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Hello, and welcome to The Advice Line on How I Built This Lab. I'm Guy Raz. This is the place where we help try to solve your business challenges. Each week, I'm joined by a legendary founder, a former guest on the show who will help me try to help you.
And if you're building something and you need advice, give us a call, and you just might be the next guest on the show. Our number is 1-800-433-1298. Send us a one-minute message that tells us about your business and the issues or questions that you'd like help with. You can also send us a voice memo at hibt at id.wondery.com.
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And we'll put all this info in the podcast description. All right, let's get to it. Joining me today is Bobby Brown, founder of Bobby Brown Cosmetics and Jones Road Beauty. Bobby, welcome back to How I Built This.
So nice to see you again. You too. So when we first had you on the show back in 2018, before I even talk about that, I have to say, I find myself talking about you all the time because every time I give a speech or appear on stage somewhere, I end up talking with a makeup artist about you and how you started your incredible career doing that work. And so many of them are so inspired by you.
I mean, people know your story by what you built, this iconic brand. And for those listening who haven't heard Bobby's original How I Built This episode from 2018, we will put a link to it in the show notes. It's such a good episode. You talked about how you're doing makeup in the 80s.
It was really this over-the-top, super glam kind of world. And then you kind of created a new look that was more understated, natural. This is what became known as nude makeup. And that's how you launched your brand.
And anyway, back when we had a conversation, Bobby, you were still under a non-compete with Estée Lauder, who acquired Bobby Brown. But in 2020, that expired. And you launched a new beauty brand called Jones Road. The day my 25-year non-compete expired, I did.
That's amazing. You know, right a week before the presidential elections, in the middle of, you know, everything. Oh, my God. And you know what?
You just sometimes you have to do something. And if it doesn't work, then just, oh, that didn't work. Let's do something else. It's awesome.
I mean, you launched this at a time where some entrepreneurs would just say to a victory lab and say, you know, I sold this business and my name is kind of, you know, ubiquitous. But you decided to start something from scratch all over again. Tell me what compelled you to do that. What did you see or not see in the market that compelled you to do a startup again at that point in your life?
Well, I just felt, even at the end of my tenure at Estée Lauder, I felt the industry was changing. The world was changing. Things were shifting. Even when your name is on the label.
Yes, even when your name is on the label. Exactly. So there was something missing in the market. I didn't like the texture of a lot of the clean makeup that I was playing with.
And I thought I wasn't sure if I could do better, but I wanted to try to do better. And I did. Yeah. You know, you may not even have the answer.
I don't think I have the answer for this because I think it's more of an intuitive thing. But, you know, you could have said, you know, it was awesome. I really, I'm considered a pioneer in this industry. You are.
And maybe I'll be an mentor and an investor and, you know, kind of dabble here and there. But to muster all your energy because a startup is, you know, better than anyone else. It is a full-time, 24-7 job. It is all-encompassing.
And did you feel like you just had to do it? Like you just couldn't contain the energy that was inside of you? It was not an option of doing it or not doing it. When I started to make these products, I just thought, these are so simple and they're so much better.
People are going to love these. I thought I would maybe start the company on Etsy. Just put, like, the best brown eyeshadow and start there. And then I realized, okay, there's a different way to do this.
So, no, I could not wait to launch. And I did everything completely different the second time that I did the first time. But I didn't look at it as hard. I looked at it as, this is so cool.
I felt renewed. First of all, I was 62 years old when I started this brand. That's so awesome. I'm 68 right now.
I love that. So, it's invigorating to go back to the simple things. And by the way, guy, I love being in charge. Like, I just, it was time for me to be in charge.
Like, okay, we don't have to do that. We don't have to have a big party. We don't have to spend all that money. We don't have to advertise.
We just have to tell people about it. So, you know, you figure things out. And I'm very scrappy. I don't like to waste money.
I don't like to waste time or energy. And I like to figure out what is worth my time and energy and how to do things without spending a ton of money. Yeah. I want to ask you about this thing that you pioneered, which is known as nude makeup, right?
