Latest / The Growth Class with Phil Masiello / Hospitality Waste Innovation: Scaling a Sustainable Supply Solution with Gregory Hegger

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Hospitality Waste Innovation: Scaling a Sustainable Supply Solution with Gregory Hegger · The Growth Class with Phil Masiello

• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: Hey everybody and welcome back to the Growth Class.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: I'm your host, Phil Mastiello, and on this show, we leave the applause at the door focused on what actually matters, which is truth, traction, action.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: Today, we're getting into the trenches with Greg, one of the founders of Foxfold.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: Now, when you s when you hear what he has to say, you're going to think, my God, that was such a simple idea, but it always comes down to execution.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: And it was a big gap in the market that nobody really thought about.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: It was something that when when we first when I first talked to him, I thought, my God, you know, it's so right on.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: And uh it's probably something that's been neglected for decades.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um we're gonna unpack the reality of building that brand from the ground up, diagnosing his early bottlenecks and how they're navigating the hospitality industry, which is their biggest client base, but they're essentially selling paper, the tissue paper, uh uh, et cetera.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: So if you want to know what it really takes to grow a company like Foxhold, it's an interesting discussion.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so, Greg, welcome to the class and really thanks for taking the time to come on and share with us.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_01: It's a pleasure, Phil.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for having me.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_01: Appreciate it.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, why don't we uh take a step back and really talk about you and your and your past and then how you got to uh this point in time.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I but before this, I worked in in the wireless industry.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_01: So I worked for a you know big company with 20,000 plus uh employees, and uh I had a fantastic time there, learned a lot.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_01: But I guess I, you know, I always had a bit of an entrepreneurial itch, if you will, like a lot of us uh do.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um I can promise you that no one dreams of becoming a tissue paper salesman.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_01: That that wasn't one of the goals as a as a kid growing up.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but my uh my business partner now, my he's he's my cousin, where we've known each other since we were age zero, we'd always been jamming on different ideas.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_01: And we noticed something in the hotel space, um, which is pretty simple.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_01: Uh a roll of toilet paper in a hotel, when it gets half used, housekeeping is going to replace that role.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_01: And because you can't recycle toilet paper, more often than not, it it goes in the garbage.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_01: And then the same thing with the tissue box, um, you know, your facial tissue box, that thing's getting tossed out when it has 10 to 20 sheets left in it, uh, or if it has um, you know, it touches water that's on the vanity.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_01: So the that may not seem like a lot of waste in one hotel room, but you know, you run the numbers on about six million hotel rooms in North America.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_01: That's how many they are, and what this inefficient format does to a hotel's costs, to storage, uh, and and to waste.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_01: So uh Phil, I don't know why of all the ideas, this is the one that's stuck.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_01: Like there is, you know, a million things in the world that we could improve, uh, but this is the one that just it's the idea that wouldn't go away.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_01: And and I'll always remember this, you know, in that we hadn't left our our careers yet.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_01: We were doing a ton of research.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_01: We were meeting with hotel partners, general managers, you know, hotel owners.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_01: And frankly, we kind of wanted to be laughed out of the room because there's a part of us that's like, we don't actually want to leave our careers.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_01: You know, my my business partner was in wealth management.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_01: I worked for a great company.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we weren't actually going to leave our careers and go sell tissue paper.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_01: But Phil, every meeting we had, we would walk in and we would explain it.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_01: And they're like, oh, yeah, no, that's that's just unfortunately it's a cost of doing business.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_01: We we throw out a tremendous amount of tissue.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_01: Sucks for storage, sucks for labor, operationally inefficient.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_01: If there was a solution, we would absolutely try it.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_01: You have 20 of those meetings in a row, and you kind of go, man, I I think we're on to something here.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_01: And so, you know, fast forward another six months, uh, we did leave our jobs.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_01: We had a bit of an exit strategy.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we partnered with an amazing company called Box Clever, which helped us with the product design of the dispensers that we made.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, we we built like a refillable, uh so the first one is a refillable toilet paper dispenser, right?
