Advice Line with Randy Hetrick of TRX

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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, former guest on the show who will help me try to help you.

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And we'll put all of this info in the podcast description. All right, let's get to it. Joining me this week is Randy Hedrick. He's the founder and inventor of TRX, the full body resistance strap exercise system.

Randy, it's great to have you back on the show. Thanks for coming on. Yeah, it is so nice to see you. And great to be back.

Thanks for having me. It's awesome to have you. You were first on the show back in 2017. This is the early days of how I built this.

And just to remind people of your story, you were a Navy SEAL. You were stationed in Southeast Asia for kind of grounded for a while. And you and your buddies were kind of getting frustrated because you weren't able to work out. And you had this idea to use like an old jujitsu belt, which you accidentally kind of brought with you to do pull-ups or I guess upper body work.

So you throw it over a bathroom door and boom, and you start using it for a resistance training. That was the genesis of TRX. It's a pretty great story, isn't it? And it happens to be true.

So yeah, those straps had pretty long legs, as it turns out. And it's just, it's so well to me that, you know, you happen to have that belt and you happen to have that idea. And then it became this kind of legendary product. Anyone, for anyone of you who haven't heard that episode, because this is in the early days of how I built this, you've got to check it out.

We will put a link to it in the episode description. Randy, before we get to today's callers, it's been a few years since we last spoke, right? And a lot has happened for you, for TRX. I think two years after we spoke, you sold a controlling interest in TRX.

That was in 2019. But then a bunch of other stuff happened. Just bring us up to date on what's been going on in your life since you last spoke on the show. Well, it is funny when you think about it.

Man, we were eight years ago. Where'd that eight years go, guy? I'm not, you know, we packed a lot in there. But yeah, I sold the business to some private equity guys.

And, you know, I should say it was not a match made in heaven. And we, after a couple of years, decided I had to go and, you know, pursue my bliss elsewhere. So I did. And I started a company called Outfit, which is outdoor mobile fitness.

And, you know, just as I was getting that thing up and rolling, it turned out that the opportunity came around to buy back my original baby. And I went out and found a good buddy, my good pal, Jack Daly. And we hatched a plot to buy TRX out of what was kind of a troubled situation, let's just say. And so we ended up, you know, I ended up with a turnaround and a startup, which is almost more fun than one guy should have.

But it's been an incredible ride. And TRX is doing great again. And Outfit is, as you say, it's a mobile exercise company. Basically, it's a gym in a van.

And it's kind of a franchise model, right? It's designed for, is that right, people can buy a franchise and then run it as a gym wherever they live? Yeah, well, we're just getting going on the franchising aspect. Because, you know, I felt at the beginning, I needed to really understand the ins and outs of this business, which is pretty path-breaking, if you will.

You're not in the gym. The gym, think of the gym as a rolling, kind of a rolling storage unit full of functional training gear that comes out of the van. The group fitness class goes on in parks, you know, parking lots, beach parking lots, beautiful places outdoors. And then in 10 minutes, it sets up and tears down and drives away.

And ultimately, I'm very excited about it as an opportunity for veterans coming out of service because the cost of buy-in and the operating costs are so much lower without brick and mortar. And, you know, as you know, I'm pretty passionate about the veteran space. Two groups of people that I really love, veterans and trainers. Yeah.

You know, it makes so much sense. I mean, I use, like, every time I do bike repair now, I get one of those mobile bike repair shops that comes to my house and everything's in that van. And we're talking about light equipment, right? Straps and functional equipment.

You're not, like, pulling out a treadmill out of the van or, like, a Peloton. No, exactly. You don't have fixed overhead that's anywhere near what you experience in a brick and mortar. But you have quite a big capacity.

You can train up to 50 people at a time. So it's, you know, hey, have me back on in a few years and I'll tell you how it went. Well, absolutely. You know, Randy, the fitness market has changed so much since you started TRX, right?

Even easier in the sense that you can find a manufacturer easier, but harder in that there's so much more stuff out there, so much more noise, you know, and there's influencer marketing and customer acquisition costs have gotten higher and higher. If you were today, I mean, you are doing it, right, with your new company, but if you were to introduce a new product into the market today, what do you think you would do differently in order to break through all the noise and the millions of products available on Amazon and on social media? Well, it is a non-trivial question that you're posing there. It's a, the clutter is, you know, just profound out there and trying to break out.

