Latest / The Growth Class with Phil Masiello / Custom Gifting Innovation: Scaling a Brand Through Personalization with Hannah Redmond

Transcript

Custom Gifting Innovation: Scaling a Brand Through Personalization with Hannah Redmond · The Growth Class with Phil Masiello

• 0:19
  SPEAKER_01: Hey everybody, and welcome back to the growth class.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_01: And today we're diving into the world of gifting, grit, and building a business from the ground up.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_01: So our guest today is a marketing powerhouse turned the co-founder of Happy Box, a multimillion dollar custom gifting empire that's changed how we send joy.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_01: And she's been featured in Ford's Be Business Insider Today Show.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_01: So she's very brilliant, very creative.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_01: She's all over the place, and she's got a great story about how she started this.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_01: But the uh the wonderful Hannah Redman is our guest today.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_01: Hannah, thank you for taking the time to come on the show and share with us what you're doing and how you got here.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: Well, thank you for that wonderful in intro, and I'm very excited to chat.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we had a good, we had a a good pre-call uh discussion, and you were talking about, you know, what you did, how why it started, how it started, what you were doing before.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_01: So if you could sort of go back, because I think people would be interested in your background and then how you got to here.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, sure.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: So I started my career in PR and marketing.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: I always knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur, like since probably pre-high school.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: I was obsessed with commercials, I found, and just I always thought that I would build something, sell something.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: It was in me somehow.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: And I think you're kind of born with it, to be honest.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's like something inside you, something a little crazy, maybe.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: But um, I always knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur, worked in PR marketing, had this idea when uh I had to solve a problem myself.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: My sister got dumped in college.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: She lived states apart from me, and it was right around Valentine's Day.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: And I wanted to send her like an awesome, like hug in a box.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: Like I wanted to make her laugh.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: I wanted to make her feel cared for.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: And at the time when I was looking around, it's like edible arrangements, Harry and David, these were my options.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: And it wasn't exactly what I was going for.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: Like star-shaped fruit was not what I wanted to send her.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: I wanted to send her her favorite chocolate and a voodoo doll and some like self-care items, like stuff that really would make her feel amazing in this horrible moment, right?
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I was, you know, I'm a millennial and I started doing research.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: In my day job, I was a consumer strategist, and I see all this trend data about customization and convenience being like where everything's at, right?
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: And so I'm like, how is there not a way to make a custom care package where you can pick every single item inside?
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um, take a card design, pick a design, you know, do the whole thing extremely customized for your recipient.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um, later I realized why no one did it extremely hard to do.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but anyway, that was like the seed of the idea.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: I presented it to my sister years after the original, I guess, care package I sent to her for that breakup happened.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: And we kind of side hustled it.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: We were like both in creative and marketing jobs and decided to try it on Etsy, moved to Shopify, and then COVID blew us up.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that was like the most relevant we would ever be, right?
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: Long distance gifting.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: And we were still side hustling at that time.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: And then we finally quit our full-time jobs October 2020.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: So a little bit after the start of COVID.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: That was crazy.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: And then from there it's been our adventure.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I would imagine COVID probably was just a boom for you.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it was really weird because you know, everybody was talking about how e-commerce was great during COVID.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_01: And it was in particular categories, but it was not in every category.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_01: Like we had, we probably lost 10 clients during COVID, and not because we were doing a bad job.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_01: They couldn't get product, they couldn't, nobody was buying their products at the time.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_01: Some of them were like, you know, outdoor people and things that just couldn't, you know, auto autos and stuff like that, things that just weren't working.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_01: And uh it was it was a wild time.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's interesting.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: That was, and I think we talked about this last time too, but I credit ourselves for a very good decision we made is when you know all the craziness in COVID was happening, I was working brand side and I had a lot of friends in marketing at brand side at different brands.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I kind of was talking to people about like, is everyone pulling back your ad spend right now?
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: Because that's what we're doing at the brand I was at, because our supply chain was disrupted and we couldn't keep up.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: So to your point, SumECom couldn't keep up.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: So once I realized that everyone was kind of pulling back their ad spend, I literally looked at my sister and co-founder and was like, let's dump everything we have.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: This is the most relevant we'll ever be.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: I know it's a big swing, but let's try.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: We did, and it blew us up.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: It was the right move for sure.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: Because our our supply chain was not disrupted.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: At the time, we were sourcing from the local coffee shop, right?
