This guy built a $1B+ brand in 3 years. The product? You'd never guess

We're quite literally just getting started.

Where do you think is that gap to really jump from average or good to great?

If you want to have the greatest odds of success, it's by creating a new format. New formats win.

You obviously spotted one really great opportunity. I'm curious what other opportunities you spot.

I think there's an idea that no one else is going to be able to run at. There's a $10 billion business idea.

You should just say it now and we'll bleep it out.

We'll talk about that. I think that's the biggest opportunity for founders.

What are the inputs necessary to get to $100 million in revenue for an e-commerce brand in 3 years?

Here's what I'll say. I feel like I could rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off. On the road, let's travel.

Here's, here's 3 things I'd love for you to deliver. One, I want to know the origin story, like how the hell did you have the idea and why did you have the confidence in the idea? We're going to go there. Two is you sent us a thing about your marketing funnel, which is like, you know, what does world-class marketing look like in this scenario? And then the last part, I want to riff with you, brainstorm on like, where to from here. You obviously spotted one really great opportunity. I'm curious what other opportunities you spot.

Yeah, let's do it.

Okay, sweet. Dude, I've been, I've been taking Groons for, I don't know, 6 to 12 months now because it's like, it's basically like eating candy. It's like you open up a pack of gummy bears and then you eat them and then you're like, I just had vegetables. Totally. I ate gummy bears, but I think I just had vegetables, maybe?

Totally.

And so I want to know, where were you sitting when you were like, you know what? What if we did this?

Yeah. So, um, I like to describe myself as an entrepreneur who had short stints in private equity and investment banking. So I've started 3 companies. This is my 3rd company, and I actually didn't want to start a company. So I was on my way from Boston at a private equity firm called Summit Partners and was leaving that investment firm to go get my MBA at Stanford. And I told myself, look, I just want to have like a normal MBA experience for 2 years. I'm not going to start anything. Maybe I'll do an internship in the summer. And then it was like 2 weeks before going out to Stanford. I was at my parents' place in, in Utah and just doing some work and I'm drinking a greens powder in my dad's office. And I just remember looking up like super vividly in the corner of the room being like, there's no way I'm keeping this habit. Past 30 days. Like, I'll do it because I always finish what I started, but like, I'm not gonna stick to this habit post-30 days. And it wasn't just the taste. For me, it was like, you know, you got that weird like frothy sediment at the bottom of the drink. And the biggest thing for me that I think this is probably unique is I remember staring at the bottle sitting on the countertop on like the drying rack. And I remember being— and I'm sort of an OCD person— I remember just being like, if I commit to this habit, I've got to like stare at that bottle. On the countertop for the rest of my life, right? Like, there's, there's just no way that's going to happen. Um, and so that got me thinking about, hey, how do I take a, a comprehensive supplement nutrition and put it in some format? I didn't know it'd be gummy at the time when I had the idea. How do I put it in some format that gets people looking forward to it? Like, they'll go to bed at night being like, I can't wait to have that the next day, which, which is a complete pivot, I think, to how people sort of think about supplementation Can we like roll it into a blunt now? Yeah, exactly.

Look, hey, smoke your greens.

Well, we'll talk about that.

I honestly think that's the biggest opportunity for founders. Like, people just want to rip on the formats that work. But I think if you want to have the greatest odds of success, it's by creating a new format, right? So if it's a blunt, awesome. If it's these little Zen pouches that people are doing now and making those like Focus, that's non-nicotine, Great. Like, new formats win.

Did you think that? I mean, just— it's maniacal. 32 months to a multi— or a billion-dollar exit is maniacal. Did you call your shot and you're like, that's where we're going to go? Or were you like, who knows? I mean, where was your mindset when you started it?

This is a bit shocking to hear, but we've basically met the forecast that we put in place since the very beginning. You have to appreciate I was I talked with like thousands of entrepreneurs when I was at Summit Partners. I looked at the proprietary data sets. I don't have them obviously anymore, but I have a very visual memory. So I know the LTV to CACs of hundreds of brands. And so like for me, it's weird. Like I could tell you, I won't, but I could tell you what like every big brand's LTV to CAC and margin looks like. All the brands that we know of today. Now, I didn't really forecast beyond $100 million of revenue because that would be pretty pointless.

Like, I'm not a sociopath. Yeah, there's a fine line between ambition and being just absolutely batshit. So you're, you're saying that now. I want to ask you something about in between when you're like, oh, like, I don't really enjoy this form factor. What if there was another? And you said you didn't have gummies, you know, right away as like a— it's not like you immediately had the fully baked idea. But I'm curious, like, what were the either companies or products you had like admired? Because I sort of have this this thing, which is like what you admire becomes a little bit of your destiny, right? Your, your admiration becomes your destination. And if you think about like a lot of great entrepreneurs, Steve Jobs famously, who did he admire? What products he admired? And then you steal little elements of that. They sort of bleed out into your final products years later. Same thing with comedians and moviemakers. What were the products and companies that you thought were kick-ass that you feel like inspired some of the result of Groove?

Yeah, look, I sat on the board or observed the boards of great brands like Ruggable, Dr. Squatch, Brooklinen, Chubbies, Solo Stove, Thuma, 12 different businesses. And so I learned a lot from the unique problems and frankly, the recipes that worked for each of them. I would say that the brand that I think we most closely resemble in terms of execution is Dr. Squatch.

