The Exchanges

Q who was a young guy, he, he passed away, he died, he had, um, a very rare form of cancer, and he was just 18, and this really, like, you guys were really close with this kid, right? I think he was even, he had dated your sister. Tell me a little bit about, about this, because this is, This was going to actually affect a change in your life.

A Yeah, it was horrible, and, you know, and he'd gone into remission, and we didn't know him at the time. My younger sister, Emma, she met him, you know, right after he'd gone into remission, and when we found out that the cancer was back, I started coming, flying from New York back to Seattle to support my sister, and I would go back and forth between the two places, and as we started to get more information about Josh's diagnosis, and it became clear that it was Terminal. Those trips became longer back home, and I had been living this kind of fast-paced, exciting life, and this started to become a reminder as to what really mattered the most and what was most important, and I really started to feel that urge to spend more time with my family, and my sister, and my mom, and my dad. So then, that was eventually kind of what prompted part of my move back to Seattle, along with Launching Skinny Dipped.

AI assessment note: “that was eventually kind of what prompted part of my move back to Seattle”

Q So how did you get, I mean, you were gonna have this guy make you a thousand decks. You have to make 700,000 now, so what did, did you call the guy and say, hey, we got, like, tell me what happened?

A Yeah, I called him up, and I, I explained, uh, Uh, what we needed. We needed 700,000 copies, and he just started screaming. Like, just absolute chaos. Um, I later learned that that would be higher capacity than the entirety of the number of decks of cards he's printed in the 10 years he had been in business. So, uh, he was just out. He was just like, I don't know how to help you. Um, then we called up, uh, a casual friend At, uh, Cards Against Humanity. And they do really, at the, especially at the time, they did just so many decks. And I said, look, here's our problem. Here's what we gotta do. I don't, I, I have no experience in this thing. And they were really nice. They said, look, you're going to, uh, call our distributor. You're gonna call our manufacturer. You're gonna call our agents. And we're gonna, we're gonna make sure we hold your hand through this whole process because we've printed even more than that in a year. Uh, so we got you. And it was incredible. Like, they took such good care of us, and we promised our backers, having no idea how many decks we were gonna have to produce, we promised them that we would deliver this thing in seven months. And, uh, so the campaign launched in January, we promised it would ship in July, and because of Cards Against Humanity and their help, uh, we shipped every single copy Uh, by July 30th of that year.

AI assessment note: “Yeah, I called him up, and I, I explained, uh, Uh, what we needed.”

Q Awesome. Well, thanks for calling in, Melita. So, okay, Q for Quinn. Tell me a little bit about, about this business. How did you, when did you start it, and what were you doing at the time?

A Sure. I started the business about eight years ago. My first bond, I have three kids now. Uh, he was 10 months at the time and he suffered from eczema. I was not working. I had a stressful corporate jobs as a, as a derivatives trader and a management consultant, and I was really taking time off and being a mom. Um, and so when, when he had eczema, I researched different fabrics. I found organic cotton onesies, but I couldn't find organic cotton socks. And that's when I had the idea to make my own organic cotton socks. So we started with kids socks, but as we sort of grew, we added adult socks and underwear, and we've been growing pretty nicely, especially in the last few years.

AI assessment note: “I started the business about eight years ago. My first bond, I have three kids”

Q Huh. Meanwhile, as you mentioned, I mean, you, you're still with Dan at this point at the hedge fund, and then I guess at some point he decides to move the fund to California, right?

A Yeah. Yeah. Um, we had moved out to Silicon Valley. Dan's wife had become a professor at Stanford, which is why we had moved out here. And, uh, so my wife was able to finish her fourth year at med school doing a bunch of rotations out here in the Bay Area. So we, you know, and now that we were on the West Coast, I was working from five AM till about two in the afternoon. So before our first child was born, I had a lot of time on my hands. Uh, you know, so I was spending about, you know, that four hours, four to five hours that I was spending after work I was spending about half of it making videos and about half of it continuing to write code, right? That software, that practice software for my family that, that other people were now using. And by. 2007, 2008, it was in the tens of thousands of people. And by 2009, it was in the hundreds of thousands of people were using it on our, on a regular basis.

