#10 - Using $1k to Build $100M Deodorant Business

At some point we tried to raise more money and, you know, the investor was like, "The entire natural deodorant industry is something like $30 million a year. So why would anyone be interested in investing in a category that only has $30 million a year run rates?" And I was like, "If the natural deodorant industry is $30 million a year, we're the entire natural deodorant industry.

So my wife is currently 8 months pregnant. And she started using Native, and she was like, yeah, I just bought this like $12 deodorant. And I was like, is it Native? And she's like, yeah. And I was like, dude, I'm gonna— I'm about to have him on the podcast. Amazing. And then she was like, I was like, why did you choose to buy it? And she was saying the same thing, like, oh, you know, because of the baby, I'm like, I have a heightened awareness around what am I putting on my body and in my body. And she was like, it's paraben-free. And I, I was like, what's a paraben? I have no— what is a paraben? I actually don't even know.

And so you say we, but at the beginning it was just you, correct?

That's right. So we launched the company in July 2015. I remember I bought the domain name on my birthday in July 2015.

Why the name Native? Why did, why that domain?

Yeah, sure. I really liked what it stood for, which was like we wanted to use ingredients that were like native to the earth. Like we weren't trying to say, hey, this is owned by Native Americans, and we weren't trying to say we're a natural product and we'll never use an artificial ingredient, because I don't think that that's necessarily the case. What we wanted to say is like, look, we want to use ingredients that are native to the earth and we want to make those ingredients part of our deodorant as opposed to using ingredients that nobody can pronounce. And so that was the genesis of the name. Bought the name in July 2015, basically 12 days later launched the business. I was like, you know what, I think we can launch this business really quickly and see if it works.

But what do you mean? What do you mean launch the business? Because how do you even have deodorant? Uh, yeah. If I wanted to launch a deodorant brand, I'd be like, okay, I guess I need to manufacture some deodorant or buy some up. You know, how did you do something 12 days later?

Right. So you, you literally launched like without a bang. That's right. The opposite of a good launch.

Yeah, exactly. The opposite of a good launch. Uh, one sale, had zero product in inventory. I was gonna email the guy and basically be like, look, we were trying this out, it didn't work out. We're gonna refund your order. Have a nice life. Right. And then what happens is I'm working outta this coworking space called the Founders Dojo. And one of my friends in that coworking space is like, hey, I know an employee at Product Hunt. And what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna have him try and put you on the first page of Product Hunt again tomorrow. And usually you're not allowed to do that. You're not allowed to be on Product Hunt 2 days in a row, but he got me an exception and I'm on the first page of Product Hunt the day after I was on the second page.

And what was the little tagline at that time? Because I know that for businesses, the pitch evolves. Like right now when you described Native, it was like really compelling. I loved it. Made sense to me. It was kind of inspiring. Yeah, I should use products like that. But I know at the beginning our pitches like kind of suck, or they, you know, over time they suck less.

Yeah. Yeah. Oh, it was terrible.

What was it at the time?

We have a tangled history with the guests that you're going to talk about. So you mentioned Product Hunt. We had Ryan Hoover on the podcast. Yeah, you mentioned Founders Dojo. I think earlier when we were talking, Sam was on the podcast earlier. And your brother was the first episode of the podcast, actually till this day, the highest, highest sort of listened podcast. Oh, good for him. And so he said that, he said, told a story on the podcast, which was that at some point you guys were like ordering deodorants off Etsy and like you're just testing deodorants. You were like, put one under one arm, the other under the other arm, and like go run around the block and see which one worked better. Was he full of shit or was this real?

No, that was definitely real. We were like, before I launched Native, I was like, okay, you know what? I want a natural deodorant that works. Um, so does my sister cuz she's pregnant. So I started testing every deodorant I could fine. I tested like the Tom's and Maine's of the world, the Schmidts of the world, the, uh, you know, the Etsy deodorants of the world. And I was just like, look, these products aren't cutting it. I'm not sure if it's my personal body chemistry or what it is. But yeah, we were testing natural deodorants left and right from Etsy and from every store you could possibly imagine.

Gotcha. So you order those, that first batch, order that first batch, 50 customers.

Yeah. I'm living out of like Solomon's apartment. I, I, I moved to California like, you know, during that time period, basically moved to California, living out of my brother's apartment, order 100 units, start packing them on a dining room table. So I get like Uline boxes delivered to the house. I get a bunch of crinkle paper delivered to the house. What's wonderful is my brother is the messiest person in the world. When I moved in, he had a birthday cake from like 3 birthdays ago still in his refrigerator. I moved in and I'm like, I can't live like this. You're, you're too much of a pig to like, I can't live like this. And then I was like, you know what? This is perfect because I've got all this crinkle paper and all these shipping boxes and all this stuff floating around here and it's making a huge mess. And my brother's the only person in the world who wouldn't care. Yeah. He doesn't even notice the mess because he's just like living in a pigsty himself. And so we're shipping these boxes out, we ship 60 out, and then sales start dropping because, you know, we're off of Product Hunt.

Yeah.

And I'm like, okay. And my last business, we had built the entire business on PR. I start contacting all these like reporters and I'm like, hey, do you want to write about Native? And they're like, no, this is a deodorant. Let's, let's take a chill pill over here. This isn't that compelling. And this is in 2015. You know, like today there's a new natural deodorant that launches every day. In 2015, we're basically one of the few guys out there. And so we start like, we start running a bunch of Google Ads and, you know, we haven't fundraised, so it's all my own money. I spent $500.

How much money? Yeah, it sounds like you're gonna answer that. How much money did you decide, like, I'll put into my kind of testing and figuring out if this is real budget?

I found a way to burn money.

Yeah, exactly. And this is the, like, my mom would be so upset at me right now. She'd be like, go quit this business tomorrow. And so I'm like, okay, Google Ads aren't working. So we start advertising on Facebook and like pretty clearly we get some product market fit on Facebook. Facebook Ads start going well. And like what happens is I created this Excel spreadsheet where every day I tracked every single ad I had. The click-through rate, the, you know, CPA, the return on investment. And I start doing that every day starting, you know, probably August 2015 or maybe September 2015. And like, that's really how I started getting good at Facebook ads. I was tracking every single ad we ran on a daily basis.

And I'm going to guess you're now, you know, company got acquired, company's much larger, lots of people in the company. Do you still get hands-on with the Facebook ads?