Is that deodorant?

It's the, uh, they call Cold Process Soaps, the bar soaps that, um, for men.

I've seen like the marketing, but I think I have the deodorant, but I don't know what's the, what's so special about it. Like, is there something cool about it?

All right, let's take a quick break. This podcast is called My First Million, and it's probably the question we get asked the most: how do I go from zero to making my first million? And so I did an episode a little while back where I broke down exactly the sort of philosophy and frameworks that I would use. So things like finding your white belt business or identifying your bear on a unicycle, advantage, the core way that your two skills can overlap, or why maybe starting a service business is better than starting a software business for your initial businesses to make that first million. And so the team at HubSpot has created a guide that took the stuff I said in that episode. They laid it all out for you. You can get it for free in the description below. Just click that link and it's all yours. All right, back to this episode.

How much money did you raise to get to your first million in revenue and how fast did it come?

You mentioned like focusing on LTV to CAC. For you, what's good and what's great?

Yeah, I think table stakes for businesses that need to be acquired, you need to be at least 3. The best I saw— one, obviously this goes where we're at, but during the COVID era, I would see brands in the 4 to 5 range. You know, those brands are probably 2.5 to 3 times right now.

But when you say LTV, are you referring to— so LTV, lifetime value, is for, for an e-com brand, does value mean your contribution margin?

And you use 3 years not because that's how long someone subscribes to Groove, you just said 3 years for everyone should use 3 years. You can't do a lifetime. Yeah.

I think it, I think it's like just a productive way of looking at it to optimize against. I mean, we obviously look at 3 months, 6 months, 12 months, uh, and try to make adjustments based on that. Um, but yeah, I mean, we've got consumers who are, you know, are 32 months old, so we haven't hit that 36-month mark, but like there's very clearly going to be consumers who are around purchasing into, I guess, quote, perpetuity.

And you, uh, picked a name that if you had told me, I would have been like, hey brother, do you want to win, or are you going to put an umlaut over one of the letters and nobody knows how to say it? And then you won, so I'm an idiot. What, what, what's the— what gives?

So what I always say here is, uh, and Sam botched, uh, Gruns at the start. He said Gruns, which is totally fine. What I tell people is, what I tell people is, I do not care how you pronounce our name as long as you're buying. So like, you can call it Gruns if you want. You can call it Grüns, which is cracked. It's Grüns.

But did you think it was a good name and you knew something none of us do? Or did you just not care about the name? And how the hell did you arrive at that name?

Yeah, so the word Grüns with an S, I guess I can show you here, with an S at the end actually doesn't mean anything in the German language. The word Grün means green in German. But once you throw an S on it, there's actually no meaning to it. And so when I threw an S on it, it just seemed to be like kind of fun and playful. You've got this like natural smiley face. It felt like something that we could brand over time really well. And it's simple. But you're right, like at least in America, very uniquely in America, like 70% of consumers don't know how to pronounce it.

That'd be like your argument to the team. Like, no, guys, it makes a ton of sense. Now, it may not make sense in America, but like, yeah, you know, that's a— Sean, we had a Uh, we had this guy David on who runs a company called Lexicon, and his whole job is naming companies. He's named Swiffer, Febreze, Sonos, BlackBerry. Sean, what do you think David would say about that name?

Well, it's hard to know, right? Because he's got this little AI computer brain where he's like, yes, no. And it's almost like a sommelier describing the taste of a wine. And then you just have to nod along like an idiot. Be like, mm, yeah, I, I sense the notes that you're talking about there. I thought notes are for music, but I definitely sense it. And so, you know, I think it's hard to know, but I would have guessed low, right? You're talking about like, doesn't make much sense in America, the market we're going after. But you did it anyways. What was runner-up name? Or, you know, in the brainstorming process, sometimes you start with like, here's what we're definitely not going to call it because it kind of guides you away from maybe some typical areas.

Honestly, like, I hit it pretty quick. So I guess I didn't mention this. I served— I grew up Mormon. So I served a 2-year mission in Germany, Switzerland, Austria. So like, I am fluent in German. And so when I had the thought, I—

Pretty sick assignment.

Yeah, totally. It's literally called the Alpine German Speaking Mission.

So it's— Yeah, like, you know, someone else could have been assigned to like, you know, Redding, California, or—

Yeah, totally. That wouldn't be too bad. That wouldn't be too bad. There's worse.

All right. So you have the ideas. How long did it take you to go from idea in your head to I know what the product is going to be and I have my first batch and then I go for sale. Like, what was that timeline like?

What's the total? This is important, Sam. Sam, you've never taken the product, right?

No, I'm going to buy it now, though.

So the way it works is— this is a good point you just brought up, which is you don't like— when we say it's a gummy, you think it's a— it's a gummy. No. A single serving, you eat 8 of these things. So it's literally like having a pack of Sour Patch Kids, which I think was, you know, seems fine, whatever. But that's actually pretty non-obvious. And if I'm reading between the lines or if I'm understanding what you're saying, you're saying one of the reasons nobody had done the comprehensive gummy was because the gummy would need to be like, you know, 4 inches large to contain everything. But what if we made it, what if we made it where it's not a gummy a day, it's a pack of 8. We package them as little pouches of 8. And that's how, that's how we can do this when other people may not have tried to do this.