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: Like the local candle maker.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: And so um, what was happening is we were actually keeping them in business.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: These were businesses that didn't have any e-comm.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: So they had to shut down their entire business.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: They couldn't pay rent.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: And they were like, we were getting the nicest notes from them, like, oh my God, you're allowing me to stay in business, like your orders are keeping me afloat.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: It was insane.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, the amount of tears during COVID for so many reasons.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, we were very lucky in that sense, you know.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: But I think like like any entrepreneur probably talks about luck, it's like there's luck, but then there's what you do with that luck, you know?
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um so No, I I agree with you.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_01: You know, um I had this conversation.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_01: There, there's a guy on my on my show, Vern Harnish.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if you ever heard of him, but he wrote The Rockefeller Habits, Scaling Up.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_01: He founded EO, YPO, uh, all those groups.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um uh Birthing of Giants at MIT.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_01: Brilliant guy.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_01: He's a friend of mine.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_01: And and we were having a conversation, and he said, you know, a lot of people looked at COVID and said, you know, it's discouraging.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_01: And they sort of put their heads down and they were like, we just have to figure out how to get through this.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_01: He said, and other people thrived because they looked at it and said, we have an opportunity here, you know, and and it's true.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um, when you looked at the opportunities, because we saw the same thing, people were pulling back on ads, and in certain categories, we did tremendously well in the shaving category, in the personal care category, in the beauty category, because even though people said we're letting our hair go or we're letting this go or that, it's not true.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_01: During COVID, we were selling hair color and people were self-caring at home.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_01: Uh they may not have, they may not have had be having get dressed up to go to work, but they were still taking care of themselves.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_01: Exercise equipment all went through the roof.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_01: It's true.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, there were there were categories, but then there were some categories where, you know, they just couldn't make it, either because their supply chain was disrupted, they had product on the water, uh, you know, people weren't buying what they were selling at the time.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it was but we saw opportunities just like you.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_01: And it was probably the lowest cost per click of ads that we saw for a lot of categories in like the last probably, you know, 10 years before that.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it was really a boom, but then things changed again and it, you know.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, it was interesting because that was the first full year in business where we were full time.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: And as you you know, you're a bit a numbers person, it's really hard when that's your first data set.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: Like we didn't know what was normal, and I wasn't a demand forecaster.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: Like I was a marketer, and sure, I'm like smart enough to figure some things out, but like I didn't know what I was doing.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: We didn't know what we were doing, and so we were just making bets, placing orders, and that in the end really hurt us because once the kind of crash happened and iOS updates, we declined just like almost every other e-com.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's funny, I was just talking to another founder about this today.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like everyone in e-comm lived the same life those few years.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: Like we all have the same story, and like I've talked to competitors like you know, in a friendly fashion about like what happened in 2020, 2021, 2022, and like how you had to like it was the big growth, the big drop, and then how do you regain profitability?
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: How do you regain it?
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: It was insane.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: And the good news is I felt like everyone was kind of in the same boat.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: Like I felt, you know, there was a long time where I felt like I kicked myself, like, oh, I could have done this differently, but everyone was in the same boat, even some of the smartest founders I know, it was hard.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_01: It it it was it was hard, but like we saw huge opportunities and we started pushing a lot of brands into because we said, look, you know, people are spending the there were a couple of things that we saw happen.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_01: One, because people were working from home, even though they were working from home, the traffic on social media boomed.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_01: And because they were they needed to communicate, right?