And there's a couple of ways to do it. Generally, one of them is kind of foreclosed, which is by your way to exposure that for early stage companies, you know, rarely happens unless you happen to come from a trust fund and can afford to do it. So, you know, I would say that getting good, authentic influencers on board is a good way to do it because, you know, those folks have large followings who trust their, you know, what they say and are interested in what they do. And that can be a relatively inexpensive way to do it.

You're going to pay some equity in all likelihood, but if you pick the right partner, then you get somebody who will be excited about the business and will want to be a partner rather than just kind of a pay to play. Okay, that can be an effective way to do it. Yeah. All right, let's bring our first caller to the advice line.

Are you ready? Ready when you are. All right, great. Welcome to the advice line.

Please join us. Tell us your name, where you're calling from, and just a bit about your business. Yes. Hi, Guy and Randy.

I am so excited to be here. I'm Paige Say. I'm the co-founder of Benny calling in from Toronto, Canada. Benny is shaking up the energy market with naturopathic doctor formulated energy drinks for caffeine conscious or caffeine sensitive consumers.

Got it. Okay. Welcome to the show. Hey, thanks for calling.

So Benny is a beverage, it's like an energy drink, like a Red Bull or Monster, but I'm assuming different, right? You betcha. Yeah, you said it's different. Okay, what makes it different?

Yeah, so like I said, it's for caffeine conscious consumers, like my co-founder and myself, so it's less caffeine, it's 85 milligrams of caffeine, which for energy drinks or even for a cup of coffee is definitely on the light side, and then we use some pretty unique ingredients. So the base of the caffeine itself is yerba mate tea, which is a tea from Southern America that gives you a really nice kind of gentle sustained boost, almost similar to a matcha, and then we use a blend, a prettier blend of adaptogens. So we have lion's mane, reishi, and ginseng, so it gives you a really nice sustained boost. Nice.

Okay, well, thanks for calling in, and tell me a little bit about how you started this. I mean, when did it start and why? So throat closed and body covered in hives, it was very scary, and spent the next couple of months trying to figure out what was going on in hospitals and kind of with typical Western medicine, and they sent her back saying she had exercise-induced anaphylexia. So started peeling back the layers, and now it's so obvious, but when she started cutting the excessive caffeine, you know, the multiple coffees, the Red Bulls, the caffeine pills, she felt way better, so we wanted to see if that was something that other people were dealing with, and after doing some research and bringing on a naturopathic doctor, we found it was a really big problem, so we thought there's no one really putting this in a can in a fun, accessible, efficacious way.

All right, interesting. You're taking caffeine pills and drinking excessive coffee. That just seems delicious. Tell me a little bit about the business.

Very small bank, blowing $25,000, which was amazing, you know, like Jane, you couldn't have done it without it, so that was our launch. Started really in my co-founder Julie's kitchen, brought our naturopath doctor on, brought on kind of a team to help us formulate, got the formulation down, and that was two years ago, so since then, we really bootstrapped it. We bid profitable, which has been really great for our beverage business, but we can't really grow that way, but now we're in about 1,000 stores across Canada. Nice, so let's get your question.

Yeah, yeah, so this is the How I Built This Exclusive. We actually never shared this publicly. I had to get permission from my co-founder, but we're launching in Target nationwide later this year, so in all of their stores, thank you. We're so excited, but we want to know beyond, you know, the obvious of finances, like, how can we really set ourselves up for success?

Wow, well, first of all, congratulations. Lots to unpack here, and before we get to your question, I want to bring Randy and Randy Hetrick. Do you have any thoughts about her questions, or do you have any in-questions for Paige? Well, I mean, congratulations on early success, I think, you know, so it sounds like you've had pretty steep growth, right?

Yeah, no, thank you. It's been, it's been like a dream come true. So much work, but a dream. And you mentioned that you're profitable, which, honestly, like, if I can give anybody advice, including myself, it's always, hey, get profitable as quickly as possible, and stay profitable, because you make infinitely better decisions from that position.

