Advice Line with Tim Ferriss (August 2025)

Transcript from https://podmenti.com/t/3b0ea8b26cc6d8a4

Hey everyone, so this week we're revisiting one of our favorite episodes from the archives. It's an advice line conversation with entrepreneur, author, and podcaster Tim Ferris. And stick around to the end because we checked back in with the callers to hear what's happened since this episode first aired back in August of 2025.
We'll be back next week with a brand new advice line episode featuring Christina Tosi from Milk Bar. Super fun episode, can't wait for you guys to hear that.
And without further ado, here is the episode for this week. Enjoy.
Mm.
Hello, and welcome to the advice line on how I built this lab. I'm Guy Roz. This is the place where we help try to solve your business challenges. Each week, I'm joined by a legendary founder, a former guest on the show, who will help me try to help you. And if you're building something and you need advice, give us a call, and you just might be the next guest on the show. Our number is 1-800-4525.
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Alright.
Let's get to it.
Joining me this week is Tim Ferris. He's an entrepreneur, investor, host of the Tim Ferris Show, and author of many books, including the Four Hour Work Week. Tim, it's great to have you back on the show. Thanks for having me back. So nice to see you.
Uh you two, Tim, you are first.
on how I built this back in twenty twenty. And as always for anyone listening, if you haven't heard that episode, it's so good. We'll put a link to it in the episode description, so check it out. In that episode, Tim, we talked about
your time as a student and the learning Japanese and how you got a sales job out of college and then you started your own business, a supplement company, and then of course
You published your first book, which many people know you for, the four hour work week and initially you couldn't even find a publisher.
And the story of how you managed to use your blog to get it out there and sold millions of copies. Became a massive
Yeah.
And of course, since then you've written several other books. You've launched a massively successful podcast, which hit a billion downloads last year. Congratulations.
Thank you.
Give us a little bit of an update about about what's been going on in your life since we
Last spoke.

Well there are a number of
Simultaneously running chapters. Uh so supporting a lot of early stage science. Yes. And then I would say every
Mm, three to four years I want to try something completely off menu professionally.
To see.
What I can learn.
The angel investing after the success of the first book, the podcast after the third book, et cetera. And now I've spent two years working on a card game. This is a tabletop analog game.
That is called Coyote.
That is now
Launching
Everywhere.
I think part of your story for people who haven't heard it is that
You kind of follow your
your passions and your interests in ways that
have led you to do not just interesting things, but things that have been lucrative that have worked out. Like your podcast was just kind of a started out as just a fun little project which turned into a real business. Now you're doing
A card game which is totally out of left field. Tell me about how you
What inspired this idea? So I tend to explore these off menu
out of left field things.
For
skill development, learning, and new relationships. Right. So the podcast, I launched it as a LARC, but
I
Basically wanted to ask myself, how could this win even if it fails? And I did the same thing with Angel Investing, just treated it as paying for
A
business degree. So
In this particular case, I'm looking at it the same way.
And it came about because
I have seen in my audience is sorely needed as an antidote to digital malaise and loneliness, which is
in person social time with something that is a light.
Lift. So how could I design a uh
game that takes about two minutes to learn, ten minutes to play.
that can help people
offset their screen time and all of the things that come with excessive screen time.
with family with friends
that hopefully makes you a little bit smarter. Right.
And I wonder whether
Some of that came out of your own experience. Like, did you find yourself
Maybe s at cer certain points in the last decade just
Being
you know, uh a slave to
to screens, to your phone, to whatever was in front of you.
Oh for sure.
This is basically creating what I want more of in my own life, certainly for the last
I'd say two, maybe three years I've had no social media apps on my phone.
Because if you think if you think you're gonna use the
Discipline to be
Teams of
you know, computational neuroscientists and statisticians and
uh computer scientists.
who are have billions of dollars at stake in ensuring that they can overcome any type of resistance you have to using their program or platform compulsively, you're just bringing a butter knife to a gunfight. And I think it's uncontroversial when you look at the scientific literature. These technologies like there are costs. So my thought is
Just offset it.
Try to offset it a little bit.
And
I think that in person still counts. We are not evolved for two dimensional screens at eighteen inches.
