The Exchanges

Q After you had the first plant up and running, how did you decide what next? Walk me through sort of like, how do you go from that? How do you determine what the next step is?

A Well, I think that people like to look back and, you know, kind of idolize and act as if there's, you know, there was a plan, it was a plan all along, when oftentimes it's, uh, you know, evolution of, of skills and an evolution of your thinking. And, you know, honestly, you know, for the first eight years, we only operated in Talladega, Alabama, where I'm originally from. And I knew it was important for us to Diversify geographically, but I was too scared to do it because it felt like such a big risk and such a big undertaking, and I didn't have the guts, quite frankly, to go in and to do it, and then COVID happened, and I worked with the team to figure out how we were going to work through it, and we were getting so slammed, and about two to three weeks into that process of working with it, Amazon stopped Third-party sellers from sending products into their warehouses, and at the exact same time, FedEx made the decision to cap the number of trailers that we were able to ship from our Talladega location because they were getting overloaded, basically saying, you know, we can't take any more business, and I was faced with the decision, um, do I either expand my geographic footprint, and I made the deal with FedEx to allow me Additional capacity if I was, would expand it out and not overload just their southeast network. Um, or do I just raise my prices like a lot of our competit…

AI assessment note: “I made the decision to open our Ogden Utah plant in May of 2020”

Q Is that what you mean when you're in a different business than three M or is there another nuance to that when it comes to air filters?

A Yeah. So, you know, three M, you know, best I can tell. I mean, they can, they can refute it if they want, but like, but they mostly sell through, um, retail. So like places like Walmart, Costco and whatnot. And like, that is their major distribution channel. And, you know, until this year we did literally zero retail. Um, so they did that and they sell, sell online, but that's basically, uh, The extent, and when they sell online, they're basically doing it through Amazon and Walmart and, and, you know, other retailers, which means they're effectively trucking in product to a distribution center. Then that distribution is taking it off the truck on taking it out of the case, case, um, packed boxes likely, then moving it around the country to their distribution network, then putting it back on the shelf, and then picking it again and putting it in another box and sending it to an end user. All of those are steps that we do not have in our supply chain, um, which means that the cost structure, um, for us versus, you know, them through that network is, is very different. Um, and, you know, my opinion, and in my opinion that a lot of these big companies actually subsidize companies like three M, um, um, maybe unknowingly, um, to compete on price on, on, um, online on some of these products because The economics of shipping them and putting them through their distribution networks j…

AI assessment note: “All of those are steps that we do not have in our supply chain”

Q I want to come back to the systems, but I really want to get specific on, like, how did you identify You're building a huge company. How do you identify the talent? Is it somebody who's done this before at a different scale, the scale you're trying to reach? Or is it somebody that has different traits that you're looking for? Or...

A I think that it evolves over time, but you, how I think about it now and where I found success, and I've worked with a lot with Dr. Garner about this actually, but I realized you need to find people that have done the task that you're looking to get done today or before. At least maybe it rhymes, maybe it's not exactly, but like if you want to hire a CFO, for example, um, I want to find somebody that has Done the things that I know we are lacking before. And so like in my example, I hired a CFO that came from US Foods that has a lot of distribution, um, managing distribution centers experience and really cost accounting and understanding, um, you know, zero-based budgeting and this kind of stuff. That's what we were lacking. That's what we needed. And so I went out and I searched for somebody that had done exactly that before. And, um, You know, that, that is how I chose him and, and, you know, he's been successful in his, his role with us so far. So I, I do think that historically I have made the mistake of hiring aspirationally because if I like, if I like somebody or I think, oh, they've got a lot of good energy and a lot of potential, then I have been burned by that so many times in my career and I really had to take a step back a bit and, and I think it's, you, you, For me at least, hiring somebody that's done what I'm looking to solve before is really kind of an important…

AI assessment note: “you need to find people that have done the task that you're looking to get done”

Q take that person that buys on Amazon and convert them into a direct relationship because with Amazon, I don't own the relationship with the customer. Amazon is the middle person and for better or worse, and I don't have an opinion on this because I don't sell on Amazon at all. They want to take that and have a direct relationship with that consumer. How do you think about that?