Yeah, it's, it's our packs are, it's about 8. We go off of gram weight, which is about 20 grams, and some grams are smaller, bigger than others. But yeah, it's a, it's a full— every gummy is identical in terms of nutrition. It's sort of the total of the 8 in this case that make up the full dose.

I just think that it's insane that I asked you a question that I thought was going to be ridiculous about, like, you pointing like Babe Ruth and saying, like, you know, we're going to get to this and you're like, yes, that was part of the plan. I mean, it's pretty audacious to say I'm going to get to $100 million in revenue in less than 3 years. For the people listening, what are the inputs necessary to get to $100 million in revenue for an e-com brand in 3 years?

So it doesn't have to be consumables. I think everybody points at consumables these days and they're like, supplements. It's like it's a better business. It's not necessarily a better business because if you're selling a hard good like bedsheets or furniture, your margins are going to be worse. It's going to be more difficult to ship. Like there's a lot of things in there, but you theoretically make money on day one. In supplements, you don't. You got to make that money on the retention. So that's a new lever you got to pull to make the business work. So to answer it directly, Sam, I think first and foremost, you've got to have a good product. And good product doesn't mean like make a better version of greens. Like that's not going to work for people. What's going to work is finding that product category, that white space, Good product equals new white space. So you've seen— I'm sure you guys have seen these like nicotine pouches, the Whip and like Ultras of the world.

Like, I would not encourage an energy— it's basically looks like a Zyn, but it's not tobacco or nicotine. It's energy.

Yeah, it's like, like caffeine and other things. They like the nicotine pouches. Amazing. Not because I'm a believer in the product, but amazing because now you're taking a new format, a form factor that doesn't have competitors. And so I think anybody looking at it and be like, oh, I'm going to do it too, like, you might find a little bit of success, but you're not going to sell your business. You're not going to be the winner here. Go find a new product format. Symbiotica came out with these little liposomals. Um, who else have I seen that, that's created new— oh, you've got like, do you know the product Dose? It's like the liver health product. It's like these little shot glasses. Um, it's like, it's like a concentrated liquid. That's another one.

I, I wouldn't— a concentrated liquid of what?

Liver, like their supplement is a concentrated liquid for the liver. So look up, I think it's dailydose.co is the website. That's another product that has like a unique format. Another one for you, you guys know Mary Ruth Organics or RHO Nutrition, R-H-O. Uh-huh. So those are like, I'm not sure if they're liposomal, but they're like liquid vitamins, right? Like their approach is where the liquid vitamins— I'm shocked there's no, not more competition doing that. Like, these are big businesses. Every single one of the ones I just mentioned is a big business doing really well.

So the framework of this is taking a thing that everyone knows or many people know and just slightly changing the form, the way you consume. But everything that you've named so far has been a consumable.

Correct. Because that's the space that I'm like most familiar with and people typically are looking at right now. But like, it would be the same thing. Like, do you know how big Cozy Earth is? Their whole thing was bamboo sheets, right? And I don't— if you ask me, I'm sure other businesses sell bamboo sheets, but like, that's their thing. And like, they're a big business as well. And so I could give you examples across all sorts of categories. Obviously, supplementation is the easiest for people to visualize.

Wow. So the step one you're saying is good product, but let's say that less generically, what you're saying is the right product. And the right product is a category that's not already supersaturated and you either, either you take an existing category, you change the form factor to make it new, or you find a new pain point, new problem, new supplement, new whatever. And you're going to do it. You need some point of key differentiation. Yeah, vitamins, but you're liquid. Your sheets, but you're bamboo. Yeah, you're, you know, your greens, but you're gummies. And you find that key point of differentiation, which gives you new category. All right. That's step one.

Exactly. And to be clear, a couple that I've just seen recently and then I'll tell you the step two. I've seen jelly beans as a form factor. I've seen lollipops, right? Like people are— do I think that those businesses are going to be huge? Probably not. Like it's a little bit niche, but like they're probably going to be more successful than somebody making a gummy like us.

Hey, stupid question. You started this by saying Sour Patch Kids. Yeah. How come none of the gummies are sour? This is— why doesn't anybody be like, it's sour vitamins? TBD.

TBD. We might, we might give you something like that, Sean. I'm a sour fiend as well. I'm going to hit that.

Don't worry. Sometimes I want to start the business and then sometimes I realize, oh, I know, I'm just hungry and I just want to eat that thing and I don't need to start. And this might be the category, or maybe I'm just hungry.

Wait, you actually said something interesting. You said it's too niche. Is there a— what's your— to getting to $100 million in revenue, is there— okay, so you said take the form factor and then the second— or I don't know if the second thing, but there is a TAM-related thing here. Is there like a a threshold where you're like, this has legs?

Look, like, I'm a bit psycho, right? Like, all I've seen around me is businesses getting to hundreds of millions of revenue quickly. So like, my gauge for success is in the business I started, the first business I started, I literally sunset 6 months in. It was doing $100,000 of revenue and 90% EBITDA margins. And I sunset it because I said, this isn't big enough. Like, this isn't— but that's how I'm wired, right? Like, if somebody wanted to get to a $5 million cash flow business and run that, like, that's, that's massive success. So I'm not going to, like, deter people from—

but I want to know your, your threshold.

Yeah, my threshold. Well, I mean, my, my sites are even bigger now, right? Like, I'm still working on Groove and Nutribs and Juiced and these products you see behind me. We have more than just Groove now. Happy to talk about that. But I mean, at this point, I'm looking only at stuff that can be one $10 billion outcomes somewhere around there.