Ten hours a day that is not what we're evolved to handle at all. But
Uh I I really think.
that there is a quality of life
value to in person. We see some
countervailing trends, so for instance in New York City, these massive game nights in person.
have become a big thing.
running clubs, people getting off of dating apps. I think that at the very least, you know, microdosing analog is a good idea. Yeah. With other people. I agree with you. I mean it's we it's had a m there's a crisis in attention. And this this is relevant for entrepreneurs, right? Because I think
many of the entrepreneurs I interview on this show also have multiple interests. I mean their their passion might be their business or the thing they started, but I think that

the sort of the underlying foundation for their success has to do with
being interested in lots of different things. And I wonder how you find those things. I would say that I just I throw a lot against the wall. And part of the reason that I do
Uh many different things. By the way, some of them have been dead ends and failures.
But if you look at say the Angel Investing, it's still going. You look at the podcast, it's still going. And these are things
that provide energy and recharge the batteries.
Right, so the energy that you might get from playing a game, spending time with

you can transfer that to everything else that you do.
And that's part of the reason why I think a lot of startup founders in particular could benefit from a little bit of identity diversification.
If your entire
Identity.
and self-worth is wrapped up in your company. There are too many factors outside of your control that can give you
a r a real curveball type of damage.
And
I just know
dozens of founders where if they have a bad quarter or they have a bad
Year?
They feel like a failure.
And for that reason having a few
Concurrent.
Projects.
allows you to make progress in
other areas to offset lack of progress in another. And then you just you're like, okay, this is the one out of twenty that seems to get me super excited for some reason. Let me just follow that central.
And see where it goes.
I love that. All right, Tim, let's go ahead and bring in our first caller. Uh you ready?
I'm ready.
All right, hello, caller. Welcome to the advice line. You're on with Tim Ferris. Tell us your name, where you're calling from, and just one quick line about your business.
Hi Guy, hi Tim. I'm Lauren Minard.
I'm usually based in San Francisco, actually, but I'm in my hometown in Beakmantown, New York right now. I'm the CEO and founder of Gob, and we are on a mission to reinvent single use personal care products that
disappear after you use them, as they should.
All right, so what what's your product?
Our first product is a single use foam earplug made entirely out of mycelium.
Mm.
Which is from mushrooms.
Yes, it's the root structure of a mushroom. Amazing. Congratulations. Thanks for calling in. So Lauren, the product that you have now
They're earplugs, like regular earplugs, except I guess, and I've always wondered this,'cause I've used earplugs, lots of people like you throw them away and
They're probably mainly plastic.
Yours what they biodegrade?
Yeah, so normal foam earplugs, they're all made out of pure petroleum. They're polyurethane or PVC and they're really bad for you and the planet and
Ours are a bioengineered material foam that's
actually biofabricated. It's grown into its form.
Wow, and how did nobody ever think of this before?
You know, that's exactly why I started the company, guy. When I had the idea, I was like, Why has no one done this yet?
Yeah, tell me how you how you came up with this. Are are you are you an engineer by background, or tell me a little bit about about what you were doing before?
So I'm an industrial designer. I was running a design agency.
thought that was gonna be the rest of my life working with
Large
Fortune five hundred companies helping them bridge the gap between mass manufacturing and better materials. And you launched the business when? When did you launch Gab?
Just the middle of March this year.
Wow, and tell me a little bit about how you're doing so far. I mean, you're selling mainly to who and w what kind of traction are you seeing?
Yeah, so we sell directly on our website currently and also in a number of music venues and
That's a bit about like why I'm here and asking you a question.
Go ahead, Launch. What's your question?
So we're really lucky to be gaining mega traction in the live event space with actually a national partnership with a massive
company that owns many venues.
And at the same time, we're growing a really strong direct to consumer
Customer base.
For sleep.
So my question, I'd love both of your advice is around
How to successfully scale
Two very different verticals simultaneously without losing focus.
All right.
Awesome questions. I'm gonna bring Tim Ferris and Tim questions uh maybe for Lauren or or thoughts about her question.
Lauren, if you had to focus on, say, the venues or the DTC.
Oh gosh. Which right now, let's just say you had to make a decision, which way would you go and why?
Oh, that's really tough because
On the sleep side of things, we're getting customer feedback, like we're getting a lot of rave reviews, and so I feel like we're really
finding that need and we're meeting that need. On the venue side of things, however
You know, we have access to guaranteed eyeballs.
Thousands, sometimes tens of thousands in a night.
And
Basically
We're meeting people in these cultural emotional moments. And Tim, you were mentioning IRL experiences. That's where people really connect with brands. So that's why I'm so torn.
Guy, do you mind if I rip for a second? Yeah, please.
Okay.
Uh
I would actually be curious to know if you think it could make sense.
to build up your coffers and generate a nice, healthy, reliable stretch of income.
With the music venues.
And
That puts you in a position.
