Advice Line with Curt Richardson of OtterBox

Transcript from https://podmenti.com/t/a3d05a717154ed6e

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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 1-800-422-252-252-252.
Leave us a one minute message that tells us about your business and the issues or questions that you like help with.
Alright, let's get to it.
Joining me this week is Otterbox founder Kurt Richardson. Kurt was first on the show back in 2019, and if you missed that episode and you want to go back and listen, we will drop a link to it in our episode show notes. Kurt grew up in a tiny mountain town in southern Colorado, and when he was just 21,
Kurt bought his own small plastics company, and for years he had a really rough time of it, until he came across a book called The EMyth.
Which helped him understand what truly matters at the core. And this insight eventually led Kurt to build otter products, which started out as small, waterproof boxes for outdoor enthusiasts. And when the iPhone exploded in popularity,
Otterbox was in place to become the dominant phone case brand in the US, growing the company from$5 to$575 million in just five years.
Fast forward to today, Kurt is no longer the CEO, but he's now the company's chief visionary officer, and we are so happy to have him back on the show. Kurt, welcome back to How I Built This. No, thank you for having me. I remember.
When we met in Denver, it was a great time. We did. We did a live show together. It was super fun. Um when you were on that show back in twenty nineteen.
What did you think?
the next sort of five years would look like and of course
What eventually actually happened. I was out or getting out of
running day to day by then.
Which was uh something I desired.
I think any entrepreneur many times hits a size of a business where it's like
Okay, this is beyond my skills. I'm great at startup but
This has turned in operational. Yeah.
So um went through a number of CEOs in the meantime, learned some hard lessons there.
And uh we've got a great CEO and great executive team now in place at Otter and
Um seeing some great benefits from it.
Initially Auterbox was known as the the protective case. Like if you dropped a phone from a building, you knew it was gonna be fine.
Now um you know, you've got a whole range of products out there. I mean, when you are sort of the the top brand.
What is
What does growth look like? Like how do you
How do you
Innovate. How do you get bigger?
Or is that even does it even matter?
Well, we've been around thirty years, so for us, uh
It really is listening to the customer, watching the market.
Um
A lot of things have changed and continue to evolve in the marketplace.
although we've really become a commodity.
So you know, when we grew, we went we went clear up to one point one billion in revenue.
And uh the market has shrunk.
People don't buy phones as often.
So uh as far as overall revenue we've dropped.
But as far as overall profit, we've come up.
So um for otter it was all about getting
better what we do.
And um you know how we sell the product.
Whether it's D to C, whether it's distribution.
Um, you don't always have to be first to be there, but when you get there, you need to be very present.
Yeah.
Kurt, I remember w we used we spoke about this a little bit, but but one of the other things that you're focused on
Is this sort of
other business that you started called Blue Ocean Enterprise is really focusing on investing
in in businesses that are
Designed to stimulate the economy and engage the community.
You know, I I hear from a lot of um startup founders who are trying to build the next sort of
interesting or cool consumer brand or consumer product and often I'll say, you know,
The businesses that are consistently successful in in at least in the US are the ones you don't hear about. The sort of the boring
I hate to use that word, but the sort of the the boring businesses, right, that that actually provide
um goods and services that that many uh industries need, right?
And and and really Otterbox kinda started out that way. I mean, you weren't making
y you know, it it evolved into what it is today.
If you were starting Otter Box today, right, with no brand and and no distribution and and no capital really.
Um
Could you still build it in the same way or or would it would you have to do it differently, do you think?
Um, I don't know that I would have to do it differently. Would I do it differently? Well, sure, I'd love to have the kind of capital to
Uh
to really just hit it hard. But you know what, there's a lot to be learned from bootstrapping it.
There's a lot to be learned from having to do stuff the hard way.
Um, I think it makes you a better business person. It also makes you looking like how how do I do this differently? You know, the the innovation isn't always in the product, the innovation is very much so in the business.
How do I do this business right in the right way?
And I I think that's a huge question that a lot of people never ask. They're always looking for the next new product and we've done that. Yeah. We did coolers, we did clothing.