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_01: People still needed to talk to their friends.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_01: So all of a sudden you had people using social media a lot more, whether it's Instagram or whether it's YouTube or whatever.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_01: You saw people we saw a boom in traffic.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_01: So I said, you know, we came out of um um TV shopping.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_01: We did uh we did that early on.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_01: We built brands on on some of the TV shopping channels and and uh and I loved that whole thing.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_01: And so we started saying to people, you know, just start making videos.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_01: Just make videos about talking about your product and your brand.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_01: And then every once in a while, when one hits, we'll promote it and we'll we'll see where it goes.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_01: And it and it actually worked a lot better, and the costs were a lot better because you're right, iOS change, uh, meta change the algorithm a couple of times, Google changed the algorithm.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_01: It was, you know, a couple of different things happening.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_01: But I'm I've never been a fan of uh spending a lot of money on paid ads.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_01: I always found paid ads to be a support mechanism, not the be all end all.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_01: You have to do something different.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_01: You mentioned that you were in PR.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_01: I've always been a big fan of PR, whether it's earn media or whether or what.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_01: It's to me, because I did a when I had a shaving brand, I did a stunt and it through PR stunt and it blew us up because um and it really literally cost me nothing.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_01: You know, cost me nothing.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_01: And and so um, yeah, I think that there were opportunities.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_01: And then, you know, I think w long-term shift was that um, you know, we see that people still were gonna work from home, which opened up some opportunities, and then how people were using social and how they changed social.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_01: It no longer became static images and became more video focused.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, definitely.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like that's the drove the TikTok boom.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: And you see that some of the founders and their success with being early on TikTok with video and stuff like that.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: And also a lot of the creators I follow today, they started in COVID.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: They were bored, they figured it out, and now they're they've monetized it, you know.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: Definitely a lot of opportunity out of COVID, but it's um it was it's true.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: It was so hit or miss.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: Like if you d depending on the industry and depending on the business.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_01: No, no, no.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I think that it was definitely dependent on the industry because like we we had a lot of uh and we helped a lot of people on Amazon, and Amazon was restricting a lot of categories.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_01: It was just the five essential categories because they couldn't keep up with the demand.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_01: And so, yeah, that pushed a lot of people out and it hurt a lot of people, a lot of people that were big Amazon brands.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_01: And um, and then, you know, what what people were looking for, like nobody was looking for auto parts that weren't to fix your car, they were more to dress your car up because nobody was going anywhere, right?
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_01: Nobody was getting boat parts, nobody was buying, you know.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_01: So it was like those those companies got hurt really bad.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_01: Plus, a lot of them, again, had product on the water, it got stuck, they couldn't get it offshore.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, you know, it was a big mess.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_01: But uh even shaving, like you couldn't, you know, we had the second largest uh razor company was a client, and they they couldn't get enough steel into the country and and it was affecting, yeah, it was affecting they they started to have to um you know they're they're selling product to Walmart and on Amazon and Target and et cetera, and they had to allocate.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_01: And it was really a wild time.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_01: But you learn from it.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, we learned a lot from that.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_01: And that's how you get better.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, definitely.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_01: So what's the so so how have you busy how how's business been since COVID?
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's got it's still growing great, right?
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so after COVID, we definitely saw a decline, and largely it was because the consumer like didn't need the long distance gifting as much as they did during that time, right?
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: Like you were able to go out again and go to events and celebrate your friend's engagement, stuff like that.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and that was most of our business.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: We were personal gifting.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: That was the idea.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_00: That's how we started.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: In COVID, though, we started getting these inquiries for corporate gifting.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: And so yeah, I think Uber was one of the first clients that reached out, Meta.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and they were like, hey, you know, I have to gift my remote employees and you do boxes.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_00: Can you put my brand on your box?
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: Can you source some swag?
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: And can I add some goodies?
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_00: And it's funny because there was, I think Uber was the client that said to us, Can you interpret brand guidelines?
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_00: And my sister and I looked at each other, like, oh my God, what are we doing?
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: Like, this is like that's all we did, right?
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: Like I worked on very big brands, she works on very big brands interpreting, creating brand guidelines.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_00: So we were like, wow, we're like very well positioned to do this for companies.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: So we started doing that, but it was kind of still like, again, an idea, and we weren't really sure what this would become.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't what we set out to do, but we did like smell that there was something there and follow the money, you know.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um, at the time, though, there was that decline with iOS and on the consumer side, plus it just lacked like a relevance.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: So we as a business had a very tumultuous time kind of figuring like landing from that.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we had to like, I mean, we took you always talk about like a low moment in the business.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: We had to like lay off people.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: It was just that one of the those moments where you're just like, we have two weeks left.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and we kind of just turned to each other and we're like, we will do this.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna hunker down.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_00: I think some of your best ideas come when your back's against a wall.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_00: And we both kind of held hands and we're like, let's just, we're gonna try this, we're gonna make the team this, we're gonna go back to doing XYZ, and we're gonna be scrappy again and we're gonna get out of this.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_00: And we did, we like clawed our way back out, um, you know, regained profitability, regained growth.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_00: And while our revenue has never hit that COVID revenue number yet, we have strong goals and we're inching there.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_00: But the good news is definitely profitable now.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_00: And I think at the time the growth was so explosive.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we're talking for us, it was 6,000%.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: We made the Inc.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_00: 5,000, like we were number 53.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_00: Like it was insane growth that like I totally lost sight of profitability because I was just throwing money at like, how do we get these orders out the door?