AI assessment note: “Yeah. Yeah. Um, we had moved out to Silicon Valley.”

Q I gotta say, there's something about those flavors that is working for me, because I love pickles, and I like a nice light lager, especially on a hot day. Alright, how did this, how did this even start? Tell me the story. How did you come up with this idea? Because it's so, it's so weird and cool.

A A pandemic idea. I had been running cocktail bars around the country for years. And during the pandemic, I couldn't sit still and I became a mailman in West Hollywood. And while I was delivering mail, I really didn't have the opportunity to be creative and it's all I like to do. So I was coming up with different business ideas, just throwing toilet paper up at the ceiling, seeing what would stick. And, uh, I happened to be on route one day and Donna's pickle beer Kind of popped in my head and, uh, I drew our can out on a piece of paper and I sent it to my business partner, my now business partner. I said, what do you think about this? And he said, this is amazing.

AI assessment note: “I happened to be on route one day and Donna's pickle beer Kind of popped”

Q Awesome. Okay. So you, and you launched this kombucha brand and you've got tap room so people can go and get draft kombucha. Tell me a little bit about the business. How's it doing overall?

A Yeah, it's actually, it's been a rough last couple of years with pressures from COVID and supply chain stuff. We've had a bunch of, you know, distributors go out of business. We changed our packaging a couple of times, which was really challenging and lost us a bunch of shelf space and stores. Sales at the tap rooms are down and all of the expenses are, are much, much higher. And so, yeah, we were, I was doing a million and a half dollars a year for, for several years. And the last few years that's, that's really been, uh, dwindling. I started contract manufacturing for other beverage brands in the last six months, and that has brought its own challenges. Um, I also do beverage development and R and D for other brands, which is great, but it's just kind of like a one-time project when we do it. Yeah. So I'm, I'm really looking for the next step.

AI assessment note: “it's been a rough last couple of years with pressures from COVID”

Q Alright, this is important, because, because she will factor in later. Your girlfriend's name is Cindy, because she will, you will be together for a while and start other businesses, but let's talk about the fence business. How did, what did you know about, like, did you know how to build a fence?

A Not at all. I had no clue. I didn't know a postal digger from a pry bar. So I got on Craigslist and found a guy who worked at the number one fence company in town, Mike's Fence Center, and he was ready to leave there. And I said, well, come on, come work with me and I'll, I'll make you the head guy. And he said, okay. And And so we went out and bought a truck and bought all the tools that the supply company told us that we would need. And the day before our first project, uh, he got arrested. And so, uh, we were supposed to show up in sun river and put in the first fence. And instead I ended up going to the homeless shelter and found a couple of guys that said they knew how to do fences and went down and Learned how to build a fence on, on site.

AI assessment note: “Not at all. I had no clue. I didn't know a postal digger”

Q Tell me the story. How did you start this business?

A I mean, it started a while ago while on a family vacation. I went, wandered off onto a local beach and just saw it littered with all these plastic shampoo bottles, and I was shocked because all the narrative at the time was reducing plastic straws, plastic grocery bags, and no one was talking about the Plastic toiletry bottles that end up in our landfills every year. And so I got back to, I was in college at the time, got back to school and just started tinkering in my kitchen, uh, trying different formulations. We first made shampoo strips. So if you know, like Listerine mouthwash strips, we made shampoo in that form, but they would dissolve too quickly. Tried a bunch of different iterations, thousands of, of experiments later invented shampoo tablets.

AI assessment note: “got back to school and just started tinkering in my kitchen, uh, trying different formulations”

Q Okay, so it makes sense. Alright, so you're now working full-time at the family business, the, the Newark Nut Company, and, and what, were you, like, making suggestions on how to change the business? Like, what, what were you doing?