Definitely. You're saying today? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Uh, I mean that, like, I, like, that's my, that was our bread and butter and I, I really enjoyed it and it's something I'm good at and it's not just a job for me. It's something I really enjoy. In fact, I was at Facebook's headquarters like 2 days ago talking about Facebook ads with a bunch of their execs and it's great, like, uh, to understand what products that they're launching and how they're thinking about the business. It's insane. But in any case, so, so we're like running these Facebook ads. We see a ton of product market fit and then our manufacturer, you know, scales from 100 100 units a week to about 500 units a week. She calls me up and she's like, Moise, this is a fantastic business. I used to be selling, you know, products at a farmer's market and now I'm making 500 deodorants for you a week. You know, they're charging me about $6 a unit, so it's pretty expensive, right? And I'm like, okay, great. I'm glad this is working for you. And she's like, we're going to scale this business. We're both going to like hit home runs with this business. And I was like, great. This is like, I really appreciate your commitment to this. 2 days later she calls me and she's like, my son is sick. I'm out. Like, forget it. I'm not making any more deodorant. And I was like, are you kidding me? We had a conversation 48 hours ago and you were in, 48 hours later you're out. And so that was really jarring. And I'm like, okay, you know what? We're selling 500 units of deodorant a week, which is, you know, a few grand in revenue and appears to be working well. But like, it's a few grand in revenue, you're out. How do I replace you? I don't really want to be making these deodorants in my apartment. Like, at some point, well, Solomon doesn't have— he doesn't even have pots. We're not going to be able to make this over here. And so I'm like, okay, maybe this business is over. And then I'm like, then I go on vacation with a girl that I was dating at the time. We go to like the Dominican Republic or something. We get back. I'm a little bit more like patient now. I call the manufacturer and I'm like, okay, look, how about you make 500 units a week for the next 4 months? And then afterwards I'll pay you like a few thousand dollars bonus. I think it was like a $5,000 bonus. I'm not entirely positive. I was like, I think I'll pay you a $5,000 bonus and then I'll find another. I'm committed to finding another manufacturer in that period of time. And, you know, she's like, okay, that sounds fair and reasonable. And so let's do it. And so she starts, you know, making the 500 a week again. And in the meantime, I'm like Googling and I'm like, who makes deodorants? Like, I've got a formula I want to make. Who can I get to make this? All right.

Quick break in the action to talk about HustleCon. So as you guys know, this podcast is published by The Hustle. They send out a daily email newsletter with the best news of the day, everything you need to know about tech. But that's not all they do. I've been 2 or 3 times to HustleCon. It's a conference. It's happening December 2nd and 3rd in Oakland. They rent out the Paramount Theater, which is really an amazing venue. I saw Chris Rock there, Jerry Seinfeld there, and I guess HustleCon is happening there. They have a stacked lineup of speakers. So when I went, founder of WeWork was talking. Let me look at the list for this year. Founder of Hims, the founder of Madison Reed, Strava, Calm, Method and Ollie, Lime, a bunch of CEOs and founders of multi-billion dollar companies and startups that come on stage and share insights about how they did what they did, how they got started. And HustleCon is very different than a normal conference. Normal conferences are kind of stuffy. You wear, you know, you see a lot of people in suits, like shallow networking going on. HustleCon is very different vibe. Meet a ton of people who are guests in attendance, but also the speakers are very approachable. So they are not only sharing good insights on the stage, but you get to meet them afterwards. And that's a really cool experience. So highly recommend coming. In fact, I'm bringing out the editor of this podcast, has to come because I just think it's a really great opportunity. He's 19, 20 years old. This is an amazing way to sort of get in the mix. If you're thinking about starting an idea, a business, or you are— you want to do that someday, or you're doing it right now, either way, listening to speakers tell their stories, being in the audience amongst a bunch of other like-minded people, that is a really, really good way to get amongst it. So that's my genuine recommendation for HustleCon. They gave me a promo code. Let me give this to you guys so that you can get a discount if you do want to get a ticket. The promo code when you check out is MYFIRSTMILLION, all caps, all one word. Again, that's MYFIRSTMILLION. That'll give you $50 off a ticket to HustleCon. And you know what, if you are listening to this and you want to go to HustleCon and you can't afford the tickets, I will buy 4 tickets for guests myself and I will send you to HustleCon. You got to figure out your travel to get there, but I'll buy your tickets to the conference itself. Email me, puri.shawn@gmail.com. Happy to give this this as a gift to anybody because I think that going to HustleCon, it can really like sort of change the trajectory of your business life. One meaningful relationship or one key insight while you're there, that can make it worth it. That's been my experience with conferences in the past. So, okay, you guys know the deal. HustleCon, December 2nd and 3rd. Try to get there if you can.

I call some guys up, like there was a guy in Chicago I'll never forget. I called him up, he— it was like an hour-long conversation., and I probably said 5 words. He talked the entire time and he's like, yeah, so we'll make your deodorant. And I'm like, you don't know anything about my needs and you spoke for 59 minutes and 55 seconds. So like, I don't think you're the right guy for me. Red flag. Yeah, terrible red flag. Finally, we find a contract manufacturer that's like, yeah, we have a low minimum order quantity, a low MOQ. I think their MOQ is 80. And so I was like, great, we can, we get, we want more than 80. I'm not gonna like, uh, you know, bankrupt the business. I don't have to mortgage my house based on this. And so she starts making $500 a week for us in this tiny, like, 800-square-foot manufacturing facility in the United States. And things start going well. And so, like, you know, we launched, like, you know, in July 2015, we were doing a couple hundred dollars in revenue a month. By January 2016, we're probably doing around $75K in revenue a month and things are starting to scale well.

Wow.

Then like, you know, the first, the beginning of the summer hits in 2016, in May 2016, and somehow all of our deodorants start melting. I go to our shipping facility, which is located in San Leandro. It's like these two guys called Fafilco, nicest guys in the world. You know, I call them all the time. We like, you know, they're a small business. I'm a small business, easy to talk to the owners. I go over there, they're like, you know, it's probably an hour drive. I rent a Zipcar and I go over there and I'm just looking at our deodorants and I put my finger in one of the deodorants. Because it like looks weird and it turns out it's got the consistency of lotion. You can just put your finger all the way down to the bottom and I'm like, holy shit.

And you have like how many, how many units are we talking here?

You know, we probably have a couple thousand units, which is a lot of money at the time because that's like, you know, we're not, we're not doing a ton of sales.

That's a lot of lotion.