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I need another body to like, you know, handwrite cards for this client.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_00: It was insane.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: And like, again, hindsight's 2020.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: I wish we didn't make some of the decisions we made, but it was survival.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_00: Like, we didn't know what to do operationally.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: And again, back to the story of a normal entrepreneur, right?
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I had never created a warehouse or fulfillment center.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_00: That was the first time I had to ever do operational work like that.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: So it was there was so much learning in that.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_00: And I just feel so proud that we got ourselves out of the, you know, the hole and are now, you know, growing again.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, now we are growing.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_00: We pivoted our business to prioritize the corporate gifting from like a revenue standpoint.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's now about 80% of our business, probably more actually, from a revenue standpoint.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_00: And it's super fun, super creative.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's not actually what we started with.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_00: We actually do a lot of um, in addition to the employee gifting and we do sales and prospecting gifting, um, we built a lot of gifting technology.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's where um we kind of pivoted to like a SAS sort of product, and then in addition, have this like agency model for marketing gifting, like influencer gifting and PR and brand gifting, and that we are like the most differentiated ever from any other gift company because of our backgrounds.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um and we're recognizing that the clients who really understand that our backgrounds are valuable in that.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my god, they hire us again and again because it's so easy to talk to a marketer about your marketing brief, you know, versus if you go to a you go to a promo shop and you're trying to make an event swag kit like a promo shop, they're just selling, they're just like slinging swag, you know, as a volume game for them.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: You get a salesperson, there's no strategy, there's no like what's the call to action here?
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: There's no strategic thinking.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_00: And so we really bring that to those clients now.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, the business is totally different, but still a lot of fun, still, still pivoting, really.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, always, you know.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: And the corporate or the consumer part of the business is still a flywheel.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_00: Like it's funny, I've been told by advisors here and there um over the years, like, oh, you know, your consumer business is declining, maybe kill it, right?
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_00: Like cut it, cut that leg off.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_00: And we keep seeing that that's a flywheel to our corporate business.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_00: The same person who bought an engagement gift, they're the head of HR at a new startup, you know?
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's we're never gonna kill it.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_00: I think we've taken our eye off of it a little bit and from an optimization standpoint, which is one of my goals eventually to look back at it again and optimize it.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_00: But um, it's been very interesting balancing kind of those pivots and the change and um and finding again, finding the next opportunity for growth.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_01: I yeah, I would never kill the consumer side because you're right, you know, that's sort of an entryway in.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_01: People get it, and then all of a sudden they think about it and go, you know, I have to send gifts.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_01: It could be somebody who's in charge of HR, could be the president of a company, could be his wife that got it, right?
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_01: Because my wife influences a lot of things that that that obviously that I do.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_01: And um, and as well as I I influence her, right?
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_01: I would say to her, hey man, if you want to send stuff out, you know, look at this company.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_01: And uh um, yeah, but it's amazing.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of uh a lot of mentors out there that sort of uh, you know, don't know what necessarily they're doing.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and you know what?
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's so funny because I think one of the reasons we were the one of the reasons to not kill consumer for us too is we've built this brand.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_00: Like I told you in the beginning, like we wanted voodoo doll and quirky and fun.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_00: And that is so foreign to the corporate gifting space that when they even land on our site and they see a little bit of neon and some happy faces, they're more like again, I'm the target.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's millennial women are HR people, right?
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_00: Like generally, um, and older, but like, you know, so they're still attracted to the brand of Happy Box, even if what they're gonna execute is like a new higher swag kit that's generally boring, you know?