A Yeah, so I just rolled up my sleeves and, and, and dug in and just looked at, like, let's just study this business, try to see where the opportunities are. So some would be simple as, hey, we sell raw cashews in the store and roasted cashews. I know what we pay for raw cashews. We're buying from our friend the roasted cashews because he was a roaster. That spread is pretty big. Well, why don't we just send him the raw cashews, pay him just to toll it, just to roast it. And that suddenly saved us 10,000 dollars. That's like mana from heaven, right? So A, I start winning proof points with my dad and uncle because that's like, you know, real money for a business that's not making any money. Um, and then the other thing I did was, well, there's a couple of things. One thing I did was I visited our wholesale customers and just said, what more can we do for you? Mind you, I'm a shy kid. I don't like selling at all. And I didn't love that we were selling sometimes commodities in a 25 pound box. Right. It wasn't a point of differentiation there. So we had, for example, the specialty supermarket said, I really want you to package the product for us. My dad and my uncle said, no, too much labor. I showed them the math. And then I became the laborer.

AI assessment note: “I just rolled up my sleeves and, and, and dug in”

Q And how did you come, I mean, were you like a, were you a baker? Were you working in restaurants?

A No, so I've, I mean, I've always loved baking. I've always loved baking like desserts and breads, but I had never really dabbled with pizza. Um, and so the story goes, so summer, 2024, last year, I quit my job to become a stay at home dad. And I never, like I said, I always loved baking, but to keep my sanity, I decided to dive into homemade pizza making and start an Instagram page to document the journey. And I discovered that you don't need, like, a fancy pizza oven to make really good pizza at home. And so in January, I decided to do a series where I made a pizza every single day until I got a Dave Portnoy pizza review. And so obviously.

AI assessment note: “No, so I've, I mean, I've always loved baking”

Q and especially e-commerce focused brands, it turned out to be an incredible event. You know, opportunity because people are stuck in front of their computers. Now, some apparel brands, it was a disaster, right? Especially if you're, if you're selling stuff for the office, but for more casual brands and things like that, it was actually a great year. Tell me what happened to you guys during that COVID year.

A So we had a couple of really great things that were going into that year of 2020. Our Nordstrom business was finally starting to work. So stores were, you know, between wholesale and stores, it was about 70% of our business, and only about 30% of our business is e-commerce. So when, when it first shut down, 70% of our business is basically dead. And it was really tough. And, you know, we had to do furloughs for a bunch of the team, and we had to figure out how to survive. And then at some point in May, You know, we're like, all right, e-commerce is better than we thought. We had comfortable product. It was great for stay at home. Like it's performing better. Like, let's start spending more on marketing.

AI assessment note: “So when, when it first shut down, 70% of our business is basically dead.”

Q Okay, so the idea what would be, there'd be lockers, initially in office buildings, and let's talk about the locker first. Like, I'm imagining an Amazon locker today that's digital, and you know, but this is 2013. So what What were those lockers going to be and how would people access them?

A So you're exactly right. They were simple and we actually called them dumb lockers, but they were dumb by design because that brought costs low. They had a digi lock on them and you would just type a four digit code and you'd turn it. And then the only other thing that would make it special was we put a number at the top. So each person, so say a certain building would have eight lockers, four on the top, four on the bottom. Each of those would be numbered one through eight. You'd go, guy, drop off your, your laundry in this, you know, hypothetically office building, and you would just send us a text, and it would just be this, this one number, and you would just say the number three. And that would give us the signal to go pick it up, and we wanted to keep this as simple as possible.

AI assessment note: “They had a digi lock on them and you would just type a four digit code”

Q bigger, broader platform for, you know, local commerce, logistics. You've been expanding into grocery and retail, international markets. I've used some of the other brands that you've acquired, like Wolt and Deliveroo, and which I think is still in the process. Can you tell us a little bit more about Some of the things going on with DoorDash now. What is the sort of the vision for expanding the platform?