To experiment with different ways of acquiring customers on the D2C side. And then you can make an informed decision based on.
At least some math.
And history.
Which way you want to go.
Do you have any
any feelings on where you want to go with this company for yourself. Do you want to be some type of investor backed company or do you want to
Maintain control.
and remain private.
Great question.
So we are actually investor backed. We raised a pre seed last year of a million dollars and I'm currently raising our seed on a safe note.
So we do have that outside investment, but basically because
my dream and my vision of this company is to build it into a new category.
And I intend to find these kind of forgotten about personal single use personal care products.
and adopt biomaterials that can meet the need.
Right. And because of the nature of biomaterials, there needs to be a little bit of R D that requires some funding. So basically that's why I've had to do that thus far, but I intend to build this into a very large company.
I want to take on three M. If you're if you're I'm in I'm in ambition. Yep, I can tell. All right. I I wanna pass it over to Guy because I feel like I'm hogging the mic in. No, no, it's great, Laura. I'm curious, with AEG, how does that relationship or how will it work? Will they sell the earplugs at their concerts?
Yeah, so we pay a mo marketing fee or sponsorship fee to be there for the full year at each venue.
And we keep one hundred percent of the revenue.
And we sell both at concessions. So we have these little light boxes near all the cans of drinks. And we also have gob green bright vending machines.
Right. Okay. Are you able to work it to to make independent deals with other music festivals and or or are you do you are you exclusively tied in with AEG now?
We are their exclusive hearing protection, but we are not exclusive. We we can definitely work with other venues.
Um
One of the th I think of of course where you are in San Francisco, outside lands, one of the biggest festivals, where people would be more receptive to really listening and hearing about the story. But the other thing I keep thinking about are is airlines where people have time to really look at a package
And open particularly in first class when they get do you people get these kits in first class and they get a card with all the information about the products in there. And it to me it seems like an opportunity to get this in front of
a pretty influential group of people.
Have you approached your lines?
We have, yes, and we're definitely going down that path. It takes a bit of time, but what's interesting is some of our angel investors have invested because they have received those kits in business class. And everything is quote unquote sustainable, but they still have the little foam earplugs and the plastic pouch. So that's actually a fun fact that that's
What actually led quite a few people to investing in my company. Tim?
When you are so you're planning on raising around in the not too distant future.
What is the slide in that deck gonna say for how we plan to use all your money, dear investors?
Well the the deck is together, so I'm pitching. I'm in it. I'm in it. So basically the funds will be used to set up operations. So we manufacture in the United States and we need to scale up our operations'cause right now we're
Building all of our product in a
Tiny little space in San Francisco.
And um definitely t need to move that into a three PL on the east coast.
'Cause that's where a lot of our traction is and
We're also using that capital, but I would be lying if I said I wasn't using some of it for marketing, right? But
I do have a bit of an allergy
these days to advertising heavily on social media because it's just like so competitive and saturated. So I wanna use that in smart ways to do IRL experiences, actually.

Well, all and also I don't know if this is part of your deal, but if you have
sponsorship deals, right? Hopefully you have the ability, I don't know if this can be negotiated, but to use
That brand?
on your website as right exclusive hearing protection provider to X. I don't know if that's something you can finagle, but using that as part of your marketing for
Social credibility.
For
Some of the D to C stuff. Yeah. But what I'm hearing from you, Tim, is that uh
This ability to capture eyeballs and capture people in real ways in
These B to B spaces is maybe
More impactful
Gain trust of consumers. Is that what I'm hearing?
I th I think that that's one way to approach it. Uh I wouldn't say it's more effective
writ large, but it may be more effective for your stage of funding.
If that makes sense.
Right.
Because if you were like all right, we're gonna go full D to C, you're gonna need more than one person.

Two.
Do everything that will be a required
to make good use of investor funding.
To make that count as like you said, in a very competitive
certainly online landscape, which is why you lean towards IRL. But if you had the right employee or contractors for selling into.
more
Let's just call it venue conglomerates that run multiple locations. You could actually get a lot done.
with one like one full time, one part time, or several part time.
And I think that's harder to do.
Direct to consumer.
If that makes sense.
It does. Uh
I I agree. I keep thinking about monster energy drinks, right? And and what they did and how they scaled so quickly was they made a decision when they were launched. They were gonna work with motocross
And uh MMA
and uh heavy metal concerts. And so
They focused on those three areas, targeted those fans, those kinds of people. They were going after men who loved heavy metal music. And Monster became the number two best selling energy drink very quickly. And it's interesting here because you've got the music venues, but it sounds like the sleep side
is really where you see an opportunity.
