Mastering the Couch Market: AI, Entrepreneurship, and the Quest for the Perfect Sofa with Alex Back

0:00 okay welcome ladies and gentlemen to the AI training podcast I have a very special guest today Alex back welcome 0:07 back what oh welcome back we're gonna have a blast together let's have some fun so Alex you are the CEO of couch.com 0:16 a fel.com with meaning amazing and 0:22 welcome to the show thank you so much I am very excited to be here I love your 0:28 podcast and to chat cool let's start from the top how did couch.com come to The Origin Story of Couch.com 0:37 be great question I started thinking I left my company my 0:43 former company apartment 2B which is an online furniture retail brand and I left 0:50 my company after about 13 years a year ago and I set off on a worldwide journey 0:56 to find myself and I traveled the world and and read every Business book I could 1:02 get my hands on my goal was simple to get out of the furniture 1:07 business but somebody told me about the fact that couch.com the URL was available and so that idea was like 1:14 percolating in my mind it was very expensive mind you like life savings type expensive but I started thinking 1:23 what I might be able to do with it and I had an aha moment when I was traveling 1:29 the streets of Oslo Norway where I realized that this could be something 1:35 much bigger and something that can scale a lot better than I had originally 1:40 thought and so I started pursuing it and ended up acquiring the domain and yeah 1:46 we're just building it up right now it's very exciting I have not been to Oslo I imagine the couches there are 1:53 beautiful and that's super cool yeah that's what I went there for the beautiful couches of 2:00 course the beautiful Scandinavian couches that's what they talk about so true this this business couch.com I know 2:08 you've you've had a chance you've been doing a bit of a podcast tour lately showing up on all the popular podcasts 2:15 so nice to have you here feel like I'm talking to a little bit of a a podcast celebrity so what is couch.com what are Understanding the Concept of Couch.com 2:23 you doing there yeah so couch.com is a place to find a couch it seems simple 2:30 enough but it sets out to it's a platform that sets out to answer the the 2:36 toughest question that consumers have when buying a new couch which is quite simply where the heck do I buy a new 2:43 couch nobody really knows even people in the industry friends of mine colleagues 2:50 we all joke about the fact that we ourselves don't really know where to buy great furniture and the reason is that 2:58 it's as much as it's saturated in some ways with direct consumer Brands these days that have popped up over the last 3:05 10 to 15 years it's very it's still very underrepresented in the online space the 3:10 furniture industry and the couch retail world the other thing that's really difficult is that people just generally 3:17 don't feel very comfortable buying a couch that's not a pun comfortable couch 3:23 they're not comfortable finding a comfortable couch and the reason is it's just something that no one really knows 3:30 very much about as a consumer it's very much like the car buying industry where 3:35 you know certain things and you've bought them before you use one every day but you don't really know about how the 3:41 business works so the goal of couch.com is to educate consumers to remove that 3:47 sort of veil of mystery if you will to make people feel comfortable and then 3:53 gather some information from them to point them in the right direction because there's a lot of information or 3:59 there's there are a lot of variables that go into a couch buying experience that people don't really expect when 4:05 they first set out sounds it's filled with all sorts of challenges and things 4:11 that an educated consumer can learn about couches at couch.com Great Name 4:16 love it you're an interesting Guy what's been one of your biggest Lessons Learned in entrepreneurship over the years for Entrepreneurship Lessons and Challenges 4:24 me whenever I get asked a question like that the first thing that comes to mind 4:29 is is that it's something you hear often it's it's don't listen to other people 4:35 too much and how that applied to my personal history is that with uh my 4:43 former company apartment tub we were very successful but it took a long time to achieve that very 4:49 scalable success that we did in the end and our trick was really taking the slow 4:55 and steady approach that's not smart strategy for every single business or 5:02 organization but for us it worked and as much as people tempted us and Industry 5:09 tempted us to supercharge it at certain points we really found a lot of comfort 5:17 and ultimately success in taking this slow and steady route so we saw others pop up around us that raised a ton of 5:24 money and came and went and there's so many difficulties and challenges in the furniture industry that really behooves 5:31 one to take their time and figure it out so take your time and don't necessarily listen to anybody else is advice that I 5:38 would give to some people in certain cases mine was one of them slow and steady wins the race don't listen to 5:46 everyone I like it yeah what would you say your biggest challenge is as a 5:52 leader well personally my biggest challenge as a leader is that I need everybody to like me and that's a very 5:59 difficult we're getting a little deep here Mark early this morning