A Sure. So, you know, when you and I last spoke seven years ago, we were largely a single product, so restaurant delivery, single geography, United States company, and that occupied, you know, well over 99% of what we did. Today DoorDash Is a business with, you know, five big areas. Obviously, we still bring you lunch and dinner inside the US. We, as you mentioned, expanded about five years ago into other categories, delivering you groceries, convenience items, retail items. We now do this also internationally. So you mentioned that, um, you know, a couple acquisitions that we've announced. We now operate in over 35 countries. We have a B to B business where we help you do delivery from your own channel or help you with online ordering from your own app or your own website.

AI assessment note: “Today DoorDash Is a business with, you know, five big areas.”

Q How, how are you measuring success? Like, was it, was it from the interest and engagement from, from restaurants or, or was it from people ordering from the platform? Like, how did you know this was sticking?

A Yeah. And you're right. There are three questions, actually, to know whether or not the idea for DoorDash would work. But the first question really was, would consumers care if we made available all restaurants for delivery? Um, you know, in 2013, only about 10 to 15% of restaurants offered their own delivery. And what we looked for really was, how often would consumers order and come back without a discount or some sort of a marketing incentive? The other questions, of course, well, one, will, will restaurants actually want to partner with us in adding incremental sales to their kitchens? And the final question was, would drivers, the dashers, we call them on our platform, would they actually want to partner with us?

AI assessment note: “how often would consumers order and come back without a discount”

Q 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?

A Yeah, great question. So I met my co-founder back in university. We went to the University of Victoria, and we really bonded over this shared love of wellness and entrepreneurship, and she, like herself, Randy, was an athlete all through university, and she was on a run one day in her fourth year and broke out into essentially anaphylactic shock, so throat closed in, 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 anaphylaxia. So started peeling back the layers and now it's so obvious, but once 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.

AI assessment note: “So we thought there's no one really putting this in a can in a fun”

Q mention, uh, 2010, 2011. It's still a more, let's say, innocent time in the history of the internet. So, um, some of the things that, that, you know, user-generated companies deal with now, including Nextdoor, um, were not quite as much of a problem back then. But how, for example, were you going to make sure that, um, people really lived in the neighborhoods? That they were who they were?

A So, over and over again, what we heard is, well, I need to make sure that the people on this thing are my actual neighbors, and so that led us to many innovations, including looking at a map, breaking the map down into specific homes, and then we had to verify that they lived there, and so we would do very old school things, like send them a printed postcard via US mail with a code, And you would have to enter the code to verify your address. And so in the early days, I mean, look, we weren't thinking what's going to happen when we have a hundred million users. I mean, that's a pretty expensive postcard bill, but we had a hundred users, 500 users, a thousand users. Right. But we built it with quality from the very beginning, because that's what the neighbors asked for. And we felt like we'll solve the scalability issue. Later.

AI assessment note: “send them a printed postcard via US mail with a code”

Q And so what would you do in your garage? Were you like melting plastic and pouring it into mold?

A Oh, it's so, it's so cool. Uh, first of all, I did all the reading I could, and I went down to the Natural History Museum in LA, where they actually embed specimens in plastic, and I talked to them, and I checked out a book from the Natural Library on embedding specimens in plastic. But of course, they're not making, there's a, there's a couple problems. One is, I wanted mine to be shatterproof and like the globes and other things are not shatterproof. So I did research on materials. I called actually industrial chemical companies in LA and arrived at polyurethane is the kind of plastic that wouldn't break, but all kinds of problems, just like you might imagine. The first problem was, you know, scorpions, if you don't dry them out, took me a long time to figure this out. They turn white, and you can't see the scorpion. So then I took, I went to Goodwill, and I, uh, bought like five or six old ovens, and I then put light bulbs in them to heat them, and then I would desiccate the scorpions inside.

AI assessment note: “I went to Goodwill, and I, uh, bought like five or six old ovens”

Q Ok, for a couple of months, I mean, you put this out of your mind, I'm not gonna get into the tea business, Snapple's killing it, we're not gonna do it. What changed?