It's a lot of lotion. Yeah, it's no deodorant and a lot of lotion. And so our manufacturer at the time, like she didn't like the woman who ran it didn't fly. So she was randomly— had driven up to San Francisco to have a meeting with me like the day beforehand. And so like all of this is just like works out randomly. So like I call her up and I'm like, hey, are you still in San Francisco? I want to have another meeting because I think there's a problem with the deodorants you just shipped me. And she's like, yeah, I'll come by your office later this afternoon. She comes by and I'm like, here, I brought a few of the deodorants. And she's like, holy shit, what happened to these? Like, you know, she sees it immediately. She calls up her facility and she's like, stop making deodorants. We're We've got a problem here. And I'm like, okay, well maybe this business is over again. Like, you know, we, we move to a new manufacturer. Like, what are we gonna do here?

And are you the type to get down on it? Uh, what's the, like when stuff like this goes horribly, awfully wrong, are you, some people go inwards, they get very quiet. Some people get angry. Some people get sad. What's your reaction?

I'm like all three of those. Anger is the number one thing for sure. Like I, I'm fuming. But I think for like the first hour, I'm just like, forget it, this isn't worth it. And I think every time I have a major problem like that for the first hour, I'm less like, this isn't worth my time anymore. I'm quitting. Right. Divorce right away. Yeah, exactly. Divorce right away. And then like hour 2 comes along and you start getting like determined and you like, you know, grit your teeth and you're like, wait, I'm better than this. I'm going to fix this problem. I've got something that's working for me. This is not going to stand in my way. I don't care what it takes. I'm going to fix this problem. It's like hour 1, I'm like, forget this business. Hour 2, I'm like, nothing can stop this business. We are going to— we are going to succeed.

You're like, thank you. Yeah, you bring it on.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I'm like, problem? Don't worry about it. You've got the best problem solver in the world right here. And so, you know, like what had been happening is that over the course of the last 8 months since this— or like last 4 months since this woman had been making deodorant for me, like we'd gotten a lot of customer feedback basically saying our formula was kind of mediocre. There were a lot of problems that we were trying to solve for. People were like, look, it does a great job at absorbing wetness and blocking odor, but it's really flaky. It's hard to apply. Men in particular were like, look, I've got hair under my arms. I like— this pulls the hair under my arms out and they're sticking to the deodorant. And so for a while we've been attempting to make a better deodorant, like a better formula. And I've been sending out samples to people and say, like, you know, our best customers who are like communicating with me and I'd be like, hey, what do you think of this formula? Is it any better than like, you know, the formula that you actually paid for?. And a lot of people, like, you know, we had said we had done hundreds of these formulas. I, I was at home, I would rub the formulas on t-shirts, throw 'em in the washer, the dryer, and see if they stained shirts. And like, you know, I, I have 1,000 of these stained shirts. Solomon's like, you're running the washer and dryer every day. What's going on over here?

And you're not a scientist or biochemist or so, so how are you even figuring out the formula, right? Like whenever I listen to a guest tell these stories, I think to myself, could I do this business? And when I, I think there's a lot of things that are relatable, right? Cuz you started this with, with essentially no— you didn't have to be a programmer, right?

Yeah, that's right.

You made an e-commerce site, that's great. You didn't make the stuff yourself, you found a manufacturer just by Googling who the heck makes deodorant.

Yeah, that's right.

But then when it comes to like figuring out the right formula to prevent flakiness, that's one where I'd be like, well, I don't even know what's— I don't know what to do there. So how were you figuring this out?

Yeah, that's really interesting. Like I remember starting the business, I told one of my friends from law school I'm starting this business and her husband was like, what the hell do you know about deodorant? You know nothing. And I was like, yeah, you're right. And in the next 6 months I will be an expert on deodorant. And really what happens is like you email all of these customers, uh, like, you know, the customers are like, hey, here's the problem. Uh, customers will even like do diagnoses and they're like, hey, I think it's because of this. And I'm like, oh wow, great. Thank you for like doing the, like the science that I was supposed to do. But in reality here it was a little easier because like one, working with our contract manufacturer, they did have a chemist and two, it was easy to diagnose is the problem because with deodorants you want to balance the amount of powder and the amount of oils you have in that deodorant to make a product that like absorbs wetness, blocks odor, but still glides on really easily. And so like, you know, sometimes we'd make a bad batch of our deodorant and we'd be like, oh, how did this batch turn out? Because like, you know, oh, we forgot to add this amount of oils. And so we start pouring, like, you know, we take a look at it and we're like, oh, this is what we forgot to add oils. And it's way pow— like way more flaky. So you're like, you know what? It's the oils that make it glide well.

How frequently were you going to the actual manufacturer? And also, it sounds like it really paid off that you weren't just using a Chinese manufacturer that's hard to speak with, hard to work with, and doesn't guarantee quality.

Definitely. Uh, so one, we've never used a Chinese manufacturer. All of our deodorants are made in the United States, uh, for two reasons. One, you're right, it allows us to have a really flexible supply chain. Two, it allows us to have like faster demand creation. So like, you know, when we, we give them a purchase order, they're able to make it much faster. And three, I would be scared as hell using a Chinese Chinese deodorant. Like, that is something I don't want to do. I don't know what quality control looks like over there, and it may look great the day I go over there and terrible the next day. Yeah, and we didn't want it. We didn't want any of that kind of stuff. Like, the whole point here was we want to avoid the Doves of the world, and in order to avoid Dove antiperspirant, make it in the United States with ingredients you know, like, you know where they're being sourced from and you know what they are, right?

Okay, and we're gonna jump back into the story, but one more tactical piece When you— when I build, I build products that are like software.

Sure.

And with software, it's pretty easy to iterate. It's pretty easy to try, you know, A/B test. We can send one, one visitor of our, of our app to see one experience and the other visitor to see another experience. Very easy to do that sort of thing. How can you talk tactically about how you iterate with a physical product?

Sure. Uh, I'll talk tactically about how we did it at the beginning first, and then how we do it today. In the beginning, what we do is we send out samples to our best customers. Customers who were like, were vocal and be like, hey, I love your deodorant, I'm going to be a customer, but I wish it did this. And we'd say, hey, we're trying to solve your issues. Here are two— like, I remember we were doing this. I was like, this is version 7 of the deodorant we produced and this is version 8 of the deodorant we produced. They're like, you know, you don't know what's in them. We're giving you free samples. Compare it to the one that you purchased from us and tell us what you like more. And like, that's the type of feedback that we would do early on.

And that's unusual, right? Like, I've bottled deodorant my whole life. I've never had anyone from the deodorant company ever reach out to me. I've never spoke to them. They never sent me different variations. So this must have been kind of unusual for people, I guess.