but but that but it 6:06 truly is my greatest sort of crutch it's an advantage because it really allows me 6:11 to find ways to empathize with people and connect with them because I inherently want or need them to connect 6:18 back with me so it could be great for communication but if someone's not doing 6:23 their job very well you can imagine that wanting to be their friend and wanting to wanting to like you is not exactly 6:31 the easiest hurdle to overcome because sometimes as a leader you have to give it to people straight and be the bad guy 6:38 so that is that's been my personal challenge the most and I think a lot of 6:44 people struggle with that too just the balance between being the sort of 6:50 amicable leader I just said like 19 times being this amicable or benevolent 6:56 leader or dictator as a CE and also just getting the job done so 7:02 that's always been the biggest challenge for me as a leader I think I can relate to that it's it's hard sometimes when 7:08 you want everyone to like you and your role or the the nature of what you do 7:15 you can always be a good gu I appreciate you sharing that when it comes to prioritizing there's probably no 7:22 shortage of things that you have to get done what helps you prioritize what's most important that's a tough one and 7:28 it's that is that's a challenge I think that every startup founder struggles 7:36 with as well prioritization is very difficult and to bring It full circle to 7:42 a comment I made a few minutes ago everybody's telling you to do certain things there's always there's a lot that 7:49 attracts you in different directions I listen to podcasts and read articles every single day and I get excited by 7:56 things or interested and I get nervous that I'm not doing something that I should be doing and at the end of the day sticking 8:05 to one's goals and priorities and what's the most important thing is really sort 8:11 of Paramount to one's success do I achieve it all the time not necessarily but my practice at not 8:19 listening to other people and just that sort of Mantra rolling through my brain 8:24 at all times helps me focus on what is most important even though the new and 8:29 shiny may be attracted me and I think that it relates a lot to just this concept and term AI it's something that 8:38 really has gotten in everybody's Minds it's like the thing that everybody feels 8:44 like they need to master they need to incorporate it into their everyday life and sometimes it makes sense and 8:50 sometimes it doesn't focusing on the most important thing to your business or to your personal life is still I think 8:55 the most important thing AI it's a tool right but it can only help to so such 9:02 degree that your priorities are your priorities and there is a definite case 9:07 of shiny object syndrome with so many new tools coming out let's talk a bit about AI how have you been able to The Role of AI in Couch.com 9:14 leverage it in your business there's a great question there's a frontend meaning user facing uh way to answer 9:22 that question and then there's backend but I'll start with the backend so our entire site thus far our strategy 9:29 couch.com was to get start with a Content first approach meaning before we 9:34 build the ultimate platform which is going to sort of be an advertising 9:40 platform for the furniture industry on a national scale where there's going to be local listings for furniture businesses 9:47 Mom and Pops and Regional chains alike brick and mortar and online the first thing we did was to 9:53 start with content making tons of Articles and videos and images to answer 9:58 some of the toughest questions that people have when buying a couch so that's what we've been focusing on in 10:03 the last six months and AI has assisted a lot in that we used AI to write a lot 10:10 of our articles or assist us in writing a lot of our articles I know it's taboo 10:16 to say that AI wrote everything it didn't we edited it heavily but we used AI a lot to gather information into one 10:22 place as far as our images in the furniture industry and interior design 10:28 it's just a sea of pretty images so much so that they almost don't resonate 10:34 anymore I think with consumers like a beautifully styled room and I would say 10:40 only a certain percentage of people are like whoa that's really nice I'd like all the products that are in that room most people just chalk it off oh that's 10:46 a pretty room that I'll never have or something to that effect so we used AI to create images that really told 10:54 stories that we would never be able to capture in a photographic sense there so Hy hyper real not hyper abstract images 11:01 like someone getting lost in a sea of couch cushions because they were having 11:07 trouble making a decision right that's not something you could be like all right let me hire a photographer and get a sea of couch cushions here no we 11:13 literally use mid journey to have a sea of couch cushions overcoming somebody is an example of how we used it to our 11:22 advantage from a visual perspective and then just tons of backend organ data 11:27 organization and things of that nature ai's been really helpful on the front end we intend to use AI in heavily with 11:35 couch.com to augment the users's experience of finding and ultimately 11:40 buying a couch the main thing is making 11:45 people feel comfortable and educating them in the process but first we have to 11:51 get information from them so the entry