You know, all of which we
Don't do anymore.
Focus is so important.
We focus on phone cases and
Mobile accessories.
Yeah.
Well, Kurt, we asked you to come onto the show to help us do what was one of the things that you really love doing, which is mentoring. Um, and uh we've got some callers waiting
Uh for advice with some questions. You ready to take our first call?
Sure.
All right, let's bring on our first caller. Welcome to the advice line, you're on with Kurt Richardson.
Founder of Autobox, tell us your name where you're calling from and just a little bit about your business, please.
Hello, guy, hello, Kurt. This is Andy Jeremiah in Sarasota, Florida.
My wife Tracy and I founded Mr. Game Show Florida in twenty twenty.
We conduct live game show events in the many gated communities in the area.
Our mission is to have everybody play a game at least once a week. So we offer
free print and play games and game night ideas on our website as well.
All right, thanks for calling in Andy. Okay, so Mr. Game Show. So tell me
You convene game nights. Tell me.
Specifically what you do.
So our primary uh business is putting on live game show events.
So communities here are always looking for something to put on their calendar.
So we offer music bingo.
uh a twist on family feud a twist on the wheel of fortune
Uh, the unique part about our games is that we're very sh very scalable from twelve to two hundred people.
Um, and we just make sure everybody has a ton of fun.
And these are these are retirement communities, I'm assuming, right?
Mainly.
Uh yeah, I mean most of them are definitely fifty plus, but uh yeah, there are some family communities now in this area as well.
Got it. Okay, cool. And uh how long have you been doing this?
But we started in twenty twenty.
Uh out of Covid, uh our community was looking for games and we just started doing music bingo in the parking lot.
It went so well, I started offering it to other nearby communities.
And you know, things took off from there.
Wow. And tell me how how how many events do you do a year, roughly?
We
average about 10 events a month, uh as a side hustle. We we did uh just over fifty K last year.
All through word of mouth, no advertising, no social media.
Okay. Um and and w what does an event cost?
We start at three fifty for a ninety minute event.
And it'll go a little bit more if we have to travel farther than the little radius that we like to stay in.
Okay, so so pretty uh you know, mm relatively affordable even for an events budget at a community center. Okay. Um before we dive in further, what's your question for us?
So we like to scale Mr. Game Show nationwide by providing our content to others who want to start their own local game show business.
It's relatively
Low cost to start. Uh we have great unique content. Uh we have a twist on a lot of, you know, popular, familiar games. We just want to get that material out to more folks, and we're just looking for a good pathway to get there.
Kurt Richards and here. Uh and he's got this
uh business. Trying to figure out how to
How to scale this, how to make this a a a bigger brand or bigger business.
Yeah, scalability.
Big question.
Um, and a tough one when it's so dependent on you.
There's a lot of different ways to go here.
Maybe it's an app kind of thing that they can buy into and you're giving them new content all the time.
Maybe it's a it's a video play. It's uh
It's a training.
Tool, it's a kit somebody buys.
Maybe it's a subscription based deal.
That could be
One way to go about it.
Uh.
To me, it seems like you've got to create a lot of content.
So I guess my are you technical enough to be able to do that on your own? Can you can you you and your wife put together that
Um, where that's sellable.
We have I mean I I was a former corporate trainer, so I um I'm great at developing, you know, documentation and and uh so we have
A lot of you know, for example, our trivia game we have over
twenty six sets, you know, unique sets.
You're ready to go, which I think are easy for other folks to kinda grab
And uh you know, promote themselves in their local market.
Andy, I have a question for you. What are you
If I say to you, Hey, what what's your product? What's your what what are you selling?
What what's your answer?
F
We're selling fun.
Fine.
Okay. I would argue
I would argue and I don't I can tell by just talking to you here and I haven't been there.
I would argue that you are the product.
that you and Tracy are the product because
It's not
just music bingo. It's what you're bringing to it, the charisma and the excitement, probably the way you host.
probably the way you write questions or jokes. Um
You know, making sure that people have a great experience, and so
The the challenge is is how do you
Scale Andy.
