Exit Strategy S1:E5 // Paul Tran - How Manscaped Created a Nine-Figure Business

Episode of My First Million with Sam Parr and Shaan Puri.

Transcript

Note: This transcript was auto-generated from YouTube captions. It may contain errors and lacks speaker identification. A full Gemini audio transcript will replace this.

Kind: captions Language: en [Music] welcome to episode 5 of the exit strategy podcast I’m here with Paul trend Paul you’re the CEO and founder of manscaped manscape you know native started in 2015 manscape started around then manscaped sells products that helps men groom their groins is that right that’s that’s whitespace and some of the products that you sell just so people have clarity are the lawnmower which helps men trim their pubes deodorant for your balls you know like a foot and a foot odor product as well what’s the foot odor product called it’s called the flick duster it’s called the foot duster ok and you guys have a really cheeky sense of humor you know when people go into manscaped or look at man escapes past you know I’ve read some of your tag lines they’re fantastic one is I remember one cuz that’s reading it’s called good sense when you trim the hedges the tree stands taller who came up with that I mean I mean that’s true right that’s absolutely true who came up with that tagline you know we have a really talented marketing team you know we’re we’re just you know it evolved as I can’t remember where exactly where that where that tagline came from but you know we just have a really talented marketing team that that comes up with these these really catchy sayings all the time yeah that’s certainly really catchy you know one of the questions I was thinking about when I was doing some research about manscaped is how often are men trimming their hedges do you guys have any idea do you guys like survey your customers about that kind of information or what they do survey our customers and it’s it’s actually it’s turned out to be much more frequent than we thought a lot of men or you know of course anything there’s a bell curve right there where the bell curve the highest frequency is around once a week to to once every 14 14 days so it’s between you know seven and 14 days is when I wouldn’t somebody maintenance their Bush and what’s uh what’s the other end of the bell curve is the other end once every like five years the the other end of course is you know it follows it also follows the age gap right when you’re you’re much older less incentivize to do it so it’s like never right so the that’s the other side of the bell curve gotcha yeah and that look um I guess who are the who’s buying who are buying these products is it is it men who were like hey I want to make myself look better and my tree to stand taller or is it women who are like I’m tired of looking at my husband or boyfriend or partner’s looking like this and so he needs to trim well we actually have a pretty eclectic mix between men and women during the holidays it’s we open marketing much much more to women so we have more of more women customers then you know the rest of the year but really the truth is that if you if you haven’t groomed down there you don’t know what it feels like I think if after you’ve done that you feel it’s it’s refreshing so we’ve seen that men like that actually start they really enjoy it you know it’s like it’s like you know we we got your hair is really long you know and then then you finally cut your hair it feels really like it feels really relaxing we really cool and and I think men start they’re starting to enjoy that you know it’s it feels fresher it’s not as damn so I think you start getting used to that feeling and and becomes just a normal thing yeah yeah your app your you’re right about a lot of that I know like when I shave sometimes or at least get a barber to cut my beard afterwards I just feel like I’m a new human being and feel great I don’t know what it is about that like I still don’t understand what like like what psychological impact that is where I’m like okay this guy’s just cut my beer it looks good but now I feel like I’m a new I’m a newly reborn person yeah it’s it’s and that’s what we strive for you know we I mean that’s the essence of the company at the end of the day at the end of the day we just want you to feel better you know like like the window we think about it is life is pretty rough already you know there’s so much to do there’s so many responsibilities you know we just want to make your life just a little more enjoyable yeah that’s truly that’s our mission yeah and so there’s a subscription element to the business as well aside from like I imagine like you the the hero product that you guys have is the lawn mower like what trimmed hedges is that right absolutely so I mean if you think about it we like to explain it is that when you look at the female body you realize you can start from head to toe you’re analyzing me you you realize that there’s a there’s a product and a brand for every single female care and need you could dig up when you go to the male body switch your attention to the male body you start with you know inside with your hood you got all you got your Gillette your dog shows your up your hair easily you go down to the Torsen is not native you need that Old Spice when you get down to the groin there’s nobody playing in the groin right there that is total empty white space and you know we got lucky and fortunate when we recognized that you know three years ago and we were able to capitalize on that we were to obtain an amazing name so a manscape you know right now I mean we define the category of man sleeping right so that manscape defines that category and we just we totally own this category and you know we and what’s really important for us is to create the best products that we’re the way that we think about our mission and our mandate is we we don’t optimize for anything other than quality so we’re not we’re not optimizing for price we’re not the cheapest products we are the best products so that that’s that’s kind of how because there’s just a lot of products out there right I mean from everything from the low end too high and we want we want to focus on is creating the absolute best products and that’s not until non-mo of them it so talking about the lawnmower which is like a trimmer for your pubes really and a fantastic name you know we’d love to delve more into the name of manscaped and lawn mower in a minute but like you know you’re on the lawn mower 3.0 what did like how did you guys decide what went from lawn mower 2.0 to 3.0 and what what look what what are you gonna put in lawn mower 4.0 look is that a is that a you know it is there customer feedback involved in that is there look what’s going on for you guys to make those types of decisions absolutely so we have a Facebook group and I want to plug it here this is Facebook ballers group it’s a VIP group and it’s invite-only you have to you know ask to join but the deepest group is for our closest best customers that are interactive with us and when I say best it’s not on a monetary value how much you buy it’s just you know it’s just people that like the brand that want to interact with with myself and our you know our executive team and a product development team and so we have about close to 2 or 3,000 people in there that are really interactive that they love to test products so we have a great group of core you know manscape fans sure can do test new products but one of the biggest things that we do is you know our blade has what we called