A I walked into a Seven 11 one morning, which I did every morning, to buy coffee on the way to the office, and they had Gatorade in a 24 ounce can. And I had never seen that before. I knew that 24 ounce can, because we, John and I delivered Schlitz Bowl, was in a 24 ounce can. They were the only brewery using that can. Uh, I buy the can. I take it back to the office. I look on the side. It's Reynolds Metals making it. We call up Reynolds. Reynolds says, you can put tea in that can, because that's what I asked. And I said, now I got the package. This, this, this, this will, this will be 50% larger than a 16 ounce Snapple bottle.

AI assessment note: “I walked into a Seven 11 one morning... they had Gatorade in a 24 ounce can.”

Q passions and your interests in ways that have led you to do not just interesting things, but things that have been lucrative that have worked out like your podcast was just kind of a started out as just a fun little project, which turned into a real business. Now you're doing A card game, which is totally out of left field. Tell me about how you, what inspired this idea?

A So I tend to explore these off menu out of left field things for skill development, learning, and new relationships, right? So the podcast, I launched it as a lark, but I basically wanted to ask myself, how could this win even if it fails? And I did the same thing with angel investing, just treated it as paying for A business degree. So in this particular case, I'm looking at it the same way, and it came about because I have seen in my audiences sorely needed as an antidote to digital malaise and loneliness, which is in-person social time with something that is a light lift. So how could I design a game that takes about two minutes to learn, 10 minutes to play, that can help people Offset their screen time and all of the things that come with excessive screen time with family, with friends, that hopefully makes you a little bit smarter, right?

AI assessment note: “came about because I have seen in my audiences sorely needed as an antidote”

Q What are, what are some of the things that you, cause I'm assuming you had some face time with Howard Schultz, who's been on this show before. What are some things that you, you learned from him?

A I learned that this thing inside of me, which is mission-based and values-based, was an important factor in whatever I did next, and so he validated that that could be true and be, have success through that, and I had the good fortune of walking into stores with him and seeing that he started to get on the line when there was a line taking orders, right, that he was just part of Starbucks regardless of Him, whatever role that he was in. Um, I also learned that he saw things before other people saw things. He had a gift about spotting a trend. Um, I will never forget it was the fall of 2007, and we had an investment meeting in Seattle, and he walked in and he said, we need to slow down our investments. Now you remember that bank collapses happened in the fall of 2008.

AI assessment note: “I learned that this thing inside of me, which is mission-based and values-based”

Q So I'm curious about overall sort of financial situation. I mean, you know, on the one hand, you're grinding, you're trying to get to sustainability, but what about, and it was just the two of you who were, who were financing or funding this thing, you and Bill. Um, I mean, were there, do you remember any specific moments where you weren't sure you were going to make payroll?

A I mean, damn near every week, it felt like, um, you know, there were definitely weeks where I was like, holy cow, it's Wednesday, and I need, like, 3000 bucks to make payroll, and we've got a thousand in there. Like, how's this even gonna happen? And we'd get these little breaks, right? I'd get a call, and I'd have a catering for, like, a Thursday night to go cater fajitas for a riverboat, or, you know, there may not quite be enough in the bank, but I knew it was gonna be a great sunny weekend, and I'd cut the checks, hoping they didn't bounce, and You know, we'd get enough sales over the weekend to cover the float and, and not get in trouble, but it was real, real dicey at that point.

AI assessment note: “holy cow, it's Wednesday, and I need, like, 3000 bucks to make payroll”

Q And where did you, I mean, where did you sit? I, you set up on a corner in Austin and what just like, how does that work? Do you have to get a permit from the city? Like how can you just set it up anywhere?

A Yeah, see, definitely need a permit. They did have mobile vending permits back then, um, and we needed to have a commissary kitchen, so we figured that out, um, and I got a buddy who I knew owned a restaurant to help us use their kitchen to start, and, um, so yeah, we opened on south first, um, just south of downtown in this It's undeveloped lot. There was a guy that was selling snow cones there before that went out of business, um, who I had asked originally, and he didn't want to, uh, share the spot with me, and then I came back a month later, and the poor guy was packing his stuff up, and he gave me the landlord's number, and I called him, and, um, you know, came to find out that whole spot was in a floodplain, so you can't build on it, and so having a food truck there is actually, like, the perfect use for it.