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_00: So like I think the brand sucks people in.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then to the point about mentors, it's so funny you say that because one of the hardest things I think I had to grapple with in my entrepreneurial journey, especially in the beginning, is how when do you listen to mentors and advisors and when do you listen to experienced people and when to not?
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I think what we've kind of learned is we actually have a really good gut feeling and like we've just been living this and breathing this so much that our gut is like usually right.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_00: Not do we know everything?
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_00: Will I claim to know everything?
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I absolutely love hearing from experienced entrepreneurs, experienced people in e-com, and I definitely take advice, but there is this like twinge of doubt sometimes when you hear a piece of advice, and I think you have to listen to your gut, especially if you've been building for so long.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_00: Like we have enough experience that I know my customer very well.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_00: And I have hunches that I may not have all the data for, but I feel very strongly about.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, no, I I hundred, I 100% agree with you.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_01: I actually did a video because I had somebody come to me, because I I do coach, and uh and they came to me and they were frustrated and they said, you know, I paid to join this group, the Million Dollar Seller Club.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_01: And they said, you know, every day I go to these meetings, it's all about, hey, what's your big win?
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_01: And hey, let's the mindset and hey, mind shift.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_01: And he said, you know, it just kills me.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_01: Goes, he said, and then the other thing is he said, I got a coach, and they're throwing their certifications at me and and and all.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_01: He said, and I didn't pay them any money because I said, look, let's just talk.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_01: And it was all just book speak.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_01: He said, and so I'm looking for somebody to help me.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, I agree with you on the c on the the the um joining the groups.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_01: I said, I actually made the mistake of joining a group uh about a year ago, and I paid a decent amount of money, and it frustrates me because we get on and all they talk about is, you know, tell me the big wins of your mindset, and then they post these stupid, you know, these stupid power phrases.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, no, let's talk about how to move from A to B.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, yeah, so it so it inspired me to make this video.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, I wound up bringing them on as a as a as a client, but I said, I did this video and I said, you know, I'm a certified coach.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_01: I said, and let me tell you what's where's where I got certified.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_01: I got certified when I started spending my own money to build my own businesses, and I went from here to here.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_01: I said, and I wasted, you know, I can tell you that I wasted over 17 million dollars traditional television commercials before I learned how to do them correctly.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_01: Now we do CTV commercials.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_01: I said, but here's at the you know, and I went through this whole thing and I said at the end, I said, would you climb Mount Everest with a guy who read a book about climbing Mount Everest, or would you go with a guy who's gone up there and nearly died three or four times because he doesn't, it's because the the air gets thin and he knows where the crevasses are where he almost fell in.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_01: I said, so you know, that's what makes it different.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_01: So to your point, I agree with you, man.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes you have to listen to people, I think.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_01: People are valuable, but you have to find the people that have walked in the shoes you're in.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_01: Like I people that come to me that have, you know, that have like um you know, SaaS business, techno high tech businesses.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_01: I I can't help them because I never built a high tech business.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_01: I'm more of a I'm a consumer product person.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_01: That's what I know how to do.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, I know how to do SaaS, but in in a certain specific category.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_01: So I never take on people in the in a category.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know because but I'll direct them to somebody who can help them.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_01: Because I can't give you wisdom.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_01: I've never done it.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_00: No, it's so true.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I think what's hard, I think, and I I feel for them, like I see on like I mean, especially Instagram, that's like definitely my targeted channel.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_00: Like as a as I'm an elder millennial, so Instagram's like my jam.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but like I feel, especially for women, which you're not the target, so you may not see this as much as I do, but there is a lot of crap out there about like overnight stay at home with your kids successes.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, no, no, no, I see it.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I I feel so like every time I see those things, I'm like, if like I wish I could just scream into the camera to everyone and be like, do not listen to these people.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_00: Nothing is an overnight success.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_00: Everything takes a lot of work, it will be hard, you will not make a million dollars, you will not have a million dollar launch like tomorrow.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_00: Like you won't.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: Like 99.999% chance.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: So, like, it's so frustrating because I think, especially women, I think we're like, we're taught that like you need help, and there's this whole everyone talks about imposter syndrome, which I f I understand, like, but it's funny, my co-founder has a very strong feeling about imposter syndrome.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_00: She's like, it's stupid.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_00: Like, every no one knows anything until they do it.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_00: Just do it, just try.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I think to your point about like reading the book versus doing, like, you just have to do in some of these groups like you're talking about.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_00: We talk a lot about like I don't want to say feelings or like fluffiness, and it's like, no, like I need to spend this time building, doing, learning, not necessarily like talking about like something fluffy.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_00: I don't have time.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, we started a a small group and we're we're building it, but it's like Tuesdays we talk about brand building, right?
