Advice Line with Neil Blumenthal of Warby Parker

Transcript from https://podmenti.com/t/9a5a98ce1443a87e

Hello and welcome to the advice line on how I built this lab. I'm Guy Raz. 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 1-800-433-1298. Leave us a one-minute message that tells us about your business and the issues or questions that you'd like help with.
Alright, let's get to it.
Joining me today is Neil Blumenthal, co-founder and co-CEO of Worby Parker. Neil, uh, welcome back to the show.
Thanks for having me. It's great to be back. Great to have you back. You were first on the show back in twenty sixteen, telling us how you and a few friends from your MBA program at at Wharton
basically realized that glasses were way too expensive than they had to be and you decided to do something about it.
And of course your brand, Warby Parker, uh, was the result. It's been a amazing success story. Um, and you guys really changed the way people
buy glasses. And by the way,
Uh for those of you listening who haven't heard that episode, we will put a link to it in the show notes. It's such an awesome story and well worth uh going back. I want to ask you a qu a quick question before we get to our callers um about
your co founder, Dave Gilboa, because he was also on the show with you.
You guys are still the co CEOs of Orby Parker all these years later, since you founded the company back in two thousand ten. Yeah. This is quite uncommon, right? We've seen it with like um
Wayfair and some other brands where the co founders are still really running the thing together.
Um
But it's uncommon, right, to have such a long working relationship that's successful
Co CEOs, you're both the CEOs.
How do you explain it? I m for me
I think a lot of it is just chemistry.
have chemistry that just happens to work.
But it still takes work. What works in
It to you know, in your relationship to make that possible.
Completely. I think it comes down to trust and and respect. Uh we implicitly trust each other to make any sort of decision, but also to seek each other's advice. Um, and if I am thinking through a challenge, um, you know
I immediately want to share it with Dave because I know that, you know, whatever ideas that I have.
he'll enhance them and make them better. Um and we still sit next to each other. So for fifteen years we've been sitting next to each other in between meetings, we're constantly talking to each other. You know, often uh we might call each other on the way to work or late at night, much to our wives chagrin.
Um, but it it's just been a a a lovely partnership, um in which we both make each other better.
It's it's really great. And you know, I know uh glasses or the technology of glasses have been around for a long time. It's it's basically
Yeah.
uh ground down glass um and in pl in frames, right? But
I know you guys are really leaning into AI. Can you talk about
how you're integrating AI into the actual products that you make.
Yeah, we're really excited. We're working with Google to launch AI glasses. Um they're sort of Warby Parker branded intelligent eyewear. Um, if you think about it, right, your glasses sit on your face. Um, they're able to see what you see, hear what you hear, and you can
look at a plant or a building or a piece of art and you can learn more about it. Um being able to communicate with somebody in another language uh where as they're speaking your glasses could be translating in real time. So you know th these are
things that are really helpful and and useful for all of us.
Yeah, I mean not not to you know c make any comparisons, but I have a pair of metaglass. They're really cool. The the the audio quality is great.
And also not having to look down at a phone. It's really nice. Completely.
Yeah, just
You know, the freedom to not take
your phone out of your pocket for an hour. Right. We we are behold these mobile devices. Um and uh I'm excited for that day where it can stay in your pocket or on your desk for a little longer.
Yeah, for sure. All right, let's take our first let's bring our first caller. Uh welcome to the advice line. You are on with Neil Blumenthal.
Co founder Vorby Parker, please tell us your name, where you're calling from, and a little bit about your business.
Hi, my name is Kimber Crandall. I'm calling in from Utah and I'm the co-founder of Pearl Pop. Pearl Pop is the first soft and chewy toothpaste, looks more like and feels like a gummy and tastes like a treat, but it actually treats your teeth with clean ingredients too.
Okay, awesome. Kimber, I met you
We I met you, you came to one of my book signings a c for uh my kid's book, Wow in the World, and I'm so psyched to have you on the show. So before we dive into all your question, let's talk a little bit about Pro Pop. These are
It's a it's they're gummies. They l they look and they
They sort of have the texture like a gummy candy, but it's basically toothpaste. You chew on it and then you brush your teeth.
But it's not like foam, right? It's not it doesn't foam up. Tell me how it works.