And you guys, it sounds like, are in a really great spot with, you know, a huge key account early in your business. And so your, is your main question, or you guys are unable, I presume, to finance, or to finance it from your own cash flow is kind of where we're headed, right? Totally. So, yeah, we're exploring, like, you know, bringing on more investors.

We've done very small, you know, friends and family, which has been good. But PO financing, like, even just knowing, like, how much money, I think the number is, like, infinite, right? Like, we're up against the biggest players in the world with, like, the biggest budgets in the world. So just kind of navigating from, like, where we want to be to, like, how do we work our way back from kind of obscurity in Canada?

Paige, do you have, give me a sense right now of what you guys are doing in terms of sales. Yeah. So we launched about two years ago. We've done just, I think, over $500,000.

To date, Target, obviously, their POs are going to be... And are you launching at all 2,000-plus stores simultaneously, or are you going to start in a region? Yeah. So we're launching with a limited edition flavor for the holidays in November and December.

Our buyer is leaning in really deeply with us. He has a really good relationship with a lot of other energy drink brands that have kind of grown over the last few years. So he's kind of replicating their success in what they did. So an LTO, limited edition flavor in the holidays, and then launching all stores in January, which is intimidating.

Do you have somebody you're working with who is experienced, particularly with a retailer like Target? I mean, you mentioned the buyer, but like a consultant, somebody who, because, you know, again, and I don't want to scare you, and people have told you, but I think it's important to be prepared for this, which is, you know, we've had this on the show, where people are going to Target, Walmart too early, and then, you know, they're out for a few years, and they have to come back, and then they come back, and they're okay. But sometimes, you know, these big, big box stores, they give you one chance initially. And so there's a lot of pressure, right?

Because you want to sell this thing. So my first question is, do you have somebody that you've identified that you can work with in addition to the buyer? It's like a one-shot, it feels like, so we don't want to blow it. Yeah, you guys must sell TRX at Target, right?

We don't sell at Target, but we do big box retail, you know, through VIX, and we obviously do a lot on Amazon. But what I was going to mention to Paige was that very, very early, at about the same point in our evolution, we had a great big opportunity with a big box, massive big box retailer called Costco. And what, you know, it was so tempting. And I flew up there to Issaquah and sat around the big table, and ultimately ended up saying no.

And the reason that I said no was because I was in the same spot you were. I was going to have to take on a big chunk of debt in order to finance this pilot. And the put rights are the thing that you want to really make sure that you guys are no dummies, and that's why they have gigantic businesses. And generally, they will have terms that if the business doesn't work exactly as they hope it will, as the product doesn't work exactly as they hope they can put it back to you.

In our case, you know, we had product problems that ended up coming out shortly after we passed this up. Had I not passed it up for that reason, there would have never been a TRX. So I would just, you know, sort of throw that out there. And if you have a great advisor who's very familiar with big box retail, then they'll, I'm sure, be telling you something similar.

But that is not a trivial decision, right, to make, to do it or not to do it. And, you know, you really got to know your product. Yeah. Yeah, Paige, the other thing is, you want to do everything in your power to harness your followers, your fans, anybody that you can possibly get to go to those stores and to buy the product, obviously.

I'm assuming you're going to work on, you know, some kind of sampling demos and things like that. But a quick question for you. I'm curious, because I'm looking at the cans. They're really nice, beautiful.

Who is your target audience? I mean, you mentioned people, you call them caffeine conscious, so people who are looking for a little bit of a hit, but not a sort of a jittery bus. Is it women? Is it men?

Is it both? Who is your kind of typical customer? Yeah, we call them our friends with Benny. So it's typically that kind of 18 to 35 young woman, some men, but usually students, young professionals, someone that either can do like one coffee a day, and it's kind of their afternoon pick me up, or someone like my co-founder who really just can't like handle that much.

And it's kind of their go-to pick me up in that way. You know, the reason why I ask is because, and you may know the story also around you about Monster Energy, which is they really focused on a specific demo when they launched. You know, it was like guys who listen to metal who are into MMA and motocross, like no joke. I mean, that is how that brand just went through the roof.