That's kind of amazing. Is that standard? 'Cause I've never heard.

It's definitely not standard. 'Cause like we have this direct relationship with consumers that allows us to monitor repeat purchase rates. And have a direct line of communication with them. Been really phenomenal for us because things like baking soda particle size are unique and you have no idea what's better. Like, you know, in a laboratory versus in a consumer setting, you're going to have very different results. And so that's how we A/B test formula changes.

That's amazing. So you guys are sending different versions of Native deodorant formulas to batches of people, cohorts of people, and then you're able to see these guys repurchase rate at 28% versus this one at 21%. Therefore, we believe this formula is better.

That's exactly right. Yeah, but we're doing like tiny changes, like, you know, like changes that wouldn't even influence the ingredient deck that we're like, hey, look, do you think we should put in, you know, 1% of this ingredient or 1.05% of this ingredient to see what's better?

Like, you're like nerdy deodorant stuff.

Yeah, exactly. We're getting into— yeah, we're getting into the weeds as much as possible.

Right.

Okay.

All right. So we're going to hop back in. So rewind to that part of the story where deodorant Lotion. Oh my God, we gotta fix this. And you guys are, you're starting to troubleshoot. So this is sort of like near-death experience number 2. Definitely.

Take it from there. So, so we talked to our manufacturer and we're like, look, let's first, we're not sending out any more of these deodorants that are lotion. We're either gonna refund the customers and close the business or do something. And so what happened is we, we had been working on, uh, different, uh, deodorant formula to fix for consistency. And so we're like, look, we think we have good feedback on here. We don't have as much feedback as we would've liked. You know, we still had a bunch of samples that we'd sent to customers and hadn't followed up with them yet. And so we're like, look, push, push is coming to shove. We're either gonna close this business or switch formulas. Let's switch formulas and see what happens. So we switch formulas basically because we have to, we think it's supposed to be better. And we start shipping that out. We email all the customers and we're like, hey, look, your product was supposed to ship out today. We had a problem. It's now gonna take 2 weeks to ship out. Customers are irate. Just absolutely irate. And I don't blame them. Like, you know, deodorant is not something you can really go without. Like, you know, it's like toothpaste. I need this, so I'm going to go get another product. They're irate, but a lot of them are really kind and they're like, hey, we appreciate the, you know, the honesty. We're willing to be patient for it. 2 weeks later, we start shipping it out. This is May 2016. We're probably doing around $100K in revenue at this point. And immediately we see reviews go up. Like the quality of our reviews has gone up significantly. You know, 6 weeks later, we'll start seeing repeat purchase rates go up as well. Like we can monitor the cohorts and early on we get a really good indicator that repeat purchase rates are going to be substantially better with the new version of our formula as compared to the old version. And so we're like, you know what, maybe this, like, you know, this terrible experience has led to something really good, a much better formula. And then like, you know, May 2016, we're doing $100K in revenue. Revenue a month. I'm still the only employee at the company.

Yeah, I was gonna say, how many people are there? So you're saying we, but we is me.

Yeah, just me. Just me doing $100K in revenue a month or, uh, something like that. Just me at the company. I'm doing like customer service, have a really good idea of what the problems are at the company, doing the operation. So I'm talking to the manufacturer all the time, doing Facebook ads to understand like product market fit.

So, so let's talk money for a second. This podcast is called My First Million. Yeah. It's called My First Million because since, you know, when I was growing up, I wanted to have a million Yeah, who doesn't? Who doesn't? Exactly. I was not, you know, in Silicon Valley there's a lot of people that cool thing to do is say I'm here to change the world. I'm down with changing the world for sure. But let's be clear, if I'm starting a business, I'm trying to make money. Definitely. I'm not afraid to say that. So my whole startup career was around how do I build a business that makes money for me, for my investors, for my employees? And in order to do so, we're going to have to make an amazing product that customers love. Otherwise, why would they give us their money? Money. And so I like to think— I like to give my listeners an understanding because a lot of people who listen to this podcast right now, they're commuting to work, they work at a 9-to-5 job, they have aspirations of either leaving that job and going and starting a startup, or they're doing a startup, it's not quite taking off. You know, they hear you say, we're only at $100,000 a month in revenue, and they're like, oh my God, I wish I could get to $100,000 a month in revenue. So let's talk money for a second. Before you started the business, what was it? You know, were you already doing well financially? Were you, were you comfortable? Where were you at before. Let's start with that question.

Sure. I was an attorney in New York for a couple of years, and during that time I basically paid off my law school student loans. One of my law school classmates and I left our jobs, you know, back in 2012 to start an e-commerce business. We sold that business for a 7-figure sum and like we hadn't raised any money. So I would say I was comfortable, certainly. But like, you know, wasn't a, you know, wasn't going to be able to say, okay, you know what, I'm going to retire for the rest of my life. I was in a position where I was like, okay, I bought myself a couple of years of not having to worry about rent and not worry after having to worry about, you know, food or vacations. But I haven't bought myself, you know, 50 years of not having to work.

Right. And so now you get to this $100,000 a month of revenue. Yeah. And it's taken the business about how long at this point?

It's taken about 11, 10 or 11 months.

10 or 11 months. Great. And what does that mean for a deodorant business? So, you know, you make $100,000, but margin-wise, what were you doing? You know, what were you able to take home at the end of that? Sure.

Were you break even?

Were you better than that? How were you doing?

Yeah, um, so we were selling $100,000 of deodorant a month. You know, the deodorant was costing us a lot of money at the time because we didn't really have any economies of scale. I was the only employee and I wasn't taking a salary, but I'd say on $100,000 in business— I'm guessing because I don't really remember— I'd say the company probably made about $8,000 in net profit, right, uh, selling $100,000 of deodorant.

And you and your brother are very business savvy. You've invested in, I don't know, 80+ businesses.

Yeah, something like that.

Something, something like that. You've started multiple businesses. So what was your mindset around this? Did you think, man, this is gonna be a big business? Were you like, this is just kind of a fun project? I guess how were you thinking about it when it was at that stage? 'Cause $100K a month is good revenue, but you're only taking home $8K maybe. That does— it's not clear at that time. And there's not a whole bunch of other examples you could go look at at other big different businesses that were startups. So how did you think about this business?