point to couch.com eventually will be a an AI powered quiz where 11:59 consumers will come and we will ask them quite literally what are you looking for what are the most important things to 12:05 you timing Comfort Design budget these 12:11 things don't always work in Tandem and they are four factors for instance out of the 50,000 that you need to consider 12:18 when you're buying a new couch needling in a what's most important to people using AI to funnel that information into 12:25 a personalization strategy to help the consumer find the couch of their dreams 12:30 is really important a really important part of our strategy and the user experience at couch.com 12:37 amazing the the thing you said earlier about you know not listening to people The Importance of Mentorship and Inspiration 12:44 because there's this intuitive part of being an entrepreneur how do you balance that with mentorship and finding mentors 12:52 yeah that's a great question not to be a broken record but for me it applies I have a lot of people in my network I 13:00 started really young in e-commerce and business and so I built up a lot of 13:07 great contacts along the way what I found is every time I talk to someone 13:12 who is smarter than me and I know say that in a derogatory sense they literally are smarter than me but in a 13:18 specific area so I think it's important to remember what type of advice you're seeking from a mentor or a wise elder or 13:28 whomever you're seeking advice from because they often have a specific Focus if you talk to an accountant they're 13:34 going to give you they're going to have a a financial take about how you do certain things but they also may have an 13:41 opinion about how your website font looks like I don't know that's the person you should be listening to okay 13:46 that but that seems obvious ultimately I think it's about something I said before just not listening to everything 13:54 trusting that you or me in this case have the best sort of most well-rounded 14:00 vision for this company and when people give you advice or opinions even if you really trust 14:06 them I think it's to be taken with a grain of salt and I think good mentors understand that you're not going to just 14:13 be like yes whatever you say and do literally what they say I think it's 14:19 everybody has opinions especially people who have done stuff and has have succeeded so when they give them to you 14:26 I think it's about filtering them in a way that's going to be Val valubles you versus detrimental that's great 14:32 advice tell me Alex what are you most excited about I so like the furniture 14:38 whatever it's an open question you can take it anywhere you want I love making 14:43 so when you and your listeners check out couch.com now and in the future you see 14:49 a lot of Alex there me making silly videos and just having fun with all of 14:55 these Concepts that have that that we're educating customers on or that people 15:00 have questions about like negotiating in a furniture store and things of that nature like I love talking about things 15:07 and presenting them in an entertaining way so that's really on the streets of Oslo Norway what drove me towards this 15:16 type of Direction was like oh I can make a couch 15:21 content site that is actually helpful and entertaining so I'm excited to 15:26 really continue doing entertaining and funny content surrounding this but in a 15:33 larger sense I really know that this industry being a Furniture marketer for 15:38 so long is missing something like couch.com which is a platform that's 15:44 literally exists to help people bind and buy couches and I know that a lot of 15:49 furniture companies are struggling to find advertising that works for them 15:54 these days they're going to be really happy and excited by this especially when it works so ultimately that's what 16:01 I'm excited for but I like to make silly stuff too that's great there are I know 16:07 with your content you're you've got some stuff about like celebrity couches how do you figure out who's what celebrity 16:14 has a wet couch and where does that all come from that's funny because this is 16:20 something that's an example of something that where AI was extremely helpful to help scour the internet for information 16:26 that was already out there that an example like we'll have I think yeah we have a an article or two about yes like 16:32 as you said like celebrity couches who has what couch or like what what's been written about couches in people's homes 16:38 ultimately I think that's people like to know this it's architectural digest has sold a lot of copies based on their 16:45 celebrity sort of Partnerships or editorial exposes so yeah using AI to to 16:51 find what's been written about like Mark Wahlberg's big sectional and then aggregating that data in one place was 16:58 helpful but also I live in Hollywood baby I live in LA so we we're a very 17:03 celebrity driven Community here and I think that that offers us a little bit 17:09 of a unique perspective on on that subject and I intend to build upon that too I have definitely have some c-list 17:15 and Bist friends out there not really A-list but I hope to intend to bring 17:20 them to couch.com to have some fun with me at some point that's cool tell me a bit about Personal Furniture Shopping Experience 17:26 your experience buying your last couch how'd that work yeah so the last couch I 17:32 got was it looks horrible right now but they deserve to