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_01: Where you're instead of rolls of toilet paper, it's packs.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_01: So the the beauty is when this is half full filled, you're not throwing anything out, you're just putting in another pack of paper, right?
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_01: It's not rocket science.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_01: And then same thing with facial tissue.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, it's a refillable facial tissue dispenser.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so instead of throwing out the the you know the partially used tissue box, you're just topping it up with more paper.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_01: So not rocket science, but this company helped us with the design of the dispensers and we launched the company and we kind of never look back.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's funny.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um the I listened to people um talk about entrepreneurship, and I've listened to supposed experts and everybody saying um you should always follow your passion, always follow your passion.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I had a a talk with a woman uh last week who founded a huge uh floral company.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: She does uh close to a hundred million dollars a year.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: So she started it from nothing.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: Uh-huh.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: And she said, you know, my passion is uh ceramics and design.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: She said, and if I followed that passion, I would be miserable because I would now have to do this as a job every single day.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: She said, What I realized was that the key to success and the the path that you should follow with entrepreneurship is the idea that keeps you up at night, that keeps haunting you and coming back into your brain all the time, which is exactly what you said a little while ago.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: And then uh about a week ago, I had a a a conversation with a with another entrepreneur, and they said something similar that if I if I did, if I turned what I really love to do into a business, I would wind up hating it.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: And it's because I would then have to do it.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: And it had to do with uh he has a um he has a dog uh uh uh pet business and he franchises pet stores all around uh the country.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, you know, there are groomers out there that love to groom dogs.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: When they try and and make that into a business, they hate it because all they want to do is groom the dog.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: They don't want to do all the other business things.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, I I agree with both of them that following your passion is not always the best thing.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: Following the business idea that keeps you up at night is I I I couldn't agree more, Phil.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_01: And I think, you know, even even to add to that, I think that we've got um a society that's really hyper-focused on uh a lot of the the, let's call it quote unquote unquote like sexier category, sexier products.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_01: And when I was new to the entrepreneurial game and thinking of ideas, of course, at the time, it's not cliche, but everyone wants to create the next Uber, create the next Airbnb, create the next AI revolution.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um, thankfully for me, I was always very interested in tangible products, real life things.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_01: I wanted to make something physical or create a service that interacts in in sort of your real life.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_01: I was less focused on software.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_01: And I see huge opportunity in these unsexy categories and and businesses.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um I'm in a B2B business.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_01: And the reason being that the um the bar is set pretty low uh in a lot of these businesses and they've been pretty stagnant and they're they're a lot of times they've just um haven't been reinvented in say over a hundred years.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_01: And why I say that is that there's real opportunity there to make a difference, to create something new that adds value.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_01: And there's a lot of revenue potential in these quote unquote boring businesses.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so that's been a huge eye-opener for us.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, we think about all the next products that we could create.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_01: Like our mind just went nuts.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_01: Once we created this, we're like, what other unsexy categories out there that's inefficient that we could, you know, play a role in improving?