AI assessment note: “Yeah, see, definitely need a permit. They did have mobile vending permits back then”

Q He's been on the show, he's awesome. So, so now, I'm sure you did very well then, after that, but how, how have sales been since then? Have you sustained those sales, or has it been, been a bit tough?

A Um, highs and lows, of course, like most businesses, we, um, that was great for our business, and then, um, twenty-twenty was, you know, following that, and pandemic hit, and we actually were lucky, one of those businesses that did good during the pandemic, so we saw continuous growth. So we decided to spend the year looking at if we really wanted to raise this outside capital through friends and family, etc., and we decided that The best way for us to scale was through digital advertising. Um, we're seeing around 10 X return on ad spend, so it seemed, you know, like the best way to go. 86% of millennials said that they would dress their dogs in clothing, so the market potential was huge. So we raised that outside capital in twenty-twenty-one, and then in the summer of twenty-twenty-two, the Apple Privacy Act happened, and our digital ad spend or return on ads went from 10 X To eight X to five X. And now we are lucky to hit three X. Wow.

AI assessment note: “highs and lows, of course, like most businesses, we, that was great”

Q You go to a lab, they put a bunch of monitors on you, they put a mask on you, or a breathing apparatus, right?

A Yeah. And you're going to be videotaped while you sleep and it'll be the worst night's sleep of your life. That was a machine though, that could really accurately measure not just how much time you spent in bed and how many hours of sleep you got, but it could go deeper. It could understand of the sleep you got, how much of it was restorative sleep, which is to say how much was slow wave sleep versus REM sleep. And it turned out as it pertains to recovery, Restorative sleep was actually that magic period of time. So I got very interested in, okay, well, how could you get to, how could you measure restorative sleep? Uh, and then the second machine was the electrocardiogram, you know, 20,000 dollar piece of equipment. And then the third piece of equipment was a consumer product, but it was a consumer product that was invented in the eighties. And that was the heart rate monitor or the chest strap.

AI assessment note: “Yeah. And you're going to be videotaped while you sleep”

Q of all, those guys have Huge endorsement deals. Millions and millions of dollars. Like, how are you going to get to them, and even if you do get to them, they're going to say, presumably, well, I'll do it, but you've got to pay me a million dollars or five million, whatever, or you have to give me equity in the company or whatever. Like, how would you do that?

A So those two people had a lot of Infrastructure around them. And you're right. They had a lot of offers and these things. And the secret to getting to them, just to say it was to find people in their lives that had a big influence on them that no one else knew. It turned out in 2015, the personal trainer was a relatively unknown person in a professional athlete's life. And it also turned out that the personal trainers of the very best athletes essentially lived with them and spent more time with them than any other human on the planet. And so in the case of LeBron, like Mike Mencius was his longtime personal trainer, still is today, and he started wearing whoop. And he liked it enough to ask for another one to put on LeBron.

AI assessment note: “the secret to getting to them, just to say it was to find people”

Q So this is an unusual kind of traveler, right, because you're basically saying, hey, it's gonna be a one day trip, you don't know where you're going, but here it is, follow the, follow the instructions. How did you come up with this idea?

A I wanted to give my parents a unique experience gift. They had too much stuff, and I wanted to give them a, uh, a road trip, but I didn't want to just give them, uh, like, you know, a confirmation on booking.com, so I planned out everything. I didn't want them to think about anything. I divided it into four stops, with the fourth stop being an overnight hotel, and I really tried to outline the history of the small towns they'd be visiting. I wanted to tell them that, like, Quirky little facts about the small businesses they would be visiting. So I love doing it so much. My parents had such a great experience on it. I decided to start a business out of it.

AI assessment note: “I wanted to give my parents a unique experience gift.”

Q So you, you took your, your lecture, essentially, and you typed it up into, into a book that, that you called Europe Through the Back Door, and did you, did you structure the book in just a, you know, clear way? It was like country by country. Is that how you organized it?