And Tracy, right?
We you know, we had a question about uh similar to this in a recent advice line episode from somebody who who had a
a training business and I'm trying to figure out how to scale that.
And I my advice to them is is the same I would give to you, which is
You you may want to start
with an experiment. So you where in Florida are you?
Uh Sarasota area.
Sorry, sir, okay. So um you're not too far from Tampa, is that right? Or Okay. So maybe find somebody in Tampa.
That you can train, that you can
Give them your materials and
Let them run a few events.
And maybe show up and take notes and see
What happens if see if customers are just as happy.
And and that's where you start to get the answer. Can this scale? Can I
Create
material that I can license and build actually a business
that is a Mr. Game Show branded or certified host, you know, down down the line.
Anyway.
D that's my initial thought, Kurt.
Sorry, to to come back to the No, I I did that was great because I was kinda
I I'm I honestly I'm kinda stumped by this just because
I'm such a product guy.
And this is a product, and you're right, and he's the product. Yeah.
Um, can he duplicate himself? Can he sell that?
I mean that's
That's the question and and that's a great experiment. I I think that's uh

Probably a couple of different ways for you to go.
Yeah, this is doable or
Uh, maybe not.
You know, maybe it's just
Maybe I'm just gonna keep doing this and make my fifty to seventy five thousand a year and
And be good with it.
Now you did say something interesting. Uh uh
about your background, Andy. You said you were in corporate training at some point.
Right. Yes.
Okay, that's great. So you know
You know what it means to build scripts and to build, you know, content and a playbook and
uh you know, g rules and all of the systems. So
Knowing that
If you can find compelling, exciting people
Um theoretically this could work. You know, the the this is the whole Zumba model.
In Zumba
Uh you pay a license fee to be a Zumba instructor. Any anybody could kind of replicate a Zumba like class, but to actually be a Zumba certified instructor to get that
you know, on your uh you know, on in your title when you're trying to advertise a course, you've got to pay a license fee.
That's that's the value. So maybe
You know, you start to build this out thinking, alright, can we make Mr. Game Show?
that thing. You know, oh it's a Mr. Game Show host. We we want this person in our retirement community. But I think I would start
With identifying somebody
Who's interested in doing this, who you think you could train?
And see what happens.
Great advice. I really enjoyed this conversation. Thanks for the many words of wisdom. And and Guy, thank you for all the inspiration you give entrepreneurs. Thank you. And Kurt, thank you for the great role model that you've been to entrepreneurs as well. Thank you.
Yeah. Uh you are Kurt. In fact, all the work that you've you've done in b building a sustainable company and also building a a a community of employees who really benefit from what you what you've done and what you've been doing. So thank you. I uh I echo that. Thank you. Thanks, Andy. Thanks Andy.
We're gonna take a quick break, but when we come back, another caller, another question, and another round of advice. I'm Guy Raz, and we're answering your questions right here on the advice line on how I built this lab.
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Welcome back to the advice line on how I built this lab. I'm Guy Raz, and my guest today is Kurt Richardson, he's the founder of Otterbox and Blue Ocean, and we are taking your calls.
Let's bring in our next collar.
Alright, I'm excited to talk.
Please tell us your name, where you're calling from, and a little bit about your business.
Hi, I'm Marissa Valenzwella. I'm calling from Tampa, Florida.
And I am the founder and need fairy godmother of Gilded Coach Tease, where we create
Enchanted tees inspired by fairy tales from all around the world.
Awesome. Welcome to the show, Marissa. So gilded coach tees
Uh you sell loose leaf teas in uh in bags.
They're in like canisters. Um I have two sizes. There's so I have canisters like a three ounce size and um a one and a half ounce bag.
And these are cardboard canisters? The canisters, yes.
Okay, cool.
And and tell me uh I I love tea. I'm a big tea drinker. I've lately gotten into this really intense
Chinese black tea that is man, it gives me a big hit of caffeine in the morning. And uh I cause I switched from coffee. Uh or I gave up coffee at the beginning of this year. I love it, but um
But tea just I just it's really my jam now. So what tell me about your teas? Like if I was like all right, Marissa, why should I buy your teas?