And I wonder whether
There's a an opportunity to partner.
With some of these brands that are known for sleep, you know, a a certain mattress brand or
If you're not going to be able to
If that's something that you wanna
Move towards.
Yeah, that's that's a really great thought and
It's it's complicated, right? Because
the use cases that we're attracting are so opposite.
And so those brand partnerships feel very
Important.
And'cause
They already have leverage and they already have an audience, which is really nice and good for us. And I will note you mentioned Monster Energy.
I am very lucky to have just hired the ex VP of Cult Indoctrination from Liquid Death. She just joined our team this week and
He's gonna be going out there and trying to get as many new brand partnerships as possible, so
I'll give him that task of looking more into the sleep side just as much as the venue side. Awesome.
Uh Lor Lauren, what is the uh
The retail price.
Yeah, so we sell our smallest skew, which is two pairs for five dollars.
Four pair for ten.
And before us the venue was selling
One single pair of foamies for between five to ten dollars.
Oh yeah.
Yeah, in a really good position.
Yeah.
There you go.
The brand's called Gyb Earth. Congrats. Good luck. Keep us posted.
Thank you so much. What a pleasure.
Alright.
Thank you.
I love that idea. It's a cool idea.
One earplug like
hack that I used when my kids were little, when they were babies. We would

'Cause you get an airplane with a baby and you almost
Uh oftentimes you'll sit next to somebody and you can just tell they're just like, Oh my God, I gotta sit next to this person with a baby for the next four hours. And what we would do to disarm people is I would go to the people in the road in front and behind and say, Hey, I have a baby there's a chance he's gonna cry
But I brought some earplugs and if anyone would like some, please take some and I d have the bag and I'd pass it around and nobody would ever take the earplugs, but they would always be so nice to us.
Because we just made that gesture. So hat for any new parent. I love that. Bring a bag of earplugs costs you four dollars a CVS or nine ninety five if you get gob. My buddy had a a an adjacent strategy, which was anybody want a vodka tonic, I'm buying everybody drinks. I love it. That's great. That's great. A little bit more expensive than earplugs, but yeah.
Yes, not also. Usually exclusive. Alright, we're gonna take a quick break, but we'll be right back with another collar and another round of advice. Stay with us, I'm Guy Roz, and you're listening to the advice line right here on how I built this lab.
Welcome back to the advice line on how I built this lab. I'm Guy Roz, and my guest today is entrepreneur and investor Tim Ferris, and we are taking your calls. So hello, hello, caller.
Hi, my name is Emily. I own EB Co, which is a women's accessories brand based out of Kansas City, Missouri. We specialize in sizeless gifting and we have mainly hair accessories and jewelry. We were founded in 2012 and yeah, a Midwest girly.
Nice, Emily, welcome to the show. So E B and C and Co accessories.
So like hairbands, like are you selling rings, earrings, bracelets?
All of the above and more.
Earr kind of the big hero product for us.
I have a manufacturer in India that I work with that does hand beaded uh stuff, so we have some custom headbands.
Scrunchies, all the fun things that make an outfit look more finished when it's not.
Awesome. And you have a brick and mortar store in Kansas City?
I have two brick and mortar stores. I also wholesale at the airport, and I rent booths inside other stores as well.
And um are most of your sales coming in through the store or are you also selling online? Where are you seeing most of your
Revenue come in from?
Well last year was a bit of um an outlier because Taylor Swift wore my ring and we went by one of your rings. A bit of an outlier.
Well it was Travis Kelsey themed, of course, guy.
Oh, and we developed a relationship with Donna and um we kept gifting her things that were Travis Kelsey themed that we created and Donna's his mom, right? Yeah, my apologies.
You made rings that had a like his jersey on the ring?
Yep.
Like like it's okay, I got you. So
Taylor Swift wore one of your rings.
Yeah.
To the AFC championship.
Which both of them to go to the Super Bowl. So if you can imagine my mind being blown and then all of a sudden like that Shopify ding happen, and it was just like ding ding ding ding ding ding. Okay, now I'm now I'm looking at now I see it because you have all you've got these rings with the jerseys so you have Taylor Swift wore one of these rings and imagine
It had an impact on your sales.
Right.
Yeah, so my sales went up fifty percent from twenty twenty three to twenty twenty four. Wow.
Wow, amazing.
And um it's been bananas. It's been a wild rhyme and I hope to give her the biggest bear hug someday. I bet. All right. So tell us what your what your question is for us today.
So my question is in twenty twenty four.
My brick and mortar sales went up thirty seven percent.