This idea that you were wearing makeup, but you couldn't really tell. It was very, very natural look. And I know, I remember when we talked about this, some people all the time were like, oh, this is going to be fat, you know? People are going to want to look like, you know, those porcelain masks from the 80s again.
But, of course, decades later, nude makeup is still a big deal. We don't call it that anymore, right? It still is the thing. And we're going to have some callers today that are, you know, that are worried that, you know, that their success, limited success or whatever might be, might be trend or fatter.
So how do you think about the thing that you're building, right, into something with more longevity, something that has more staying power? Because, as I say, I mean, people at the time said, oh, this nude makeup thing is just a trend and, you know, it'll pass. Right. And people thought that, you know, I mean, I had comments from people that said, oh, you're just putting your name on some package.
No, I'm not. That's not how we're doing it because we didn't have fancy packaging. But I think for anyone that is, you know, an entrepreneur and a founder, you look at what you're doing. And, yes, it's got to constantly not just, like, grow into something else.
You've got to pay attention to what you have and make sure it's the best. And sometimes you have to make little fixes and sometimes you have to make big fixes. But you always have to make sure that it's the best thing on the market. So people will come back for it.
People will tell their friends about it. And people will rebuy the same thing over and over again. But you need new things so people are interested. So it's, you know, it's just kind of figuring out the whole ecosystem.
Yeah. All right, Bobby, what do you say? Let's take our first call. Sure.
All right. Welcome to the advice line. You're on with the legendary Bobby Brown. Please tell us your name, where you're calling from, and just one brief line about your business.
Hi, guy. Hi, Bobby. Thanks for having me on. My name is Mark Sokolowski.
I'm calling from Chicago, Illinois. I'm the founder of Cabbage. Yay, Chicago. I'm the founder of Cabbage Labs.
We make a muscle and joint rub called Cabdab. It's made with cabbage leaf extract and has all the natural anti-inflammatory goodness of cabbage. Why? Cabbage has a lot of good natural anti-inflammatory enzymes in it.
And when you crush the cabbage leaf, you get all the goodies out. That's amazing. So wait, this is a balm, a rub that reduces joint pain. And it's made from cabbage leaf extract.
That's right. How did you figure this out? All right. So I'm an orthopedic surgeon.
And we have a practice that's mostly first and second generation immigrants. And for years, patients were like, oh, I just put cabbage leaf wraps on my elbow or on my shoulder or on my hips. And at first I was like, that's crazy. But then younger kids were telling me, oh, after I work out, I do cabbage leaf wraps on my muscles to relieve soreness.
And so I did a little bit of research, looked into it. Turns out it's real. There's actual data that shows that cabbage leaf wraps are more effective than usual care for arthritis and even for breast engorgement, any sort of inflammatory condition. And so we said, okay, it's impractical to put cabbage leaf wraps on all day.
How do we put it into something more convenient? Well, this is incredible. By the way, do you focus on shoulders or knees or everything? I'm a spine surgeon, but I speak Polish.
So when the Polish patients come in and they see orthopedic surgeon, they're like, look, it's great that you're a spine surgeon, but you're going to take care of my knees. Yeah, I got you. This is amazing. So the idea was, hey, on the side, I'll start making a balm and offer it to my patients.
Yeah, so we said, we'll try to do this in a lotion form. And I said, I don't know anything about marketing, so I'm going to give it for free at the end of every visit to my patients as they come. And if it works, great. If it doesn't work, no obligation, no worries.
And so we've just kind of grown this organically, no advertising, just from giving it out since 2021 to every new patient at the end of a visit. And how is the business doing? I mean, is it making money? Yeah, we've been profitable since day one.
The margins on lotions are pretty good. And we're 30,000 tubes in, and we have our next order of 10,000 tubes coming. All right, and before we get to Bobby, your question for us today. So I give away a ton of product to my patients, and this whole doctor-to-patient giving the tube is like a high-trust, no-obligation kind of trial.
How do I scale this business beyond me having personal interaction with every potential customer? Bobby, this is amazing because there are a lot of parallels, right? You were a makeup artist, and then you're like, wait, I can make my own makeup. And here Mark is an orthopedic surgeon.