A Early on, I would spend some time thinking about that, and honestly, I realized, at least in our case, and maybe everybody's different, it's a fool's errand. I mean, it's like, um, there's a reason why customers choose to buy on Amazon. I mean, there's a funny story. Um, she'll maybe get mad at me for telling it, but I will. About two years ago, we needed some air filters at our house, and my wife actually ordered our air filters on Amazon, and it really irritated me at the time. Because I said, how in the world, why in the world would you go on Amazon and buy our air filters? But for her, she was just doing a chore, and she was looking for the easiest way to, or she wanted to solve that problem, and we buy a lot of stuff on Amazon, and so she just went and clicked order on Amazon, and so that's my wife that made the decision to go and buy our product on Amazon. So I, quite frankly, gave up on Spending any energy and worrying about it. Um, you know, I'm focused on building our brand and, um, making the best products we can and giving the best customer experience we can. And if people choose to buy on Amazon, then that's great. I'm, I don't care where people buy us. Early on, I thought I would never get into retail, to be honest with you. And, um, here I am, we just launched in 505 Walmarts and, um, really have a big retail strategy going forward. You know, 84% of, um, retail tr…

AI assessment note: “I realized, at least in our case, and maybe everybody's different, it's a fool's errand.”

Q What are the core fundamentals you use personally?

A Well, you know, when doing this YouTube series, I've actually thought about This a lot, and so I do have a few traits that I can speak about that are important to me, but the very first one, which I recommend for everyone, but I, I, whenever I say these things is really a reminder to myself more, more than it is advice, although I think it is great advice, but it's focus. Time and again in my life, um, or really as an entrepreneur, I should say, um, is I, I've had the tendency to get distracted by a shiny object or by potentially another New business model that sounds interesting or would be fun to pursue, and every time I've started one of those things, realize it's a lot harder than it probably looks, and I end up shutting it, shutting it down or, or refocusing on my core activity, and I'm always better for it, and, um, you know, like I started a freight business during COVID, and, um, that I could kind of squint and say made sense because I'm in the logistics business after all, right? But, It ended up being a big mistake, and I have a lot of examples like that, and every time that I've, like, really refined my focus, and I kind of, just kind of come back to the fundamentals, as we talked about, I've been better off, and so that's why, you know, having the focus around my mission, and why you hear me talk about it all the time, because I'm reminding myself, I got to stay foc…

AI assessment note: “the very first one, which I recommend for everyone... is focus.”

Q home. And importantly, throughout the podcast, you'll see the mindset of a founder in real time, whether you're starting a business scaling one or simply curious about turning a bold idea into reality. This conversation is packed with actionable insights from someone who's done it and is doing it. It's time to listen and learn. You said you felt like an outsider at Goldman. Why did you stay so long?

A Well, I'm stubborn, and honestly, I had manifested my job at Goldman in a way. Like, I really, it's something that for years I had idolized and made happen in my life. You know, I didn't go to an Ivy League school. I didn't come from a rich Northeastern type family that had, you know, family and private equity and all the traditional feeders that lead to a finance career normally. I went to the George Washington University. And about my sophomore or junior year, I really decided I wanted to go into finance, and the premier place to work was Goldman Sachs, and so I became very obsessed with working at Goldman Sachs, and there's no pathway from the George Washington University to Goldman Sachs, at least not at the time. You know, it's just not, not how they hired and recruited, and I studied economics and statistics in college, and you know, I was in Washington DC, and I just happened Um, to be really close with, like, the economics professors, because I was probably the top, you know, kind of, um, economics student in, in college, and did a paper on predicting currency crises, um, using a diffusion index kind of geeky, geeky thing, and my professors were really impressed by it, and kind of ended up forwarding it to somebody within Goldman that, that saw it, and then I ended up interviewing within the economics research department. So I ended up coming to New York and doing seven…

AI assessment note: “Well, I'm stubborn, and honestly, I had manifested my job at Goldman in a way.”

Q Talk to me about the lifestyle creep. You mentioned you've seen this before with people. Is there, without mentioning names or anything, is there an example that stands out to you that other people might be able to learn from who are listening to this? A lot of incredibly successful people listen to this.