My wholesale orders went up over three hundred percent.
And so I'm trying to decide, even though the majority of my business, about ninety percent of my revenue coming in is in that retail
Direct to consumer.
my wholesale side is what has a much significant more growth. So should I follow what is where the money's coming from or should I follow what area is growing the the most aggressively?
All right, lots to think about. Tim Ferris, I want to bring you in here. Um questions for Emily.
Yeah, sure. Well congrats on
a lot of different aspects of the business. You've made it past a lot of places where other companies do not
cross the river, so to speak. So congrats on that.
Yeah, I don't even know what to say about Taylor Swift, I would say.
Yeah.
You know that may be a non recurring phenomenon. So probably don't want to bank on that, but
My God, congratulations. Let me ask a couple of of questions related to products. Are the earr the best selling category of product?
Yes.
Okay. By how much?
Say about fifty percent.
Okay, so so the earnings are huge. In terms of uh this is coming to your question related to wholesale.
and say the brick and mortar. So you're talking about revenue.
If we're talking about bottom line.
Profit, however you want to define that.

What what is actually contributing
The most at the moment. It's still the is it still the brick and mortar, would you say?
Yeah, it's the retail side for sure. So D to C definitely gives us more revenue. Last year it accounted for eighty nine percent of all the revenue. Um, and thirteen percent was wholesale. You know, the the great thing about wholesale is that, you know, there's not as many expenses, right? But
the same time it's just not accounting for as much revenue. So that's why I'm having a hard time decided to focus.

If you were to
Basically get the
wholesale up to the point that it was generating the same as your current brick and mortar.
How would you feel about that?
versus keeping the wholesale where it is and
Basically doing the same doubling but with
Brick and mortar.
I mean wholesale is great because it essentially acts as a Shopify order. It's just bigger. And I already have all those systems in place. You know, I have a fulfillment manager, I have an assistant manager, we ship out of our store. So it it doesn't take more calories for me to execute that.
But opening more stores
Takes a lot more energy, right? Like I have to approve everything and and you know go go sites and find what feels good, negotiate, you know, wholesale is just another online order which doesn't take any energy for me. So I would love that, and that's one reason why we're putting so much energy into growing that.
But it's just hard to prioritize it that much when ninety percent of the revenue is coming from
Direct to consumer.
Emily, do you have a

person who focuses on wholesale? It's me. It's you, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, is there a world where you can hire somebody at maybe even on a part time basis?
to only focus on building the wholesale business.
Yeah, totally. I mean I think that has some legs to it for sure. I'm really trying to focus also on like customized pieces too, and that was a new area that we're developing.
Um so I've been really focusing a lot on building those
direct to other business like relationships, but that's definitely something that I want to work on.
And have you done trade shows?
Any church shows?
I have it.
I haven't, no. Mm mm. Because that would really be the the fastest way for you to
Get some wholesale deals done.
I mean it sounds like
you really want to build the wholesale part of your business out.

it the potential is greater there, which I agree with, and
In in some ways it's it's easier. There are obviously downsides too, but it's easier with what you are doing rather than trying to open up, you know, other brick and mortars,'cause brick and mortar is expensive, it's challenging, there's a lot of
a lot of moving parts there and y it depends and relies on foot traffic.
Yeah, for sure. And it's done really well for me. And so I think that's another thing that's like
Man, it it's a lot of fun to have a space where people enjoy, you know, talking about your digital detoxing, like getting out of your house, getting off of your computer, walking around a store, trying things on. So I enjoy creating those spaces. Well, let me hop in here uh for a second just to say
I don't want to discount that.
So
If if the only thing that mattered for your quality of life
Were
growing the business, then there would be one line of thought and a certain set of advice that we could give.
But people start businesses and run businesses for a million different reasons. And not everyone's trying to build the next startup that they sell to Meta or Google or whoever, right? So
If you really enjoy the time in those spaces, I think that number one, they're not mutually exclusive, but you could take
the attention on growing.
Brick and mortar.
and apply it to wholesale for a period of time, right? You decide like for six to twelve months, I'm really gonna focus on wholesale. Can still keep the brick and mortar running, but maybe there are places where we can streamline, maybe there's extra help I can bring in. And I agree with
Guy that
Trade shows could be interesting also. You don't necessarily need a booth. If you just have samples of your products, you can meet not only direct wholesale customers, but also potential distributors. That's going to affect your profit margins. So I think it's uh
relatively speaking, very low cost way of doing a lot of really valuable in person research.