That's right. There is no foam and that's because we don't have sulfates. Uh as we were formulating this, we wanted it to have cleaner ingredients. And so that was part of the process. So you pop it in your mouth, chew for a few seconds, and then you start brushing. And you brush those pearl bits into your teeth until it mostly dissolves. So about two minutes, spit, don't rinse. Then the nanohydroxy appetite
And the xylithol can keep working even after you brush.
Okay, so the this nanohydroxyle appetite, this is uh this is
replaces fluoride. These do not have fluoride.
Um tell me tell me why you don't have Flora in there.
There is a huge market when we were initially starting out doing this, about fifty percent from our s surveys and studies showed that fifty percent either don't want fluoride.
Or they're looking for an alternative because they don't, they aren't passionate about fluoride. So we thought, let's go after that audience first, since they are looking for something and need an alternative.
Okay.
Kimber tell us a little bit about
How you got into this because
I know this because I met you.
You were a T V reporter.
Yes.
One of you Emmy's and yeah, lived out that life. And now this is part two for me.
Tell me what was the c like what was the what precipitated that pivot to to just completely st
Start something new.
Yes. In twenty twenty, I became a single mom of four little girls. At the time they were between the ages of one and seven. And I knew I needed to revamp my career and figure out what to do. And so I applied to BYU to their executive MBA program. And this started out as a class project. We were in an entrepreneurial class. We were studying parents of young kids and
bedtime as the pain point. Well, what about bedtime was hard? It's that you needed to get your kids to brush their teeth. You asked them five times, they squirted out all over the sink. You finally just send them to bed, you've yelled at them, you feel like a bad parent. Okay, so if we can just stop right there and give your kids something that makes them actually want to brush and with cleaner ingredients.
Then you're going to smile more confidently and your kids will too.
Got it, and all direct to consumers all being sold to the website, right?
Mostly through the website we do have some small retailers like local stores that are carrying it.
Nice. Okay, that's great. Tell us what question you brought in for us today.
Yeah, the question I brought is with something that requires so much education and is completely new to the market. How do you create a movement or a moment that changes the consumer habits and spreads awareness to essentially take it from something that's a niche to a mainstream product and behavior?
All right, Neil Boomfield, I want to bring you in you don't have to answer the question right away, but any questions for Kimber or thoughts?
Sure.
You know, what I think is really interesting about your business is that you effectively have two customers, um right.
Uh you have the the the child that is
sort of using the the toothpaste. And then you have the parent, right, that is generally the decision maker, the the purchaser. Um what have you learned about those
two different customers on how they make decisions around sort of dental care or or brushing teeth or or purchasing toothbrushes and and toothpaste.
That's a great question. So what we have found is that for kids, they want it to be fun. They want the flavors to be fun. So right, we've got peach rings, groovy grape, bubblegum. And then for the parents, they want to know that it works. In fact, the science has proven to look so good.
That we had a lot of parents that were using peach rings and bubblegum themselves. And so they requested that we come out with an adult line. So we now have Mant Kiss for adults as well.
So the adults really care more about the science and the kids care about the fun.
You know, it does feel a lot like the early days of of Warby Parker and one of the
things that I'm struck by in your story is that there's so many sort of messages and selling points um right that this makes bedtime easier. Um this is actually better for your health um and it's a cleaner product.
We spent a lot of time at Warby trying to understand
How do you prioritize a bunch of these different messages? And it should all come back to what is most important for the customer. We were trying to message glasses for a fraction of the price, um, great style and design.
buying online. Um we have a social mission, right? For every pair of glasses we sell, we distribute one to someone in need. Um and after survey after survey what we found was what mattered first and foremost was how these glasses look on your face.
Second price, um, you know, third quality.
Um last if at all
would be the social mission. Wow. So we we almost never lead with the social mission and often many of our customers
Don't find out about that until after they've purchased with us. So
You know it's
Interesting, um you mentioned efficacy, right? If that is the most important thing, um that might be what you lead with.
Um, one of the things that also I'm jealous of is that you can provide samples to people. Yes. You know, with um and and you sell a product that has frequency um and repeat use, whereas, you know, the average American buys glasses once every two years. Right.
So I totally agree with you, Neil. I mean, I feel like the other thing is it's a non-fluoride product. Now, I'm gonna just say this flat out. I use fluoride toothpaste. I will say that my dentist, this is very unusual, he is one of these very rare dentists that doesn't use fluoride. So I know both sides of this world, right? I don't have strong feelings on it either way, but
People who do have strong feelings on it.
That is a tribe and they they share information. They amplify what works like
So I філак
You you know
It's not like you need to change everyone's habits at once.