see so I just moved into my 17:40 own new place a number of weeks ago so I'm still getting it ready but I bought a couch recently from one of the 17:48 factories where I'm basically partnered with so for me I do know where I want to 17:54 buy a couch but that was ultimately a decision that was driven by cost and 17:59 other factors and ease and convenience I think the more relevant story is where I 18:04 bought the rest of my furniture which is funny because I was talking with my former business partner from apartment 18:09 2B the other day and reminding him that neither of us even know where to go to buy furniture I ended up at Living 18:17 Spaces which is a regional big regional chain here on the West Coast big 18:24 furniture store you're in Florida so similar to room to go type of 18:30 environment something for everybody just a big furniture store not where you would expect like a cool direct to 18:35 Consumer brand founder to go bu furniture and you know where I went right to the back of their clearance 18:41 section and I was picking and popping all the little clearance items and things that I felt were like a great 18:48 value so I almost went bargain hunting in a huge furniture store because I thought that's where I would get the 18:54 best deal and where I'd get the quickest results to tie that in into the concept 18:59 behind couch.com that's what was most important to me it wasn't the design it wasn't the Comfort it wasn't really much 19:07 of anything except the two factors were I needed to furnish an entire house so budget was important not the big biggest 19:13 thing and timing I have I had no furniture I like instant results and I 19:18 think there are a lot of people out there like me I don't think that I'm like the anomaly some people want to say 19:25 yes I need it tomorrow and that's going to weed out a whole bunch of retailers 19:31 that sell or Market to customers online so for me to go to a place like couch.com and say I need it tomorrow and 19:38 have filtered results by all these different retailers in my area and online where I can get it tomorrow would 19:44 have been a very useful tool instead I just took my friend's pickup truck and went to the local Furniture chain store 19:50 and started bargain hunting for a few hours so in your mind will there be like a 19:56 clearance section on the site that gets 20:01 people who have that similar I just need to fill a house with a couple couches 20:06 and uh give me the best price uh help me 20:12 absolutely and uh in fact right now there's we have a great post that was from the last few weeks it's very 20:18 relevant um about the top 10 online clearance centers to shop one one little 20:24 Furniture industry tip I can give everybody it may not be a shock but every Furniture retailer is 20:31 overloaded with inventory why because 2023 was one of the worst years for the 20:36 furniture industry in a long time and everybody has to buy and make inventory choices well ahead of time so you find a 20:43 lot of furniture retailers these days looking to get rid of inventory as 20:49 cheaply as possible this is a great time to bargain hunt in the furniture industry especially like surrounding the 20:56 end and the beginning of the year that's a big product turnover time so if you 21:01 walk into a clearance section of a furniture store right now and it's not completely full of good stuff send me an 21:09 email I would like to know about that one place because they must be selling and doing something amazing most retailers have like tons of inventory in 21:17 in their clearance section and things like that good point I'm excited to see the site progress and see where the 21:23 content Sor we're going to have to edit this out I have a knock at the door let me just go answer it and I'll be right yeah no problem so sorry we cut it no 21:29 worries and we're back so I wanted to ask you about what you are inspired by Content Creation and Inspiration 21:38 like you're doing all this content there's certainly people that maybe you have as watching what people are up to 21:45 what inspires you to create original content question I think the inspiration 21:52 for me comes from well okay hold on let me say specifically regarding creating 21:59 content what I think I enjoy most is that I know that it's very valuable 22:04 because whenever I talk to a friend or colleague like they they have the same 22:10 questions and they feel so happy when I give them advice the furniture industry is like the car industry and that if you 22:17 have a friend that tells you how to get the best deal on a new car or lease you're like thank you my goodness thank 22:23 you so much like I had no idea generally so I get inspired knowing that like I'm 22:29 giving information that's actually helpful and I'm not just making stuff for the purposes of making stuff because 22:36 I have to I I think that everything we're talking about at couch.com is actually valuable and helpful but 22:44 there's a lot of great interesting funny content on the internet on the social 22:51 platforms on YouTube and I get inspired by a lot of that stuff just to make 22:57 other wise for lack of a better term boring or not that interesting content 23:03 and make it fun and interesting I think it's a skill and it's something when I see other people's doing it well like 23:10 explaining some difficult Financial concept on a great YouTube video you're like oh this is great or an awesome 23:17 podcast wow I didn't understand