Yeah, totally. And you know, when people get their hands on it, they are like, I'm in. And so yeah, I think I I can definitely see your point in that. When people try it on, it's
It's easy.
Guy.
I think Tim's idea is great.
You know, make make a decision that you're gonna spend six to twelve months on this thing on this wholesale side.
And test it out.
And and you're trying to position yourself for the day after the Taylor Swift bump.
And
But then you won't need it anymore.
Because you've built out the wholesale business.
Yeah, I think that sounds great. You know, I try to get some brain quicken today and I couldn't get my hand I'm like what's gonna make me a sharper shooter. Yeah, it's been a few decades. I sold it, so I'm not sure what they did with it, maybe.
Got set out to pasture, for all I know. Emily Borner, the brand is called E B Co. Congrats, good luck. Keep us posted.
Thank you, and I just want to say you both have been so instrumental in inspiring me to make my business. So thank you.
Thank you, thank you for saying that. Yeah, that's awesome.
Okay, next up after the break, another collar with another business challenge.
I'm Guy Raz and we're answering your business questions right here.
The advice line on how I built this lab.
Welcome back to the advice line on how I built this lab.
I'm Guy Raz, and today I'm taking your calls with entrepreneur, investor, author, and podcaster Tim Ferris. Uh Tim, you ready to get our next caller on? I am ready, let's do it. Alright, let's bring our final caller. Welcome to the Vice Line. You are on with Tim Ferriss. Tell us your name, where you're calling from, and just a little bit about your business.
Hey Tim and Guy, thank you so much for having me.
I'm Kimberly Becker and I'm a clothing designer calling in from Woolwich, Maine. My brand is K Becker. It's a collection that I've designed with a focus on women over 40 years old, which is me, and this is a
group of women who have been looking for high quality clothes for quite a long time. It's an underserved population in the fashion industry.
And you design all the clothing?
I do. Yeah. Wow, amazing. And they're manufactured overseas in in Asia? No. I have a team in New York City and the fabric's are sourced from
Japan and Italy mostly a lot of dead stock fabric, so most of the fabric is quite sustainably sourced.
And really high quality. And dead stock means fabric that was that that uh one manufacturer too much of and and so was available. Yeah. That's awesome. I love that. And I'm looking at your website now and I'd it'd be beautiful. I mean amazing. So w did you you studied as a fashion designer, is that your background?
I'm actually a textile designer by training, which I bring a unique angle to the apparel industry. I
Work in almost every cotton mill in America before they all closed. Wow.
And and it's got a little bit of an of an Eileen Fisher kind of vibe to go in for a little bit. Yeah, so I listened to your interview with her and Years ago, yes. Yeah. She really I mean, changed the fashion industry for women gave
women at a way to dress in a that that sort of Japanese aesthetic is so timeless and so beautiful. But I almost think of myself as
Her alter ego. We're not trying to make sort of a simple boxy silhouette. We're trying to bring style, fashion forward, sort of whatever was on the Paris run runways so that um it's not dumbed down. It's not timeless. It's not
Shapeless. How many years have you have you been doing this?
So I launched in October twenty twenty three, so I'm quite new. And
From year one to year two we've doubled our sales.
I sell direct to consumer on my website, but
Really, primarily, I'm doing this all in person.
So you are the designer and the CEO and the sales rep. It's all you basically.
Basically. Yeah. Yeah and and and have you broken past uh a hundred thousand in sales, two hundred thousand sales?
I the end of this year I believe we'll be at seventy five thousand in sales.
So we're slow and steady here. Awesome. All right. Let's hear your questions and then we'll dive in a bit deeper.
Okay, so
I wanna shift away from an inventory model to a pre order model. In other words, you you're carrying inventory and you wanna shift away from that model.
Yeah, so being a small sustainable indie brand, we can't compete with the huge corporations that massively overproduce and then deeply discount and unload at the end of the season. It's not
It doesn't work for us financially and it's also just not sustainable. It's not good for the earth to be
doing it that way. Um
However, the US population isn't so game to wait five, six, seven weeks for a garment, so the the idea of
pre orders that we actually
take the orders and then manufacture what's ordered. So my question is sort of twofold. When do I make that move from an inventory model? And how do I shift the mindset
From instant gratification to patience.
Um knowing you're gonna get something great at the end of the day. Yeah, a lot to think about here. And as you know, we've done a lot of apparel on the show and for people who are unfamiliar with the industry, you've got to anticipate
what somebody's gonna order and and the more you make
the the higher you're the the chances you're gonna lose money because you're making these all
uh these high quality material making it in New York, so I understand the challenge and you're looking at a way to
basically show off a design but but get taken pre orders
So then you've got the money in hand
And then you only order what you need instead of instead of having all this excess inventory, right? Exactly. Okay.