He's like, I can make a balm that I think is going to be effective for patients. So I'm sure you've got a lot of thoughts on this. Well, in the very beginning, I gave away lipsticks. Like, not in the fancy packaging, in the testers.
And people said, oh, my God, this is so different. It's so good. I want it. And so they would come back.
And so, you know, I gave a lot of product away. You're only giving it to your customers. So your biggest thing now is how do I get other people besides my patients to know about me? There's this little teeny thing called PR.
It's old-fashioned. It's free. Someone writes an article about you in the Chicago Tribune. Is there still a Tribune or sometimes whatever the papers are?
They write an article about you, and all of a sudden, your phone's ringing off the hook. You've got all these people calling. I want this cabbage. You know, everyone has pain in their body, right?
Everyone has pain. I cannot wait to try this cabbage. My sister has back pain. She's in Chicago.
I need your number. But, you know, so you've got to have more people know about this. You know, and by the way, PR can cost a little bit of money. But, Mark, I think that it would be worthwhile considering saying, let me take $10,000 or $15,000 or $20,000 and see if I can contract with a local PR firm that can get me into these papers because this story is so compelling.
Yeah, but I have a better idea. I think the $10,000 a month is great. But why don't you hire, like, a Swiss Army knife, like a kid who can post, shoot, do videos of you, like interview you and put you up on Instagram, and they can call the local papers. Like, it's not that hard to get a list of who to call to.
You can hire a full-time marketing student, right? You can hire someone that could do a bunch of things, someone who's resourceful, and then you can always take money, you know, later. Like, $10,000 is a lot of money. You could probably get a good PR firm for $5,000, too.
That's true. That's true. That's true. By the way, how big are the tubes you're giving away?
How many ounces? They're 100 million. We don't have sample products. We give away the whole size product.
See, that's also a problem. You're giving away too much. You've got to give away a smaller version. So what I would do is I would go to the container store and buy a bunch of empty containers and squeeze and just make, like, little samples, however much you think people need for an area, and then just keep them in your pocket.
And when you're at a restaurant or you're whatever, you know, just start handing out with a card where they can order it. Give them a 10% discount. Like, you know, that old-fashioned marketing doesn't really cost anything. I also think that it's worthwhile, and I'm sure you're in medical professional organizations and maybe you go to conferences, if there's a community that you can kind of bring in, particularly, like, you know, I know this may or may not, you know, resonate with chiropractors.
A lot of people go to chiropractors. I don't know what you think about them, but a lot of people trust them. And to me, like, that would be a natural channel where you could get, you know, maybe, again, you create these smaller samples, and it's, you know, and if somebody goes to the website, they can get a free trial and you pay for shipping or something like that. Yeah, that's a great idea.
I definitely, definitely think that we could expand our distribution. We definitely could do smaller samples to make it more economical just to give away lots and lots of them. Bobby, I have a question for you. Mark is a very busy guy, okay?
He is an orthopedic surgeon. There's got to be a lot of demand for his time, and this is a side project. You were a makeup artist. You were very busy.
How would you recommend he starts to balance these things? Because, look, let's be honest, most of his income is coming from being a surgeon. I mean, come on, Dr. Oz was a heart surgeon, okay?
So, you know, you start somewhere, and you go whatever pace you're comfortable with. And how could you get things done while you're actually at work? You know, just whether it's a meeting in the morning with who's going to help you, this kid that you're going to hire, and then at the end of the day, you check in with them. Things are working.
The business is continuing because, you know, you have someone to do that. But there's no rush for this to kind of take off. It's going to happen, especially more people that know about it. Yeah.
I think it's a great idea, yeah. I want to take a cabbage bath right now. Yeah, see? I want to get some lower back.
Mark Sokolowski, thank you so much for calling in. The product's called Cab Dab. Good luck. Congrats.
It's awesome. Thank you guys very much for having me. Thank you. You know, I'm now wondering if this will work with sauerkraut.