A In the beginning, the book was two halves. It was like two books bound together. The first half was all the skills. Packing, hotels, eating, transportation, communication, you name it. And then the last half were individual chapters on my 20 favorite discoveries. These are the back doors. So, I didn't need to write a guidebook to Paris or to Ireland. I just need to share my discoveries. And, um, For a long time, I kind of almost prided myself in not having to bog down on, you know, phone numbers and prices and hours and that kind of stuff. I just wrote creative articles to turn people on to my favorite corners, the south coast of Portugal, Dingle Peninsula in Ireland, Arrow Island up in Denmark, you know, the Mosul River Valley instead of the Rhine for your castles in Germany.

AI assessment note: “In the beginning, the book was two halves. It was like two books bound together.”

Q you're eating, like steaks and Malbec and, but really what you're doing is you're working in finance, and when you were in Argentina, like you're a year, two, three years in, what did you think you were going to do? Did you, were there moments where you're like, I think I'm going to settle here forever. I think I'm going to live here. This is going to be my home.

A Yes. There were moments of that. Um, the hardest part for me was I missed my family. Back then, it was harder to get home. There weren't direct flights to Dallas. You would go through Miami. Uh, I had my, my mom's mother, my grandmother passed away, and it was very hard for me to make it in time. I didn't for her funeral. That made a big impact on me, and then also my sister, my older sister, started having children, and I felt very far away because it was hard for me to see them. So, although I loved being there and in many ways was thinking maybe this should just be home forever, there was that pull as well to come back.

AI assessment note: “Yes. There were moments of that. Um, the hardest part for me was”

Q that you've done and, and really started with, with method is, um, you're not an expert necessarily in any of these things and vitamins or soap or, you know, first aid, but you go into, into spaces that you, where you find opportunity. So how do you, how do you think about, about starting businesses? I mean, do you, are you literally looking for where there might be an opportunity?

A Yeah. So I definitely have like a little bit of an academic approach to it. Unlike a lot of founders will follow something they're really passionate about, or they see a problem in the world they want to solve. I, I really start with like categories. And so I will, um, look for spaces that I think are a sea of sameness. Um, and that's kind of the clue dig here. And what I do is I look for what I call like the culture shift or the macro trend that that category is missing. So in the case of method, Uh, we found two is lifestyleing of the home. Like nobody thought about these products as a, as a form of self-expression in your home. I mean, you look at a dish soap more than you use it at the same time. This is back in 2000. You couldn't buy a natural product outside of a natural store. Um, but yet you were asked to pollute when you clean or use poison to make your home healthier. So those were the two macro trends of high design and deep sustainability that we built the brand off of. And so with, within each business, that's the opportunity I look for. And I kind of then, um, you know, Build a strategy around it, and to your point of like, you just got to get in and figure it out.

AI assessment note: “I really start with like categories. And so I will, um, look for spaces”

Q to tell you, I, I think it's a good ad, I mean, you're an entrepreneur, you're talking about this idea you had, but there's something about the ad that's polarizing, right? Which I actually don't think is a bad thing, because it got more attention than it probably would have gotten if it wasn't polarizing. Like, it was a YouTube ad. I mean, this ad has been parodied on Colbert.

A It's, it was in, so I have, um, Letterman and, and Seinfeld. Seinfeld, you know, saying, I just hate that Untucket guy, you know, walking down the street all smug. Then Letterman's first, Letterman's first appearance back after not having been on after leaving. His first line. Where have you been, Dave? What have you been doing? I've been looking to find a shirt that looked good untucked. You know, that's what, then you have Kimmel Colbert. Jim Gaffigan has an entire thing in his skit, a very funny, you know, thing about the untucked shirt. All of that, that is amazing, that stuff. It helps you. You're right. Everyone would pick their head up. Everyone would pick their head up and say, what is this lunatic talking about? Why does he care so much about his shirt?

AI assessment note: “You're right. Everyone would pick their head up”