Definitely. I think the first like 4 months of the business, I was like, look, let's see if— let's launch this business. I'm bored. I don't have a job. Let's see what happens when I launch the business. Pretty early on, I thought that there could be product market fit. And I was like, you know what? We're seeing good return on investment when we buy ads on Facebook, not necessarily on Google at the time, and even on Pinterest, we're seeing a good return on investment. The problems that we have are we have a low repeat purchase rate, a good product, but kind of mediocre. And like, um, you know, a decent review, uh, average, something like 4 stars, right? And so I was like, look, if we can improve our product, we really have something. I saw product-market fit with the product, but I also saw that there was a larger opportunity if we could just make our product better.

And why not hire people? I think a lot of people like to rush to hire people. I'm anti-hiring people. I want to maximize the sort of earnings per capita in my company. Yeah, definitely. And like, how did you resist that? What was thought process around that because you're doing it as a one-man show?

Sure. One, we like, you know, in Silicon Valley a bunch of people raise money. We also raise money, to be clear. We raised about $50,000 in November of 2015, so like a few months after we started, and then another $250,000 in about April of 2016.

And this was friends and family, or this was—

these were both outside investors that I just met. Like, you know, I had somebody introduce me to them and both of them invested and and, you know, so we had about $300,000 in the bank account plus the $1,000 I kicked in. So probably about $3,000, $301,000. And so we're like, you know, we've got some cash but not a ton of cash. Uh, I, I, I didn't hire anyone for a couple reasons. One was super busy trying to run the business. Like if you're doing marketing operations and customer service, that's a full-time job. On Saturdays I would spend the entire day basically, I'd go to Workshop Cafe, and crank out a bunch of customer service like inquiries. So people got responded to within 24 hours. So one was really busy. And then two, I was afraid that the business wasn't going to survive much longer. I didn't want to hire someone and then fire that person 3 months later because the business was collapsing. And four, I wasn't sure I could afford them. Sure, we had $300,000 in the bank account, but we had $8,000 in net profit. If I hire someone between employment taxes, their salary and benefits, we're certainly giving up that $8,000. And so I was like, I don't know how long we're gonna be able to afford this person. The future of the business doesn't have a, like, we don't have a ton of profit right now, so I don't know how long I'll be able to afford you.

And what was your schedule like? So you're saying Saturday, Saturdays is customer service day. How do you, when you are the one doing operations, marketing, and customer service, plus everything else that goes into all the little things that go into a business, how were you organizing your time and your day? Are you like a, I work 18 hours a day kind of guy? Or tell us about like kind of your schedule.

Yeah, I was like, I was waking up and going to work. Yeah. I mean, work until like, you know, 7, 8 PM. Early on in the business, probably the first 4 or 5 months, I was doing all the packaging as well, the shipping as well, out of my apartment. And so like I'd go home at 7 PM, turn on Netflix, and while I was watching Netflix, I'd be packing boxes and shipping them out, right?

And, uh, so you were Michael Scott, you were Dwight on sales, you were Darryl in the warehouse, you were the whole office.

So what caused the business to grow from that $100K a month to $1 million a month? Yeah, that's a huge jump. Was it just spending more on ads? Did you guys— obviously the formula is getting better. —so obviously the product is getting better, but is it just, is it just like that? It's a million little things getting better, or was there a breakthrough or a point of emphasis that really was highlighted?

So it sounds like focusing on repeat purchase was a key insight that obviously if you're in D2C businesses, that's, that's kind of known as a good standard. But if you're new, you know, That's something to hone in on. How did you know that at the start? Did a mentor tell you, hey, repeat purchase rate is the thing to key in on?

I think for like, uh, it depends on the product you're in. If I was selling Casper mattresses, I would be concerned about new customer acquisition because how many mattresses is someone going to buy? You know what, I bet Casper is doing a really good job with repeat purchase rate, but like when you're selling a consumable like deodorant, the whole point is that people are brand loyal and once they find a deodorant, they're are going to stick with it for a really long time. I used Axe deodorant from like, you know, probably 12 years old till I was 30 years old, like 18 years. And so for me, I was like, look, we have to find— like, if we're producing a deodorant, we need to make sure that people love it and they don't just churn and go back to their Doves or Degrees of the world.

And why were you able to charge $12 for deodorant? Is it still $12, by the way? It's still $12.

And a normal deodorant, you know, Axe or Old Spice or whatever, they're not, I mean, what's the— I almost don't even think about it. I just pick it up off the shelf typically. It's, yeah, $3.

Yeah, what is it, $3 to $4 is like a traditional price to anti— like a traditional price.

And so when you were going into this, weren't you, you know, if I was your friend, yeah, at that time I would have been like, hey bud, you sure you're gonna be able to 4x the price of deodorant? Like, are we sure that's a good idea?

And so you, you've said the phrase customer service a bunch. Yeah, people are playing the drinking game at home, taking a shot every time you say customer service. They're dead. And so a lot of people, like, you know, we just got acquired by Amazon. Amazon has this phrase, you know, customer obsessed is what Jeff Bezos says. A lot of people say that, but I think you guys are doing something specifically that your actions back up your words. I saw some little things like, you know, you know, first the stories you told about reaching out to customers. Yeah, 20 days later saying, what could we be doing better? Sending them different formulas to try out, working with them. But also right when you sign up, you get a funny email from you guys. Like, talk about some of the things you guys have done on the customer service or customer obsessed side.

Sure. I guess like one of the, the goals that were one of the values we really have is to try and build a human business. Like, we want you to know that when you communicate with us us, there's a human being on this side of the business, and it's not some corporate entity. And you're not going to like get one of those, uh, you know, Comcast-like responses where people are like, I don't care about this, let me transfer you to some other customer service representative and like they'll deal with it. And they'll transfer— well, when you contact us, you— a real human being who sits in our office responds. And then we try and build a really human element in a few ways. Uh, one is when you order from us, we send you this over-the-top order confirmation email an over-the-top shipping confirmation email. When you order from us, we say, hey, we're popping bottles of champagne and this is fantastic. Um, and when you— when we ship the order, we say, hey, look, um, we're writing your name over the Golden Gate Bridge. We're putting a sign in our parking lot that says world's best customer with your name and photo on it. And it's really over the top, meant to be playful. And so, uh, so you know that the brand that you're purchasing from sort of subscribes to your values as well, which is we don't take this too seriously, but at the same time, we're really— We take it very seriously. Yeah, exactly, yeah. Like, this is deodorant, and so like, we know that this isn't like a product that you're gonna, is gonna make a huge impact in your life. This isn't like having a kid, but at the same time, it's important that you use a deodorant that works, and you know, you're buying from a brand that really resonates with you.