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So let's, let's keep going in your formula. What's, what's, uh, did we do step 2 or number 2?

All you're saying is I want a machine where I can buy a customer for a dollar and I know that in 36 months that customer will pay me back $3 and I'm going to dump as much dollars as I can into the front of that funnel as long as that's possible. And I'd say the key here is most people, I don't know, maybe, maybe I'm just, wrong, but I think a lot of people think lifetime revenue, lifetime value as just revenue. And what you're saying importantly here is it's the, you know, totally fully loaded gross profit. So to get to 3, you're probably actually doing $6 of revenue on that customer, uh, close to it, $5 to $6 to get $3 of gross profit off that, off that customer.

Correct. Whatever your margin is. But yeah, that's correct. You've got to do, but if you hit that 3 times fully burdened gross profit LTV, Uh, divided by your CAC and that equals 3 or more, you've got a business.

How did you know that Groons was going to be 1 to 3?

Um, I didn't. I've seen enough to know how it might play out, but we, we came out with a CAC. Everybody in our company since day one knew what our CAC ceiling was that would result in a 3 times or greater LTV to CAC.

Can you say what that number is or no?

So what does that mean then? Your ads need to be extra catchy. In order to make extra catchy ads, you need like a super good offer or a super good story or a super like, you know, all of it.

It's kind of all of it. And that's where like I think this gets so difficult is people are like, you know, sometimes I see the shadow figures that are running these dropshipping companies and they're like, Gruen's ads are bad. Like, they're not even good. They're so, like, non-creative. And that's because we're, like, a reputable company that doesn't say we can cure cancer. You, like, do these things that some of these shadow figures do. Uh, like, that's not creative. That's just actually, like, bad to do as a human. Um, but, like, to answer your question, like, it's not just, like, creating good ads. You gotta have the good offer. You've gotta have the good retention. You gotta have a good product, right? Like, you have to have a product that people actually want to take. Um, like our Amazon LTV to CAC is phenomenal. Like, and that's on a platform where we're not advertising the way that you do on Meta. We're not like, you don't have your subscription portal in a certain way. It's like a one-click cancel button. And that's like leagues beyond what I've seen with other brands in terms of Amazon economics.

D2C is one of these funny spaces. Like I think I DM'd you.

I read our DM, Sean, uh, from like, oh man, it would, it would have been like in 2023, like 3 months into the business. You're asking about the landing page.

Yeah. So 3 months into the business, I was, I think I just sent you a compliment. I was like, hey, I think your landing page is really great. You know, I guess the interesting thing is you were really, you were quiet, right? Because there's this weird paradox and I would call it the dropshippers paradox, which is sort of the louder somebody tends to be about their e-commerce success. I sort of, I sort of proportionally increase my skepticism and I feel like you were very quiet and you built a killer business. And then now once you've kind of like, you know, reached a big exit and a mountaintop, sure, you could talk a little bit more about it. You're doing a little bit, spending a little more time. What do you think about that? What do you see when you look out at the landscape of like people who are, are quite vocal, quite loud on D2C Twitter and other places?

You know, I want to have sympathy for how others run their businesses. And so what I will say is like, I've had chats with some of these people who are louder, who are running, you know, these businesses that they, they're little shadow businesses. Like you don't know what their business is, but it's doing $100 million of revenue or whatever. And what I've come to realize is some of these people just don't know yet that what they're doing is inappropriate, right? That the ads they're running is inappropriate, are inappropriate. They don't really understand the consequences. They're, you know, they're fist bumping their friends about the Lamborghini they just bought. And so what I would say there is like, I think it's less about how loud people are. I think it's about the natural evolution that we all go through as we learn what it means to be like a reputable business person. Running like a clean business. And that comes with time. I have to learn most of it through amazing brands that with great executive teams that I learned from who are mentors and friends. And I think for some of these people, they're learning and it's going to take a little bit of time.

So from the outside, I look at you and I think, well, you seem really— I've only known you for 30 minutes. You seem very calm. You seem very well-balanced. You seem like a lovely person. The success has been off the charts., and I think, well, everything's perfect. This guy's just had it all. Of course, that's not the reality. So what has, what has sucked about this journey?

You know, it's funny, the team, we have this joke internally that I'm the chillest guy we know. And it's like sort of kind of true. Like I am actually a pretty calm person and I think mistakes are all part of the learning. Like no business is perfect. A perfect business is one that learns quickly from the mistakes that it makes and people aren't to blame for that. What I'll say is, uh, you know, I, I could give you an example of actually like a really rough day we had, uh, on January 29th, 2024. And I'll, I, I can tell you a little bit about that. But I would say the hardest thing about building a business like this that folks just don't appreciate is just how difficult it is to build a team of all-stars and more difficult than that, unleash them. Give them the space to play and run and execute according to their abilities. And that's really been our unlock is one, getting amazing individuals. I think if you look at our executive team, if you look at our entire team, right, the 130 people plus at this company, I think people would be like, that is a stacked team and they're not going anywhere. We're having a good time. Like we've got a lot ahead of us that we want to do. And the culture here allows for them to excel in a way that they wouldn't be able to do elsewhere.

Can you dive deeper on that? Because people always say hire the best people and all that. And I say that too. And, but it's, that's, I hate when I give that advice or when I receive it because I'm not trying to hire the worst people. Like I am, I am trying. So what does the best people actually mean? What is, what do you look for? What attributes?