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_01: Thursdays, we talk about scaling, right?
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_01: And then we put together a calendar.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_01: But I don't want to hear, I'm not gonna have people posting saying, you know, what do you think is the best, you know, a feeling about ugh?
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I don't really care.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't want to go out to dinner with everybody just to have a dinner and we can hand out cards and network with each other.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_01: I don't care.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_01: You know, the purpose of the group is to help people get from point A to point B and give them real life experience.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_01: Have speakers come in, not speakers that are trying to sell you something, but speakers that are actually trying to give you information to say, look, I'm gonna take my time to tell you something.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_01: My name is so-and-so.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_01: Here's what I've done, here's what I could do.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_01: Ask me questions.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, this is the best I can do to help you.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_01: Because you you're 100% right.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_01: These groups just drive me insane.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_01: And then I look at the posts and I go, but I see exactly what you're talking about with, you know, people that are like, you know, uh like I the reason I'm gonna tell you, the reason I started doing the podcast, and the reason I started doing the TV show was because of this very reason.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_01: I mentor people, University of Maryland, School of Entrepreneurship, Johns Hopkins, et cetera.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_01: And I see these young men and women that think they because they watch these stupid things and go, oh, well, I can start a side hustle on Thursday, and by Tuesday I'll be a multimillionaire.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_01: And it's easy.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_01: And I go, it's not easy.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_01: So I five years ago, I started doing the TV show and I started having some real life entrepreneurs, guys that spoglini pasta, or you know, people that have started brands, like real brands, it's fashion, food, beauty, and people that you would know, and they they come on and they say, here's how I started.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_01: And oh, I almost went out of business six times in the first three years because of cash flow, and here's what I learned, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and it's like you're you're listening to this and going, Well, I have never, and I've said this a million times, I have spoken to over a thousand successful, moderately successful, and unsuccessful entrepreneurs.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_01: Never has anyone said, Oh yeah, it was easy.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_01: I woke up, yeah, yeah, had this idea, put it into play, and it was a hockey stick, and then now I'm a millionaire.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_00: And also, it's so funny you say that.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_00: I had this exact thought today that I've never heard an entrepreneur say, I made the perfect business plan and I have the perfect team, and then I executed because I think one of the biggest barriers is people don't start because they're like, Oh, I don't have the model perfect, I don't have this perfect.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_00: And that was hard for me to learn, honestly.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_00: Like, as someone who's I I definitely I pride myself as a planner, like I like the business model like document, you know, I like the business plan.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_00: But I had to really unlearn that for entrepreneurship.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_00: Like, yeah, I got my MBA, I learned lots of things there, and those are nice tools, but like they're not the be all end all.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I think I was it's so funny you say that because I was just thinking, I'm like, I have literally never heard any company, any successful entrepreneur entrepreneur say that.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_00: Like, yep, we wrote this business, we had to draft 75 of the business plan.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_00: No, you just do, you try, you test.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_00: And so I think it's the same.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, I totally agree.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_00: It's never easy.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I love that you're doing that kind of content.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_00: That's something I'm very passionate about talking about because it is so hard.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_00: And you see these entrepreneurs again.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_00: I think we talked about this, but it's like like Alison Poppy right now is all over my feet in her hot pink suit and her beautiful glam.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like, that's not the normal entrepreneur right now.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_00: Like that's not, she was she and she also hustled her, like she did.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but now, yeah, she's now she's successful.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_01: You know, everybody looks at her now and says, okay, great, but look at what what she did.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_01: She started making the stuff in her kitchen, then she was smart enough.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_01: I give her a lot of credit for this one move.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's so hard to get your product into a store, but you can do it through demand uh uh uh direct store delivery, a DSD, right?
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_01: Because the stores will take it because it's no risk to them, right?