So, you've hit the scale that really matters now. You're doing $1 million a month. Yeah. At this point, you know, any non-believer at this point has to sort of be thinking, okay, There's something real here. And the company size at this time was still pretty small, right? How many people were at Native at this time?

There's probably around 5 employees.

Wow. And, and so you're, you've got this business on your hands and you ultimately decided to sell. What was the thinking around that? Why, why decide to sell when things are sort of, when the going is good? And I'm going to ask you how you sold it because as I've learned, selling a company is both art and science and I'm curious to hear how it all went down. Why, why decide to sell in the first place?

Well, what happened is that like somebody came knocking on our door in about February of 2017, indicating that they wanted to purchase the business. And we're like, look, I, I'd never heard of them. And I'm like, hey, you know, we're growing. I don't know who you are. I think this is like, you know, this isn't serious. And it turned out that they were like, you know, this was a privately held company doing $1 billion in revenue and it was very serious. And so that really kickstarted the process. They started knocking on the door and like the knocks became loud enough that we couldn't ignore it any longer. And that's when the process got kicked off. It turned out that they were a lot less serious than I anticipated. Like, I went out to meet with them and, you know, they're like, okay, great, send us all of your, you know, financials and your information. I sent it out in like June of 2017. They don't even reply back for like 90 days after. Like, they're just radio silent. I follow up with them. I'm like, hey, is this still going on? If it's not, no problem. Just give me a heads up because, you know, at this point, you We've started a process and we're talking to a bunch of other parties. I mean, I don't say all that. I just say, if you're not interested anymore, no problem, just let me know. But just radio silence, like being ghosted from an ex or from like a, you know, a Tinder date is what's happening.

And were they, you think they were just picking your brains to get the numbers from you and then they were like, great, thank you very much. Or what? Or were they just bureaucratic internally?

I think they were just like, I think there was like a little bit of a brain drain going on. And I think that it was also just like, you know, They have their own business and they're like, you know what, maybe this is too small. We're a billion-dollar business. Maybe the, you know, the right person internally was like, we don't really care about this business. I think it was a bunch of factors, but at some point, like, you know, we started going our own way and we're like, okay, because you knocked on the door so loud, we started our own process and we've got all these other suitors. They ended up coming back like, you know, a few months before we sold the— or like a month before we sold the business. And they're like, okay, yeah, we're interested again. And I was like, I was like, no, uh, I'm not going through this again. We're really far along in the process with a bunch of other guys, and you guys don't have the credibility to continue doing this, right?

And so you're, you're selling the business. Do you feel like you know how to do this process?

Definitely not. Um, this is like, you know, look, there are so many different emotions that happen all of the time when you're trying to sell a business. I was really thankful that, like, you know, my brother was there with me. He had just sold his business. He had hired a banker and sort of gone through the transaction knew what to expect. So we start this process ourselves. You know, we create a one-page document that's like a teaser. We send it out to a bunch of potential acquirers. It doesn't even have our name on it. They say, yes, are you interested? Or like, they're like, yeah, we're interested in this business. They're like, no, we don't care about the deodorant category. Uh, get out of here. The guys who are interested sign an NDA and we send them a book that's like, you know, probably 120 pages long telling them all the information about our business. This is what our financials look like. This is how many people we have. This is where our business is growing.

The banker put that together or you put that together?

The banker— the banker and, and our team put that together. So a bunch of people have this book and then what happens is that they indicate— they send us letters of interest where they're basically like, yeah, we are interested in this business. If they are— if they're not, they just go away. But if they are interested in the business, having looked at our financials, they say, we're interested in this business. We think that we would purchase this business between, you know, $10 million and $20 million or something something to that effect. And then what you do is you say, you know what, these are the— these are the guys who I think are really serious about this. Like, if some guy's offering you $10 to $20 million and you're doing $40 million in revenue, probably don't— not worth a conversation. So, you know, we take a bunch of these, and I think there's 12 suitors at the time, maybe 14. And so we say, okay, everyone come to our office in San Francisco and have a conversation with Moise. And so this is like The Bachelor.

You're, you're sitting there with the roses And you invite them all to the party.

12 of those guys in that room are paid to like do a 90-day diligence process. Yeah, exactly. Oh, what am I doing here?

Yeah, they had to pop a Viagra just to do a deal like this. Yeah, exactly. They're not used to this.

Yeah, exactly. I, like, I don't even know how to, like, get a reference on P&G to see if they're serious because no one has seen them in the market.

And at this point, had you put out a price yourself of, like, this is our target? No, you're letting everybody—

we're letting everyone come in with bids.

And did you— what did you internally— what did you internally think about this? You know, you— are you dreaming about a certain number? How are you internally thinking about the price? Price?

Great question. I'm not sure. Like, you know, there are, there are times where I'm like, okay, like the month, a month closes and I'm just like, we generated, you know, $4 million in revenue this, this month. Add another zero to that price, buddy. Add two more zeros. And then there'll be like one bad day where I'm like, you know what? Uh, we had this like hiccup because of operations and like, you know, something happened and, and now I'm like, okay, I'll take anything.

Yeah. Take it off my hands.

Somebody come in and give me anything. And like, you know, it's, it's like a roller coaster, and the roller coaster isn't even week to week, it's hour to hour. And like, you know, during diligence, people are asking for random— there was one company that asked for every email that we had ever sent out, a copy of it, the open rate, the click-through rate, and the revenue generated from that email. And I'm like, look, at this point we have a million customers, we send out millions of emails a month, and you want this from the beginning of the time that we launched the business? And they're like, yeah, that's just to make the first board meeting really productive. And I was like, the board is going to go through through emails because even I barely like, I mean, I look at that, but I don't look at that on like a quarterly basis. And so, you know, they're just like, so you're up at 2 AM preparing these things for them. And there's like a bunch of these acquirers. So there's a bunch of them. Some guy, like the guys who were most interested in the business ended up dropping out in the, during the, during the acquisition conversations. And I was like, I don't know why you did that. And so, you know, all of these things are happening and you're just, it's like a roller coaster. The company that you thought was gonna marry you, like, gets up to the altar and they're like, we're outta here. And you're just like, oh my God, who's gonna marry me now?

And I remember, uh, when we were going through the process just now, cuz it's pretty fresh on my mind, just a couple months ago, there are these moments where you're having a conversation and certain things, it's like they say something and you in your head, you're like, this is the moment I need to say something. And whatever I say right now is gonna really actually swing the way this whole process is going. And, uh, there are these like key moments that are just happening over a coffee or on the phone or whatever. Do you remember any of those kind of conversations or key moments along the way?