Well, you should buy our tees if you are someone who happens to enjoy magic and nostalgia. So we have blends inspired by Cinderella, in fact the first blend.
I ever came up with was called Once Upon a Time and it is a hazelnut.
Black tea with French vanilla creme as well.
Um it's hazelnut because in the original Grin's fairy tale, there's no fairy godmother. There's a hazel tree that uh Cinderella sort of cries to and it brands her wishes. So I like to go back to the original fairy tale and
Base
Each blend off of that.
Wow, I'm I'm looking at your website and this makes sense now. I'm on the fairest of them all. U I'm assuming this is from Snow White. Yeah, of course. Uh you've got herbal tea with
Candied apple steep.
Oh, that's so cool. Cause she of course has the you know the poisonous apple. Yes.
Fairy tale.
Scholar.
Thank you so much. I haven't gotten a fairy tale scholar. That is
I'm a I'm gonna see a lot. Thank you.
So you're blending these teas and selling them on your website. And tell me a little bit about uh how long has the business been around and yeah.
So we've been around since October twenty twenty and
We've developed a couple ones, shelved a couple.
We're in
two stores at the moment locally.
And how and give me a sense of your sales. How how are you doing, roughly?
So that kind of uh leads into my question. Okay. Our sales were doing really, really great for a while where they were projected to go up in
Up and up and up, if you will. But I sort of took
Like a one year hiatus.
When I had my first baby personally.
And ever since then I

what I can do to sort of regain that momentum and recapture those sales.
All right, regain momentum and recapture sales and you feel like you're starting from scratch. Okay, Kurt Richardson will bring you on
Any thoughts, any advice on how to regain momentum?
Well, I guess right away you gotta treat it like you're
Starting all over.
Um R.
In some ways. Um, but y the nice thing is you've got product you and you I love your story.
Thank you. I think story is huge. Yeah.
You've got lots of opportunity with social media with this brand. I mean this this just
Reeks social media good stuff.
And uh I would really pour my attention into
Getting my story out so people um
people come to my website and direct to consumer. I mean, th this has it written all over it and that's where I would go. You can play with some stores and stuff, but sure man, if you can go D to C
You're gonna make so much more money for your effort. I I just I love D to C.
Yeah, I I agree. I love the story, uh I mean
All these teas are inspired by fairy tales, and then you start to see it when you look at the ingredients. The ingredients are awesome and they they sound delicious. I mean, I'm looking at little sea princess, obviously and inspired by the little mermaid. It's got I didn't even know what this is Danish bilberry and sweet honeysuckle and a white tea blend. That sounds delicious.
Bilberry is like a
It's like the Danish version of a blueberry. Okay. And that's of course a Danish story, right?
Yes.
Yeah. And what's this dust?
Oh Pixie Dust. So we it's an edible it's our edible glitter that we call Pixie Dust and we say you need a fairy's handful and just the tiniest amount in your cup and it makes everything sparkly and magical and enchanted.
Um, we used to put it in the tea itself and then like shake it up so that way when you
Scooped your tea out and steeped it.
It was already covered for you.
Um, we've since stopped doing that because I don't own my commercial kitchen and
You know, people don't like it when they get glitter on their tools.
I think there is so much I mean, I and I'm gonna tread carefully here because I know that all kinds of kids love
um fairy tales and but uh I've been to Disney World and Disneyland and I've got two boys and I can tell you right now
They did not run to the princesses. Even though that is the biggest I think it's the biggest part of what Disney sa like, I think it's the
It's just massive, right? So I can imagine

birthday parties for for for girls, little girls and I I it's just s so many cool things. Here here's here's what I would
What I would say.
How do I jump start this? How do I
regain the momentum.
Uh first of all, taking a year out again for because you had a baby is it awesome. And I think that's
Just amazing. To to give yourself that time with your kid. Um
I would not put that kind of pressure on yourself,'cause that's that's exhausting.
Ma maybe I think the question is like what
What can I start to do consistently each week? You know, for for three for six months.