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I uh, you know, I couldn't agree more.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: I know plenty of people who have built good businesses doing boring things.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um and so I have no, you know, I have no problem with that.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: I agree with you that there's there's a segment of the population that's always looking for, you know, to create the next Uber or to create the next Airbnb.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: Uh everybody is in the AI game today.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's just ridiculous the amount of uh everybody's an AI expert.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: You know, two weeks ago that the they were uh they were working in a uh retail store and today they're an AI expert.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: So it's uh it's just amazing to me what what goes on.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: So you know, I I've always been a first and foremost, a consumer product marketer.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: That's always been what what I've done.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: Tangible products, beauty, personal care, um food, things like that.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you know, and then SAS products, you know, from for the the the agency we market all kinds of products.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: But I, you know, personally I can always I'm always focused on something that I can that I can touch.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not a I'm not as great a technologist, so I'm not trying to build the next uh you know.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and speaking to you, uh, you know, I I think you're doing yourself a disservice.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_01: Like you use a lot of technology in in what you do.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_01: And I think you and I are similar, Phil, in that we use technology to support our business from a sales perspective, from an operational perspective.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_01: But my my interest and drive has never been in creating uh uh another software.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um I'm happy that there are people out there that want to do that, but that that's not me.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_01: I'm I'm more a real life product kind of guy.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: We use technology all day long.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: We use AI, we've been using it for seven years.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I I like it, I understand it.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_00: I I like it as a business, but I never sit there, I I never thought at night, you know, as I'm sitting there going, boy, if I connected this to this to this.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: Now my partner, uh Brian, we have a technol we have a a development side where we build and host and manage websites and apps and things like that, which, you know, I'm a part of, but only f from, you know, certain pieces.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: But he's always he thinks more along those lines, which is great, you know, and that's what makes it a good partnership because he's uh he has a skill set I don't have, I have a skill set he doesn't have, he can come up with it, I can market it.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: So it's fun.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: But uh I'm never I'm not sitting there thinking about it, you know, in the same way.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: So um but so let's get back to it.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: So so now you're you're you're scaling this business uh directly at hotels, but there's a tremendous amount of hotels, like it's a fragmented business, is it not?
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's a fragmented industry because you've got independence, you've got chains, but even the chains, it's a marquee which is owned and operated by someone else.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: Like someone else owns the real estate in the building, they may put the Marriott marquee on it, but it's it's independently owned and operated in decision making.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: So how do you crack that?
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's pretty complex.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_01: Had we known the the layers and the spider web that exist in this industry, um, and had we known all of the challenges in making a product from scratch, honestly, Phil, like it's good we went into this naive because I don't think we would have gotten um so on like on the production side, right?
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, the from from coming up with an idea to designs, to CAD drawings, prototyping, you know, and then the the tooling and the manufacturing and all that and and all of the the errors that happened in that time, that's just to get the product to you.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um that was a massive learning curve.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_01: I'm glad we had great partners to help us with that.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_01: But then to your point, selling it in, you know, aside from distribution, and distribution is a whole other topic in and of itself.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_01: But on the hotel side, you're right.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_01: You've got the hotel itself and you've got the general manager there.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you've got a hotel management company that operates it.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um, typically that GM and the team will report into that management company.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_01: Then you have the building owner who actually pays the bills.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_01: And then to your point, you've got the brand, you know, the sign that that's up top and they have all of their brand standards.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_01: And I'll always remember my first hotel conference, I went in, I go, okay, and I've now learned this web.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_01: Guys, can someone help me make, like tell me who makes the decisions?
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_01: And everyone laughed and they're like, yeah, it's kind of everyone, and you just got to figure it out.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but what we've learned is um uh if you can get the general manager um as a champion for this change for the product, right?
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_01: If if they understand that, hey, this is gonna help room save money, it's gonna be operationally more efficient, and it's gonna be more sustainable, the the general manager has quite a bit of power and influence.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_01: They are the captain of that ship.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_01: And it makes the roll out a lot better.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_01: So where we're at now is we typically will work with general managers, uh, but more so we're also working with hotel management companies because they will have, say, you know, five to five hundred hotels under their portfolio.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_01: And if you can get into that ecosystem, you're able to move to different properties.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_01: But we've never forgotten that even if we're, let's say, doing a partnership with the hotel management companies, we've got to do the one-on-one relationship with each GM, otherwise, our product will not roll out well.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: I I um there was a company, I don't know if they still exist, um, but there was a company called Avendra.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, with them.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: They are a buying group for well, they started out buying, I think, for Marriott, uh, and now, because I think they were a lot of ex-Marriott people, and uh they um are sort of a centralized buying group for uh uh independent for or for for the hotel business.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, a company like yours would go in and meet with them, and they would be able to get you into, you know, tens of thousands of hotels around the world.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, if you can get in there.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_01: That's a world.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_01: And there's definitely a chicken and egg scenario that happens in any startup in our world.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, so we'd go to a hotel and we'd have our product and they'd say, This is great.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_01: I love it.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_01: I buy through this distribution partner.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_01: Are you listed?