And I think it's interesting, because that is definitely a category of customer, right? And I feel like there isn't really an energy drink that targets women. It's like extreme sports. It's like, you know, it's Red Bull and Monster and, you know, but I don't feel like there are many.

drinks out there that are energy drinks for women yeah that's exactly it we kind of say what would red will be doing with their community for this community in 2025 if they were doing it today so you kind of advance like pilates like you know all those good things that our community really likes that i like so and you mentioned pilates but there are so many you know opportunities that that to me would be so clear and so aligned with what you're trying to do have you guys started to explore certain collaborations with brands that you know might not be obviously everybody wants everybody to buy their products like you want men to buy your products you want young and old people to buy products but having a core committed tribe of customers is not a bad idea have you have you started to reach out to potential collaboration partners yeah do you mean like on like a limited like flavor yeah a flavor or some kind of offer or some kind of something yeah for sure for sure we've got them kind of on the works of different creators but i love the idea of like if it was i'm trying to think like what would be the modern like a soul cycle or something like that yes exactly exactly yeah because i'm looking at your website and i feel like it's cool it's great but i feel like it says women owned here and normally my advice is like well you know you really want to appeal to everybody you want to be kind of careful about those things but in this case i think it makes a lot of sense for you to lean into that i think it really does no this is such good advice i'm like drx i don't know if we'll do a collab but we'll find our right partner hey we'd have to be black and yellow but it would work it could work no i i think that one other point that that bolsters you know the idea of focusing is the reality that at this point in your evolution you know you don't have a lot of resources you know you really do kind of have to focus in sounds to me like you're far enough along to have pretty high level of confidence in in that kind of hierarchy of of consumer targets starting with you've got you've got the woman and you've got her age group that then allows you to stretch those resources you know and to the maximum effect versus a shotgun where now you're taking them and spreading so thinly that they don't really make an impression on anyone so i i agree i like the idea of uh of your current target yeah especially because it's going to be a potentially a cheaper way to market right because you're you're going to need to balance marketing dollars and production dollars right and you mentioned you've got an advisor on the show in the past who's that yeah terrible awesome smart sweet so she's wonderful yeah we're so lucky to have her yeah she's great uh cool randy any last minute thoughts well i mean i i think an advisor that knows the space the more relevant that advisor's experience is the more directly relevant that she's going to be to you so that sounds amazing it sounds like exactly the right person and if she's dealt with with big box retail distribution so much the better it sounds like he does her off and running and uh man i wish you the best of luck yeah good good luck page on the brand is called benny page say uh thanks for calling in thanks so much guys congrats yeah i this is a tough category beverages because there's a lot of competition and even energy drinks right um and obviously dominated by the big players that you know the cokes and pepsicos but um it there's always an opportunity and it's all you know we've talked about this in the show a million times there's no such thing as a saturated market right is that there's always going to be uh you know an audience people who are interested in your particular product or item and two things that i really love about her space is one it's coming as a product guy that makes durable products i can tell you that the idea of consumables and recurring revenues is fantastic and while while her space is heavily competed it's also the kind of space where she creates something unique which it sounds like they're on their way of doing there are a ton of strategic acquirers out there right looking to snap that up and roll it in stay with us because after the break we'll talk to another founder working to take their business to the next level that's after the break i'm gai roz and you're listening to the advice line right here on how i build this lab welcome back to the advice line on how i build this lab i'm gai roz and i guess today's trx founder randy hetrick and randy is with me to take your calls and hello let's bring our next caller hi randy hi guy thank you so much for having me my name is kerry jones and i live in the ski resort town of whistler british columbia in canada i'm the president and co-founder of peaked pies we're an australian bakery cafe group and at peaked pies we make from scratch five inch individual australian savory meat pies awesome thanks for calling in kerry i've had them they're not yours in particular because i have to be whistler but uh meat pies are delicious they're basically i mean every culture makes a version of these cornish pasties or you know some kind of calzone or something right some bread or pastry stuffed with meat or cheese or so um tell me a bit about the business yeah so we are a meat pies are very iconic they're kind of called the traditional like national dish yeah and um when i moved to whistler in 2009 to first season like whistler is basically run and overrun with australians and there was no um meat pie shops here which i thought was really strange and i then that's when i met my um now husband and co-founder um he's amazing in the kitchen and he's heard me talk about i miss the australian meat pies and and he then heard everyone else saying so he started making