Tim Ferris, I wanna bring you in here. Um a lot less thing by uh Kimberly's idea, I mean what she's doing is awesome and but uh c you know, consumer behavior is consumer behavior.
Mm-hmm. All right. So I'm looking at the website. I like the website, by the way. Very elegantly done.
I had a definition question for me because I have I've sadly no fashion sense.
But the what does choose the first piece of your capsule closet today mean? What does capsule? So in the sustainability world, the idea of a capsu closet is that you can have ten, fifteen
eighteen pieces.
The you can mix and match, you can wear again and again.
That's the idea. I actually have clients that are basically every time I release a new piece, which I think of as the next piece in the capsule closet, they are buying it.
They're like I'm building my capsule
Through you.
Okay. Tim, you do have a capsule closet. It's T shirt. And you mix and match.
So
Couple of thoughts.
I would say
One company you might want to check out.
run by a friend of mine, but it just so happens there might be some parallels. It could be pretty interesting. Uh his name is is SEP, but it's spelled S E P H H scarrot uh propercloth.com is his company.
And
He makes people wait.
And the company has been going for I wanna say ten years now.
but started off with something like ten different fabrics and one type of shirt in his apartment and now it's this
Very successful.
Yeah.
So I would
Say that there are exceptions.
to the US customers not being ready to wait. There so I would
go out of your way to try to find some of those outliers.
The second thing.
is that in terms of
When to make the switch, I would reframe that question.
How do I experiment? Because that's a risky.
Switch.
And so what I thought of were, say, limited drops.
Where
You don't make a
full switch, but you test the waters
To say.
Hey guys, we're running a really limited edition as an experiment. Here's why it's exciting.
The race goes to the Swift, we're only accepting this many orders, and then
You're gonna have to wait.
Four to six weeks.
Right, but y but you make it a feature instead of a bug. That's a great idea. And it would go right it would dovetail beautiful with the short amount small amounts of fabric I'm sourcing in those dead stock
Like Italian beautiful Italian fabrics I can only get eighty seven yards of or something. So it's Yeah, like that's part of the story.
I wonder if the the term pre order
Could be like could you could you
say made to order. I don't know if that's gonna make a difference or move the needle that much, but maybe pre-order scares people because they think, oh, it's it's like a Kickstarter you give. You know, how many times have you given money to the never ever arrives. But maybe made to order, like hey
you know, we're gonna you put the you make this order and we're gonna start working on it right away.
It's worth trying it again, it may not move the needle, but it's worth trying
Playing around the language.
No, it's a great idea. Yeah. Kimberly, I'm I w I'm wondering, I mean, are you hoping to move exclusively to this model?
Um so
In the long run, yes, it's it it
In a way that goes to the whole idea of that Tim, you talk about the smarter
not harder concept. So you design some if I design twelve pieces a year and once a month a new piece drops.
those orders come in, the manufacturing happens, they all get shipped together. Like it
consolidating the effort, um, but also then clients know when the next piece is coming. So they're they're watching for it, they're waiting for it, that Friday night drop, but
That would be the the
smartest way for me to reduce the amount of effort it takes to sell the product as well.
Right. Yeah.
While you're working on the transition,
Is there a way to keep best sellers in stock, right? Or maybe you design
sweaters or things that have a sort of a longer, more sort of timeless lifespan that are always in stock as you transition more and more to the made to order because there are things you can do to incentivize people, free shipping, maybe
Maybe they get inducted into a club. Maybe people get a first look at what you're working on. Maybe they get an insight into the sketches you're working on, or photographs of of you, you know, kind of cutting material or dra or drafting designs. I mean, that could be something that you may want to experiment with too. You know, it's funny you say that because
earlier when Tim was talking about the his friends
brand and the benefits that come from that sort of exclusivity. I was thinking it's the m
The men's wear angle on things is so different than the way we sell women's wear, but one of the aspects that I'm trying to embrace is to think more about men'swear and how it's pitch, because you guys
are a much harder sell. You don't buy as much. And so you actually require a little bit more carrying through. And and so in the idea of the club idea, which I love calling it that, it never occurred to me to do that to
but to send swatches of fabric for a new piece because the fabric is such a big part, the quality is such a big part of my
brand to send a swatch of fabric and say that that you're getting exclusive like first touch, like first opportunity to see this beautiful gabardine that we're gonna be making the next blazer in it's coming out in a few weeks. Keep your eye open when it drops, you know, you would be one of the first people.