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_01: We're not.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_01: We'd go to that distribution partner, these are early days, right?
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_01: We say, Hey, we've got this product, this one hotel is interested.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_01: They're like, listen, unless you've got 20 hotels that are willing to buy, I'm not gonna load up a whole new SKU just for this one.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_01: And so you kind of had to, you know, we had to get enough hotels and we sold directly to them at first because we had no distribution, which is the right way to do it.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_01: We built enough interest and scale that we could then go to our distribution partner and say, hey, I've got these 20 hotels.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_01: Do you want the paper business?
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_01: Then you add to your point the group purchasing organization in the middle, which is essentially um, you know, uh an approver of the product, right?
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_01: You've got to be in that system.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_01: And it's the same game with that as well.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_01: I'm happy to say that we now do belong with group purchasing organizations.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_01: But at first, you're kind of you know going into that door, then moving there, and everyone is telling you, well, that person has to say yes before we carry you.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_01: And we were doing the circle for a little bit.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so that that was definitely a big challenge in the first few months.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's no different than than retail.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we we have a lot of clients who are, you know, have their products in retail.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_00: And it's the same thing.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you start a product, you start selling it online, and then you maybe get it on Amazon, and then all of a sudden you want to get into retail, and you go and you say, Okay, I found you know Sprouts uh stores, they want the product.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: Well, in order for you to get the product into the stores, you have to go to uh um UNFI, and they're the distributor, and so you have to pitch to UNFI, and UNFI is only going to do it if Sprouts says yes.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_00: But then you've got you know UNFI who has to approve it as well, and then you've got to do all the work with UNFI.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: And then once it's in the UNFI system, then you have to go out and try and sell it to the stores that are in their system for them to push it through.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: You would think that once you're in the system that that that the salespeople for those groups would start helping you by you know, and then on top of that, you've got these broker networks of people that, you know, will try and help you get in.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_00: And then, you know, you want to get into another chain and they don't use UNFI, they use Kahy, or they use, you know, another group.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_00: And then everybody wants to go to Walmart because Walmart does it direct, right?
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: And so uh yeah, it's a very supply chain is always complex.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and I always tell people to try and get as far as you can, make as much noise as you possibly can, get as much PR as you possibly can when you first start out so that people hear about you and want you, and then the phone starts ringing and you have some inbound.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_00: Because once you start having inbound, then it's it's a lot um it's a little bit smoother.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_01: But mo momentum is key.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_01: You're absolutely right, Phil.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I think part of our success has been the amount of noise that we've made, whether it's through conferences, through LinkedIn, um, through different investors that we have.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and I think, you know, time, time is not your friend, right?
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_01: When you launch, you you've got, you're either gonna run out of money, uh, you're gonna lose steam, you're gonna lose interest from potential uh uh buyers.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_01: So time is not your friend here.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_01: And so trying to make as much noise as possible, growing as quickly as possible and showing that momentum so that whether it's a hotel management company or in our case, distribution partners are like, hey, we think this, we think this product is really gonna explode.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_01: We better carry them across the country to make sure that we're part of that, uh, that we're part of that.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no question about it.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_00: And and you know, young companies, when they come to us, uh, you know, and and again, I'm I'm sort of uh we have an agency, but I I I'll be very honest with people about how they should spend their money.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: I don't do things necessarily for the best interests of the agency as much as the best interest of the client.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_00: But like they'll come, young, young companies will come to us and they'll be like, you know, I want to start running ads.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_00: I want everybody to hear about us.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I'll say, best money that you can spend is not with us.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: The best money you could spend is to get a PR firm that's gonna talk about your product, get you on the news, get you in publications, you know, so that people hear about you.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: That's not something we can do, but that's the best spend for you right now because just like you said, I mean, that's gonna build momentum.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's gonna get people to hear about you.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_00: Because a PR firm can get your product talked about in all the hotel magazines and all the anything that uh the hotel industry looks at, uh, you know, the shows and and get you press and and and it winds up feeding on itself.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_00: And then you can worry about running ads later.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, agreed.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_01: Agreed.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_00: Agreed.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_00: So um, yeah, it's interesting.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_00: So so how are things going?