that before so that those things inspire me as I'm sure they inspire 23:23 you yeah having a balance between some entertainment to little utility a lot of 23:29 utility and uh something that ideally people revisit so it's cool I'm uh I'm excited to see how the the content 23:36 evolves is the tools that make content easier evolve as well as an entrepreneur Utilizing AI Tools in Business 23:42 what are some of your tools that you've started to use that have become daily Staples specifically around maybe AI 23:50 yeah absolutely so I will use GPT to organize dat data like 23:59 most people do but we're aggregating a lot of lists and taking just taking 24:05 things like transcripts and turning them into something else I think like data transformation and and light analysis 24:14 we're not asking AI to solve all of the couch industry's problems but we are 24:19 asking it to take a list of links of all these websites and give us just a list 24:25 of websites that we can give to our our readers and things like that one thing 24:30 for images because in the furniture industry the I don't know that there's 24:35 been a lot enough AI training out there for the visuals like on a platform like 24:41 mid Journey for instance you get a lot of weird stuff with prompts for 24:47 furniture think about what hap what may happen when you put in the term show me an armless sofa for whatever reason 24:54 it'll interpret it like arm should be coming out of it or something like that because there haven't been as many 25:00 prompts for armless sofa as there have been for attractive female superhero 25:07 with wielding daggers there there's been plenty of that and a lot of refinement um so that's interesting so Harnessing AI for Visuals and Information Gathering 25:13 one of the programs that I've Ed that that does a great job with visuals 25:19 is. a that's something that's that has been really helpful to me and just found it's like for whatever reason filters 25:26 through some of that like AI noise when it comes to Furniture images it seems to 25:32 intuitively understand a little bit better what I'm looking for and yeah 25:38 tons of one thing I use just to gather information for myself I'm a big skimmer 25:44 when it comes to reading but if I'm listening to something I really connect with it so I turn almost all of my text 25:51 anything that's longer than an email I'll I'll use AI voice assisted audio to 25:56 give it to me while I'm working or exercising and I I find that I absorb information a lot better and it's so 26:02 engaging these days like tools are so good over the last few months even they've gotten so much better when it 26:08 comes to understanding and interpreting and ultimately putting a voice behind a lot 26:14 of text on some of these AI platforms like speechify something I use all the time yeah I was just I was just thinking 26:21 let's dig into that a little bit because I've I recently got back to iPhone which no idea how I went so long with without 26:27 it and the the ease of use with some of the text of speech is just amazing tell Leveraging AI for Text-to-Speech: A Deep Dive into Speechify 26:34 us a little bit how you're using speech by yeah so essentially I'll go I have get a ton of emails every day with like 26:41 article roundups yeah they're probably leveraging AI to find those articles or 26:48 have some kind of alerts about what their readers will find interesting they'll and then they'll aggregate those 26:55 and put them in like an email Roundup we all get them in some form in every industry so then I will spend 15 or 20 27:03 minutes every morning or afternoon when I get to it opening those emails and 27:09 skimming through to find the articles that I think are most relevant to me and 27:15 what I'm thinking about right now and I'll open them in a like in separate 27:20 tabs then I'll go to them and just literally copy the URLs and paste them into speechify and each time I do that 27:27 it just it takes all of that information and puts puts it in the library there 27:34 and then when I'm ready to listen to it my my favorite lovely English woman will 27:39 read it to me in a wonderfully a powered AI powered voice that's great do you do 27:45 something s is this a me thing I I haven't it I think that is a you thing 27:50 but we're all unique and have our own little uh quirks but I do like that I think that's uh something that I'm going 27:56 to try so thank you for the suggestion so all you need is a a link to the URL and throw it in speechify and then you 28:02 can pick it up on your mobile phone when you're going for run or what have you and you can process it is that right 28:09 that's literally what I do and I just have my speechify libraries what I if I'm playing basketball or exercising 28:15 that's just have my earbuds in and I'm on speechify and that's when I get my 28:22 articles it's it's great I love it I have no complaints that's a great Pro tip one 28:28 thing that has been quite useful is not on the audio side but taking if there's 28:34 any training video or Long YouTube video that you don't want to spend an hour if you can copy that transcript and turn it 28:41 into a custom gep now you can dig into the details that's been like you talked 28:46 about that the way you manipulate data and taking some input and transforming 28:52 it into something else is U always interesting to hear about how other people are using technology because uh 29:00 it is so personal to us right I've often said