A Yeah, well, you know, the examples that I've seen come back to something we spoke about earlier in the conversation, but, you know, when you're relying on other people or a paycheck, um, or one income stream to, um, pay your bills, and then it may be, like, if you're working in finance and you're making a few million dollars a year, then your lifestyle creeps up to that, and then you wake up one day and maybe, um, you know, you're, you're not as marketable as you, as you were before, and you don't have any other skills, and you don't have the muscle of Building, um, those new skills, um, and then you're in trouble, and I had, I know a number of people that have lived that because it's easy to think, oh, this is going to go on forever, and then it inevitably doesn't, and even if you have a lot of money, it goes back to that scarcity mindset. Because you're so afraid of losing it, you can't spend it, you can't invest it, you can't, like, take the risk that you need in order to be able to go out and build Build that lifestyle again, so to speak, and so most of the people that I've seen that have been impacted have come from, like, the finance world that, you know, that, that is now declining as a share of GDP, and so, you know, it's just contracting. There's not as much money as there, as there was before, and then a lot of those people get to a point where then they're not employ…

AI assessment note: “if you're working in finance and you're making a few million dollars a year”

Q Why do people buy air filters? Like what makes them buy your filter over three M? Is it price? Is it convenience? Is it?

A I like how you put in versus three M our, our arch enemy, or at least they, they, they think so. Although we're actually very different games. You know, there are a lot of factors and it's a simple question that is a little more complex. Um, take a little bit of a step back. You know, one of the things that makes us, makes us the most unique I think, is that we sell to both the residential and to the business-to-business market. So, like, business-to-business is actually our fastest growing segment now, where we sell, you know, direct to hospitals, hotels, you know, gyms, you know, you name it. And, you know, all of our product that we manufacture is geared towards that commercial customer, and so it's, you know, a, you know, Higher, higher quality beverage board and, um, you know, a higher, a double-sided frame and like little nuance type, type things that really make it a quality product that can stand up, you know, even if it was put on an outside, you know, air handler unit. But that's the exact same product that we're selling to, um, residential, um, and to, um, to, to consumers. And we're able to do that at a comparable and oftentimes cheaper price than three M, um, You know, I'm, I'm not knocking them at all. I'm not looking for a fight with it. It's just, but they're, they're just, they and a lot of the other companies that, um, sell into the residential world only sell…

AI assessment note: “we're able to do that at a comparable and oftentimes cheaper price than three M”

Q I have a theory, maybe you can, you can correct me if I'm wrong, but people who are obsessive and information gathering all the time And are hands-on, tend to have a lot more confidence. Do you think that they have the confidence because they have the information?

A Yeah, the more you know how things work, the more confident you become that you're able to kind of turn the system in your favor, I guess, you know, so I think that there's, there's a lot of truth in that. I mean, like, I, I definitely have proven that to myself time and time again. Um, I think that there are People, um, that are doers, and then there are people that just let life happen to them, I guess, and I think that because I've been able to, over time, build more and more skills, more and more, um, resources, or like, you know, just compound things positively, that you get more and more confidence as, as time goes on, and that comes from experimenting and going down rabbit holes and And that kind of stuff, and I think that, um, that lends itself ultimately to, to confidence. I mean, you know, I see so many people, so many friends even, like, that from my finance days that, you know, you look at and make, they made a lot of money, um, on a relative basis, and, um, some of them, you know, still make a lot of money, but don't have the, the, the confidence, and I think it's because when you're working for somebody else or relying on other people to, um, You know, pay you or validate you that you never really get the confidence that you can build as an entrepreneur when you're kind of out there making things happen on your own. And I think that, um, for me at least, that's be…

AI assessment note: “Yeah, the more you know how things work, the more confident you become”

Q and trying to figure that out at night. You were doing all the admin work, all the marketing. That's often, my friend Brent Beshore calls this the ceiling of brute force. And it's where a lot of businesses get stuck, a lot of small businesses. It's the limitation on the entrepreneur. And how did you decide when to hire people, when to go big, when to take the next step?