I feel like a deal is not close to being done. It's not real until the deal almost falls through. That's like the test. You're right. It's not a real deal. Like, I was talking to— so Michael Birch was on this, sitting where you're sitting a couple weeks ago, and he sold Bebo to AOL for $850 million. And I was— I didn't ask him this on the podcast, but I've asked him this before. I said, you know, was it smooth? How did it go? And he was like, you know, he was kind of like, you know, I just let the bankers kind of do their thing. It was such a big transaction that there's all these lawyers, all these bankers. It's not pleasant, but we almost got— he's like, we got to the very end. And then with Bebo, which was a social network, they started getting sued by the music companies at the 11th hour. Oh God. And the music companies knew, hey, these guys are about to sell. We have all the leverage in the world right now to just, just go ahead and sue and they'll have to pay. They have to settle because they want to close some deal. So, you know, they, they go and sue and I think it's like a $15 million, uh, like settlement is like needed or whatever. So Michael goes to the investors, the VCs, and he's like, hey, um, I might have got the numbers wrong, is something like $10, $15 million. He goes to VCs, he's like, hey, look, to close this deal, we really need to just settle this, this issue, and then, you know, we can go sell this company. These guys are not going to go away unless we do this. And they were like, yeah, you know, you're right, you really got to settle with them. And he's like, no, we got to settle with them. And they're like, no, no, no, I think you're going to settle with them. And so he ended up out, basically out of his own share, had to like settle with these companies in order to settle the lawsuits to get the deal to close. And of course he holds it against those VCs like, you know, to this day. Definitely. But these are the crazy stories that happen at the end of the deal, you know, right when you think you have it.

That's really terrible because like, I never felt it wasn't a we with my investors. Like they were all like super happy and super excited about getting the deal done. And, you know, if someone had come to me, if one of our investors had been like, I don't love this and I'm going to try and vote no and fuck this up, I would have like been devastated, right? And like, felt like there was a knife in my back, right? So I don't know who those investors are that are active in Michael, but he— I hope he should mention their name everywhere he goes.

Yeah. So, so this is actually that, that mindset. Your brother's told me about this. He says, he's like, yeah, my brother Moise, you know, he's, he's great. He does a great job. He's like, but if you flip the, the, the temper switch, he's like, he has this like retribution streak where it's like, if you wrong me, I will publicly right the wrong for the next 50 years.

I'm devoted to it.

Give me an example of this.

Yeah, sure. I'll give you an example right now. There's this company called— they said no to us because I was like, hey, I want to launch this refillable deodorant early on when we were launching the business. I was like, yeah, we're launching this refillable deodorant. And they're like, no, this is terrible. Get out of here. And like, you know, in the last 6 months, I don't even remember what, but they invested in a refillable deodorant company. And I'm like, well, I see that you're doing a refillable deodorant now.

I thought such a bad idea, huh? You reached out back?

No, I didn't even say anything. I was like, this like stands by itself. Like, you know, you know that you're doing this and I know that you're doing this, right? But like, you know, do what you got to do. But you could have had the oppor— you had the opportunity 4 years ago.

I also heard the sort of once you get to Procter Gamble, obviously they have a sort of much tighter, you know, view of risk tolerance around Twitter and some of, some of your tweets. How's that been for you since, since joining, you know, the mothership?

Basically what happened was sent us this letter. And so I tweeted at fucking and I was like, if you're wondering when I decided to destroy your business, it was when you sent me this letter. Like before, I was like, you know, you guys are a gnat and I don't care about your tiny business and I'll let you exist. And now it's personal. And like, you know, my life's mission is to make sure that you regret sending this letter. Every morning you should wake up and you should be like, fuck, I sent that letter and now my life is fucked. Someone called someone a PNG and they're like, you have to take down these tweets. And I was like, why should we take down these tweets? We should show how competitive we are. When people come after us, you know, uh, we, we like go after them 10 times harder. You know, like, uh, Donald Trump is always like, we're building this wall 10 feet higher. That's basically what I was like. You come after us, we're building this wall 10 feet higher.

And where did that come from? Where did that strategy or mindset come from? Is that like at an early age, were you doing this with your brother, like competitiveness with him? Or where is that?

I think it came from him. I think he just does a better job of like hiding it. Yeah, he's just more charismatic than I am. So he says it and everyone's like, oh, you know what? You know, Solomon's like funny and like, this is good and good-humored. And when I say it, people are like, Moisés is vicious. He's just more charismatic. So it comes off nicer, but he's got it himself for sure.

I love it. Okay, so company finally does the offer, does come through. Procter Gamble was serious. Take it from there. How did it end? How did it feel? And where are you guys at now? That now?

Yeah, sure. So one, I think one of the issues with these types of companies is always about like, or with a deal is like deal certainty. How comfortable are you that the other guys are going to close or try and do something at the 11th hour? Because like, you know, if you say no to all of these other companies and then your deal doesn't get consummated, you come back and you're like, hey, do you want to do a deal? They're like, what's wrong? Why did the first acquirer not end up buying you? I've got the leverage here. Damaged goods. Yeah, exactly. And so there was a lot of deal certainty with P&G. Like, they were fantastic partners throughout this all. They were like, you know, they came out to San Francisco, we met with them, we went to dinner with them, they made the offer. They came back again before the deal signed and they're like, this is how it's going to be post-acquisition. Like, this is how you're going to report to us. This is how we're thinking about the business. How do you feel about it? And I was like, wow, you guys aren't trying to like hide anything or be like— you guys are just genuinely nice Midwestern people who are honest and like mean what you say, right? And so that was— that gave me a lot of comfort going into the deal and that was was wonderful. And as soon as we bought the trademark, I basically knew the deal was going to— I mean, there was only 5 more days, but I knew the deal was going to close. Since then, you know, we've grown the business a ton. We've launched into Target, into Walmart, where like the number 1 selling natural deodorant in Target, the number 1 selling natural deodorant in Walmart. Native Coconut and Vanilla is the best-selling deodorant SKU at Target over the last 52 weeks. And we haven't even been there for 52 weeks.

One question on this. The sort of, what's the, it's not flavors. What's the sense? Yeah. You had these, like, I saw something like a pumpkin spice latte scent. Yeah, definitely. Is this like, is this just like your marketing genius or what is going on here? Yeah, it's super fun.