them at home he's canadian and then friends started coming over and then we joked so we should open a pie shop and uh that was 2013 we opened a pie shop so they are hot grab and go so you come into our little cafe service um the display case is right in front of you it's a custom made just exactly like you would find in australia so they're hot ready to go um we bake all throughout the day and we just top up this here display case so someone walks in they say i'll have a steak bacon and cheese pie um we have a little twist on it so we say do you want to get that peeked and then they add mashed potatoes mashed peas and gravy we put it in a box and now they go they literally have a homemade hot dish within like a minute and a half wow all right so and how many cafes do you have so we have uh three um corporate owned stores under peak pies we have built a 3,000 square foot production facility now and we are in the process of building our first franchise location nice okay so you're starting to think about and you have a franchisee already we do yes yes it's our very first one yeah amazing okay lots to talk about before we do tell us what your question is yeah so i've been listening to how about this for a long time and i know it's like a common theme from some of your entrepreneurs which have credited their growth to bringing on the right strategic investor my husband and i have um bootstrapped peak pies it's just been us we don't come from money um we've pulled into this over the years and we're definitely at a point now where we're looking to bring on a strategic investor and i'm a confident person i'm happy to reach out and talk to people but it's getting them once we're in those meetings what would you say are some smart questions for us to ask a potential strategic investor um what information do you think we can request from them to help us evaluate if they're truly the right fit for us all right this is great question for you randy because you have dealt with this uh in good and bad ways i know um so first of all a lot of questions or answers for carrie well i mean i i love the franchise model for what you're doing here and interestingly carrie we're at the at the same because it's kind of roughly the same place with our franchises right in terms of rollout so i'm not going to position myself as a deep expert in franchising i am an empathetic early stage franchise with you uh and to guy's point yes i have had both good and not so good experiences with uh with capital partners and that i've thought an awful lot about and and so i think um one that seems to me at first glance i pulled up your site which is really beautiful by the way it seems to me to be to lend itself very well to a franchise model because in general i think the things that make the best franchises are the simplest concepts right the more complicated the concept yes the less well a franchise structure works because all of that complication has to be trained into your franchisee or the whole thing falls on its face so this one looks to be a great fit for that and obviously a franchise is a great way for you to scale rapidly in a relatively capital light way um my first kind of question to you just as a general pushback was okay but since you're doing this as a franchise and franchises can grow as fast or as slow as you want them to since you are the franchise or selecting how many you take on are you sure that you that you really need and want external capital it's not it is the capital yes but it is the strategic part of it as well it's my husband and i like we it's just us we didn't go to college we didn't don't have university degrees in this we've you know as a lot of founders don't have really and so it's now that growth of like someone who's experienced in really the operation side of things the um franchise development uh and with that the capital um as well so marketing and so forth like we've we're really looking for someone who can partner with us to really boost this well i think that's a great answer and self-awareness in a uh in an operator in an entrepreneur is a very valuable thing like as plenty said right a man's got to know his limitations so so that that's uh that's all great stuff i i would say that you know my initial impression and then i'll pass the mic back to guys just to make sure that you know what you described was a lack of domain expertise in certain areas of this which you can get with team members who bring that right and i would just be i would be very careful expecting too much from your investor unless and we can talk about this in a second unless you really get to the right one which is easy to say you're gonna do it turns out to be hard to do and so you know that's that's a that's just kind of a pathway that you can you can choose between you know the right path and the left path do we build it ourselves by getting some money and then hiring team members with expertise or do we bring in that strategic investor early and have that person help us do it all yeah i think i think really what what you're saying is and carrie i think is really great advice is you can bring an investor but that investor ultimately may talk a big talk about how they can help you strategically but they're investing in 20 other things and they're focused on unless an investor operator somebody who says you know what i'm gonna put money in and i'm gonna be your cfo or the operations i think there's an argument to be made here that you can do one of three things or maybe more than that you can bring on an investor who might just be a silent partner or not a great investor or you can bring on we can i try to identify really great operators people who have experiences particularly in sort of small to medium-sized franchise operations building them out uh who are sort of semi-retired they come in for some equity and and that is one option or you do a third option which you bring those people in and you raise money in addition to that because having folks with operational experience like that is very attractive to strategic investors as