Yeah, you know, it's so funny about this, Sam. I've heard people be like, oh, well, like somebody could be the best for your role. And I'm like, no, no, no, there's like legit people who are the best. Like, uh, like you're probably just not able to hire them if you're saying like, well, we got the best for this like narrowly carved out role. So when I say like the best is what we're looking for is people who have confidence to make decisions, right? So everyone has the ability to be essentially a CEO. And frankly, I would not be surprised if we're talking 5 years from now and a lot of the folks here at Groove have started companies that are really successful because they've had that skill set, that repetition of making decisions as if they're the CEO. And so I would say that it comes down to just being like reps, experience, training in whatever function. If you're a marketing person, a retention person, if you're a product person. And then the hardest part again, and this is where I think the people listening to this who might be founders or CEOs have to check themselves, is how do you unblock these people? How do you get out of the way to ensure that everybody together is building something massive?

I want to ask you about your marketing because I think you did world-class marketing. Like we said years ago, I compliment— first thing I ever said to you was, yo, nice landing page.

Right?

Right. Yeah. That's the highest form of respect I give. You— I want to actually open up here. Let me screen share. I want to show you your Facebook ad library, and I just want you to talk us through a sort of 10-minute masterclass on marketing. Yeah. So I want you to tell me what you see because, you know, the average person will look at this. They don't really know what to take. I want you to point out what's interesting here. Let me see if I can zoom this a little bit. What's interesting here, what to notice, what to learn from that would apply to other people in their businesses, how to think about marketing the way you guys thought about marketing.

So you were able to kind of surf that wave. You were able to hijack some of the momentum of that product and position yourself not as a replacement,, but as a companion.

Wait, why did you have, why do you have an Olipop?

Okay. Well, it was the GLP-1's new Crush ad was an Olipop, uh, image on it. And so we're running a limited time offer right now with Olipop.

So this is— Oh, it's like a flavor. It's an Olipop flavor.

Got it. So this is, this is Gruen's, which I guess you can see right here. I'm pointing to it in the video. Maybe people are on audio, but we've got Gruen's sort of original. And then, you know, every month or two months we do these limited time offer drops with, in this case, it's Ollipop strawberry vanilla flavor. You know, the first one we did was like a Granny Smith apple, like Granny Smith apple flavored. We did a Grinch, Sour Grinch punch last year in November. So we do these— this again, back to the whole like, how do we make this fun? Like, you tell me one other supplement brand that's doing like drops and making it actually fun to take the product each day.

So, so it looks like you've got different angles. So you've got, yeah, hey, we're, we're you know, Ozempic's best friend. You've got poop more. You've got nurse, you know, the nurse here who's probably talking about her nutrient gaps. There's Jackie talking about nutrients. You have these different angles, and I'm guessing that these each lead to a landing page that aligns with that message, correct? So it's like, yeah, 5, 6 different angles each to a tailored landing page that continues that message. And then you're— are you doing that just to experiment to find one winner, or you're like, no, we're going to keep running 5 or 6 of these because there's just different markets of different customers who have different mindsets, and we're going to try to get all of them.

Most everything you're saying, it's sort of like when I read the book How to Win Friends and Influence People, I'm like, oh yeah, this is obvious. Makes sense. Makes sense. But the hard part is execution. Totally. And it seems like you're ruthlessly, in a kind way, executing. What's— so I'm going to ask a bunch of questions I think you can answer in one, in one go. How many ads and landing pages per month are you putting out? And I think you only said you had a 30-person team. That seems like a lot of output for a relatively small team. Can you talk about like who's doing the work?

Yeah, we're probably putting out hundreds of ads a month. Cycling in and out, just trying to find that next, you know, unlock. We try to create new concepts pretty consistently. So it's not just about ad volume. It's actually structured around like how much of that is like business as usual ads that we already know, or structure, or sorry, concepts, themes that we know already work. And how much of that is like we're trying to find new frontier of applicability. In terms of the team, you know, when Sean reached out to me in December of 2023 saying, hey, nice landing page, that was me, right? Like, I was the guy who built that landing page. We didn't use an agency. I think I even said that in the message because you asked. That was me from the beginning. And, you know, you see our buy box, that place where you do the add to cart, which then people rip that over the last 3 years, copying that buy box. And if they only knew that random dude named Chad who's not like an e-com expert, you know, broadly across D2C. I know quite a bit, but like, I'm not an e-com guy who builds these sites. The whole industry is mimicking this, this format. Yeah, it's really interesting to see that. I think people need to test around. And since then we found new formats that work. But talking about the team, we've got people across— we've got like 3 folks on the retention team who do the emails, SMS, who set up all the flows that allow for our consumers to have a good experience. Um, so they're focused on after order 1, what does that journey look like through order hundreds, right? We've got a large team doing paid, so creating ads, the actual creatives. We have probably 4 plus, maybe 5 or 6 creative strategists who actually create the ads, and then we have people who design and do the video edits, and then we have the people who actually manage the ad accounts, right? There's probably 4 or 5 of those who actually like are looking at the analytics evaluating, passing back to the creative strategist saying, here's what's working, iterate on that. We've got an e-com team that's absolutely dialed. The velocity coming out of e-com now. So landing page designs, iterations on the cart checkout, post-purchase, like all of that good stuff where we're constantly iterating on it. I mean, it's so fun to see, right? Like it used to be me throwing up a quick website against an ad angle and now we've got like a full infrastructure around it.