that no two people are using chat 29:05 GPT the exact same way we all have our own little things that we've discovered that it can do and I love having these 29:12 conversations to hear how people are using these tools how do you prioritize The Art of Staying Productive and Healthy 29:17 your your health I understand you you're using this is there anything else you do for productivity to reset after a long 29:24 day or are you a morning exercise or what's your how do you how do you stay in such great shape yeah I staying in 29:31 shape is important and I interview and people as 29:36 well and on for couch.com and somebody a very 29:41 successful CEO said recently even if it's 20 minutes a day you got to move your body around and so even though I've 29:49 been a sort of a lifelong exerciser myself I don't even think about it very 29:55 much and on the days where I'm like like oh this I'll skip today I'm like no 30:00 chanu said he said 20 minutes a day and that's the key to success and I'm like I can do 20 minutes so I really believe in 30:08 that and you hear it all the time you see a lot of at least I do a lot of advice and content surrounding how 30:14 important exercises to cognitive function I wish I felt the same way about sleep I don't get enough sleep 30:20 personally but when it comes to exercise like that's been one of my big things 30:25 for and yeah yes the morning sometime in the morning I'm not like a 5:00 a.m. exerciser but generally I'll take a 30:32 break in the morning my morning hours even though it's difficult to turn off the noise from you know 9 to 10 or 30:38 whatever that's the time I feel like I'm most needing of exercise and then it 30:44 pays dividends for the rest of the day so I think that's really important the timing of your exercise when can you get 30:50 yourself to to perform at a high level exercise wise and when will you get the 30:55 most benefit of focus that and mushroom coffee those have been my big things to 31:01 stay focused it's so funny it's like that and mushroom coffee of course can't forget it that's cool I I'm not drinking 31:09 mushroom coffee what's the why should I be drinking mushroom coffee what's I have no idea Mark no I'm The Magic of Mushroom Coffee 31:15 just kidding mushroom coffee it it just really helps with focus it helps me with 31:20 Focus it's yeah it's caffeinated so that helps 31:27 yeah but it also just really yeah I don't know how else to say it like sometimes I feel extremely focused on 31:35 something almost to a degree that I'm have to check myself and I'm like whoa what's going on here I'm very dialed in 31:42 mushroom coffee I had it 30 minutes ago it really I don't know exactly I'm not like a big mushroom science person yet 31:49 but I started trying it about a month or two ago and it's been very helpful for my focus very cool you got a good 31:57 mushroom guy who's your go-to supplier now it's not legal in all the states yet 32:02 no not those kind of mushrooms but I think there's some similar principles but anyway the brand I got courted by 32:11 online after I told the Instagram or Tik Tok gods that I was interested in 32:16 learning more about this what is called rise R YZ they have a monthly 32:21 subscription thing it's super easy I guarantee there are plenty of them this one has been good for me and it's worked 32:28 so use promo code Alex at rise.com just yeah hit the link below no that's 32:34 that's cool mushroom coffee love that great is it I'm a big coffee drinker 32:41 myself ever made the switch over to mushroom The Taste is it is it you typically take a a Black Mushroom coffee 32:48 or you add a little something to that all right well here's what I do please I like okay so I like very 32:55 sweet coffee I'm not like a coffee connoisseur I have my I know what I like like very strong coffee with very sweet 33:03 sweetener there was a funny one of the seasons of the show True Detective on HBO these two cops were getting together 33:10 after not seeing each other for 25 years and he's one says to the other can I get you a cup of coffee he said yeah I'd 33:16 love one he you still like it the same way he goes yep make it like dessert and that's what I like but I digress so I 33:24 make my mushroom coffee like dessert don't love the tastes and I really like 33:30 my experience of tasting my morning coffee so I'll actually like down it I'll just put something in put some 33:36 coffee and and mix it with water and the mushroom coffee put some creamer in it like a bunch and I'll just down it I 33:44 don't know that's the best way but that's how I do it I don't try to savor it I'm just like this is serves a utilitarian purpose and then I go to my 33:51 like espresso coffee mate mixture to get the full effect recently yesterday 33:58 actually I went to McDonald's and I'll take a little milk in my coffee I'm from Toronto so that's totally normal but 34:05 they don't even have the option for milk at McDonald's anymore it's only cream 34:11 there is at least in Florida and I know McDonald's are supposed to be the same everywhere the only way that they were 34:17 going to give me milk was to sell me like a child's milk to go along with it 34:23 I don't know what's changing but milk I did because I misunderstood their what 34:28 they were saying and then I immediately refunded it because and I just had the coffee black but yeah Strange World 34:35 we're living in where McDonald's is not allowing you to have milk they're just not even an option it's