skin safe technology and skin skin safe it makes it really difficult for you to excuse my friend should make your balls right because if if you’ve ever nicked yourself down there it is the most horrible feeling you know that I think that’s what everyone is afraid of before they start manscaping leads a lot you know so our blades we it’s the only blade out there specifically engineered to trim your groin this is not it’s not any other area of your face right like in some of your beard it’s pretty talked your face is really easy to trim right this is your loose skin with yeah so it’s not the same experience as as trimming as trimming your beard it’s much more difficult so go back to your TR to your question now how do we determine the difference between the two point on the three-point oh it’s just innovating you know in the product pipeline your it might take like a year 18 months engineer and a great product so we have multiple products lined up that we’re designing the 4.0 at the same time we’re designing the 5.0 and we’re putting it off into the 6.0 because we’re we’re a hardware company in addition to soft goods right so we have our own Rd lab that we that we built out that does all the soft grips all the formulations you know the ball deodorant and everything else that we’re going to get into but on a hardware side we have our own in-house industrial designers material experts and engineers that design these and design and think through the problems that you have so when we when did we developed a 2.0 that was really our first mass product with skin-safe and then the 3.0 was an evolution of the of the 2.0 you know it had a light in there because you realize like what even if you’re a brat bathroom is really lit your shadows you know so like the light it seems we thought about is it a gimmick you know if we put a light but light on there what do we do as a gimmick and then we actually put a light on a prototype well this is actually really useful because like you you could because you need to see down there you know like it’s not the same experience because you you know you gotta see down there so putting the light on there it was made it into the 3.0 the porn for porno I don’t want to talk about all the different features but yeah we’re really innovating on on this experience and I don’t we don’t think that there’s many companies that really looked at growing trimming and how to innovate in that area well making it safe easy and enjoyable and so going back to this Facebook group are you gonna like reach out to the Facebook group and say hey guys we have the 4.0 does anyone want to try a couple samples and give us your feedback before we finalize this production is that how it works or like an epoxy work that works all the time so that why that cycle there’s much more frequent with with our soft goods products so you know all of our you know ball deodorant and all the products that we’re we’re testing in the pipeline now that is that goes out that gets tested internally you know goes all do all the stability testing and and can all the employees use it and then and then we expand it out to our VIP ballers group and then talk to me a little bit about R&D it’s really amazing that you can sort of have that R&D in-house was an independent company we never had that as native as an independent company and even once we joined Procter & Gamble like we did some R&D internally but most of the R&D we did like with their party manufacturers how big is this R&D group I haven’t heard of like a start-up sort of thinking about R&D or like you know early on or within the first five years of their existence like you guys are doing how big is that R&D group so that goes back to a firm belief of mine you know I’ve always kind of thought I always I always thought it was really important not only to go wide but also go deep and what that means is you got a you got to know you know a lot of different things but you just can’t you just can’t be a what was theirs there’s a saying was saying you know a jack-of-all-trades with master of none I don’t think an entrepreneur can be like that I think anon to be to be really successful you not only have to go wide we you also have to go deep and you’ve got to be a master a lot of things so yeah with that with with that that belief now we always we we made sure that everything was done in-house if we’ve never hired an agency and we don’t use any agencies for anything all video production is done in-house all media buying is done in-house R&D is done in-house oh my god there’s no agencies how’s it look the the technology that you guys build out you guys have your own developers when you guys launch a TV commercial you have your own in-house production agency make it you have your own in-house creative agency decide what it is and then your own in-house like agency or your own in-house employees cut it up as well an edit yeah that’s it how big is the entire team then right now we’re seeing about 72 employees okay yeah that is not that big and pretty amazing based on like the amount of content that I see coming out of manscaped so you guys are certainly productive at creating content and when did you guys hire your first R&D employee then well I mean just like many other startups in the CPG space you know we we use contract manufacturers so we use a third party lab to create our first products but I think it’s about about a year five 14 months ago when we started really building out our own R&D lab Wow and hire the first already our new research chemist and you know it was we knew that we had to retain this knowledge and really understand it you know from top down so having it in-house we’ve got to iterate very quickly and we didn’t like this let’s change it and so we’re like what would take you know what would take weeks from from from we’re working with a lab cuz you know we work with labs before you got to send them to them you know send them a brief they send you samples chirpin and you saw them back and forth it just yeah the cycles are just way too long right so for us having a team that we can work with hand-in-hand is it was was just really accelerated that gotcha okay let’s start talking a little bit more about like the early days of manscaped so before this rnt R&D team exists before you guys are sort of developing a lot more 4.0 you know you guys were working on the original products manscape gets on Shark Tank at some point and it’s some like uh you know you’re on Shark Tank you’re working on the original marketing for the for that for the company is do you guys call the first do collies call the first product you release a lawnmower 1.0 and we stopped the lawnmower yeah it was cold okay gotcha yeah and look how do you guys yeah tell me a little bit more about how this marketing strategy developed because certainly like you know I I think everyone is familiar with the Dollar Shave Club like like commercial or video initial video that really launched that brand and how spectacularly successful it was you know how Michael do been saying you don’t need Roger Federer to endorse your razor blade why are you paying Roger Federer to shave how did you guys get started in terms of your marketing strategy so you know we first started to be we knew that this is something that was good for men way it helped with being you know it’s hygienic and its cleanliness right yeah so we started off with messaging in that way like dudes you guys should do this because it’s good for you you’ll feel better and none of that one about resonating right how long did you