Still, that's crazy. That just not seem like a lot of that doesn't seem like a big operation for creating hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue and hundreds of ads.

That guy's got to clip that clip and make that an ad. Get ready to see your face on a Replo ad.

Look, and I have no problem. They don't charge. I mean, I've told them before, they don't charge enough. Uh, it, it, it's, it's stupid how much value you can get out of that. And I would say this about a lot of our platforms. They're just getting a shout out because it's relevant here.

This is for the folks out there who have a business that does at least $3 million a year in revenue, because around this point, that's when you're able to look up after being heads down for years building your company and you realize two things. One, you've done something great, but you're still a long way from your final destination. And two, you look around and you realize I am all alone. I've outrun my peers, which means you're now making $10 million decisions alone by yourself. And that is when mediocrity can creep in. My company Hampton, we solve this problem by giving you a room of vetted peers of other entrepreneurs who are going to hold you accountable, call you out on your nonsense, and help show you the way. Because the fact is, is that there's only a tiny number of people in your town who know what you're going through and who have been there. And they're hard to find. And if you can find them, it's hard to have this explicit time, this explicit place where you sit down, where the rules are clear that we are here to help each other and to be one another's board of directors. The biggest risk is not failing. You have a company and it's working. You're going to be fine. But the biggest risk is waking up 10 years from now and saying, shit, I barely grew in business and in life. And for people like you who are ambitious, wasted potential and regret is what we want to help you to avoid. We have made so many of these groups and we have 1,000+ members. And I know this stuff actually works, whether you work with Hampton or you get your own group on your own. But having a group like this, a group of people who you meet with in real life once a month, it can change your life. It changed mine, and I know it will change yours. So check it out. Joinhampton.com.

What do you see when you look at average marketing versus world-class marketing? What do you think if I'm somebody who's got a brand or a company and I have a landing page, I got ads, I'm doing all the things he said, test creative. I'm testing creative. He said, Tesla. I think I'm doing that. What is the most typically missing when you either advise a founder or you go look at somebody else's brand and you're like, oh man, they're just not doing this one thing, this, these two things well enough to really jump from average or good to great?

Have a better product is typically what it comes down to, which is like so unhelpful because it's like you got to cut your losses. But like a lot of the people who are trying to like find these hacks, they're doing it with like a a mailed-in product. Like, some— they, like, didn't— we took a year to develop our product. It's custom blends.

Well, how did you know that it worked? Because a lot of times when I take vitamins, I don't necessarily know if it's working. Did you, like, get your blood tested a bunch?

This is the beauty of this industry, is if you go to PubMed— um, are you familiar with PubMed?

It's a public— it's a— where studies are, right?

What's on your ideas list, but you're not going to actually go do it. So you can, you can riff with us here of brainstorming other brands, other ideas that you think are interesting, may not, may or may not work, but interesting.

Yeah. And also you mentioned that you have a Notion doc.

If you, if you're comfortable, if you want to pull up your bank balance, we can also just do that.

Tell you wiring instructions too. Um, here's what I'll say. One thing that I, that I disagree with is people say ideas aren't worth anything. Oh man, do I disagree. I think ideas are worth so much in the right hands. And in my hands, they're in the right hands, I believe. And every founder should believe that. About themselves. And so there's certain ideas I can't share because I'm like, guys, like, I legit have an idea that years from now, like, I've still got a lot I want to do with Groove. It's like, like, actually, there's a lot I want to do with this business. I'm not done here. But like, years from now, I think there's an idea that no one else is going to be able to run it. There's a $10 billion business idea, and I'm—

you should just say it now and we'll bleep it out and we can—

yeah, totally. Give us like a code word or something so we can, we can at least give you credit for it. Yeah. Oh, hey, look, we're the wrong heads.

When you see it, you'll know. You'll see it and you'll go, oh yeah, this is a bill. This is a big business idea. So, and I don't think anybody's going to do that in the meantime while I'm finishing my chapter here at Croons and doing what I set out to do.

Okay, well, what, what, what are some other ideas that if in the right hands are great that, that aren't your hands?

That's a great idea. Um, even whether it's for consumer or for businesses. Have you ever read the book Profit First?

No.

Have you guys heard of Simple? Do you guys remember Simple? I loved Simple. It was really cool. I don't— I think it's gone. It got it. It was one of the very first Silicon Valley banking banks. Yeah, neobanks. And it was— I don't even think neobank was a description.

Envelope system where you like put digitally money into different envelopes.

Yeah. And like, I didn't, I didn't make a lot of money at the time and I was like, but I want to like fly home to St. Louis to see my family. And so like, it's going to take me 4 months. And so I automatically, when it would come into my bank account, the way it would visualize it, it was still one bank account. It was like, Well, this is, this is how much is left. You know, you have $350 in your spending account, but you have another $400 in your vacation account. So like, don't touch that money. It was pretty cool.

So, so, Sam, here's what I love about this idea. And Sean, you're bringing up actually why I think this is even potentially more compelling for businesses, because if you're changing the way that the P&L works, I mean, venture capital firms want that because now there's more discipline around the money that they're giving. Totally. The small founders who are making $5 million a year who want to pull $500,000 out. They want it because now it's like, oh, well, I'm forcing myself into that discipline to pull $500,000 out every year. It's like, that's a huge use case that I wasn't thinking of. In terms of personal, the problem with budgeting today is it's done— I grew up in a family where at the age of 6, I was in Quicken. And like, I had to take every receipt, scan it, type it in back in the, you know—

Your mom and dad made you do that?