Like, if you can spread sauerkraut. You know what I mean? Yeah. It's just salt and cabbage.
That's all it is. You wouldn't want to. Come on. I love sauerkraut.
I know sauerkraut is good for your gut, but I don't think you'd want it on your extremities. All right. We're going to take a quick break, but we'll be right back with another caller and another round of advice. Stay with us.
I'm Guy Raz, 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 I guest today is the legendary Bobby Brown, founder of Bobby Brown Cosmetics and Jones Road Beauty, and we are ready for our next caller. Hello, caller.
Hi, Bobby. Hi, Guy. I'm such a fan of both of you guys. Thank you so much for having me.
I'm Abby Rose Allier. I'm calling from Dallas, Texas, and I'm the founder and owner of Abby Rose, which is basically an online custom phone case business. So we do, you can put anything on a phone case, pretty much. It's our timeline.
So we do custom phone cases, and we even created the first phone case organizer that the world has seen. Wow. Thank you for calling in, Abby. Tell me how you, and you seem like you're a pretty young entrepreneur, which is awesome.
I love that. Do you mind sharing how old you are? Yeah, I'm 23. So I started when I was 16.
how this started yeah it's um there's kind of pieces to the story because i had little small businesses since like fifth grade i'd be like to take pins i would sparkle people's charters um but they would all last a month because i would just sell it to my school friends and get over it so i actually sold phone cases in eighth grade made a thousand bucks got over it and then in high school i had to be homeschooled for my sport acrobatic gymnastics got the itch to sell again had the phone case supplies started it blew up during covid and here we are it's like wait wow wait just just double pick one acrobatic gymnastics that was your sport so is that like like trapeze and flying off like what is that no i know everyone thinks just like circus and clowns almost um but it's it's like a mix of cheer and gymnastics so it's partner-based sports you throw them you catch them but it's with three people instead of a whole team yeah it's like being an entrepreneur yeah so you had to be homeschooled because you were a competitive acrobatic uh gymnast and that's when you started this business yes abbey rose yeah we had to uh actually got pulled from the middle of my junior year because we had to do two practices a day so i'd go homeschooled and yeah that's when i had the idea for abbey rose and just and so what you were initially what you were buying you people would order the custom cases and then you'd work with a third party and have them made like how did it work yeah so it didn't start as customized i kind of just well i actually started drawing designs i'm horrible at designing but nobody would design for me because i was just 16 not knowing what i was doing so i started just selling basic designs to my school friends into my acro friends and i would keep press the design onto the phone case so you keep press the design with sublimation ink and then the phone case is made it's a little complex but yeah you would custom you would custom make them originally yes yourself and now and tell me how the business is doing that give me a sort of a sense of where you are yes so it has been going crazy specifically this past year because i just graduated from college and we've seen like a 50 growth from last year um all the phone cases are still being handmade actually by my sister i just do the marketing the customer service the live streams and then my mom is also involved my sister my dad my brother it's kind of all just like this family-run business and we actually just purchased our supplier so things are wow so um and so as you are you have you guys broken a million dollars in sales um not in one year we've done over two million in total yeah no that's awesome okay but so you've easily broken 100 200 000 a year oh for sure awesome and and most of what you're doing most of your sort of channel is through social media like going doing doing things live or whatever yes yes going live selling live shipping live everything is live and how many followers do you have uh tiktok is our strong so we actually just hit 400 000 a few days ago we have one blowing up um and then like 111 000 on instagram so all right before we bring bobby brown and just um tell us which questions yes so um basically all of our growth has been organic social media and that's been great but it's been a steady linear growth and in order to keep this going and support my whole family we need to have more of an explosive growth uh soon so my question is if we just double down on what's working keep up the lives and content or if we look into wholesale or um paid advertising because we haven't really done that before so yeah you're trying to scale to a five hopefully greater million dollar business yeah what do you think well first of all what you're doing is working and not everything why does everyone think every business has to be like a rocket ship it's got it's got to grow but but it's also sometimes if things are so explosive and big like you know we've had tiktok moments that are like you know like we could not keep up with it it happened and then you look a year later and you're like how are we going to anniversary that so that's i'm not going to worry and figure out what else can i do to go viral no let's look at the business what's working what's not working what do i not need to be spending as much money on or time on you have a big success on social and i