try that type of marketing for there was like more serious and less cheeky probably for three months okay and how much money did you have to spend in those three months to be like this isn’t working out it’s a ballpark it what is it $10,000or$100,000 I think we spent five fifty thousand dollars I’m market okay realize that that didn’t work and then yeah then tell me about the evolution then what happened yeah so then you know being scientific no it just didn’t gravitate to anyone you know so then weeds and we just we basically change gears you know we knew that there was a market for this there was white space we knew that we had we had to crack it and figure out how to communicate with men because communicating like in my past I’ve I’ve had startups that focused primarily on women in skin care right and and perfumes and colognes and you know even in SAS and other things right but but we needed to understand that we have to get to that tipping point of understanding how to communicate with men in this way and we realized that you know dudes aren’t talking about this like don’t stand around the water cooler and be like hey you look so great today what you use all of my volumizer like kind of condition using dudes don’t do that right yeah they don’t talk about skincare they don’t talk about deodorants or hygiene right but they’ll talk about funny things right things that were hilarious that that entertains him so then we started creating our first video I remember was a video because it was towards the end of the year and we had produced this video of Santa Claus trimming so it was in it was it was in an apartment and Ryan Fiore our vp of marketing was the one that actually dressed up as Santa and he’s got his Santa pants down on his ankles and the camera is just panning and it looks like snow falling down right and then as you pan Santa’s legs snowing you here there’s like buzzing sound it’s kind of snowing indoors because it was I didn’t inside inside on the house so as you’re you know and then we had another person was like Katherine was was sprinkling you know these fake white hairs on onto the ground and we were we were pulling back the camera that was panning back and panning out and you can see Santa’s legs so that was the that was kind of the first video that we that we shot that was the first time you moved from like was that the first like move you had towards the cheeky sense of humor from being serious about like hey this is good for you it’s gonna make you feel better yeah that was that was the first one okay let me talk a little bit more about the 50,000 you spent where that didn’t work well where did you end up spending that 50,000 over those like three months to be like let’s test to see if this you know if this concept has any legs because you know you have a product that you know consumers want you’re trying to find out the right marketing channels and the right marketing you know messaging to go out with that that marketing messaging is what’s failing where did you spend that fifty thousand dollars but I think I think this answer is gonna be kind of defacto answer across many many startups you spending on chase looking we spend out of Google and any that is just the reality yeah whatever but what I do want to say about that is like all you entrepreneurs out there don’t don’t get a false sense of confidence that you are your cap is so low even that you’re you’re doing so well on Facebook that this is going to scale infinitely you know could you start winning those numbers right you’re like on Facebook like oh man my cap it’s 20 bucks if I if I dump you know 200 million dollars into marketing I wouldn’t make this much yes there doesn’t work out it doesn’t work that way there is a Facebook and a Google wall and I’ll use it didn’t different Facebook ceiling you’re gonna hit that ceiling and it’s gonna hurt and a lot of a lot of entrepreneurs need to realize that early on we will work really fortunate that we realize that early on because you gotta think about it Facebook is really really good at targeting I mean Facebook and Google these guys are data powerhouses they know how to target and find the right buyers for you but there’s if you are if you are market you have your total addressable market is this big Yeah right you’re gonna hit that ceiling pretty quickly you know so you have to really think about how to broaden your product appeal and into to make sure that you are addressing a very large total addressable market in your addressable market like eventually you’re gonna have to market to men or women or both if you’re still doing like fine-tuned targeting you know love your lights and you can extract every value you can’t steal it I think that look I what you said definitely has a ton of is absolutely correct like at native you know we saw a $2CACin2015a$4 CAC in 2016 a 650 CAC in 2017 so one even looking at that $2CACitbasicallymorethantripledoverthecourseoftwoyearsbutandwesawthoselikethereweremultipleceilingswegottotherewasaceilingat$200,000 there was a ceiling at $500,000therewasamuchdenserceilingat$1,000,000 and trying to push against the ceilings took a lot of time and a lot of effort and a lot of like right messaging and you’re absolutely right from an odd targeting perspective as well look look-alike audiences absolutely crushed it for us for a really long period of time until we hit one of those ceilings like you know we use the look-alike audience of 1% which look like you know 2 million people and then you know you start expanding that to 2% and 3% and then all of a sudden look-alikes don’t work anymore and then you at some point you’re just like I’m targeting all women and then I feel like I’m targeting all humans that exist on earth now you can reality like not everyone is gonna buy something when they see a Facebook ad right like you know Facebook does a great job of segmenting their audiences they’re like you know they have let’s say theirs they have 300 million people in the United States something like 80% of the people that are on Facebook generally won’t click ads and make a purchase from it and so everybody is competing for those 20% of people who do buy things online and so you’re a judge even if your total addressable market it’s this big in reality online it’s this big because you know there’s just fewer people buying things that are online absolutely absolutely you got to get to if you want to build a truly scalable business you gotta eventually figure out how to get off of platforms you gotta be if you don’t get off of online I mean online should it’s always a part of your marketing mix and your marketing strategy right but it should never be a hundred percent like as soon as you can you know you gotta you’re gonna go through withdrawal symptoms of getting off platforms but you can start diversifying your your marketing or it’s just never going to scale everywhere now we we have figured out how to and this is where we’re very fortunate we have a really talented marketing team you know but we thought off of Facebook and Google probably last year I went what is it off I mean we diversify from it yeah one of the one of our big channels is still is still YouTube right because a lot of people spend their time there where one of the biggest spenders on Hulu where we have a massive TV budget UFC sponsorship I mean we spawned to the UFC where we haven’t really announced it yet but we’re gonna be one of the exclusive sponsors of the San Francisco 49ers you know so what does that mean if you’re an exclusive sponsor for the 49ers what