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_01: They don't have to bring it into the warehouse, it's cheaper for you.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_01: And and so she's never gonna get it on the Pepsi truck.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_01: She was never gonna get it on the Coke truck.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_01: She and she knew that the beer guys were struggling because sales were down.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_01: So she went to the Anheuser Busch guys and said, Will you put this on your trucks and bring it in?
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_01: They were like, Yeah, sure.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_01: We need to fill the trucks.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_01: And she started that's how she got in there.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_01: And then she, you know, she got to Pepsi, and Pepsi started watching her.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_01: They gave her a little bit of money, and then they were like, you know, this is really taking off.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_01: She did the Super Bowl commercial, and then, you know, she sold.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_01: But she, it wasn't easy for her.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_01: It wasn't easy for um uh what's her name with Spanx?
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um Sarah Blakely, yeah.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my God, you listen to the stories.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_01: We interviewed her, um, me and John Scully a while ago.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_01: John was doing a book, and we interviewed her and listening to the stories about her, and and this cracks me up too.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_01: My wife and I talk about this all the time.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_01: She's in there pitching to a bunch of men pitching a product that they have no concept of, and they're all sitting there going, Oh, it's never gonna work.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_01: And you're like sitting there going, it's never gonna work.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_01: I was in the well, I had a a startup, had a company, uh store, retail store, specialty food stores.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_01: I think I might have told you this way back when we built the first meal site, uh, greatmills.com back in 2000.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, we had uh seven stores in the Washington, DC market, and we we were uh trying to expand, raised, raised capital, et cetera.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_01: And we wound up getting purchased by a supermarket chain.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_01: They wanted the website to turn, this is the early days of they wanted the website to become home shopping.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_01: So we sold, you know, and I went down there.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm sitting the and I'm sitting in this in this company and it's all men.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm thinking to myself, and they're making decisions every week about, you know, the circular that you get from a supermarket, right?
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_01: I'm sitting there going, you know, you guys, you set up this card marketing department.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_01: So you have all this data, but you got the fat guy in a cheap suit who runs the meat department telling you that ground beef at 99 cents is going to move the needle.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_01: And then you got the other guy over here in the cheap suit that sells seafood telling you this.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_01: I said, This makes no sense.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_01: And they're looking at me, I said, There is not a single woman in this building that makes a decision, and your number one customer is mom.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_01: I said, you know, I came out of doing stuff with with the shopping channels, and to their credit, uh, you know, Mindy Grossman, who who now uh she ran, she worked for Ralph Loren, Nike, I mean, brilliant woman, she wound up taking over uh HSN.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_01: And she made everybody talk about the customer as her, you know, you're talking to her because she was the number one.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_01: And whenever you were in a meeting with them, they would go, well, she's not gonna respond to this or she's not gonna like, you know, and that's how they spoke, and they had pictures all over the place of her, you know, what her persona was.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, that was the first time in my life that I thought these people really, really understand the customer.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_01: And all the decision makers, all the decision makers were women.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_01: All of them.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah because they sold fashion, they sold beauty, they sold cooking, they sold all these things, gifting.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_01: And it's like sitting there, you know, finally somebody understands.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_01: Because I talk about this with my wife all the time.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_01: I go, you know, there's no just in the grocery business, there's no woman.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, right.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_01: Now we have Wegmans, right?
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if you've you have Wegmans by you, but yeah, the the the daughters are running that company, right?
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_01: And now Wegmans consistently ranks among the top top supermarket chains, right?
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_00: That's amazing.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's true, but it's true.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's so true.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's so funny.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_00: I I worked on a chocolate brand back in the day, advertising agency side, and it was the same thing.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_00: I remember sitting there being like, the decision maker in the grocery shopper is mom, they're making a list, but we have like an NFL sponsorship, and we're all in on the NFL players and this insider language, and I'm like, what are we doing?