You really need to lean into this tribe, because the tribe that you're talking about.
Amplifies these things in ways that other
People don't.
Does that make sense?
Definitely.
What I might think about is
Who are these customer segments, um, which are the biggest ones and sort of rank order them and go after them sort of piece by piece. So for example, if um you know parents that don't want my fluoride free toothpaste um is particularly large, you know, how do you sort of
use that messaging and go on as many
Yeah.
parent podcasts as possible to speak about it or um advertise on on those mediums. Um and then the question is, okay, well how do you get this product in the hands of as many kids as possible? And that might be partnering with
Places where kids have birthdays and uh more and more stores and distribution. You know, if most of the people already buy their um toothpaste through um existing stores, you know, how can you be alongside
um where those other products are because at the end of the day, um, changing habits is really hard and you almost don't want to change. You want to take the world as it is and then sort of insert your product into it.
Yeah. I mean there are probably
millions, but you want to really focus on like ten thousand parents, right, who live on
TikTok or Facebook groups who are
who sort of gather around some of these issues uh brushing fluoride free
Et cetera. Sampling makes it is to me I
C completely agree with Neil. It's like sample, sample, sample. You can make these small packets and you
whoever is willing to give the daycare center, swim schools, summer camps, you know
Nielsen birthday party goodie bags.
Um
Yeah.
what what you have, right, your product
Essentially is a gummy toothpaste, but what it makes me think of Neil and I were talking about this earlier, but uh off Mike, um
Jeff Rader who who co founded Warby Parker and and then went on to start Harry's
Uh they have a product that they now bought called uh Lumi Deodorant, right, Neil is that right? Lumi deodorant. Exactly. And Lumi Deodorant, I believe, was started by a doctor and that was
The marketing of it was your doctor has solved, you know, under arm de you know,
What if you thought of your brand as like you know, like
The mom who finally fixed brushing, something like that.
I love that idea. Yeah. And partnering too with Dennis and orthodontists, endodontists, so that we have that science backing, right? Because they are using it. They're liking it. I got a text from an endodontist the other day that said he has had major sensitivity issues. Nothing's worked for his teeth with cold, and he's used sensitive and all the things, and this is finally
Breaking through for him. Amazing. So I think, yeah, you're right, as we partner with more of those authority voices, that would be a great start.
And
And there the question also is how important is the parents to have that credibility from the medical and dental community. You know, for at Warby Parker, for example, um
People generally trust glasses and you put it on and you can see it works. Um however, if you're gonna go and get an eye exam, right, and we now hire hundreds of doctors, it's really important to demonstrate, hey, these doctors are some of the best in the country. They're highly credentialed, um, they're using top of the line equipment.
Um so again, depending on in that hierarchy of how people make decisions, um, right, whether you want it blessed by, you know, the American Dental Association or whatever group it is to to give added credibility.
Yeah, I mean that may be tricky because of the the fluoride issue. I'm not but what an another I mean, building on that, right?
This ingredient you're using.
And I I I don't know it, right? I'm sure I've heard of it. Uh nanohydroxy appetite, right? Nanohydoxyapetite. Right. Okay. It may be worth really um you know leaning into that as well. And you may already be doing that, but
You know, it sounds like there are plenty of dentists who are using this
So
Uh it seems to me like those are also the partners you wanna try and reach out to and work with and just offer samples to them and and let them a pass them out in their offices.
Definitely. We especially find with pediatric dentists because their parent population is younger, right? Like in their thirties, maybe low forties, those people are more aware of fluoride and nanohydroxyapatite and realize that there's an alternative.
Um.
Another idea because you were saying how do you build a moment? Um and you know, we took advantage when there was a solar eclipse that was gonna be across the whole continental US.
Um so we created all these solar eclipse and we made them blue, war be blue, and we gave out thousands of them. Um if I think about where do I run the risk of cavities, for example, um, it's when I eat candy.
Um and when do you eat candy the most? Perhaps it's around Halloween. Um so
You know, is there an opportunity to break through and create a moment um when you know parents are worried, oh my kids are gonna be bouncing off the wall because they're eating so much candy and is this bad you know for their teeth. Um, you know, th that might be a marketing moment. Um there might be a there there, but I think the the bottom line is just, you know
When can you sort of insert yourself into the conversation?
Yes. Yeah.