well they're going to want to see you've got somebody who worked for a panera or a day's hot chicken or whatever i'm just throwing names out there whatever other businesses that have a franchise model that know the playbook this is a really interesting idea it's a really interesting product i could see something like this having um you know strong appeal particularly in canada where you've got a huge sort of you know anglo expat population right people are familiar with this kind of food uh and i would really spend time you can you can troll linkedin and do just do searches on linkedin and find people who have experience in building franchises who are semi-retired i think randy's randy your suggestion here if i'm getting it right which i am is find the right operators yes yeah i'd be very careful about going toward a financial investor who has been involved in in you know franchises before because you have to find out what stage because that makes a huge difference right were they were they involved and do they have an operator on their team who was successfully involved in a early stage franchise which is where you guys are a very very very different game right where we are now than where you know a you know 10 year old franchisor is with a thousand units or or or more um and i i like the idea that you know guy is recommending a lot of finding a successful retired or you know kind of quasi-retired operator who did really well and is now out there bouncing around interested in cool projects and would get involved with you as an advisor for a little bit of equity and who may say you know what i'd like to do this for a couple years come out of retirement because that's the kind of like perfect early stage investor that that you you know you may find and you also might just find people who love the concept want to put up some cash which then allow you to pair a good advisor with some new hires and get yourself another you know two three four years down the road and then look at because you know things change fast right in early stage business in a couple years can you know make all the difference yeah and randy you'd said um that you had been brought on investor and then you would have brought them back out was there any signs would you say are there any red flags that potentially i think that's what i'd be worried about is um bringing on someone as a strategic investor and them not being as strategic as they claim i would say that's more common than not right uh yes investors claim to be bringing the the famous word is you know synergies uh to to what you're doing um and experience because they will show you that they were involved in some you know successful brand that you like but then if you really scratch you find out that you know the involvement was pretty shallow and so i'd be careful of that i'd really look for somebody who who had deep expertise in a pretty narrow um you know field of business right franchise food franchising yeah i agree i think and that's really where you can do your diligence you know where you identify somebody who has had experience as an executive or or an operator in some capacity with a franchise model that you can now start to call people up and really dig into this person's background somebody who's you know so again semi-retired might be interested in getting some equity i would also by the way just reach out to some of these people who've been on our shows cold cold you know contact them on instagram or linkedin see if they'll get back to you can't promise it but i think that's really the best uh strategy for you right now is to find somebody who's willing to take a risk who's interested who loves this brand this product and uh and is willing to you know take a risk for some equity because it may not work obviously but but of course the hope is that it will right okay and even if somebody passes by the way uh like ask them get something from them right find out because it's easy but and i know believe me but try not to try try to ask like women what what is it that you don't like right don't just let them go get something out of them because you're gonna come away from that conversation with some really useful intel and also ask them if they don't like it hey is there somebody you know you can think of who this might be more interesting to that's also worth asking amazing no i really really appreciate that that's been some really good thoughts awesome carrie jones the company called peak pies good luck congrats keep us posted thank you all right we're gonna take another quick break but we'll be right back with another caller stay with us i'm guy welcome back to the advice line on how i build this lab i'm guy roz and today i'm taking calls with randy hetrick of trx randy ready to take this call absolutely all right let's bring our phone caller welcome to the advice line you're on with randy hetrick founder of trx welcome to the show tell us what your name where you're calling from and just a little line to buy your business please hi guys thank you so much for having me here i'm katherine perry and i am the co-founder and vp of adapt apparel for a modern adaptive clothing brand adapt creates stylish easy to use clothing designed for people with disabilities aging loved ones and anyone recovering from surgery or managing medical conditions and i'm calling in from williamstown ontario awesome thank you so much for calling in and congrats adapt apparel so this is comfortable clothing that is designed for people if i got this right with mobility issues or maybe who had surgery so what does that mean there's like a bunch of ways to put it on and take it off and like give me a description of what an outfit would be like absolutely so it's easy and accessible clothing so for example um if you have had a knee or a hip replacement and you're post-op and you're recovering with your cryo calf on your knee we have our signature and patent pending zipper that comes all the way down that you can rehab in or maybe you're going through cancer treatment infusion dialysis right um it is clothing