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_00: Where are you at?
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_00: What do you think the biggest bottleneck is that you have to growth?
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_00: Things are going well.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_01: So we we just surpassed uh 50,000 rooms uh uh this year.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_01: So we we did about we launched the company three years ago.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_01: The first year I would say was more operational.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, you know, it took us way longer than we thought to make our product, uh, as is expected.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_01: So we've been, you know, in the market truly selling for just over two years.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we're hitting the numbers of of where we want.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_01: So growth is is really, really good.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_01: In terms of the next year, uh, as you can imagine, it's it's focus on growth, right?
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_01: We've got a we've got a good product.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_01: We have a few product innovations that we're making, but um, everyone that uses our product likes it.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_01: The feedback has been great.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_01: They're sharing it amongst their hotel GMs.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_01: So now it's more so just, you know, fuel on the fire from a sales perspective, getting into more distribution partners, getting into more territories that we're not in uh uh right now.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um in our world, brand approvals do matter uh here and there.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and so we're we're really excited to be working with some of the larger brands to kind of put the finishing touches to make sure that we are sort of vendor approved.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_01: That does unlock quite a lot of hotels in our world.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_01: So we're spending a lot of time there as well.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_01: You'd mentioned the group purchasing organizations.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we're talking to some of the biggest ones and we're getting close to contracts there.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, formalizing more approvals is good so we can just keep, you know, keep going on there and selling it for sure.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_00: Aaron Powell Yeah.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's a it's a uh it's uh fragmented industries like that are always difficult to scale in, but you know, it's the it's the right way to do it.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_00: It's a little bit slower.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and you know and if there's one advice that I can give there, and we, you know, we've been it's been trial by fire, man, but um uh just moving forward in the face of adversity, like we we didn't know what we didn't know.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_01: And we would start selling it and someone say, like, well, you you guys either need these five certifications, you're like, what the heck are these?
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, let's go get them.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you need to be approved by this and this.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, what's that?
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_01: What does it take to do that?
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_01: Let's go do it, right?
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you're gonna need distribution here, and what does it take to do that?
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_01: And so, you know, every week we're met with another requirement, another obstacle, another thing we have to do that we didn't know that either takes time, resources, or money.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and you kind of almost have to be insane to go, like, all right, like just bat them out, bat them out, bat them out, and keep moving forward.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um, that that's been probably the biggest lesson for me is just again, time is not your friend.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um, drive forward as fast as you can and and bat those out.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_00: You you know, you always have to move forward.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's the point where I actually had a call earlier today with a guy.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Who started a brand and he was talking about the same thing.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_00: He said, you know, it was the first two years was just a struggle.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_00: We didn't know what we didn't know.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_00: And we started doing it and we were hitting all these things.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_00: And I and I said to him, you know, you in my life, the the successful entrepreneurs are the ones who continue to push through the adversity and continue to do what they're doing.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_00: The ones who fail are the ones that hit the wall and go, oh, this was a bad idea.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just going to go and get a job again.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_00: They're the ones who always regret it.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, they're always going to regret it.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_00: And I always say to people, look, you know, anybody who I'm coaching that's that's that's starting or doing that in the hidden wall and they go, Oh, I can't, I don't know if I can do it, you know, we're gonna have to give up.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_00: And I go, why?