You don't
really need to convince all of America right away, right? You really just need to get and I think you're doing it. You need to convince one circle of parents who tell every other parent. Think of so many products we've done. R X Bar is a great example. They started with crossfitters and it just blew up from there.
Um I I think you wanna really want to double down on the people who are attracted to what your value proposition is and let them let them be your force multipliers.
I love that idea.
It would just be amazing too if we can, yeah, just get the word out through the people that are already using it, which is a lot of times what we find, right? Uh there was a big influencer who posted the other day about us and I asked her, I was like, Hey, how'd you find out? And she said it was actually from some one of her friends that came over to her house, brought it into her kitchen and said, Try this right now. Your kids need this.
So hopefully that'll just keep happening over and over.
Awesome. Uh Kimber Crandall, the brand is called Pro Pop. Good luck. Thanks so much for calling in. Thanks for coming to see me in San Francisco.
Well, thank you so much for having me and I can just only hope that we're gonna change toothpaste. Like Neil, like you changed eyewear. And just something I've learned from this podcast is if you don't dream and go for it, we'll never know. So we'll just try. Thank you so much. Appreciate all the advice. All right. So great to meet you. Thank you.
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 Neil Blumenthal, co-founder of Warbee Parker, and we are taking your calls and Neil, are you ready for our next call?
Ready and excited.
Alright, let's bring in our next caller. Welcome to the advice line. You're on with Neil Blumenthal, co founder of Warby Parker. Please tell us your name, where you're calling from, and just a line about your business.
Hi Guy, hi Neil. It's an honor to be on the show with you two legends today. My name's Brian Dement. I'm the CEO and co-founder of Salt and Light Wellness. We are a three studio chain of wellness centers here in Southern California, and we specialize in light therapies.
Awesome. Welcome to the show, Brian. So you have got three locations in Southern California around LA or where where are you? We're kind of like wedged below LA in Orange County, but above San Diego in the inland empire. Yeah. Okay, I love the light thing. I do my morning light dog walk every morning.
You know, make sure to get the dopamine levels up and going and it it is actually really amazing and effective. Okay, so
These are this is a light there, but these are not like sun tanning salons. You go in and you what you sit in front of
red lights and t tell me a little bit more about what you do. Like what's the experience?
Yeah, yeah, with our modern busy schedules, it's not always feasible for people to get outside at the right times of the day to get their proper doses of red light, infrared light, and a a healthy dose of UV. So at Salt and Light, we make that easy.
We mimic kind of the full outdoor exposure if you were to go to the beach, say, for example. Uh, because we also pair it with salt therapy and coal plunge for contrast with our with our infrared light. You get a salt room.
Mm-hmm. You got the cold plunge. Nice. I just did a cold plunge in the San Francisco Bay. It was so freaking cold.
I can't believe I was in that water, but it was probably felt great afterwards. I felt amazing. It it does really you know, it reduces inflammation, lowers blood sugar. It's all does all those things. Okay. Brian, tell me how did you start the business and it to g give us a sort of the
basic story here. Yeah, yeah. So my wife and I, we founded it out of college in 2008. So Neil, right there with you when you guys started as well. We we just always believed in sunshine. I it was I was an athlete growing up, um, and because my athletic background, we had this idea
Of the team room, division one sports, professional sports, after they train, they have a place to go and recover.
Um, we're in a hobbyist culture as well, especially here in Southern California. And people treat their hobbies every bit as serious as a division one athlete does in college and and and
adult hobbyists actually have the money to spend on their recovery and take care of themselves. And so that's the market that that we really looked to integrate with.
Yeah. I mean it's cool because you think of like a stretch lab and we can talk more about that later. But yeah, I mean the fact that people wear whoops, there there's
You know, even Hoka shoes were designed for people who wanted to train like professionals. Um tell me a little bit about the business. How is the business doing? Are they I mean, you got three locations. Are the uh I I'm assuming that they're sustainable, that you're turning a profit.
Mm-hmm. Yeah. We opened as a red light and and uh UV studio. Um, but nobody knew what red light was in 2008. Our name used to be Perfect Tan. We would we would we knew the market understood tanning. We uh that wasn't what I believed in. We we would always make sure to coach people on appropriate times. We didn't run it like you know a fake and bake type of establishment.
Um and I think that
Bore out.
Results in the long run, but we actually rebranded to Salt and Light about three years ago. Rebranding and refocusing our marketing as a Salt and Light brand.