that you can use for those for those uses i got you so how did you come up with this idea yeah okay so i was a special education teacher and phys ed teacher for 21 years i retired and um i have my own health and wellness business to this day during that time i was called upon to be a primary caregiver for both my parents who have alzheimer's and mobility issues when my father was dying the nurse said to me katherine your father really needs a doctor of clothing and i said like most of us i have no idea what you're talking about yeah but direct me in the direction i did a quick deep dive and i was like no that's institutional looking uh where's the dignity in this i'm not putting my father in this clothing um and that's how we said i said we're gonna do better and we must do better and that's how we launched in october of 24 so they're like i'm looking at the website it's like comfortable so like sweatsuit type kind of athleisure wear but really with zippers down the sides of the legs and down the sides of the arms and like easy buttons that you just snap so you just like break away that don't easily so it's really designed clearly inspired by your own experience your parents it doesn't scream i have a mobility issue or perhaps i have a cognitive issue because of you know alzheimer's let's give an example my mom wears it all the time she feels good and she looks good awesome and tell me a little bit about how you're doing in terms of sales right you're selling entirely through your website yeah so we started with um you know direct-to-consumer market and we now are i would say 40 on direct-to-consumer and 60 is you know selling we're with uh long-term care homes we're with um medical distribution centers physio clinics hospitals um so we're really a hybrid of a model right now um and i think we can serve the masses with that type of model cool and tell us your question so my question is so adaptable it was born from a personal mission is to create dignified functional clothing for people with mobility challenges we've seen a strong interest from the long-term care rehab infusion clinics but as we grow we wonder are we spreading ourselves too thin should we narrow our focus to scale or are we actually serving the sectors it's giving us a competitive edge it's a really really cool idea i love the idea randy hetrick i want to bring you in on this uh clothing for people with you know coming out of hospital or aging or mobility issues i mean it seems like an overranger to me well i mean first of all i love katherine's kind of combination of deep domain expertise and then the passion right from having worked with her own parents and and that you put those two things together and you've got really a pretty special recipe just to start with that the deep domain expertise and passion right you're gonna need both obviously as you go forward i love you know the the when you think about the fashion space or the apparel space fashion apparel is notoriously fickle and you know read that as a whiskey functional apparel is starting to kind of have its day and i don't think that it's necessarily we're seeing this in the fitness space too like functional apparel um beginning to to pop up and i think it's it's very interesting at this point maybe niche right still but i think there's a huge potential audience if you can if you can break through as to your question i mean you're asking kind of that that great question hey how early do i focus which is you know which is a not a non-trivial question i mean it's you got to stay nimble enough to find the kind of the vein but but then focus that you can scale that's what we said too right you know for the first year you're collecting your data your analytics and everything right and don't be afraid to pivot and as we you know navigate the murky waters we're in the muddy water system right now do we branch or do we stay within where the story started i mean i think it's a little bit of both but i think it's about time frames right you're only a year into this thing and you've got a really innovative idea and product in a and rent to your point i mean at leisure where and you can call anything functional right i mean viori shorts are functional it's a billion dollar business right huge business lulu lemons of the world um this is really specific for um and i think a lot of people not just elderly people but anyone who's been in a hospital can identify with the need for something like this i think right now in my view you are you're best teed up to really work with hospitals care facilities rehab facilities infusion clinics and and really try and make inroads with those um institutions because that's where you're gonna that's gonna obviously find your initial customers i really want just sort of observation here is you've got a really interesting logo which i think is a thumbprint or a fingerprint yes i'm so glad you asked our logo is my mother's thumbprint i love it it's it's a really cool logo it looks distinctive it looks like something you can really build out as a recognizable brand but i think for now you really want to make you want to get traction with those places where people are you know are in need of this right you're not necessarily have an easy time with these hanging up at the you know at exporting goods right now maybe in five years but right now you want these where your potential customers are yeah it's a great point because you know we've had interest from retailers and we you know our team will sit around and discuss that you know is this something that we really want to do is it align with our core values and that's really important to us i'm gonna follow right where guy was heading us too you guys are brand like brand spanking new i know it probably doesn't feel that way to you right because it's it's like the uh you know everybody talks about yeah yeah so but to to the rest of us right to the rest of the world you're brand new and i think that it's it's really really important to find your advocacy early from you know wherever it is find that advocacy that people