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_00: You know, keep going.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_00: Because if you keep going, what's the worst that can happen?
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: If it does eventually fail, okay, you're gonna lose money, but you're never gonna have regrets and you're gonna learn something from it.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_00: But if you quit now, you're always gonna have a regret.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, even if you fail three years from now, five years from now, you'll be able to get a job.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_00: You're not gonna die, you're gonna succeed.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_00: The worst case is you lose a bit of money.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_00: But um, you know, because too many times I've seen people tr almost quit right before they they cross the finish line, right before they push that boulder up the hill.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_00: And um and I've seen some people quit and and they shouldn't have.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_00: And and uh so yeah, so you're 100% right.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_00: Just keep moving forward.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_01: The worst case, like uh every case is different.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_01: I can tell you that in my case, the worst case scenario is that this doesn't work.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_01: I will go, I will go get another job.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_01: It it'll it you know, it'll be it'll be okay.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_01: We'll be set back.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_01: There's definitely a hit, but you know, we're not out on on the streets.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_01: That was our scenario.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_01: I'm sure that's a lot of scenarios are different.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, we we looked at the risk reward, my wife and I, as she was the ultimate approver of of you know me me doing this, and my business partner was the same.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_01: But we looked at it and we're like, okay, what's what's the potential opportunity here if this succeeds?
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_01: It's great.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_01: What's the learning potential of over a few years building a business, raising money, working with all of these different partners?
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that that that capital is is massive, right?
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_01: That that brain trust is huge and will benefit me later on.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_01: And then the worst case is it doesn't work.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, well, you know, dust off the resume and and get back out there.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_01: So it wasn't as dire uh uh as as as you would think.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_00: No, uh uh it never is.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we uh and even even if you even if you just keep I mean, look, I um I've had some really great successes in my career, and I've had some really, really bad uh failures, really bad.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_00: And um and two of them were in the fashion business, which I I really had no business being in, and I shouldn't have done it, and I knew I shouldn't have done it, but I did anyway.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, which was high heel shoes, Phil?
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_00: Pardon?
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_00: You mean high heel shoes?
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_00: No, it was actually in uh in in women's fashion.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_00: It was in uh you know uh uh athletic leisure uh products for women uh was one of them.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, but what happened with that was those were failures.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_00: And and now as we have an agency, we've come across people who have come to us for help in those categories.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_00: And I can say, look, here's what you don't want to do.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_00: Because here's what I did, and here's what happened, and here's where the failure points were.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, that those sort of pieces of knowledge, uh, those failures that I've had have helped us retain clients because we're telling them, we're giving them more than what they're getting from any other agency, because we're able to say, look, you know, seen this, done it, this is where it's there's there, these are the problems to avoid.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_00: You know, here's the things that are gonna help you.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_01: So I mean to have that that knowledge.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_01: Phil, I'm interested to know, because you speak with all entrepreneurs, how many of them are sole entrepreneurs versus partners to get a business partner?
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, um you know that's a good question.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_00: Uh usually what happens is uh someone has an idea and then they put, you know, they'll get a co-founder together because they they they want that.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_00: And we do uh a bit of that because I I mentor at University of Maryland, University at Johns Hopkins, and a couple others.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_00: And so we we do a lot of trying to put people together, like some guy has an idea and it's very similar to some other guy, and they both have different skill sets.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_00: But I would say it's probably 50-50.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_00: I would say it's probably 50-50 where, you know, 50% of the time it's one person who's putting, you know, puts a team together.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_00: We don't really work with solopreneurs, people who are just, you know, doing something, you know, with their own like world, and it's one person or maybe two people, like a coach or somebody like that.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_00: But that's not really the world we live in.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_00: But I would say that, you know, I would say 50% of the time there's a co-founder in there.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_01: I I I got, you know, because we've met some solo entrepreneurs in our in our journey that they've got big teams, right?