The other thing is
I imagine because you did have you did reach, you know
Sales that you were happy with.
You probably still have the context of those people who
Bought your teeth.
So many businesses, and Kurt, you know this, so many businesses are focusing on customer acquisition and costs are through the roof now. I mean
What used to be shooting fish in a barrel, you're now spending
eighty, ninety, a hundred dollars more.
on customer acquisition costs.
I don't think enough businesses focus on customer retention. That's really where
You know, a lot of times that's where the sweet spot is, because th that doesn't cost that much at all. You've already got the customers and the contacts.
I would really
Try and double down on identifying your best customers. Who who ordered?
from you more than once. Are they, you know?
Have you been in touch with them?
Can you uh
Offer them some incentive.
to start buying your tea again.
One other thing I might have is is maybe really focus on those people that um guy's talking about.
Is it?
Little girls with tea parties that you could sell a tea set with too. Yeah, you could sell a whole experience, your whole story. I mean, there's so many more things you could add to the tea.
That are
Upselling.

put you in a whole different spot and you know, wow, my my mom bought me this T set. Well the next little girl's gonna want the same T set.
And T maybe there's
crackers or crumpets that can go with it too, right? I mean, have fun with this.
I I imagine right now you don't have a whole lot of cash to spend on on social media advertising, but you can make
You can make social media posts and you know, and and who knows, sometimes that you know
something can really go viral without uh any dollars behind it. It can still happen, especially on TikTok. Uh but I do think that as Kurt said, that there's just so much potential for storytelling here. Right. I mean you already you're already telling stories in the T.
Um, and and have you by the way, have you reached out to your
Previous customers.
Yes, I do have a newsletter that I do pretty good job, if I may say so myself, of uh keeping up with. And a lot of people when they find us are very intrigued by the story and
The three to aspect.
So
In that way I do stay in touch with a lot of my core customers. I would offer some kind of interesting incentive like hey for
you know, our most little customers were experimenting. Um, you know, if you
orders tea, we'd love to send you a sample of of some blends and tell us what you think. I mean, I'm just sort of spitballing here, but I I do think that
Or even uh you know, a discount or something
Just to bring them.
Bring
awareness back into their minds, right? To get you back on their radar.
Yeah, that's a great idea.
Yeah.
You know, and I've got a granddaughter and
I don't know how many princess outfits she has. It's crazy.
I think you got a chance here to sell whole experience. It's just, you know, tea's part of it.
You know, it's it's maybe the outfits and the books and I mean there's just
There's a lot of s meat here that's good.
But you're gonna have to focus. Don't try to be everything to everybody. Find that little niche, maybe that princess niche.
Yeah.
Your core product is tea, but I think
Kurt, you're onto something. I can I mean
I would start to see if I see you you you you offer weddings or wedding blends, but I mean man, could you mount could you could you mount a whole tea party for a
seven or eight or nine year old girl's birthday.
I would think that there are plenty of parents in Tampa who would be willing to spend
You know.
Pretty decent money on on a on a party like that.
And
I agree. I agree. I do believe they are indeed out there.
I just have to find that.
So
Thank you so much.
Yeah. Uh the brand is called Gilded Coach Tees Marissa Valentuela. Uh thanks for calling in. Good luck.
Good luck.
Thank you so much. And before I go, Kurt, I just want to say thank you so much. I you sparked my yearly read, listen, and reread of the emyth.
It's something every single year I forget about it. Something sparks me to reread it and that was re listening to your episode. So thank you for that. There's so many good tins in here. You bet.
Thank you.
Appreciate it.
Thank you Marissa.
Thank you so much.

We're gonna take another quick break, but we'll be right back with one more caller. 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 calls with AutterBox founder Kurt Richardson. Uh Kurt, we have one more caller.
Uh, for today looking for some advice. Uh you ready?
Yeah, I'm ready.
Caller, welcome to the advice line you're run with Kurt Richardson, founder of Auterbox. Tell us your name where you're calling from, and just a little bit about your business.