Gave us a pop of about thirty percent over our previous operations. Just out of curiosity, and you may not be able to to talk about specifics, but roughly what, you know, in terms of revenue, give me a range. What does one of uh you know, these locations, what can they do? Yeah, one studio, our top performing studio does about five hundred and seventy five thousand dollars per year. Okay.
Great. Okay, so before we dive in further, tell us your question.
Yeah, so they get about a dozen inquiries per week from people all around the country who want to open Assault and Light. Um
My question for you guys is how do we properly vet these people, especially with the volume? I mean, we're fairly small operation, so a dozen per week is actually a lot for me. How do we properly vet these people to ensure that we're getting people who align with our brand values and that we can create sustainable scaling?
Awesome. Great question and a very solvable one. Neil, I want to bring you in.
Um first of all questions or thoughts for Brian?
Sure. Well, congratulations. Um I love the rebrand, um, and it immediately evokes health and wellness for me. So exactly what the mission of of the company is. Um
I'm I'm not an expert in franchising per se, right?
Warby Parker owns and operates all of our own stores, uh of which we have o over three hundred. Um, we certainly go through quite a vetting process to hire our store leaders, and I actually still interview every single one. Um because
We think that the key to success is people and culture. Um, and if you look at enduring brands, right, it all comes down to people and culture. And what is culture? It's
shared values, uh shared rituals, um right, and and a shared mission. Um
So I I think you're on the right track here in saying like hey, selecting is really important. So I think the the first thing is putting out into the world
what the company stands for, what your mission and your values are, then people are already self selecting, right? And uh reaching out to you.
Then do you actually want to put some barriers in
in place yes um so that way you can narrow without investing too much time um
Who you might want to work with. And that might be an application process. Um, you know, it's interesting now.
I I
would say that if you do license or franchise um
Your business model changes quite a bit. You now have a new customer.
And those customers are the franchisees.
Um so it's just something to think about as you
decide on your strategy what how do you want to be spending um your time and are you gonna build a product for franchisees? Yeah, Brian, I I couldn't agree more with with Neil's advice. You know, we had a we have an episode um
on Jimbury. And Jimbury uh went into the franchising direction and the founder, she reached out to somebody who had expertise in franchising, which really
help the business. But that's down the road. I mean in the in the short term
You know, as Neil said, you want to build some barriers in just to make your workflow more efficient, right? So if s if there's inbound
You basically create a questionnaire with like fifteen or tw twenty questions. Ask about their business experience, their their available capital
uh may any demographic information on where they are, um why they're motivated. And that alone, just that barrier to entry is gonna eliminate like sixty to seventy percent of the income. Because people who are just not gonna bother filling it out. And then
Once somebody fills it out, you could you can go to the next step and actually have a conversation with them. And really what you're looking for is right
You know, are these
People.
Do they believe in what you're doing?
You know, not only are they coachable and are they somebody wanna work with, but do they really
believe in this, right? Because people who are looking for a passive income stream
That's not your person here.
You've got three locations.
Those first five franchises w we've learned from all our interviews that we've done with franchise.
Yeah.
They're critical.
Those first five are gonna define so much uh of the culture.
Um they
can elevate the brand, they can dilute it, they have such a huge impact. So
you wanna be really, really careful. Once you
let's say land on somebody you're interested, even before you hit the go button, you want to make sure that they do a shadowing period with you, that they spend time working the front desk, that they sit in on your meetings, you know
And in
Even then you want to figure out a tr some kind of trial basis because
Um it's a huge responsibility.
Well, that's yeah, hearing that's like kinda like a breath of fresh air. I I appreciate even the sifting and the workflow that you that you suggested there. And uh you said something about
Um
People ensuring people are passionate not only about
the leadership role and the operator role, but the branding side of it for Neil, do you have, you know, I know there's companies that have, you know, they're famous for the types of questions they ask in interviews. Do you have any kind of indicators of wow, this person really gets the brand? Is there a specific type of question you would ask or something that you know that this is the question that
ensures there's alignment.
Yeah, usually it's not one particular question, although I'll share an example. Sometimes I'll ask, you know
Do you remember when you first heard about the brand?