does that mean that means that I think that next year when you go to the by CEM and you go into any of the bathrooms you’re gonna see all our signage on top of all the urinals that’s gonna be I mean the great thing is that’s what we those some things we crap right it’s like yeah how many how many companies out there can actually buy that bad the ad unit right likely who’s gonna buy the ad unit mcapples not gonna buy that you know sheriff or urinal right but it fits so well for us and it fits our cheeky toned that it that it works for us right so like what are you doing right there you you’re like you you’re thinking about it right so you know when we had when you see analysis as a finger point down with the children says got Bush you’re like you’re standing right there you can find a evaluate and think about that okay I want to talk much more about this I want to talk a little bit about the past as well but before we get off this topic how much get you ballpark the cost to me for San Francisco 49ers sponsorship is that six figures or seven figures five figures oh yeah I know it’s I I can’t imagine it’s five figures so give me a ballpark because you know like let me give you a couple examples you know we interviewed Kara from hint water yeah like a couple weeks ago and she told she told me how she bought a Superbowl commercial for under 1 million dollars we interviewed Andrew who’s the CEO of this company called hymns which is like a you know men’s sexual wellness company and he bought urinals over the you know over giant stadium give me an idea of what like just ballpark the cost for me you don’t need to give me the exact number is it high six figures low six figures mid six figures is it seven figures give me some you know at native we were running you know a very lean budget but by the end it but by the time we were you know doing over a hundred million dollars we had a pretty sizable marketing budget we were spending money on TV ads on Billboard’s in New York City we spent we’re gonna spend a million dollars in 2020 or we were going to before covet really aunt on bill I’m sorry on subway ads in New York City in 2020 and you know that included like station takeovers which cost like a low very low six figures and that included some you know photos and subway trains would cost like about forty thousand dollars what is a forty niners exclusive spa ship getchu are you gonna go are you gonna do you have a booth are you gonna go to games and give me the price or give me a ball you know it’s it’s in the six figures not not to the seven figures yeah but definitely in the six figures okay and does it include a bunch of tickets or am I gonna see you at a bunch of 49ers games yeah I mean 49ers are just a phenomenal team management wise they’re so awesome we got to go to the Super Bowl with them we with NFC playoffs in you know in their box it was okay let’s go let’s rewind a little bit and go back to the Santa Clause commercial so you guys have you know it’s been three months the seriousness it wasn’t working we were spending on Facebook and Google burn fifty thousand dollars didn’t love what happened you’ve sort of pivoted now you’re running this Santa Claus commercial or like you you’ve got the Santa Claus video what do you do with it yeah like you know it’s really funny it’s cheeky super interesting but it’s kind of relevant cuz it’s winter nobody’s ever heard of Santa Claus trimming his pubes but that’s really funny what happened what do you do with that commercial and when do you realize that cheeky sense of humor makes sense so I would I would answer that in two parts so the first the first part is you once again you run it on Facebook and Google right that’s that’s the first thing so you so you run it on you run it on Facebook or you read on YouTube and what you’re tracking for at that time is that how am i how much on my pain / CPM and per click right now what am i what am i where’s it cost me they deliver traffic to the website yeah right and then and then when they get to the website then you’ve been now you’re you’re you know you have to make sure that you’re really observant and performing a lot of conversion rate optimization right you’ve got to make sure that you’re you’re that lead closes when they get to the site where you present them with the right offer so the first part of only answer your question is you know we’ve got that video we’re testing we’re running it on on Facebook running it on YouTube and we’re tracking how much it’s costing us remember at that time we weren’t broad yet we’re still like okay we’re gonna we’re gonna advertise to men that’s 18 - you know 25 it’s gonna run this video with this call to action and then there’s then we’re running 35 to 40 with this video or this cut different call to action and then it’s all gonna drive to the website so then you know of course you’re calculating what are my CPM is what are my CPAs and more important my cpc’s and then when they get to the site that’s when you really start doing a lot of work with like offer testing like what do I need to offer what do we need to say because early days really really early days when you what you’re looking for is when you’re looking for our signals right and you have to be really in tune with your entire marketing strategy to understand these signals right and what I mean by signals is early on I sort of bleep three pillars of what what is important to our male audience and this is very early on right it was you know when when you trim the bush the tree stands taller right that was that was an important motivation factor for them yeah right use the right tools for the job right so if you gonna do this don’t hurt yourself because like that that was a really important marketing message that really got them that really got me to understand it so we could we distilled down you know this really big concept of hey guys don’t cut yourself because that’s crude to say right so it really just became if you know use the right tools in the job right so what would you trim the hedges the cheese stands taller it tells you okay well then that that works right you kind of equate then you kind of understand that there’s a there’s a benefit right outside of you just feeling good because for us we we knew that ultimately we wanted to be a much bigger brand of encompasses you know masculinity and empowerment for men we didn’t want to just be a growing a growing business that was that was never that was never our intention we wanted to empower men but to get there we had to figure out what what what we what men were receptive to right so that’s where that you know if you trim the bushes the tree stands taller men got that right away wait you’ve got they got why they should do that and how they were and we see this power it’s not receive this feeling of empowerment right and then after that it was author was all I used to write or some job because you don’t don’t cut yourself don’t hurt yourself that was that was the that was the big learning that that cost probably two hundred thousand quarter of a million to really learn and it’s it’s really kind of philosophical when you’re talking about marketing in this way you know what like to spend that much money just to learn these two key things and most people like a lot of people like there are not marketers they’re not they’re not really in tune with with their audience that might just pass them oh they really get that but we tested a lot of marketing message and realize that that those two things combined together really resonated really got