cream that's 34:44 very very interesting yeah and for those good Canadians like you this is a New 34:51 Concept perhaps there's still a lot of milk in Canada I bet there's uh there's plenty of milk in 34:56 Canada so you're helping people get on the couch are you going to be talking about The Couch Conundrum: Getting On and Off 35:02 ways for people to get off the couch because when they get these couches and they're so comfortable I feel like you 35:07 have a responsibility to help them do both I'm glad you mentioned that Mark because there is a health and wellness 35:13 category at couch.com a little bit underrepresented at this moment but we do have a few great posts on things like 35:21 I don't know if you're familiar with couch to 5K couch to 5K is just it's a race it's more of an internal race it's 35:28 like a individual challenge get off the proverbial couch and start running and 35:35 start slow start with a walk then it's build up to a 5k I don't think there's an organization that's behind that but 35:42 if there were that would be an example of a great partner for us at couch.com as I said something I believe in 35:48 personally a lot just physical fitness and balance in one's life with exercise 35:54 yeah I think there's going to be a lot of content like that but first we have to make sure people like buy the couches and and are 36:01 very comfortable on them that's the main focus of couch.com but I'll get them off of them too I 36:07 will yeah that full circle responsibility to help people get on the coach off the coach back on the couch we 36:14 have to get him back we get him outside we gotta get him out you're tired you got put your feet up it's gonna heal your your feet after uh a long run after 36:22 that 5K coaches it's I never thought I'd be talk so much 36:27 about couches I know maybe when you were you've been in the furniture industry a long time so there's probably so many 36:34 things that you've learned about couches what surprised you about couches that you did 36:42 not know yeah I think a a good thing to mention there is they're so much 36:50 simpler in construction than people think they are 36:55 and you get sold the bill of goods from a brand like Restoration Hardware which is extremely 37:02 premium expensive and you think that there's a 37:08 real big difference in between the construction of one couch and another but after spending time in factories and 37:14 talking to many Furniture manufacturers and makers over the years I wouldn't say 37:20 a couch is a couch because there absolutely are different materials and you want to make sure that you choose 37:26 the material that most that you enjoy most that most fit your lifestyle or sitting style to 37:32 be more literal but ultimately there really shouldn't be thousands of dollars 37:38 in difference between couches unless there's something extremely ornate a lot of it is you're 37:46 paying more for the brand or Cache or the Restoration Hardware behind something so I think the biggest thing 37:53 that I've learned over the years is that you can find a really great couch for a 37:59 lot less than you think Cliffhanger good advice the I think a little bit about 38:06 the car industry and that you never want to be taken and get a bad deal how can The Quest for the Best Deal in Furniture Shopping 38:13 people avoid that experience of feeling 38:18 like they got hat and they're sitting on a couch that they may be paid too much for just what's the best way for people 38:25 to make educated decisions and get a good deal because we all want a good deal right that's an an amazing question 38:33 I was talking to somebody the other day and they were they equated what I'm doing in couch.com 38:39 to like a Travelocity or Expedia you go to these websites as a 38:45 user and what's the number one variable you want to find the best deal now you 38:51 have other criteria in place like I only want non-stop flights I don't want to lay over or I'm looking for this first 38:58 class business class only economy whatever there are variables to be sifted through but ultimately your 39:04 purpose is getting a good deal which is to say that it is a it is 39:11 a main criteria point it doesn't necessarily mean that you need to have find the 39:19 cheapest couch people want to feel like they got a good deal I think the operative term that we've always used in 39:25 my former business was value we didn't have the cheapest couches at apartment TV but we always believed that we had 39:31 pound-for-pound the best value in the online DC Furniture space because we combined extremely great designer 39:40 quality with a relatively affordable so 39:45 getting a good deal is very important to people and I think we're going to have a lot of content about finding the best 39:52 deal even if it's not at the the least expensive retailer so I think going for 39:57 consumers just really recognizing that getting a good deal is important to you 40:02 is extremely important and is actually a variable in your search because there are places where you'll never feel like 40:08 you you got a great deal if you go into a very high-end furniture store you're going to be wondering did I get taken 40:15 here did I get hosed on the price here is this really worth it and you're never 40:21 really going to find out the answer to that yeah makes a lot of sense yeah Productivity Hacks and Inspirational Reads 40:27 when it comes to books you're an entrepreneur Avid 40:32 Reader what's on your