Um and we're now fifteen years in, so that
you know, question is perhaps not as relevant as it was, you know, five or or ten years ago, but it starts a conversation and I can start to suss out are they a customer? Um do they believe in our mission? Um, you know
Are they a glasses wearer and can uh really empathize with customers? So what it does is it immediately invites a conversation where the individual can start to share what they know and what they love about the brand. Um and frankly, if they don't know a lot.
then how could they possibly love the brand or the mission, right? They didn't do their homework, which, you know, if they didn't do their homework on uh interview with the CEO of the company, like am I gonna trust them with the four walls of a store and managing people?
Yeah, I mean you can uh
Yeah, I mean
you ask them what does salt and light mean? What does that phrase mean to you?
Uh
Tell me about your own you know how light therapy solved problems.
Challenges that you had.
Um
You know, you really want to interrogate their own personal wellness journey.
Um to see why they're
you know, they're interested in and and to gauge their passion.
The other thing I'm just curious, are you getting out inbound from people outside of California? Yeah. Yeah. Uh last week I had a uh about an hour phone call or video call with a gentleman from Nashville, uh Arizona, Northern California. So yeah, it's I mean, obviously Northern California is in California, but yes, it's all around.
What's uh
Funny to me is it's almost counterintuitive in that these are all places with lots of sun. Um I'm sitting here in New York, um, and it during the winter gets dark at four thirty. Like I I want you to open up uh here next to my office. Yeah.

You know, I think that if you
down the road if you do work with some of these uh franchisees
You you might wanna look at what Orange Theory or Stretch Lab did, which is they built regional density first.
Right. You you know, you want to start by
maybe bu building out five to ten
Locations within an hour or two drive from HQ.
before you go to Nashville or Dallas or somewhere else. Like you really wanna
sort of s test the model and be able to really
have oversight because down the road if this does catch
You know, fire.
You wanna look at what other franchise uh brands d have done, right? Like five guys. You're gonna wanna build like an academy.
where you train people, where they learn about the science of light and then obviously the business model and how to get you know, acquire members and
you know, the protocols and
you know, the history and then the values and all those things, you're gonna have to develop a very specific disciplined program that's gonna come way down the road. But long before even before you get there,
You really want to think about keeping it really
tight and close before you think about going out of state or even in into Northern California.
Yeah. And being within close proximity allows you to provide greater support to the different locations and to physically be there and visit more frequently.
Yeah.
Thank you for that. Yeah, and and we we have seen that in our in our existing locations. There is a bit of a network effect amongst the three, which is great. Um and yeah, I mean we have we're right next door to Orange County and San Diego County. So those probably are yeah, I appreciate the advice. That's probably a good market to move into. Awesome. Awesome. Brian to mint. The brand is called Salt and Light Wellness. Good luck, man. Thanks so much for calling in.
Thank you so much. Keep us posted, yeah. Thanks.
Alright, we're gonna take another quick break, but we'll be right back with another collar. 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 Raz, and today I'm taking your calls with Neil Blumenthal, co founder of Warby Parker.
And let's bring in our next caller. Hello.
Hey Neilin guy, my name is Tanner McCraney, uh calling out of Nashville, Tennessee, and I'm the founder and president of the Cowboy Country Club, which is our made up country club and golf brand that invites anyone to join and claim membership to.
Our members represents those who can seamlessly transition from the country to the country club.
Okay, welcome to the show T. So wait, it's a
It's a made up country club. What do you
What what is it what do you do? What do you what do you sell?
So our business kinda has two sides. We've got the merch and then we've got the membership, but we don't really say that we have customers. Everyone who buys something is a member, and so for clothing, it's everything that you'd find at a pro shop.
Quarter zips, hoodies, vests, t shirt, pickleball paddles, and then we've got the membership stuff. Oh wow. So you act as a member of this virtual club, what do you get?
So our membership box is a subscription where uh you actually get a bag tag with your name on it and member number. It doesn't actually many mean anything. It's just for fun. But you also get a head cover, golf towel, uh, you get tease, basically a swag bag to trick out your golf bag.
Alright, Cowboy Country Club a made up
golf club and and you sell hats and apparel and tell me the story about the like what
Wha how did this happen?
Absolutely. So growing up, my parents were members of a golf club. Uh so I had a community to play with and talk about golf with, and then I went off to college, had a great community there to play with. Then after graduation, I went and took a finance job in Atlanta. And being there, I didn't have anyone to play with. I felt excluded from the game, nowhere to call home.
And I I figured that I could solve my own problem of feeling excluded by creating my own country club and inviting people to join. It
It was a crazy idea, but we built a social media following where I told my story and talked about why this was something that I was so passionate about. And our first drop sold out in
Twelve seconds.
