and your friends who are, you know, at our, certainly at my age are like, you know, lawyers and are making a lot of money and have families and you're like, you know what, I'm gonna put everything on the line. So have a ton of respect for those entrepreneurs and have a ton of respect for the business that you too.
01:12:18
No. Thank you. Appreciate it.
01:12:21
Thanks so much, Paul. This was fantastic.
01:12:23
Really appreciate your time. Congratulations on all the success.
01:12:27
Super excited. You know, after all of this, it also makes me realize how excited I am as an investor in Manscape. I feel like, when you said all this, I'm like, oh, fantastic, mine. That's been doing really well. So thanks again for all the time and for taking my money. I really appreciate that.
01:12:41
Thank you. I'm I'm excited to see what you're you're in next it's gonna be. So Me too. I don't know what it'll be. Hopefully, once this COVID stuff dies down, I'll I'll I'll figure something.
01:12:50
Thanks, Paul. Really appreciate it.
00:00 01:13:01