To get your hands on it.
Yeah, sure.
I I feel like and and also coming back to what you said about consolidating effort.
I love the idea of shipping swatches, but
tha I that seems like it could turn into a hell of a lot of work. And I'm I'm not saying that's a bad thing to do.
Uh.
But I you might be able to scratch some of the desire for community.
Where you give them a peek behind the curtain using something that's off the shelf like Patreon or private YouTube.
Something like that.
Like hey guys, this is what I'm looking for.
Well this is what I'm working on right now.
And
Uh
I'm always looking for low cost, fast experiments.
That are easy to do. And if it doesn't work, it doesn't work. But if it does work.
Then all of a sudden you've created a new type of loyalty program, which has a community

Yeah.
Right now is everything. It's word of mouth is everything in this brand. Like we have to get people to the website or it's never gonna happen. Well it's just get you gotta get that club going.
The exclusive club.
I love it. Yeah. Kimberly, uh thanks so much for calling in. K K Becker Design. Good luck.
Thank you so much. It was really lovely talking to both of you. Thank you.
Tim, I'm not not surprised I mean, we've done, you know, um over a hundred of these episodes now, and I'm not surprised that
You really are like one of the best. You have great
Advice. Thanks, man.

It's part of the fun of business for me. Yeah.
It's a pusher. It is. And you can get handed a different Rubik's Cube.
Every day, every week.
Yeah.
Um Tim, um before I let you go, I I wanna ask you a question that I've asked every returning founder on on the show, which is if you go back to when you were kind of building your business, what advice could you have given yourself that would have been helpful?
I would say
First, there's no there's no one right way to do it.
And there's no one.
better finish line than another.
In the sense that you don't have to build the next venture back startup. You don't have to have your company bought by XRZ. You don't have to grow at a
Two hundred percent per year.
You might have a business doesn't grow at all.
but it is deeply meaningful to you and you impact people or you love the craft you're involved with.
So I would probably say that. And then the second thing I would say is
Mind your mental health along the way. Yeah. Right? Get get outside. Get some sunlight. Spend time with your friends.
As much as you pay attention to the business health, also pay attention to the the mental health and the social health side of things, I would say.
entrepreneur, investor, author, and podcast host. And now
The inventor of a new card game, Coyote, go check it out. It's available pretty much everywhere you can think of.
Tim, thanks so much for coming back on the show.
Uh what a pleasure. Always nice to spend time with you guy. Thanks for having me. Thank you. And by the way, if you haven't heard Tim's original How I Built This Episode, please go and check it out. We will put a link to it.
In the podcast description, and here is one of my favorite moments from that interview.
There's a difference between persuading someone.
to
purchase a product and
debating with someone who has no intention of ever changing their mind. Right. Right. I wasn't making that my job, which I think a lot of people do. They make it their job to convince the world and you shouldn't convince the world, you should convince the people who match most closely to what you're providing. Yeah.
So I came to believe really early on that it's not about the number of people who don't get it.
It's about the number of people who do get it.
Hey, thanks so much for listening to the show this week. And by the way, we checked in with our callers and we are happy to say that their businesses are doing pretty well and they're following some of our advice.
Gob earplugs were featured as one of Time Magazine's best inventions of 2025. And in March, Lauren appeared on Shark Tank. She's now taken Gob back into stealth mode, and she'll be launching a new product very soon.
Emily has now expanded to four brick and mortar locations and her new customized jewelry line is already accounting for 15% of her overall revenue. As for Kimberly, she continued expanding her clothing line and she's seeing a lot more repeat customers, which is always a great sign.
She'll also be exhibiting at the Curate Fashion Trade Show in New York this September. So congrats again to Lauren, Emily, and Kimberly. And of course, if you are working on a business and you'd like to be on this show, send us a one-minute message that tells us a little bit about your business and the questions or issues that you're currently facing.
Because we would love to try and help you solve them. You can send us a voice memo at hibt at id.wondery.com or call us at 1800-433-1298. Leave a message there, and make sure to tell us how to reach you, and we'll put all of this information in the podcast description as well.
This episode was produced by Nora Gill with music composed by Raptina Rablui. It was edited by Andrea Bruce. Our audio engineer was Cina Lafredo. Our production staff also includes Alex Chung, Carla Estevez, Casey Herman, Carrie Thomson, Catherine Seifer, Ramel Wood, Sam Paulson, Neva Grant, and Elaine Coates.
I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to the advice line.
on how I built this lab.