Hi uh guy Kurt, I'm really excited to be here. Big fan of the show.
Uh, my name is Vince Judici, I'm calling in from Chatham, New Jersey.
Um my company or my wife and my company is called Everloop, and it is a sustainable baby deer company.
Um, it's sustainable for two reasons. We make our products exclusively with recycled and regenerative materials.
But also more importantly is that we buy our products back from our customers when they no longer need them.
For twenty percent cash back.
So we can recycle it into new products. Our big thing is zero waste.
Nothing to landfill.
Wow, okay, welcome to the show, Vince so th so you make baby products. Tell me just just a couple of products uh you make.
We just launched this time last year. We launched with two products, a three in one high chair made from recycled HTPE.
Um given the plastic call out'cause I know Kurt knows plastics.
And an organic bouncer chair. So something that you'd put your baby in to lounge in.
Yeah, so two products for now.
And um did you design these products yourself?
No, I worked with um.
My uh my career before this was in the toy space and I worked with some really stellar designers and engineers. I have a strong understanding of injection molding and manufacturing, but
I am not a designer and an engineer by training. Um, so I worked with them to design these products using exclusively these materials.
And everything is is is recycled. All the plastic, all the materials we use are recycled.
All the plastic is one hundred percent curbside collected plastic.
um recycled plastic. We do use stainless steel, which we'll recycle when we get the product back.
And when we use fabrics, for example, we use one hundred percent organic cotton and organic wool.
Um and we do that.
so that we can actually compost the product when we're done with it. Yeah so it's a it's a mix of it's a mix of different ingredients. So you were in the toy space for a while and and how did you come to this this idea? I mean
Baby products, uh I think
Interesting category. Uh tell me about the decision just to start this this brand.
Yeah, so the first decade of my career was at a uh environmentally friendly toy company. I
Loved every day of it. I enjoyed Mondays as much as Fridays.
Um
You know, we used recycled materials for those toys, but it really kinda dawned on me that, you know, if you went to recycle one of those products when you were done with it, it would go to landfill.
And that's because recycling centers globally don't know what it is. They know what bottles are and cans are.
Um, so that's where I kinda had this idea brewing where it was like, What if we brought it back and recycled it ourselves?
And that was kind of the
the the jumping off point for
The baby gear brand.
Mm.
Wow. And tell me you've launched a year ago and and and it's direct to consumer entirely?
Yes, so we we launched a year ago with our two products. Um
you know, leveraging some contacts, a lot of contacts I've had. We are now live with Nordstrom Pottery Barn Kids.
Uh we're live on Target. We're live with Creighton Kids, Masonette.
Um a lot of other third party e com retailers and then direct on our site. So
Um, it's all direct to consumer. Uh most of these products are drop ship.
So we use their marketplace.
Um, not too much gear is sold in store besides big box retailers.
And things are things are going well.
Tell yeah, how'd you do in your first year?
Yeah, so our for I mean, our first year we only did like eighteen K in revenue, but this year we're on track to do a hundred K.
Amazing. Okay. Um before we dive in further, uh what's your question for us?
So my questioning is is related to marketing. So most of our sales are baby registry driven.
And what that means is there's
About a three to six month lag from discovery to purchase.
And that makes knowing what marketing channel is working very challenging.
Um so my question is, is if you were in my shoes
Would you place a lot of small bets in different channels like TikTok, Meta, or Pinterest or others?
Or would you pick a lane and go deep?
Interesting question. Okay, Kurt Richardson, uh love to bring you in, say hello to Vince. Um, ideas, questions?
Well, yeah, I get your question. Um
First of all, I'm a big uh
I would shoot BBs.
Until I hit something. Okay. And then when I hit it.
Uh
kick up to a twenty-two caliber and when it really took off, I'd go fifty Mac.
fifty cow. You know, what I'm saying is
Don't throw all your money down one hole at once.
You you've gotta you've gotta fire a lot of bullets un s until you hit something significant.
And then that's where you start to spend your money.
Um, I'd be very careful just picking one channel that can
That'll that time is money.
And if you spend all your time down one rat hole.