mean have you done a sub stack have you done youtube you know there's other things you could do are you doing like other company um giveaways and collabs like that's a good thing yeah it's like all those things together have been keeping us going we love doing collabs with other companies we love social media i started up my youtube channel but it's i guess our biggest struggle right now is if like if i'm not online like sales aren't coming in so it's almost like my presence has to like constantly be online for sales going yeah it's just tough yeah i have to constantly be making videos in order for you oh absolutely or just live because they want to see their order live they want to hear the cha-ching and get their freebie you know so you started something that's working you can't walk away from it how do you evolve it maybe you bring your sister in or you bring a guest you know friend or something and just try to experiment and you know figure out a way like maybe it doesn't have to be live i know there's a way you could take it to be live or there's different things that you could that you could do but do you really want to be in retail that is a whole nother set of problems and issues it sounds great it's really expensive yeah like it's really expensive i guess that's what we're wondering because it seems like that's what all of our competitors are doing you know they'll be in urban they'll be in target so it's like do we follow that or do we you could try as a pop-up or it's like target and and i guess walmart has these great incubator programs for young brands and founders and you know there's a way you could like dip your toe into it as a test and see if it's something but you've got to go try those things out i think that's great advice i think you mentioned urban authors which to me seems a natural place to try and experiment but i want to go back to this challenge you face which is right now your biggest channel is you and you can't scale you right you can't make a million abby's but maybe you can and that's that's the question i have which is can you feature other faces of abby rose can you bring in other people and train them to be sales reps with the commission i mean is that something that you've thought about or experimented with honestly no that's a great idea though i think i it's always hesitant when it's your business it's like your baby and you know just someone else doing the role you do is scary so i just need to get over that but i think that's a great idea just finding like bubbly energetic try it once try it once and just do it once see if you like it see if it works and using your accounts right having the person go on your account and say hey i'm here today you know is out at urban outfitters you know something like that or your mother or your father like use your family like you know use your whatever your next door neighbor your grandma your teacher like people love that instead of trying to be like everybody else like what's unique about you that's comfortable for you and it doesn't have to be a big strategic anything you just try it and say oh my god that's great and it might not work yeah and they know all the family they know papa rose a mama rose and so i guess i just never thought like let's try one with just them you know if i'm elsewhere who are your customers abby are they mainly young women you know what i've learned a lot about this since graduating college because i thought it was typically you know high school and college students but i've actually realized a lot of people are stay-at-home moms that's what i'm talking awesome yeah so on lives a lot of them are stay-at-home moms you know like watching their kids and just like a community so it's anywhere from like middle school high school college stay-at-home just young females looking for friends and a community so yeah keep building your community i love the phone that holds the three lip glosses oh yeah that's so cool yeah i wanted you know i wanted to go deeper in that i'm like okay you know i'm like we're launching some new lip glosses next year yeah i mean who knew that you could carry lip glosses in your phone case i mean there's oh yeah we just got that prototype in i was like oh yeah oh i have a quick question for you because you mentioned um sort of moms which is super cool have you tried any like user-generated content like you know every post your you know your design or maybe design your dream case and the winner will get to make it with me live you know in real time or something yeah we've done design contests with our customers where they send in their submissions but not really interacting like live with the winners so that's a really good idea for that yeah yeah i want to see like 20 different abby roses like not obviously abby rose but like different people just coming on and you know that's how you build your sales team yes that sounds amazing and always already looked off my shoulders just thinking about that so yeah i agree i'm curious you know because cosmetics you know this is like one of those things because oh the cosmetics industry is such a crowded marketplace but i don't believe in that i think a good product can always break through right a good product a well-designed product and well-marketed and you know that better than anybody else when you start bobby brown people said that right the world doesn't need another lipstick absolutely people said that all the time and you know i always say i didn't invent lipstick i reinvented it so it's the same thing with your phone cases right it's like you didn't invent a phone case but