Wow. How did you get so you keep saying we, is there more than you?
Well I just call it the club, the name. It's the week. Okay. I got you. And how long have you been doing this now? How many years? Uh
Almost three years. And what are you do what are you doing in sales per year right now?
So this year, uh if it shakes out how it should, we should be at around one point five million.
Wow, that's incredible. And this is entirely direct to consumer.
No, not necessarily. So last year we started our wholesale business and we're in around a hundred retail stores nationwide.
And how how did you get people to even become aware of this?
Oh so.
We took on some really great mentors that talked about us going to trade shows. And so our first trade show was in Dallas, Texas. We set up a booth, had no idea what we're going to do. Again, the we was you or was it even.
So I actually hired my best friend from high school to take over our wholesale department, but him and I went to Texas and set up a booth and were able to get
Thirty retailers, and that just snowballed into where we're at today.
Wow.
And so and okay, so you cr that's amazing. You created this brand out of nothing.
And you've already you're doing one and a half to two million sales a year. Um before we dive in f further, what's your question for us?
One thing that I've noticed about myself personally is I struggle to delegate. And so my question to you guys is
In looking to scale, how do you let go of the the day to day core responsibilities in order to build a scalable team and a scalable brand?
Got it. Okay. Neil Blumenthal.
I wanna bring you in. Um
Cowboy Country Club.
Congratulations on all the success to to date. Um and to your question about like how do you
Delegate.
Uh what
I've always found that delegation is hard, right? Especially when you're building a business yourself and um you really want things to be done right and up to a very high standard. And sometimes
you're doing things that you've never learned how to do. So then it's hard to hire somebody to do something that you don't know how to do. How do you even evaluate somebody for that? And what I would do early on is meet with a lot of other entrepreneurs, um, or just people
in sort of similar industries to
better understand what the different departments a company has and what the different roles folks had. So a role like a merchant.
And that could mean different things at different companies. So if you speak to three different companies, you might have three different versions of merchandising. But at the end of the day, right, merchants are setting the product strategy, right? They're they're they're determining the collection
And I found that the better that that I understood individual roles and the more comfortable that I
Came
to like an organizational structure.
then that made it easier to let go.
Uh
certain roles and responsibilities because I grew more comfortable with the work that needed to be done. So that made it easier to write a position description to evaluate somebody and hire somebody to do that work.
And I th and you're right on the money there because it seems like I'm so stuck working in the business rather than on the business. And so you're absolutely right that
Hello.
Taking those roles and looking out to hire is is the right place I need to be in. Yeah. I mean you are all right, the thing you want to sound like what you want to do is you want to build the culture, the community and the uh and demand.
And and and Neil, this is probably I mean, I'm curious about your your
You started your business with partners and everybody had different skill sets. It seems like maybe
Uh, in your case, Tanner, you want to look for like a
Like a
a product and operations person, right? Like that's really but s not necessarily a designer or but somebody who has
Let's say five years of experience in apparel, like somebody who's now sort of
mid level
Working at a
business that's like, let's say two to three rungs above yours because that's you just want somebody with some experience
In apparel.
who can handle operations and product and who can develop relationships with factories and
figure out the margins and the supply chain stuff and forecasting. So it sounds like that's what is keeping you
sort of occupied right now.
Yeah.
Um where we've had trouble hiring at times is when we try and hire somebody that comes from a much larger company.
Because uh they might thrive in an
existing environment where systems are ful and processes are fully established. Whereas you're in a growth stage now and you literally have to write the HR manual. You have to figure out the flow Yeah, we have nothing. Right.
Um you have to be coming up with prices. You have to um literally be talking with the warehouse and figuring out how to connect your systems with the warehouse. So you really need entrepreneurial folks. Your first
10 hires have to be really entrepreneurial and problem solvers. Um, and those folks tend to be at uh smaller organizations.
Absolutely. I think that we need to kind of break down the business, what roles
Am I the best at or want to be an expert in, and then look for those people like you were saying that that could come in and make a difference.
And one of our biggest goals for the next year is to bring fulfillment and warehousing in house,'cause we've been using a three PL since we've started, essentially. And I think getting our entire team in one location would be a great way to kind of build a culture and then bring people into that.
having people in one location definitely is key to culture. Um and you saw that the companies that seem to function best during the pandemic, for example, had
earned all the goodwill from a strong culture and strong relationships before the pandemic. So that way when people did go to work remote, they were able to sort of leverage a lot of that culture that had already been built. Um
One thing that
I would just
think about long and hard is what are the things
that you want to be expert in um and that you should do yourselves versus what are things um that might be a commodity and can be outsourced and
you know, your brand, um, the design of your products, right, that is core
To you guys, and that's unique.
packing a hat or a uh a shirt into a box and shipping that to a customer.