meant to understand why you should do this the need and why you should use dedicated tools that we created to solve this problem so I think any any startup Eddie any started trying to build a brand and not just a Fastpass forum where you’re just selling utility right you’re satisfied when you sell utility this you know we solve your problem like this right what you really build a brand in a CPG a highly competitive CPG space you have to distill your marketing message to be so fine-tune that that it really resonates with a broad audience so you tested can you give me examples of so the two that worked were you know tree stands taller use the right tools bird in the job what were some of the marketing messages you thought might work and ended up not working do you remember any of those there was so many we we had like we had a bunch that that was it was a 10 on that made it to the shortlist of you know it was a you know you know fueled fuel fresher or something like that right it was was one of them you know you know make sure you’re clean and ready all the time and it was it was a bunch of different along that vein but it just didn’t resonate you know it was just it it just didn’t click with with dudes and and that’s what you’re searching for us as marketers trying to market any product that’s what you’re searching for you’re searching for though that with this how to sell your product in one simple statement to understand your audience understands it and sees the mead instantly yeah so you spend $200,000sortoftestingthatmessagingonFacebookandGoogleyouknowyeahIreallylikedwhatyousaidearlierwhichwasonceyougetpeopletoyourwebsiteyouhavetolikeoptimizeoffersaswellIfeelliketoooftenpeoplearelikegreatwhatismyCPAandmyCPAiswhatIwaslikehowgoodismyfacebutGodandwhattheydo{n}^{\prime }tlookatishowgoodismylandingpageamiconvincingpeopleoncetheygettomylandingpagethattheyshouldbuythisproductthati{t}^{\prime }sagoodvalueandthattheyshouldbuyitnowandnottwoweeksfromnowandIfeellikethe{y}^{\prime }reyouknowthosearetwosidesofthesamecoinandbotharegonnadramaticallyimpactCPArightlikeyoucansayheytreestandstalleronyourfacebookadandlikeyouknowtheflipsideofthatcointhelandingpagecanbeusedtherighttoolsforthejobbutifthelandingpagei{t}^{\prime }slikebuythistrimmerbecauseyouknowyourballsare{n}^{\prime }tthesameasyourfaceitcouldbeaverydifferenttypeofCPAyeahIdidalotofentrepreneursandi{t}^{\prime }sthatseethattha{t}^{\prime }stha{t}^{\prime }swhereIgobacktoyouknowi{t}^{\prime }si{t}^{\prime }sdifficulttoi{t}^{\prime }sdifficulttohireanagencyunlessyougotalotofalotofmoneyrightyouknowyourventurefundedandthatyouknowwewere{n}^{\prime }tatthattimeyouknowandsoitwas{n}^{\prime }tunlesswehadalotofmoneyyouwould{n}^{\prime 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}tagreemorewhenwewerewhennativewasgrowingtheentiretimewewereanindependentcompanyIranallpaidadsafterwesoldthebusinessIstillranpaidadsuntilprobablylikesixmonthsagoorsomethingtothateffectorlikeyouknowmaybeeightmonthsagoatthispointbecauseIwasjustlikethisisthebackboneofthebusinessthisishoww{e}^{\prime }regrowingthisisoneofthereasonsw{e}^{\prime }regrowingveryquicklyandIdo{n}^{\prime }twanttooutsourcethattosomebodyelsewhoyouknowbynecessitylikeyouknowisisanagencybydefinitionandtherewillbeagencycostsasaresultofthattheywo{n}^{\prime }tcareasmuchtheydo{n}^{\prime }tcareaboutthebusinesstheywo{n}^{\prime }tbelookingatthemetricsasquicklyasIamorasfrequentlyasIamandtheywo{n}^{\prime }tbeiteratingondifferenttestsonmessageslikeifthisisaskillthatIhaveifthisisaskilltha{t}^{\prime }simportanttothecompanyIshouldgetgoodatthisskillorIshouldleastunderstandthisskillandsolikeyouknowoneofthethingsthatyoumentionedwasyouneedalotofmoneyinordertohiretheseagenciesinorderlikeyouknowtogetthemtodogoodworkgoingbacktowhatyouguysdidyouguysspentfiftythousanddollarsanditdid{n}^{\prime }treallyworkoutwiththeseriousmessagingtwohundredthousanddollarsandyourealizedwhatmessagingdidworkhowwereyouwereabletoaffordthisstuffbecauseearlyonyouwerebootstrappedyeahImeanwewerebootstrapforandwegreworganicallyforaveryverylongtimeandhowweknowitwoulddothroughpriorsuccessesyouknowyougottayouknowyougottagambleandandreinvestyouknowtha{t}^{\prime }stheIwouldthinktha{t}^{\prime }sthebestwaytototalkaboutandyouknowfundraisingandandandspendinginvestordollarsithasitsithasitspricether{e}^{\prime }sther{e}^{\prime }sather{e}^{\prime }sacosttothatrightandIthinkIthinkveryoftenthatgetsOHshadowedbytheglitzandglamouroffundraisingandclosingaroundandtha{t}^{\prime }swhereIwouldIwouldadviseentrepreneursthatyouknowclosingbecauserightnowwhenyoureadthenewseveryclosesaroundandeveryon{e}^{\prime }scheeringther{e}^{\prime }salotofPRarounditlikedudetha{t}^{\prime }sjustthebeginningandyoudo{n}^{\prime }tknowhowmuchlessandtha{t}^{\prime }swha{t}^{\prime }sgonnabeonyourassallthetimeyouknowhowtospendthatmoneyandthenyougetintoapointwhereyo{u}^{\prime }restartingtospendfrivolouslyyouknowi{t}^{\prime }slikeIguaranteeyouwehadamilliondollarsinthebankwewouldhavespentabout$200,000 would have spent half a million tested yeah right you so I think it’s it’s a silikal trap to raise money way too early because number one that’s when you lose the most amount of the most of your company right it’s early on mom most amount of dilution you look back like oh my god that was crazy right looking within like it makes you it makes you not as strict with with yourself and with your budget absolutely I couldn’t agree more with all that you know we raised like fifty thousand dollars and it was a great sign that we were onto a successful business we raised that native we raised $50,000andlikeafivemilliondollarvaluationprobablyfourmonthsintothebusinessandthenanother250KmaybewithinthefirstyearandthosewereyouknowthereasonthatIdidthatearlyonthebusinesswasworkingIwas{n}^{\prime }tlikeinrealitywedid{n}^{\prime }tevenneedthat250kIwasjustlikeIwanttomakesurethatther{e}^{\prime }sexternalvalidationthatwhat{I}^{\prime }mdoinghereisrightIthinkthatwastheprimaryreasonandthesecondaryreasonwasthatIwaslike{I}^{\prime }minSanFranciscoandthisiswhateveryoneheredoeseveryoneraisesmoneyasasignofsuccessther{e}^{\prime }sthisgreattweetIsawIdo{n}^{\prime }trememberwhotweeteditandsomeon{e}^{\prime }slikeraise10milliondollarsandyougetinvitedtoeverypartyinSanFranciscosellyourbusinessandmake10milliondollarscricketslikepeoplesomehowcelebratethefundraisingmorethantheydoactuallythesuccessfulexitswhichdoes{n}^{\prime }tmakeanysensewelllookwhatscalewereyouatwhenyoudidraiseyourfirstfewchecksandyouknowIwanttomakesurether{e}^{\prime }ssomedisclosurehereIwasoneofthoseJaxatsomepointwhatscalewereyouatwhenyouraisedhisfirstfewcheckswellthisfirstfewchecksweImeanwewerewewerebeyondeightfigureswaitwaitwellbythetimeweraisedthosethosefirstfewcheckswouldyousayyouwerebeyondeightfiguresyoumeanyouwerelikenorthoftenmilliondollarsnotnorthofahundredmilliondollarscorrectokayyeahandthoseinthosefewcheckstheyouknowtheimpetusbehindthosewastobringontalentatyourselfrightImeanwewecalleditaasweetheartroundorasweetheartnotebecausewewantedtobringonamazingtalentsotherewere{n}^{\prime }tanyB{C}^{\prime }sininthatnoteitwasitwaseveryonethatwasprettymuchhandselectedfromagroupoffriendsyouknowselectlikeyourselflikeNickfromthriveandlikefromthisamazingindividualsthatcouldreallycontributetotothebusinessthatcanhavetheexperienceandwewantedtoactuallycallandtalktoyouyouknowIwillcall{I}^{\prime }llcallyouwhenyo{u}^{\prime }reinChinaandw{e}^{\prime }lltalkaboutthatwasthethatwasthereasonwhyweneedandhasthatbeenhelpfulyouknowweraisemoneyweraisefivehundredthousanddollarsatnativeabouthalftheinvestorsIwouldsayw{e}^{\prime }rereallyhelpfullikepeoplethatIcouldcallandbelikeheythisisaproblem{I}^{\prime }mhavinghaveyouhaditbeforeyouknowwelikeNickwasthefirstepisodeofthispodcastheactuallyhelpedmewithabunchoftrademarkstoporatleastmademethinkabouttrademarkstuffearlyonthereweretherewasaoneofourinvestorswasanexecutiveofFacebookwh{o}^{\prime }sreallyhelpfulandhelpingusjustgetaccesstotherightpeopleatFacebookthatweneededanotherwasjustlikeacalmingvoicewhoyouknowwasaVCanditsortofseenabunchofthingshappeninSanFranciscoandsowaslikewhenIcalledhimuph{e}^{\prime }slikehisnam{e}^{\prime }sPaulFerrisfromAzureandh{e}^{\prime }slikeheyboysthisishowtothinkaboutthingsyo{u}^{\prime }repanickingtoomuchhavetheinvestorsthatyousortofletinthosesweetheartshavethosesweetheartsbeenhelpfulIwasabsolutelyandIthinkyouyounaileditontheheadwithabout50$30.00 tax spend as much as you can until you had $30 you know how do you think about that I mean now we are I mean to be to be honest now we are right like we’re we’re much more systematic now we’re much more organized but the first two years let’s be honest nobody’s getting six budgets in the first two years you’re still learning so much you’re still growing so much and it’s still so fluid that like you know do we just we just launch this channel with this video the the CPA is so well kind of go balls out right yeah and that’s the only thing that matters over the question is this chill everyone else be quiet this is the channel that can make a business now I want to make sure that the listeners are and the entrepreneurs out there don’t get a you know don’t think that you need to have budgets in place on that you know in the early days you just kind of make it work that’s all you gotta do you gotta make it work that’s all you gotta focus on yeah in the early days it’s always audibles right like every day is a new fire that you have to put out and the rare days where you don’t have fires that can sort of focus on marketing channels you got to go with just what’s working and not like a not dogma you can’t be like you know what Facebook were or like you know YouTube worked for Paul at manscaped I’m gonna spend money on you know people come up to me in there like hey Facebook work for you guys I get Facebook to work for me and I’m like look Facebook work for us it’s like you know it will work for us it almost certainly will not work for you we had a specific use case you know we were on there a different time than Facebook is today and like you know we were spending a lot of resources on Facebook for you guys the content that you have and the cheeky humor is much more amenable to video than it maybe tillich a quick mobile uh you know photo and so it’s just a different channel that works and like people cannot get a caught up on the dogma of others they have to call audibles when they get to the line see what’s working and spend their time and resources there absolutely what did you guys like um fail at so like you know certainly you it sounds you know and maybe they said that maybe fails a bad word you know at native we fail that a ton of stuff operations for a really long time until we hired a stellar operations person finance forever what did you guys feel that like you know it certainly the like not doing the cheeky marketing was tough did you guys have operational supply issues because these things can’t be easy to it’s not like you you know um with deodorant you want to make more you probably can do it in there and like you know a week like you need a week of heads up maybe two weeks these are you know hardware components that cannot be made in a day or two days it’s not mixing ingredients together I mean some of your products are but a lot of them aren’t you know what were the things that you guys struggled with to make the business a success absolutely right so I mean kind of an all-encompassing way if you if you’re in software and SAS then you don’t have to worry about you know making stuff right you know you got to worry about them having enough servers but now there’s clouds and but we have to worry about that anymore either right so that’s why software is so can be so lucrative if you get the right win but but for hard and physical products and operations supply chain you know it it’s it’s a lot of work so I’m exactly with you like we failed in Opera and operations if we failed multiple times of operations meaning what was one of the example of a disaster you guys had disaster so were like one of the things that you fail that in operations specifically yeah so we had we were on a run rate we had projected inventory for the entire q1 right we bought it we have it in stock it was November we’re like we’re good and we bought so much inventory or like we’re good for the next quarter this is November and we’re like when we’re good until we’re good until April and that’s that’s how much inventory we had by December 16th and so but so now all inventory and we’re like oh crap it was it was easy you’re like everyone and our families were in the warehouse packing new like new inventory to send out so that was definitely failure so we we shipped late to our customers which means they weren’t happy with us that means that’s a fail for us that we wanted to light our customers all the time and you know that really that bad sucked and that doesn’t go away by the way like that that happens all the time all the time like when you’re scaling you can never predict how like Howard Stern would do would do a you know a read things what things would just pop and you know influencers would do would launch their videos things will just pop and which is it’s just really difficult to manage all the channels because now we were only channel right so we’re not just a subscription OTT just a b2c company where we’ve got Amazon we like D to see without international and without retail so now we’re working with you know a lot of all our retail partners and your your planning with them months and months that he tells a different beast it’s not need to see you’re planning a year in advance time’s yeah I think I uh I didn’t understand how hard it would be until Native got into retail like you know we scaled we have the same opera problems you did in terms of like running out of inventory in 2015 we were making 500 units of deodorant a week by 2017 we were making 21,000 units a day and we were still like selling out like you know if you bought your deodorant on a Thursday it was either made the day before the day after it was like it’s not like we had a lot of inventory but once you sell it to Target and Walmart and like large brick-and-mortar stores you know their first order could be you know five 300,000 units or 2050 thousand units and all of a sudden the just-in-time inventory that you had always been reliant on is no longer sustainable yeah absolutely it looks it gets really difficult as ask your SKU starts to expand also yeah yeah so tell me about some of the retailers you gathering you guys are in target today any other retailers we’re in Target Best Buy and we’re looking to focus on Target and Best Buy because I had we feel that that’s where our audience lives you know we have a lot of great retail partners but we’re gonna for the time being at least for 2020 we’re really gonna focus on targeting this way and is does your online site make up the majority of your sales or do Target and Best Buy make up the majority of your sales no d2c web ecommerce makes up the majority of our sales and is there like cyclic allottee to the business you know it’s really interesting that you said by December 16th you’ve sort of sold out I’ve imagined