Um
And don't go down multiple ones until you find what you're looking for.
Y it's gonna hurt ya.
That's that's very refreshing to hear.
Um I've talked to many different folks about it and agencies.
That focus on
specific channels and everyone's selling their their channel as the place to be. Careful with agencies. Exactly. Yes. We don't we use
Consultants for the most part. Um my gut has said to do
What you're suggesting, and that's
Pepper the beds out there.
And
You know, take your time, be methodical. Right. Until you start understanding. You know, and back back in the day for Otter, we we d we used a lot of uh
different channels.
to get different people to write about our products.
And there's a lot of free marketing out there.
If you look for it, if you find the right people to
Talk about your product. Let other people talk about it. It has more credibility than you anyway.
So I mean when you're blowing your own horn.
People just know you're blowing your horn, but if somebody else is blowing it
It's much better advertising.
Definitely.
Vince, I have a a
Slightly different.
Take which I which is to say
It depends in part on what you are
Prepared to spend.
Right.
If you're talking about
tens or or even hundreds of thousands of dollars, I think there's a a compelling case to make that you
You you do make small experiments. But one of the
The mistakes that we have seen
early stage founders make often is that they will put
You know, five thousand dollars or ten thousand dollars into multiple channels and it doesn't always

And I think one of the
One of the reasons why is because oftentimes, especially at the early stage,
Founders don't
spend as much time as they should really getting obsessed with who is actually
buying your product.
I would hasten to guess that most people buying your product are not
buying it because they're
necessarily environmentally conscious. Probably some are, but I would think that most people
Like the product and
The other thing that I think is probably the most compelling thing about the about this is the buyback. Right. That that that I mean, I don't can't think of any I mean uh very few baby products where they're like, Yeah, you buy it.
And enjoy it and then we will give you twenty percent of what it costs. We'll buy it back when you're done.
That's
That's very significant. I mean that's a big deal.
You hit the nail on the head. It's
You know, I go to a lot of consumer shows and we we sell our pitch, we talk about the ingredients and everyone says, Oh, that's great, I love that.
And then when we say the buyback, the eyes just light up and they say
Sign me up.
What's added to registry. Yeah.
And I would say before you even
put a a dollar down
I would try and call literally I
I'll buy things online.
And I use a pseudonym, but I'll get an email from the founder saying, Hey
to my pseudonym. Uh uh we'd love to hear what you liked about a product. Gimme a call, literally, and I'm very impressed when I see that. I mean
At this stage, I think you could do some of that.
I mean just do a call instead of having people fill out forums and see if you can get, you know
ten, fifteen, twenty more people giving you
reasons why they did that. And and and once you start to build a profile
Of who that person is.
Um, that really can help you sharpen your focus on where you want to
put those dollars.
Three channels, four channels, great.
Seven, ten, fifteen channels?
Not n I I'm not sure unless you again you've got
huge amounts of money to spend. But but I think knowing who those people are
Will help you
figure out where to put those marketing dollars. Does that make sense?
That makes makes a lot of sense. Um just ac going direct to the source to see. And mind you, I wasn't saying I wasn't saying go
ten places I would I would really research and pick.
Four to five. Yeah. And then
See where it lands.
See what hits. And and again, my philosophy
I'm not gonna spend money on advertising unless I can measure it.
'Cause if you can't measure it, you have no clue where that money's going.
I'm I'm in that camp as well, Kurt, and that's that's been the challenge is I like I like seeing the data and the flow through and I'm having trouble trouble seeing that, which is
Tough for an ops guy. Yeah.
Yeah.
But guy hit it. I mean if you can get a hold of your customer who bought it.
Where'd you hear about it? Why do you like it? Why'd you buy it?
Great questions.
Yeah, and I think that the story is so compelling and it really to me
I love the regenerative stuff. I love that. I I live for that. But I'm I'm not the typical
consumer on that. It's the buyback. I think of all of the baby stuff we had with our kids and just
getting rid of it and you know, you g you sell some of it, you find people who want some of it, you throw away some of it. I mean, I I'm embarrassed to tell you
You know, what we threw away.