My dad taught me budgeting, yeah. That's awesome. We were so against debt and everything else, but I like, it was so, it was awesome until there was an imbalance at the end of the month and I had to go search for the 20 cents that was off.

Is that like a Mormon thing? Because I've, I've, I think I've got a bunch of Mormon buddies who are very disciplined with their monthly budgeting.

Yeah, it might be, honestly, it might be, um, something that's, I mean, there's a lot of like financial discipline in general, but, but to put, put the headline on it, to me, what I love about this idea is it solves what I think sucked about the granularity of like wasting hours, a month, a week on like typing in all my stuff. Right. And it also solves the other end, right? Like people, they get to the end of the month and it's like, that was actually a hassle to do. Did I change any of my behaviors based on it?

I don't know.

And then the other end of it's like Mint back before that got acquired or whatever. And I think the other one today is Monarch, which I like Monarch.

I love Monarch.

Yeah. More money. It's like, it's helpful to see, but like, Monarch's not really like a proactive platform, right? It's like, oh, I'm just like getting information.

The one thing you're talking about is like, I'll tell you how bad you're doing at it versus, hey, let me just fix it for you. Totally. But you wanted the fix it for me, uh, solution. I really wonder whether, you know, with agents or, you know, you take the popularity of like Mercury or the kind of all the popular neobanks that are pretty product first.

Yeah.

And they're more programmable. I wonder if either somebody could build it on top of one of those banks or if they'll end up releasing something like this themselves?

What would be cool is if in 12 months we have to say, hey everyone, we did this podcast with Chad here. Here's what he said. And then we aired this clip that you just said, and then we're like, here's the update. Yeah, because this is, this is fantastic. This is really cool. We do this segment all the time. This is, this is a top-tier idea.

You, you have a couple of quotes that you sent us or like kind of philosophies. We always ask people, what are your, what are the philosophies you live by that you think are not, not something everybody does or not everybody believes in? You said one, one of them that I like, you go, access is everything. And you explained how you didn't have a ton of access early on, but you know, through Summit and Stanford, like, can you explain your access is everything philosophy?

Yeah. Um, I think access and the privilege of having access in the world is something that when you don't have it, surround yourself with people who do and do good work for them and you will get access every time. And then when you do have it, like the privilege I now have, I see it as your obligation, my obligation, to give that back to others.

So explain what you, what you mean by access. What's the personal story where this kind of resonates?

Yeah, you know, like, I'm a dude named Chad. I worked in private equity. What you see today would not have existed without people leaning in and giving me access over time incrementally and me doing good work for them. So like, if you go back, I mean, I was always curious on this because I think you get asked in those questionnaires like, are you, are you middle income, high income, low income? And like, I was aware of sort of wealth, but if I looked at sort of the income that my parents had and I have 7, there's 7 of us kids, so 6 siblings, and our income, I think I was like bottom middle class is like how it was defined. And I'm not saying that from a standpoint of like ashamed, like I'm grateful to have lived in this area and seen these people because I think you can solve a lot by just giving awareness to kids about what's possible. It's like the grasshopper moment. Once they know, it's like, oh, now you can go get it. So I get— I was recruiting for the Big Three consulting, McKinsey, BCG, Bain, through a contact who put me in touch. I didn't get it, but I landed through another mentor, this gig at Lazard. I did really good work at Lazard, an investment bank. So in New York City, one of the top premier investment banks working on mergers and acquisitions. That mentor, I'm still close to him. I went and visited him, right? So he gave me access and that access then landed me at Summit Partners. At Summit Partners, I did phenomenal work for them. I deployed— I literally invested like 30% of that fund, a $5 billion fund. Like, I invested that. I sourced the deals that made them the money behind that. I did really good work. And there's this moment when I got into Stanford that I was like, oh man, like, should I feel bad? Because I know how this works. Like, I only got in Like, yeah, I've had a ton of accomplishments. I had a 3.95 GPA. I've worked at great places, but this white dude named Chad, like, should I feel bad about this that I got into Stanford? And what I came to appreciate is like, no, I shouldn't feel bad knowing that the reason why I got in is because, you know, two people who are very close to the Stanford folks sent a text and a nice letter of recommendation for me. I shouldn't feel bad about that because they're not just doing that. Right. They're doing that because I did good work for them. I made their lives easier. I earned their trust. And so maybe I wasn't born into that access where my dad can send a text to Stanford and say, let my son in. But you can earn that by doing good work for the people who do have that access. And they're so eager to help you have that sort of accomplishment. So that's how I think about access. And it's part of when, you know, I got asked recently, like, what's your legacy that you want to leave on the world? And I'm like, I, you know, like 33 years old. But the way I think about it is like, I want to give that, that access that I've sort of like either been granted or earned over the last many years. And I want to ensure that more people have access to that who, who spend their, their lives working with me and putting in good work.