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_01: But it's basically one person.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_01: And I and these are successful business.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_01: I have so much respect for these people.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_01: So as someone who has a co-founder, uh uh my cousin, um I I don't know how I would do it without, you know, another individual.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, because when one person is is down, the other person's up, and you you have someone else that you can share ideas with, you can bounce ideas off each other, and you kind of hold you can hold hands stepping into the unknown, being like, well, if it doesn't work, at least we made this decision together.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_01: So I have a tremendous amount of respect for people who do it.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I mean, I've done it um different ways, you know, and my first business was 100% me, um my ideas.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_00: I can tell you that I I had a partner in another business and it was absolutely terrible because they they started out to be really, really good, but then when we started to execute, they just decided that they weren't going to participate much.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_00: And they were gonna do other things.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_00: They just wanted to walk around and say, I'm the founder.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_00: And it didn't, you know, we had a board, we had capital on the line, and they were being rude to the investors, and they were and it turned into a major problem.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and it was it was a very stressful time.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_00: And then um, you know, I had I've always had um I've always had businesses with whether I started them, but we've always wound up uh in in the scaling mode, raising capital.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_00: So we've always had board of advisors, board of directors, and that uh helps.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_00: But uh I've done it both ways and I I I enjoy like I have a great relationship now with uh Brian, who who again runs our technology side.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_00: Great relationship with him, and and we work well together.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_00: We have, you know, uh uh we we do different we have different skill sets.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um but again I've had so I I could say I have 50-50 experience with co-founders, one great, one not so great.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_01: Great guys.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_00: But yours yours is more friendly.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you're more cousins, so you've you've got a relationship and you've got something to talk about.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_01: Well, we yeah, and that could have gone both ways, right?
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_01: We were very intentional at the beginning of what what each individual wanted to get out of the business, right?
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_01: Like what do you physically want to do every day?
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um so that was a very big conversation.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_01: We're both a-type people, so you know that that could work, it could not work.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um I am priv you know so happy to say that we we've got an even better relationship now than before.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_01: Like a marriage, we we had, you know, worked, we have to work on our communication, and and you know, we're we're we're I think we're really, really good at it.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_01: But we also identified that we wanted to do different parts of the business, and that was key.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_01: We weren't gonna step on each other's toes.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_00: Aaron Powell Yeah, I'll tell you that one thing that I did learn, and I I is like organizations like um EO or um, you know, any kind of organization where they're supporting entrepreneurs, when you can get the two co-founders together, it it it helps to be around other entrepreneurs to to mediate or or mitigate if there's problems or disagreements.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_00: The the question comes down to how you communicate and whether one party is willing or not willing, right?
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_00: And and ego plays plays a big role in it.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_00: So um you know, I have another, I have a person I coach right now, uh, a company, and the two founders just don't get along, and one's always trying to work around the other one, and it's it's not a good situation.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, I keep saying, you just go to therapy, take them to therapy.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_00: Both both of you go to therapy and work it out because it it is like a marriage, and sometimes you need an expert in there.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I am not an expert therapist.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_00: I can I can help people scale, I can help people with strategy, all that.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_00: But when it comes to interpersonal things like that, you need to you need to go in a different in a in a different direction.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_01: But um, yeah, I think for for, you know, I said at the beginning, um, you know, our our thing is the unsexy category, the unsexy difference.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_01: Uh we we found something there.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, to anyone thinking of starting a business or becoming an entrepreneur, there's all the big shiny stuff, and maybe that's it for you.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_01: But there are just so many opportunities that are ripe for change where there's there's real money on the table to just add value to an everyday boring product or experience.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, great.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_00: And that's a wrap.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_00: A huge thanks to Greg for stepping into the growth class today and showing us what real traction looks like.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_00: So make sure to go out and check out what they're building over at Foxfold.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're a founder who's tired of the fluff and ready to diagnose, align, and scale your business, you know where to find me.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_00: Uh keep taking action, and I'll see you in the next episode.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks, Phil.