you know your biggest challenge is also how do you make sure that people know that your phone case is cooler more fun and better you know you have to show them yeah uh abby good luck thank you abby rose is the brand congrats thank you guys thank you bye good luck thank you yeah it's interesting because you know you think like and i'm sure you have this experience too abby where i look at product like this i'm thinking okay this is driven by sort of teenage girls um you know college students young women but actually it's it's moms right it's moms probably in their 30s 40s older um it's a little bit like you know we did an episode show about crumble cookies and that brand was really propelled and still is by teenage girls who are super psyched about the the drop of your flavor drop so i'm sure you've seen this with your you know your products where some things you make are just take off with like a certain demographic and and surprisingly so i mean when jones road first launched you know there was women over 40 that were buying the products you know now there's more and more you know like i guess the millennials are buying it but you know and i've been asked many times like how do you market to all the different age groups and i say i don't market to the different ages i just market to women that want to look natural and pretty yeah it's so cool i mean you know connecting with your customer is the most important thing yes to have a great product is the most important but then connecting with your customer and it sounds like she's on her way all right we're gonna take another quick break but we'll be right back with another 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 roz and sam taking your calls with the bobby brown bobby uh what do you say you ready to bring in our next caller i'm ready welcome to the advice line you're on bobby brown please tell us your name where you're calling from and just a little bit of business of course what's going on bobby great to uh great to meet you guys i'm calling in from charlotte north carolina and my name's henry i'm the co-founder of tannit oral care which is a lifestyle-centered wellness-based oral care company and we're the inventors of the world's first post coffee mouth rinse welcome so wait this is a oral care so it's post coffee what tell me a little bit more about this product yes so it's a post coffee mouth rinse so you know that do we have any coffee drinkers i mean bobby you guys both drink coffee yeah two hands raised beautiful it's that moment right after coffee is really what we originally designed this product for i was working at a coffee shop at the time making videos i would bring this toothbrush to the coffee shop which was both gross and also i learned that um it's actually best to wait 30 minutes after your last sip to brush your teeth because you can actually wear your enamel that has just been softened by the acid from the coffee and so i started looking for a solution i was just amazed that no one had ever made anything oral care related for coffee drinkers very sensitive in my mouth and i was living with my roommate at the time his name is joe and uh we just got fascinated by this and we started by one like posting up in a super busy part of charlotte and just asking people like are you having this problem too like what do you what do you do to clean your mouth after coffee and realizing that um it was just one of those things that people were thinking about without really thinking about it um something that they they wanted a solution for and we selfishly also wanted that solution uh yeah oral care is that the same as a mouthwash so the mouthwash is really this is kind of and we'll get into this in a question i guess but we we started by looking we wanted to to re-engineer a mouthwash that would be perfect for coffee drinkers and so we went and got every mouthwash on the shelves pulled it off put ingredients in a massive spreadsheet and started researching these ingredients and we were pretty flabbergasted to learn that i mean you guys have heard this a lot of mouthwash is actually horrible for your health it's packed with synthetic ingredients dyes alcohol basically dries out your mouth even more uh and we just learned so much about the oral microbiome about oral care in recent years um that it was one of those things where we just felt like there hadn't been a product that had caught up with the research how what is your back do you have a background in like chemistry or science or so no i don't uh i've definitely been an entrepreneur in my life but i would say my fascination with oral care has carried me through my entire life i think it you know like all good stories probably started with some childhood trauma and i came home from the dentist when i was eight and uh and i had four cavities and my brothers just made so much fun of me so i swore from that day i'm like okay i'm never getting another cavity and so i've just been very aware of my oral care ever since i've been doing the brushing flossing everything that i feel like the dentists are telling me but still having issues and that's kind of one of the things that too let me look at coffee and be like okay this is this is a real thing like this is actually having a real impact and how did you start to make this product i mean how did you start to come up with the formulation yeah i mean it started i thankfully had some dentists in my network uh we would meet with them and me and my friend joe literally ordered a chemistry set off of amazon and i would meet with my high school chemistry teacher and we would start mixing