that people are buying this product for Christmas is there another bump in sales for instance right before Valentine’s Day you know Valentine’s Day Father’s Day any gift-giving holiday we see a bug yeah because that’s when women bias gifts for men and then of course holidays that’s when we women really buy as gifts for men but then yeah men are also spending on themselves so q4 is definitely huge just any other e-commerce keyboard to you to everybody yeah well I mean the q4 is he’s like for Native it was actually probably one of the worst corners in part because like deer you tend to wear more dealer in the summer when it’s hot out as opposed to the winter when it’s cold out and you know some people give deodorants gifts in fact a lot of people do a lot more than I suspected but like you know if I gave you a tea odor and it’s a gift I think you’d be like well this is nice but like okay this is like a pretty mediocre gift I mean if I gave you a package of manscaped it’d be very different from like you know it’s it’s obviously higher price point and a great like on a much nicer gift I wonder if men ever accuse like men who get this as a gift from their female partners I wonder if they ever accuse them of being like this is a gift for yourself like when I buy lingerie for you to gift for me this is a gift for yourself I don’t you know one folder we haven’t polled our customers thought that that might be the case but we have a lot of you know unboxing experience that people unboxing reactions on Instagram and tik-tok it’s been pretty yeah did you work your way up when it came to influence their advertising did you start it like micro influencers and work your way up to like you know a list celebrities or were you like you know what let’s go big right out of the gate and get the Kim Kardashian’s or Tom Brady’s of the world to try this product you know we still haven’t gone with celebrities and we have not kept an image to that region so we’re we’re talking but he went we went with amazing influencers so what a first influencer that we have abroad on was jose zuniga of teaching men’s fashion he’s phenomenal the dude is dude knows his stuff he’s you know yes he really knows men’s hygiene and grooming and so we tapped him as one of our first influencers and we still work very closely with him today so I guess like with your budget right away going after maybe the celebrity is a bad example was your budget right away sort of saying hey let’s put ten thousand or fifty thousand or a hundred thousand dollars to test among different influencers to see what works and what doesn’t or would you look I’m ready to go with an influencer that has five hundred thousand people that may not be an a-list celebrity but certainly a large Instagram so you know but I think I’m you’re gonna test it influence your market testing micro influencers will give you a really bad data because it just there’s not enough reach right yeah you got it you gotta test with enough reach to have its active sampler I thought the more data you have the better the better the results the better David you better the better you can conclude on your data right so you know I think I think at that time Jose had like four million followers or on YouTube and that was that was the that was the right amount for us to really do a good test Wow all right so you’re looking for guys who already like rather large on YouTube but before you spend money there is that still the case are you still sort of focusing on those people that have the million-plus or are you willing to go down now to people who have 10,000 plus four subscribers now it’s now our our influencer team evaluates each influence of potential influence a partner and then we evaluate for primarily is authenticity like if you if you’ve got 30,000 followers or 30,000 fans or whatever that is you know on each on these different platforms and in your Instagram all you’re doing is pushing product you’re not the right influencer for us yeah you know we want you to actually test our product you know really use it and be a fan of it right because that authenticity comes out because we as a brand really value or authenticity we want to have a really authentic voice and that’s that’s really important to our brand and so how do female influencers sort of project that authenticity is it sort of talking about you know their partners or how do female you know users project that authenticity well it it depends usually it’s the way that they the way that they do is they it depends on which platform right so on on Instagram we’re just taking pictures of it and or something and many times are taking pictures with a partner as like you guys because Instagram is a very photo based platform whereas on YouTube it’s mostly couples it’s the if it’s if it’s a a woman Instagram or a female Instagram they would be they would pair up with their partner right and and talk about the product because there’s so many ways you can talk about this problem right yeah and then can talk about how great it is how it doesn’t hurt you how some right tools of the job right and how how how much how much better it makes them feel wimp it’s women talk about it as hey you know you give this to your men and it makes them so much better it makes you like it more and you know so yeah sure we leave it up to them to kind of put their own spin on it gotcha okay you know we’re almost out of time so I just want to ask a couple more questions you know the business has changed dramatically since you went from that serious advertising and it was you and Ryan sort of refreshing YouTube to today you know you’re sponsoring four other NFL teams and NASCAR teams and that’s pretty amazing where is it like what is your goal with a business I think that like you know do you want to work here for 20 years is there an exit strategy in the net like you know within five years or like what it look where do you want to go with the business you know this is like the business that you’ve created is right in the wheelhouse of a lot of CPG companies right it’s almost like like there’s a lot of competition for the Gillette’s of the world from the Harry’s and Dollar Shave Club so the world this is going up this is like in the same industry but going after a very different type of category or niche and you’re uniquely positioned and so sort of one of the few companies in that space what do you want to do and the way that we think about that is we know if we never like they never create or build a business for the sole purpose of exiting with with that in mind I just feel like if you if you create a successful business that transcends you know fads or you know that can be multi-generational that’s a potentially multi multi generational then then you know be potential acquirers just come it’s natural so that’s kind of how we kind of how we think about it this build a really successful business and so when we when you look at back at in the last 4050 years there aren’t many brands that are able to be multi-generation multi irrational right I mean you look at like head and shoulders they’ve sure generations upon generations right gillette generations upon generations Pantene there aren’t that many brains are able to actually do that you’ve mentioned all Procter & Gamble brands they’re gonna love that but there there’s there’s there’s not that many that actually have the unit economics to be able to to transcend what I mean by that is it’s it costs a lot of money it costs a lot of money to build a brand it is really expensive to build a brand and if you