And
That buyback is just very meaningful. It's basically saying we got you.
You're never gonna have to deal with like what to do with this thing when you're done.
Definitely. And it and it plays into the bigger vision, which is
getting people locked into this circular ownership model.
Which is as soon as they use our high chair and send it back.
You know, their child's probably ready for
You know, a walker or a rider.
stride a stri a bike of some sort or or a scooter, so
I I'm glad to hear that it resonates with you'cause as a parent
Like it hit at home.
When I landed on it and
Especially'cause like traditional donation channels won't take baby gear for liability reasons. So you have a lot of stuff that's generally used and
No place to go.
I would
really shout that from the rafters on the e even on your website. You know, I don't see that right at the
front centre, I would make that the core.
right now of what you are doing.
One other slant I might have on this is maybe you look at the philanthropic side of this, um, instead of
Yeah, you know, you give this to you have some programs you work with.
You know, uh people who cannot afford this.
So rather than recycling it,'cause it costs money to recycle that, right? It doesn't cost as much to get it into a program.
Where now
somebody else gets to use this thing that is you're just cleaning it up and shipping it on and really helping somebody else. And that that connects to that could be part of your story in a big way.
I love that we've actually done some some work with some hospitals.
Again, not offering product but steep discounts to like get
You know, we're we are a young company and we are a bootstrap company. Um
But
But it's a great way to build awareness. But honestly I I love that idea of
offering the product that comes back to other folks that are in need.
Awesome. Uh it's it's just a really, really cool idea. Uh Vince Guiduci, uh Everloop is the brand. Good luck.
And uh yeah, keep us posted. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Yeah. Keep at it.
Thank you.
Kir, thank you so much for coming back on the show and doing this. Before I let you go, I wanna ask you
a question that I I've been asking everybody who does come back on, which is um, you know
Yeah.
You know, if you could go back to when you were first
Starting out, right? And give yourself some advice.
What do you think might have been helpful for you to know that you didn't know then?
I think for me to wrestle with the question, what do you want? What do I want? And
It uh many times it doesn't have to do with the business, it has to do with the heart, not the head.
And I think it's it's important that you discover that for yourself.
And uh and and let that be your guiding light going forward.
Um, also, you know, I was really good at making things, but I wasn't really good at running things.
So it's very important to get educated.
There's different ways to do that. Um, you go to college, but I'm not sure it's gonna teach you that.
Um there's a lot of great
books out there. There's a lot of great mentors. Nowadays, I mean you can learn so much on YouTube and podcasts. I mean like this.
So educational.
I would encourage people to dive into this type of media and learning because I learn that way from watching and listening, hearing other people's stories, learning from other people's mistakes and successes.
Yep.
For sure.
Well Kurt, um thanks so much for coming back onto the show. It was great having you. You bet. Thank you, guy. It's fun. Fun seeing you again and you too. Yeah, it's great watching what you're doing. Thank you for doing that for the entrepreneurial community. It's so big. It's so important. You really mean a need.
Than things thanks for being part of it. Um as Kurt Richardson, founder of Auterbox and Blue Ocean. And by the way, if you haven't heard Kurt's original How I Built This episode, uh go back and check it out, please create episode. And here is one of my favorite moments from that interview.
I r I this is a great story. So I remember being at CES and uh in Las Vegas. In Vegas. And um
Michael Cowan, who was the head guy for
Stuff at ATT came by and showed him the case and he said, Well how much is it? I said, Well retails for 4995.
He's like, you're crazy. Forty nine five. All the cases were like five bucks. It's nuts. Yeah, yeah. So
He said
But we'll do a test. So they did a test.
And
They were gonna do a three month test. Well I think they did a three day test,'cause
They are sold out.
Wow. They sold like crazy. I mean it was like that UPS commercial, you know, where it's like and we're going
Oh crap.
Hey, thanks so much for listening to How I Built This Lab.
This episode was produced by Carla Esteves with editing by John Isabella. Our audio engineer was Robert Rodriguez. Our music was composed by Ramtin Arablui.
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