That might not be something that you want to do in house um because there's lots of experts that can do that and they may have economies of scale and could even do it cheaper than you could do it your yourself. Um Neil, just a quick question. I mean, is there a world where at this level maybe he even thinks about like a fractional
head of ops. I mean they're you know, he's still small. I mean one one and a half to two million is great, but
Uh it it may you know, it may make sense to tap into like a freelancer at this point, or what do you think?
Yeah, I
I think that's a great idea, and you know, especially if you can define
specific projects that works really well for
contract work and you know getting somebody to come on for a period of time. They have some pattern recognition because they've seen this before. And you know, not everything needs to be permanent. Not every relationship, right, needs to extend for a decade. You know, what I often tell our team at Warby
Is
This train is going for a very long journey and
People get on at different points in the journey and they get off at different points in the journey, uh, and that's completely okay.
And we can stay close with those folks and we hope that their time at Warby, they're thriving, they're learning, they're they're growing. Um, but you know
People leave and the needs of the businesses change over time.
That's something I struggle with is I wanna find the perfect person for permanent.
And knowing that
You know, it's it's the train, like you said, is is a is a good perspective.
Yeah. The the other thing I say i is that you want to ask that person
Yeah, but
some basic questions like what do w what does Cowboy uh country club sell?
And if they say, Well, you sell hats and shirts and you know, and
Uh that's not the right fit. You want somebody who understands that you're selling an identity.
Uh you're belonging into this club. It's sort of a tongue in cheek
wink and odd thing, but it's something
deeper, right? You're building a brand. You're not just lifestyle brand, yeah.
And and that's the person that you want to
Take a chance on.
Absolutely, I really appreciate it.
Great advice.
Yeah. Awesome. Well the brand is called Cowboy Country Club Tanner McCrane. Thanks for calling in. Good luck, man.
Thank you.
Um
Wow, super cool.
Neil, before I let you go, um I wanna ask you a question I've been asking everyone who who joins me on the show, which is knowing what you know now, if you could go back and say, Hey, here's here's what I know.
And here's some advice I'm gonna give you, Neil, fifteen years ago. Is there something that would have been helpful?
I think it was continue to build
relationships with folks.
That
were a couple steps ahead of you.'Cause that's where we
tended to get
the most sort of actionable advice from
from founders who were, you know, a few years in front of us and could share lessons, uh, failures. Um, you know, speaking with the founders of Bonobos, for example, who were also building a brand and raising venture capital, and they had given us tons of advice, which was super helpful.
speaking to friends that had worked in venture um because it was also unusual that not a pure tech company was raising capital. So we had to learn the language of venture capital to raise money for a tech enabled brand. You know, none of us had run
an e commerce business before. So speaking to folks that had run e commerce businesses. Um so I wish that this podcast was uh available back then um because it would have made our lives a lot easier.
Well, that's why we call you guys to help the people now. Thank you so much for um coming back on the show, Neil. It's great great having you back and and hopefully we'll have you back again again.
Uh thank you for having me.
It's Neil Blumenthal, co founder and co CEO of Warby Parker, and by the way, if you haven't
Heard the Warby Parker episode, go back and check it out. Incredible story, so good. Uh here's one of my favorite moments from that episode.
We hadn't told anyone that the site was live. We didn't wanna drive any traffic to it because we weren't sure it would work. So I get an order and then ten minutes later we get another order.
And then another order, and then another order.
And it it kind of
go from this feeling of elatement to
Oh crap. Um we we don't have this much inventory.
Hey, thanks so much for listening to the show this week. And by the way, please make sure to check out my newsletter. You can sign up for it for free at guy.com or on Substack.
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This episode was produced by Sam Paulsen with music composed by Ramteen Arablui. It was edited by John Isabella and our audio engineer was Cena Lafredo.
Our production staff also includes Alex Chung, Elaine Coates, Steva Grant, Casey Herman, JC Howard,
Chris Massini, Cather, Carrie Thompson, and Ramel Wood.
I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to the Advice Line.
on how I built this lab.