are trying to sell a shampoo in which you know at retail and you’re trying to build a business that way there’s nowhere you have enough margin to actually build a brand right because you don’t want to take 20 35 20 30 years to build a brand right sure you what you want to be able to spend 50 million dollars on marketing right or and then grow that to a hundred million dollars on marketing for five years six years right and really have a global brand and then and then then you start harvesting I mean that’s that’s that’s kind of how we see it right you have to spend the money upfront you have to you have to pay your dues right and and build that brand I really understand your audience Bill create amazing products within those five to six seven years and then after that we can smoothly start harvesting so that’s kind of how we see building a brand we we believe that with our you tour unit economics because I mean this we recoup the clock on the first time sale so beyond anything else many your portal on first unit sale profit of first unit sale so what able to recycle that cash very very quickly so that’s how we’ve been able to scale so quickly without any institutional funding right so I I think there’s not that many companies are able to do that and there’s virtually no companies that are able to do that especially that like you know there’s companies that are able to do that today get to four or five million dollars in revenue virtually no companies are able to do that at the at 50 million dollars in revenue that’s why the aways and all birds of the world have raised capital yeah yeah we’re we’re very fortunate that we you know we’re able to get you know beyond nine figures and yeah in in revenue without institutional capital and and you know to have that kind of unit economic so that allows us so we believe that that really helps us you know be multi-generational looking a grow this thing we’re launching internationally so we were early in Australia Canada UK OB all of Europe you know and within the next three to five years be a truly global brand and then it’s you know it’s all for harvesting but what’s really interesting beyond that is the way we think about is we’re clearly incremental voice you know there’s there’s no portfolio company in growing care I would pry the last frontier in male grooming agreed yeah it’s it’s really amazing when like it’s not like you’re competing with Gillette you’re in the same category and we’re a P&G and a quarter of manscaped you would sit within their grooming category likely but like it’s not like you’re cannibalizing Gillette sales exactly you know we anything we can we can help it right we’re went to the incremental to the top-line revenue right and if you look at men’s men’s hygiene in general it’s definitely growing but it’s not growing as fast as our category yeah yeah and that not only is it growing like I mean your category is primarily growing because of you I think that like you know people rarely realize that like when native launch into target we grew their deodorant category something like 8 percent or 10 percent the first year and rarely do like you know target hasn’t seen that in a really long time the men’s you know below the waist grooming category isn’t growing quickly and you’re riding those coattails you’re the reason that it’s growing quickly you know we’re seeing racism low data with with target also great partner great to be working with them there yeah I’m loved target they just they’re just phenomenal partners but we’re seeing very similar things with them this is category hasn’t been innovated and it’s a brand new category you know and you got lucky with the name manscape that we define in the category yeah yeah fantastic name okay one last question because I I put on Twitter I said you know I was interviewing you for a podcast what should I ask you and someone from your own team actually asked me to ask you this and they said have Hulk guess how many gallons of boba tea the manscape team has consumed in total I guess so the reason behind this is my my wife loves boba she just she’s addicted to boba so she got the entire company addicted to boba so I would say many many many hundreds of gallons of Bo well okay if you have to give give me a number because I’m the tweeted this guy and be like hey is this right or wrong I would say cuz we ordered over almost every day I gotta be like a hundred and twenty gallons okay no you’re it’s definitely more than 120 gals it’s your boba everyday that’s right like 18 ounces there’s 70 people on the team probably 40 of them are getting boba no it’s gonna be that is it’s a great it’s a great like line item to have in a budget when you’re like doing a P&L and sort of showing it to your board you’re like that’s how much we’re going to spend on boba this Paul this was fantastic really love you know that I really love what you’ve this conversation I think you’ve you know aside from one of the things that I’ve realized about you is that aside from having this incredible vision for the company and sort of understanding where you fit within the CPG space you also have these humble origins and you have like the perspective you you still remember the perspective you had when you launched the business and we’re struggling trying to get that right messaging out trying to understand you know how to get production up and like understand what entrepreneurs are going through when there’s still much smaller businesses I feel like very few people have that perspective and it’s so refreshing to hear because I think that a lot of people who were building to three million four or who are at a two three four million dollar run rate you know don’t necessarily want to talk about stuff that I brought up which was like how do you think about budget you go back and you’re like look budget is what we think about today the first two years we called audibles of the line every time we went up there and that was really great I love how you mentioned that because it makes me realize that sometimes I’ve forgotten what it was like to be in the trenches and makes me miss those days so appreciate you sort of bringing that up and having that like you know in the trenches type of mentality that was fantastic oh thank you I really appreciate that I think deep down at heart I’m an entrepreneur and I’ll always be an entrepreneur you know we I think it’s it’s a it’s a special breed and I I celebrate all entrepreneurs out there because it it takes guts you know to go out there and to sacrifice every single day to follow your dreams it’s not easy couldn’t agree more with that takes a ton of guts you know you got to stand up to your family and your friends who are you know and are certainly at my age are like you know lawyers and are making a lot of money and had families you’re like you know what I’m gonna put everything on the line so have a ton of respect for those entrepreneurs and have a ton of respect to the business at you too no thank you okay thanks so much Paul this was fantastic really appreciate your time congratulations on all the success super excited you know after all this I also makes me realize how excited I am as an investor and manscaped I feel like when you said all this I’m like Oh fantastic man that’s what it’s doing really well so thanks again for all the time and for taking my money really appreciate that thank you I’m excited to see what your your next projects gonna be me too I don’t know what it’ll be hopefully once this Kovach stuff dies down I’ll think of something really appreciate it