and just start like i mean getting deep in the research of natural ingredients what is really what is in these mouthwashes but like what is actually working and i think i'm always connected with bobby's story the idea of reinventing lipstick it's like people didn't say we need another mouthwash but i think what we wanted to do was really just start from square one what do you want in a mouthwash that's really going to make it as effective as possible all right tell me tell us your question then we'll dive in a little bit deeper we're at this point where people know us we take a very localized approach in charlotte people really know us in the city as the coffee mouth rents but what we want to create is a brand like a legacy brand that can really redefine and um and have staying power as an oral care brand so i wanted to get your thoughts on how you would recommend we move forward to kind of position ourselves in that way and continue to uh work towards that all right a lot to dive into well i have a question um as soon as i saw your package i mean i love your instagram it's very cool you guys are both you know like cool looking i love the vibe but my husband who is a mouthwash guy who's now using natural mouthwash he's not a coffee drinker and he hates coffee so even if i bought him your mouthwash that said coffee on it he'd say yuck right so what is the difference between that and a regular one and is there a way and how are you going to position another mouthwash that's not necessarily tied to coffee yeah it's a great question so i think like i said we set out to make this coffee mouthwash and i think we in the process created the best natural mouthwash on the market probably like i just i really do think we've done that and so i think that's what i'm struggling with like do we expand the niche and we say it's great for coffee wine and tea in any moment you need it in between or do we really stay niche down to coffee because there is obviously people that really connect with that story of coffee i think my opinion and it's only my opinion is when you you know reach a certain point and you say yes we're going to reimagine the you know the packaging and then you reimagine the marketing it started as for coffee but we've learned that even if you're not a coffee drinker it's this if you're you know wine drinker or you're just someone that you know people that have stomach issues sometimes could use a little bit of mouthwash so that would be my suggestion because i think just doing the coffee thing is really cool and different but i think there's an opportunity to expand that i totally agree i mean i think that right now if you look at the bottle and look at the website it says post coffee right we're into a coffee side effects it says for coffee drinkers by coffee drinkers so this is really it's it's a cool product it's just it's very niche right now you can build a business around each product and that's how it happens all the time but there are limits to how big you can you can take that right especially people like well i don't drink coffee you know or uh or i don't really have this problem i like the taste of coffee breath or you know whatever like some people i want to ask you before i get we draw into that i want to ask you the name tannin because when i think of tannin i think of like tannins in wine or tea you know there's tannins in there why is it called tannin yeah it's a great question so tannins are also in coffee they're really in a lot of like natural things so these compounds and trees and plants and probably know that so while they're the things that give it this natural flavor it's also the thing that dries out the mouth which causes a lot of the world health issues so quite literally we're rinsing those tannins out of the mouth when you talk about coffee or wine or tea but it also speaks to the just very natural elements of the brand like all the products are natural we use sustainable ingredients or sustainable materials for packaging um so it's kind of this dual meaning and we thought it was cool you know one of the things that comes to mind is and bob mentioned you mentioned their instagram and you guys are young you're cool you've got you know your storytellers i wonder whether you guys can talk about like oral microbiome or like you know the way we're washing our mouths is all wrong or you know do you have bad breath or even if you don't like you're you're not cleaning your mouth right in the right way like just starting that way and thinking about and i think bob you alluded to overall mouth health right or whatever microbiome and by the way how could you not have like either a little spray eventually or mints lozenges toothpaste yeah right yeah no i think you're right on and that's that's definitely exactly where we want to bring it i think we've been a little struggling a little bit to make that positioning but i mean i think we've grown even more convinced um of the importance of oral care as we've done this and everyone's talking about the gut right the gut biome but very few people are talking about the world microbiome and the connection that it has to the gut the connection that it has to total health um and so i love that idea guy i i you know i'm looking at packaging that you know all natural vegan alcohol free fluoride free i i want to know what's in it and i feel like you should make that a little clearer in your uh i see aloe leaves in a picture but like it would be cool if i'm you know how rx bars you know it's like three eggs and two dates and one you know four almonds like it's so clear i wonder if you could