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_00: And I think to be honest with you, I think at the time it was more like someone liked football.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_00: That was a decision maker in the company, and that's how it started.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_00: But it is so true, and it made it so challenging as a marketer because I'm like, this doesn't make sense.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_00: Like, oh my God.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's true.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't care.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_01: Like, we were in the shaving business for both men and women.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_01: And the one thing I learned was we were in the beauty business as well.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_01: But I said, you know, people talk about um, you know, who they're talking about, oh, well, it's men, men buy shaving.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_01: I don't care what you tell me.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_01: Women influence, women influence 80% of the decisions.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_01: I, I'm a pretty savvy guy.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_01: I can make my own decisions.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_01: My wife and my daughters are the ones who make decisions about the clothing I wear.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_01: They'll sit there and say, I swear to God, they will look at me and go, that's not good on you.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_01: And then when they go shopping, they'll come back.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_01: I wind up with clothes in my closet and they go, We found this and we think it's going to look really good on you.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_01: Try it on, and I try it on.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_01: They go, really does.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_01: It's the truth.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_01: It's the God's honest truth.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_01: Left to my own devices, I would wear I'd be I'd be in athletic wear all day long.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_00: So funny.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that's you're lucky.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_00: You have some nice stylists in house.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_01: But I guarante I guarantee you that you make 80% of the decisions in your house.
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_01: Definitely.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_01: You know?
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_01: No man that I know, no man that I know can buy a piece of furniture that's gonna go in their house.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_01: No man that I know can buy can buy a lamp.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_01: They can't buy a rug.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_01: They're not gonna buy how many men do you know are gonna buy their wife clothing at the holiday time?
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_01: They always buy jewelry because it's safe.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_01: Buy jewelry, okay, it's safe.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_00: It's so funny.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_00: It's so true.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_00: And it's yeah, it is interesting.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_00: And and how even the biggest brands can mess that up and and not really understand who they're actually talking to is wild.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_00: Because it wasn't that long ago where I've experienced this with pretty big brands, and sounds like you too.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's crazy.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my God.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_01: It's amazing to me what the decis how the decisions are made.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_01: And and the fact that what what bothers me the most in working with brands is how little they really understand about who their target customer is.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_01: They don't understand it.
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_00: So and how the decisions one of the coolest things I think uh a mentor told me this one when I was starting Happy Bucks, I think, and he said, when your company is small, you have the luxury of still having like a lot of one-on-one with your customers.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_00: Like really talk to them, understand, watch them go through your website.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_00: And he's like, because you're gonna get to a point where it's too big and or you're gonna feel too big and corporate-y, and it's not gonna feel the same.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_00: And we took, we did that for a long time.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_00: We still do it, like we'll do like um try to do it quarterly, more like do it two times a year.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_00: But um, we do have our customers like on our website go through the experience and we interview them, and it's very helpful.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um, because you understand and also consumer behavior changes, consumer preferences change.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's not a static thing that you can just decide.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, when I worked on some of these big brands, agency side, I mean, I can name a brand that they planned 10 years.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_00: It was a 10-year plan we had, like messaging, even.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, that is ridiculous.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_00: Like you can't, especially I think I do think COVID probably shook that up because there is no world in which people after COVID were like, let's do strict annual planning now.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_00: Or like, you know what I mean?
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_00: Like, there's no way, like, I would never go back to that ever.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_00: So anyway.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_01: I agree with you.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_01: Well, we ran a little bit over, but that's okay.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, any last-minute thoughts?
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_01: How can people find you?
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_01: What's your website?
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_01: Where can they uh interact with you?
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, appreciate it.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so you can find our website, happyboxstore.com, for all personal gifts, corporate gifts, et cetera, on there.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_00: You can also like book a call with our team if you are interested in any of the corporate gifting stuff we do, um, and we'll talk through it.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um, what else?
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_00: At happybox on Instagram is a great way to see some of our recent work on the client gifting side, specifically influencer unboxings that are very, very fun.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um, yeah, and thank you for having me.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_00: It was always an energizing conversation talking to you about uh all of the things entrepreneurship.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it was it it was great.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_01: I enjoyed it.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_01: I I love it.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_01: I love uh listening to your story.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_01: I I love that uh you know, that you took a simple, thoughtful idea and you turned it into sort of this massive uh movement and and have pivoted and understand how to pivot uh because I think that that's always important for people to understand to your point about long-term planning or you know, even short-term planning, you've got to pivot.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_01: Things change.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_01: So um, yeah, I mean, I I think it was a great conversation.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_01: I love chit-chatting with you, really smart, and uh I appreciate you taking the time.
• 35:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, thank you.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for having me.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_01: And we will see you guys next time.