Cause basically we're like, look, why are we taking this stuff too seriously? And like, you know, you can use a scent for a season and you don't have to go through the entire deodorant stick before you can get rid of it in the same way that you're not like, if you open up a Diet Coke, cause you want to like treat yourself, you don't have to drink the whole thing. Thing, right? Or you don't have to have an entire, like, you know, Snickers king-size bar. So we're like, look, why don't we launch these really fun scents? They work and they're effective, they're good for PR, and hopefully you find out about the deodorant through Native Pumpkin Spice Latte, and then you're like, this is a great deodorant, I don't want to smell like pumpkin spice latte in April, maybe I should buy the, you know, coconut and vanilla scent.

This is what I love about businesses and startups, is if you're Procter Gamble, you're not afraid of Unilever. You should be really afraid of of the Moys at his dining table thinking up pumpkin-sized latte scents and getting PR and really getting this thing off the ground. Like, it's, it's the, you know, one or two people in a bedroom definitely are actually the threats to these like giant multi-billion dollar companies because you have creativity and you have nothing to lose. Yeah, exactly. Fresh perspective. Yeah. And like all the things you've told me so far just fall into those buckets. And if I'm listening to this, I'm taking one thing away. It's like, do not be afraid and do not sort of conform to the sort of practices of the industry. You didn't know anything about deodorant. You went in with basically no money, no staff, no nothing, and you figured it out. And I like, what do you think is the message for, you know, the next you who maybe doesn't have this sort of confidence today? What is your message to that person who's thinking about an idea like this?

And what was it like when the deal closed? Day of, money hits the bank, this is my first million. Yeah, people want to know what is it? What changed? What did it feel like? What did you do? Did you start balling out of control? Like, tell us you started balling out of control. Sure. Yeah.

Yeah. I trust you when you say it. 'Cause there's a lot of people that say it that I'm like, okay, you don't have to say the politically correct thing around me. It's cool to just be like, hey, money is amazing. Yeah. I do this, this and this, this change. But when you're saying it, like, I believe you, I believe what you just said because I think you're wired like me in that you thought it would be X and it is good, but man, Y is a lot— actually has made a bigger impact on me.

Yeah, it just makes me happier. Like being in the team makes me happier. And like, you know, now when I go to restaurants, uh, like one of the, the best thing is I'm just like, I'll order whatever I want. Right. I don't care if this entree is $14 or $22. I'm like, I don't care. I'm taking the $22 one because I want shrimp tonight. And like, that's definitely something I do. Like, you know, I'll, I try and spend a lot more time with my family. So I like will go and fly and visit my family more often because I'm less worried about where the next paycheck is going to come from, and I'm less worried about the cost of airfare. So it's not like nothing has changed, but it's not like there's a Lamborghini sitting in my garage or I own a car. It's just like things are like easier when it comes to doing what you want to do. But at the same time, you realize what you want to do is build those businesses, and that's like an amazing, amazing high.

If you were 21 today starting from scratch, you'd you know, you have the intelligence you have today, you have the knowledge about the world you have today, but you didn't have the resources and you have all the, you know, time and exuberance of a 21-year-old. If you were 21 today, what business would you want to go start? What, what space would you want to go into?

That's a great question. Uh, and I think that it can be answered in a bunch of different ways. Like if I had no resources, I would say start dropshipping something. Find something that on Alibaba that you can purchase and sell more in the United States on Amazon or some, something else and arbitrage that that difference. I've seen so many people do that and so many people do that well. And that's a great way to get your feet wet into e-commerce and understand what's going on without having any personal capital at risk. And if you're more ambitious and you're like, look, I can quit a job, I, I can quit my job and I wanna do something, I can tell you for me, I could never start a business until I could never start a new business until I quit my old one. I would say, look, look, e-commerce is amazing. Uh, you don't need a developer. Everything is really cheap outta the gate. Um, figure out product market fit, and be obsessed with your consumer and you will find something that works. Like, you know, even if you have to like go through a bunch of products and you're like, you know what, I tried to sell them shampoo or I tried to sell them toothpaste and that didn't work out. Now I'm trying to sell something like, you know, deodorant. Go for it. Like, be obsessed with consumers. And, and that like the, the, the biggest problem that I think direct-to-consumer businesses have is that they like the founders disconnect themselves with customer service. Then you're like, you know, you're just like these CPG giants. Clients where you're like, I don't have a, I don't have a direct line of communication with people who use my product every day. We have that direct line. 1,000 people email us every day and we're like, hey, look, this is what they're thinking today. Um, it gives us incredible insight into what we should be making and how to fix our product. So I think e-commerce is amazing. I would do that again. I love e-commerce. If you don't have any resources and don't have any technical knowledge, you can still do e-commerce. The one feedback I'd give after you chose that, if you chose that category, is do not disconnect yourself with the consumer. Love it.

And if I'm listening to this and I'm like, this guy is awesome, I want to talk to this guy, I want to send him my ideas, I want to send him my, my company right now, how should they get in touch with you? And really, who should get in touch with you? What's the— who do you want to hear from?

Sure, look, if you're in e-commerce and you're like, you know, you've got some legs under you and you're thinking about raising money or looking for an advisor or just want to bounce ideas off of, please reach out to me. Like, you know, I love when people have gotten gotten skin in the game. I think the hardest part for me to— is to have conversations with people who are still— I used to be a lawyer— who are still lawyers, and they're like, I'm thinking about doing this. I'm like, look, if you're thinking about doing this, quit your job. Like, if you want to do this, quit your job. That's the biggest telltale sign that you're in. If you're not in, like, don't— like, don't go around asking everybody, hey, should I do this? Should I do this? Should I do this? Should I do this? Do it or don't do it. That's your own call. And like, that depends on your personal financial situation, how old you are, and how much energy you have, and all a bunch of But if you're in and you're like starting a business and it's got some traction and you're like, hey, how do I start scaling this? How do I get from that $100K to a million dollars? Uh, happy to answer any questions. Happy to talk to you. You can find me on LinkedIn, certainly. I'm @MoizAli on Twitter. Love talking e-commerce. You know, you and I are in this room on a Saturday. I had a bunch of e-commerce calls earlier today. This, this is what I like to do on the weekends.

I love it. All right, man. Uh, this was fantastic. Thank you so much for coming on.

Thanks for having me. I need a dollar, dollar, dollar, that's what I need. Hey, hey! Well, I need a dollar, dollar, dollar, that's what I need. Hey, hey! Said I need a dollar, dollar, dollar, that's what I need. And if I share with you my story, would you share your dollar with me?