Dude, you're, you're awesome. You are so cool. I think that when I was younger, I met this really successful guy named Scott Belsky, who was the chief product officer of Adobe and an amazing entrepreneur. Maybe a billionaire. And he used this word with me that I never heard before. This idea he used, he said, I'm going to invest in you and you need to be a steward of my capital. And I was like, I don't know, what is that word? Steward? I'd never heard of that. It's just like this idea that you need to be the vehicle that, that protects and passes on like a little bit of greatness. That's kind of how I interpreted it. And you are that person. So my friend Austin Reef, do you know Austin Reef?

He's the One of the Morning Brew.

Yeah. So he started and sold the company for hundreds of millions of dollars when he was 30 years old. He was texting me about this new idea that he was working on or brainstorming, and I was like, do you think it's going to be successful? He goes, it can be successful if I want it to be. And I love that because what you and him both said something very similar. You have this similar mindset, but I find myself being around him and people like you and it's contagious.

Yeah, you know, and I've thought about whether I should be— I've tried to figure out whether my impact on the world is more narrowly focused on the people who spend hours, thousands of hours with me working inside of Groove, or if I should have more of an impact publicly trying to relay some of this message. It's hard though, you know, like to relay all of this, um, these experiences that I've had in, in a public forum that allows for millions to, um, to learn. But you're totally right, Sam, like At the end of the day, why, why was I able to build what I built? It's because I knew it was possible, right? Like I saw it done many, many times by others. And if I ever had a question, I could, I could go ping those people. And so network experiences, awareness of what's possible.

Yeah, I think, I think it's true. And frankly, I think, you know, I'm young, I'm 33 years old. I think about the impact I want to have on this world. I think it's that first one, exposure. How can I facilitate exposure to everyone, right? Young, young kids. How do they get exposure? That honestly, I think that's where my wife and I want to make an impact, is making it possible through some, some effort in the next chapter of my life to ensure that the random kid who's 6 years old or 10 years old in a place that would never get exposure to this at least knows what's possible. Because if they know it's possible, maybe they'll go after it themselves over time.

Hey, can I— let me ask you a question that you might not feel comfortable answering. When you're wired hundreds of millions of dollars, what do you— what do you decide to do with it? Where did you invest the money? And that includes, like, did you decide to give any away?

Yeah, TBD on it. But I— one of the hardest things I have is I've thought about my my impact. Like, it's the same as, um, I don't even know if I'll invest in other companies, and it's not because I don't believe. It's like, what's the next best use of a dollar? It's gonna, it's gonna take a lot to convince me that it's something other than what I can go after and do. And that doesn't mean it's always business profit-centered. Like, I don't always have to make money. Like, can I, Sam, go out and make, make an impact on the world by taking my own funds and building like something special out of it, right? That has an impact on whether it's mentorship, exposure, or whatever it is. So TBD, I mean, as you know, when you receive money, you spend a lot of time thinking about deploying it. You don't want to rush into anything. But I would expect that the more meaningful deployment of my capital is going to come through some personal effort in my life that I do to make an impact.

So, well, first of all, can we— let me ask a boring question. Where'd you invest it? The current money, where did you invest? It's just boring index funds, is it?

Well, you know, there's a difference between signing and closing, so you have to go through anti-regulatory. So we've signed, but the closing happens as soon as it's been approved by government.

So you don't have—

the money's not been wired yet.

But I don't know what that— I've not had a deal that was large.

Yeah, my first acquisition, they just Venmo'd me.

Yeah, we've not— I've not dealt with the, with the Department of Justice.

Yeah.

So that's pretty cool.

Uh, it's funny.

A quick Google. So I haven't had time to read all this. I believe it's $130 million is the threshold where the DOJ has to—

interesting—

$130.

You have to notify the DOJ and the FTC anything north of $133.9 million.

Dear DOJ, I'm rich. What do you do? What do you notify?

There's like an official form and then they, they're just reviewing it as they should to make sure that it's not bad for the consumer.

Dude, that's cool.

Well, dude, thanks for coming on, man. And congrats again on building something pretty epic. I remember when I saw the product, it just seemed like, oh, that's it. And the best products actually are simple like that, where the proposition is easy for the customer to understand. It makes sense in the world. It was almost like hidden in plain sight, I feel, in a way. And, you know, to your credit, you ran with that, you acted on it, and you built something pretty incredible.

Of course. Thank you for having me on. My hope is that 3 years from now we're talking and you guys are like, geez, dude, we didn't realize there was that much ahead of you. We've got so much this team wants to do. And so eager to show the consumers what we've got for them. New products, new innovations, new fun, limited time offers.

What's the best thing on that shelf I should buy?

So have you tried the Olipop? We've got some products here that are launching soon, but have you tried our Olipop?

That's actually— I've only ever had the original. I didn't even— try anything else. I just got the original, like, subscription.

That's it. So yeah, you may know this, but we've got Grooves, which is the comprehensive nutrition greens, multivitamin, fiber. We've got Nutrops, which is a nootropics product. We've got Immune, which is like an almost like an immunity shot, like the 2-ounce bottles, but in gummy form. And then we've got Juiced, which is this one right here, which is like a pre-anything energy product. So I mean, we've got like 12 innovations in the pipeline. That's what I'm saying. Like, It's so exciting. We've, we've like done something so big, but like, we're like maybe 5 miles into a marathon.

Good, man. Thank you so much for coming on. You have an open invite whenever you want. You're, you're, you're a wonderful guy. We're so happy for your success and it makes us feel good to promote you. So thank you for coming on. That's it. That's the pod.

I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off. On the road, let's go.

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