desk or your audible right now what are you listening 40:37 to you're obviously an audio guy what do you like her one of my favorite questions this could be books you go 40:43 back to your revisits or your just things that 40:49 you're digging into now my revisits are very simple they're all about okay 40:57 productivity there's not much that I like to do over again like I'm not the type of guy who will watch a movie 41:03 multiple times to me that seems agonizing I don't know why so I don't go 41:08 back to things very often unless I really find a utilitarian purpose in doing so and for me think reminders 41:15 about productivity tips very those are very helpful because we've talked has 41:21 been a theme in our discussion today it's very easy to get distracted by the new and the shiny especially as an 41:27 entrepreneur you're always juggling 30 different things at one time focusing on 41:33 the most important thing for having tools to help you do that is very valuable another thing I go back to is 41:39 inspiring entrepreneurial stories if I'm ever feeling like lost or just needing 41:45 of a little bit of a push there's plenty of content around like the how I built this podcast is 41:52 unbelievable if it's the this Guyz I think I think it's very popular he even 41:57 wrote a book called How I built this where he Aggregates some of his top top 42:03 10 list of sorts of his guests and and ideas expressed so that's it's a pretty 42:09 broad one there but if you heard of how I built this podcast I have not it's 42:16 always great to be introduced to a new valuable source of information so I 42:21 appreciate that the productivity one is there a book or uh something that you 42:28 like you said you revisit the productivity category is there a specific author or someone that uh 42:34 really enjoyed I wish I was a super Smarty And could give you like the best answer on this one however I have um a 42:42 little bit of an abstract answer so no I don't have anything specific here's it's similar to how I feel about parenting so 42:49 I have two two young kids they're wonderful love you guys but very 42:56 challenging and all kids are right they'll push your buttons you'll they'll do whatever they can to just present 43:03 challenges and test boundaries and for me parenting advice is a very Dynamic 43:08 thing euro is changing the kids are growing your issues are changing the challenges are for me it's more about 43:16 getting new ideas or being reminded of old ones New Perspectives on the same 43:22 subject matter can be really valuable you don't necessarily have to follow them but for instance I'll listen to a 43:28 parenting podcasts that'll be like say this to your kids instead of that I'm 43:33 like oh my God yes that's great oh and it reminds me I used to do this and it really worked I'm going to bring that 43:38 back there's no parenting strategy that works for more than two weeks that's my thing right okay guys we're doing a 43:44 point system for your fortnite time and it's going to work like this it only works for so long until everybody falls 43:51 out of favor and the same thing goes for my productivity it's just I just I need to listen to 30 minutes of productivity 43:56 stuff right now so I'll go on blinkist blinkist is a great service that takes 44:03 very popular books and sizes them down to 12 to 15 minutes like an an audible 44:11 version of cliffs notes was and there I'll just listen to I'll rifle through 44:16 three or four books that give you a few tips and tricks and I'll jot down a few notes and I find out perfect appreciate 44:22 that and one more for fun if you were give advice to your younger self say mid Advice to My Younger Self 44:29 20s that guy what advice would you have I'm going through a divorce so there's 44:35 certain things that come to mind with that no just kidding yeah that's a good 44:40 one I don't know I think it what what comes to mind most my my my business 44:46 partner um he's uh about 10 years older than me and we came up together in the 44:52 e-commerce space and figured it out as we went and I've always been the type of guy I think 44:58 I'm just I think I know everything and I just I have a lot of confidence and things that I know and can be very 45:04 Resolute about them but he would always say to me he's like when you get older 45:10 you get wiser and he would use that in a defensive way at certain times or I I 45:16 don't know exactly why but he mentioned always about being wiser now I understand that so my advice to myself 45:22 would be don't think that you know everything I wish I sought out more 45:27 information along the way and to tie it full circle with AI and all the tools that 45:33 are available to us now versus 15 20 years ago when I was getting started like that information is so much more 45:40 readily available so I would encourage myself as a young entrepreneur to really spend time to absorb a lot of 45:46 information and stories of other people versus just go and you think you know what you're doing but really there's 45:52 usually a better path for almost anything you do great advice Alex this has been a lot of fun I Wrapping Up: The Journey with Couch.com 45:58 appreciate your time and let's let's do this again all the best with couch.com 46:04 it's a a wonderful journey and I can't wait to follow the story thank you Mark and when you need a 46:11 new couch you know where to go amazing thanks so much English (auto-generated) AllFrom OpenAi TrainingRelated