do a version of that without giving away your secrets obviously but i want to know what's in this and why is this better for me than listerine and what it tastes like i want to know what it tastes like is it minty yeah no it's all good points i think we've wrestled a little bit with oral care just wondering how much do people really want to know in oral care because some of the names are a little funkier like it's not like a date or an egg white um but i also do think you're talking about positioning to wellness just the simplicity of really educating people those ingredients and letting people in on our process is a great idea yeah um i think i think i think you have a an opportunity a challenge right which is you don't want to just appeal to coffee drinkers and also you want to show people that what this is is going to benefit them and i think i think um part of doing that is really and maybe maybe starting out by looking for a tribe maybe it is young men like you maybe you start that way and you try and appeal to that group and you build from that group i mean rx bars started out with crossfitters at crossfit gyms right now everybody you know working parents mommies everybody's using eating them on the go but that's how they started yeah yeah maybe it could be in a gym it could be you know it could be in a dentist office like you know yeah we've been i think we've been trying to uh to lean into this kind of social wellness movement that's happening like cold plunges saunas kind of where people are doing that kind of stuff uh there's a great community charlotte that we really tapped into i think we found a little niche there and so i hear what you guys are saying i'm like really growing that niche like what does it look like to really lean into that um because i do think you know at least that i've seen that world care company has really aligned to the wellness movement um where people are thinking about world care when it comes to wellness cool all right thanks awesome henry davis the product is called tannin uh mouth rinse tannin world care company uh good luck thanks for calling in yeah good luck with everything cheers guys thank you you know it's it is interesting and uh you know it is complicated when you're a young founder and there's so many different directions to go and you know my biggest advice is don't jump into something but just like like try it like dip your toes in and see and even if it's just you're putting it in your dentist's office and his patients are using it or maybe you put it in you know your equinox just in one gym like you just kind of dip your toe into those things and you know you don't and don't get overwhelmed and think oh if i only had the money if i only had you know the next series like like grow your business first yeah totally yeah and then he's got to look at the competition there are a lot of clean mouthwashes on the market like what you know and there's a couple mouthwashes that are you know dentist found you know and they're more natural ingredients so it's good to kind of know what's out there and position yourself away differently they are going to have a slightly harder battle to wage but if they do it right which is why i think maybe trying to get a certain tribe of users first they could succeed yeah bobby before i let you go one last question for you if you could go back to bobby brown makeup artist you know getting people ready for their tv or whatever video shoots and you could give her advice as she was starting to build this business out what would have been useful for her to know um that she should learn to breathe she should learn to you know to shut off your brain sometimes and learn to recover that's the same thing i'm telling my you know myself now i'm a work in progress as we all are i love it that's bobby brown founder of bobby brown cosmetics and jones road beauty and by the way if you haven't heard the bobby brown cosmetics episode go back and check it out it's an incredible story and here's one of my very favorite moments from that episode i used to hire and interview every person that walked in that brand and then i didn't and all of a sudden there were people working on my brand that i never met before and that i might not have hired and you know it was a struggle and i tried to let go of the details then i realized the details are what makes the company so special and so i kept thinking i could fix it if we could just do this if i could get this it could be better and it didn't get better thanks so much for listening to the show this week please make sure to check out my newsletter you can sign up for it for free at gyros.com each week is packed with tons of insights for entrepreneurs and my own observations and experiences interviewing some of the greatest entrepreneurs ever and if you're working by a business and you'd like to be on this show send us a one minute message that tells us about your business the issues or questions you'd like help with and hopefully we can help you with them and make sure to tell us how to reach you you can send us a voice memo at hibt at id.wondery.com or call us at 1-800-433-1298 and leave a message there and we'll put all this in the podcast description as well this episode was produced by sam paulson with music composed by ramtina of louis it was edited by andrea bruce and our audio engineer was sina lefredo our production staff also includes alex chung elaine coates carla estevez nebo grant casey herman christmasini captain cypher carrie thompson and ramel wood i'm guy razz and you've been listening to the device line on how i built this lab you