really get it and care and want to pick up your banner and help carry it forward because when you think about about retail it's pretty easy really to sell in but what you really got to focus on with retail is sell through right and that's where a lot of early brands that buyers are out there and retail looking for things to buy they're under pressure to bring in some new things and so they'll find you maybe bring you in but if you don't have some momentum if you don't have some advocacy out there it could be the worst decision you ever made because you can finance right a buy-in you put it in there and then nobody buys it and then the retail rejects you and for maybe ever but certainly for a long time that retailers burned and so i wouldn't rush too fast to worry about about retail broadening your you know your your target i'd actually try to to find the real spot where you're hitting the target as an evidence by feedback from those early customers and then focus on that right learn from that okay make your make some mistakes in a forgiving environment i appreciate that so much awesome i think it's a great process great idea uh katherine perry adapt apparel uh congrats thanks so much for calling in thanks guys best of luck thank you thanks so randy um entrepreneurship alive and well in north america clearly so i get so excited by listening to these folks concepts guy and i can listen to you more of this yeah you know i am reminded every day with what i do how much innovation i mean and look uh this isn't like you know a laser ai product but it's a really innovative product and we're talking about something that people need it's just a reminder how much cool stuff people are creating all the time you know without fail in my life experience forget just my business experience the things that always do the best are the things that start by solving a problem right because and then the broader the broader hell that problem is the faster the adoption and the more you know meteoric the rise of the of the product but if you can solve a problem and it does seem like she's solving one i you know my parents are are aging and uh you know my dad just passed away and dealing with spending a lot of time in the hospitals i haven't seen anything like this so it definitely seems like if she can if you know she can learn early and get it right there's a there's a great early mover advantage for sure um randy a question i ask all of our returning guests which i want to ask you is that when you look back at your time building trx and we i mean again you guys have got to hear this episode again again it's so good and there's so much we didn't even talk about about that on the show including how you took on all the copycats but if you were going back in time when you were really getting off the ground knowing what you know now you know all the experience you have now what do you think would have been helpful for you know what advice would you give your younger self you know coming out of stanford business school when i did i think was crippled a little bit by by by the false sense that if you know if you can't get your business you're worth 100 million bucks in three years that's not worth doing right because you know i graduated from stanford in 03 it was kind of on the back of the first.com bubble burst but there was an awful lot of of kind of that thinking in the valley and what i would tell myself honestly is like be a little more patient uh do not i i really can't say it enough get profitable as early as possible and stay profitable and make make decisions from a mindset that you know i want to try to maintain profitability and even if i have to go underwater a little bit to do it a little bit's fine deeply less fine and because you know honestly when you're living in a profitable world the clock ticks more slowly you think more clearly and and i i i just that would probably be the biggest piece of advice that i give give myself to to answer your question is be patient uh stay profitable focus on my customers and you know grow at an organic rate rather than some uh artificially powered you know nitrous oxide powered rate that you know may may not work may take in the wrong direction that's the inventor and founder of trx randy hetrick randy thanks so much great to be with you guys thanks for having me back and of course if you haven't heard randy's original high build this episode please please please take the time to go back and check it out it is so good i will put a link to it in the podcast description and here is one of my favorite moments from that interview the manufacturer that i had started with didn't have a depth of manufacturing experience in kind of product that i was bringing which is this product has been very durable and so one of the very early large lots of inventory we ordered arrived and you know we sold out of everything so of course we were out of stock by the time it arrived and desperate to ship well we hooked up the first suspension trainer lean mat and the handles just cracked like potato chips hey thanks so much for listening to the show this week and by the way please make sure to check out my newsletter you can sign up for it for free at gyros.com or on subsnack and of course if you are working on a business and you'd like to be on the show send us a one minute message that tells us a little bit about your business and questions or issues that you're currently facing because we would love to try and help you solve them you can send us a voice memo at hibtfid.wondery.com or call us at 1-800-433-1298 leave a message there and make sure to tell us how to reach you and we'll put all of this information in the podcast description as well this episode was produced by katherine cypher with music composed by martine arablui it was edited by andrea bruce our engineer for robert marriquez and hoisee lee our production staff also includes alex chung carla estevez casey herman carrie thompson chris massini ramel wood sam paulson nito grant and elaine coates i'm guy roz and you've been listening to how i built this