A You as an entrepreneur have to really understand your business if you want to be able to scale and do anything big. And it's almost impossible, in my opinion, especially when you're smaller, to hire somebody that That's going to build the systems that you need to really do something big, and you kind of have to do it yourself, and at least that has been my experience, and, and, you know, I think that it sounds great to say, hey, I'm just going to go and hire somebody to do all of these things, but the reality is that if you really want to do something big, and if you want to do something different that there's not an established playbook for, which is, which is what we have done, then it's, Your, it's your responsibility as the entrepreneur to go and figure all of that out, and, you know, we have a mutual friend in, um, Dr. Garner, and I actually have been working with her for, um, about two years now, um, and I've really enjoyed that, but the, um, one thing that she and I have been talking about a lot lately, um, is that, you know, I think that I'm at my best when I'm out there You know, building new systems, new frameworks, and getting them started to the point that, and solidified to the point that then I can bring in other people to actually manage them and improve them going forward. And so that's the framework that I like to think about it. And, you know, I only know my l…

AI assessment note: “solidified to the point that then I can bring in other people to actually manage them”

Q I want to rewind a little bit back to when you were doing all the jobs, you were traveling, you were spending all week in the factory, and then at night, you're sort of doing the other stuff. You didn't, you came from Goldman. You didn't know anything about DTC marketing. How did you, how did you learn marketing?

A It's not a hundred percent true in that I've been an entrepreneur since I was probably 10 years old, and I was born in 1983 and, you know, really came of age in the nineties when the internet was just starting to come up, and so I, I always had side hustles and things that I was working on, and in my teenage years, I was, you know, basically assembling computers and selling them on eBay, and my, my eBay screen name was, um, Momentum Corp, and, um, I've always been a believer in momentum, I guess, from the early days, and because I just think momentum in life and, and in business is, Is so important, and I fight to maintain momentum always, and anytime I lose momentum, I hate it, but then I remember I got to go in and create that momentum again. We can maybe dig into that later. But, you know, I always was kind of, um, tinkering around with online businesses, um, and actually in 2007, I had just moved to the trading desk from my economics research Desk. And, um, that was the beginning of the financial crisis. And I saw a lot of turmoil and saw a lot of people around me starting to get fired. And I was convinced I was going to lose my job. And my wife was in medical school at the time, and we had not taken on any debt for her medical school because I was paying for it, and I was determined not to take on any debt, and I started a side hustle where I was effectively an affiliate f…

AI assessment note: “It's not a hundred percent true in that I've been an entrepreneur”

Q I love that. Talk to me about the freight decision. What, what went into that? How did you realize it wasn't working? What did you do when you realized it wasn't working?

A Huh. you want to rub some salt in my, my wounds. You know, I could, I could actually give you a couple of other examples too, but freight, long story short in COVID, I'm talking in 2020, freight became very hard to source and it was very expensive because there was just so much demand to, to, to move this stuff. And again, a bit hubristic, I would argue if I was looking back at it, I thought, well, you know, I'm so good at this business thing, right? How do, how hard could, uh, um, running a freight business be? And I have a lot of, um, demand for freight, so I can just do my own freight and then sell the excess to other people. And, um, also in the U.S. tax code, there's a bit of an aside. There is a section that basically allows for accelerated depreciation. And what that means is that if you bought a A million dollars of equipment, like trucks, then you could write off that million dollars against your taxes in that year. Um, and it's actually, it actually still exists currently this year. You can only do 60% with Trump back in office. My guess is it'll go back up to a hundred percent, but it's, uh, it's for something that you don't see talked about a lot, but like if I, if I bought a million dollars of, of, of trucks, I could effectively, um, borrow a million dollars from a bank because Because, um, they love to do, they love to finance against trucks. And you could also, y…

AI assessment note: “freight became very hard to source and it was very expensive because there was just so much demand”

Q Why do you think we're attracted to strong missions and visions?

A I think that we, as human beings, need to, um, have a purpose in life and have a reason to, to wake up every day, and I've seen that You know, both, both at high level, um, executive type people all the way down to, um, people that work on manufacturing lines that really take their job seriously and really find meaning and fulfillment and, you know, working for a company that, um, you know, has a, has a mission and a purpose. And I think that, um, it's, uh, the X factor that, um, gets people excited, um, To come to work and to do, to, to go the extra mile any given day. But I just think it's how we're wired. I mean, I think that, um, we're not wired to get money. I mean, I think that, like, money is a, is, is something that's important for everyone and, and, um, you know, is, you know, obviously is, is, is an important factor in anybody's life. But, you know, that's not enough to, you know, solve people's problems or to give them fulfillment more, most importantly. Like, there's so many people oftentimes that were given money, um, That, um, are actually miserable, and I've seen that so many times in my life, and I, I'm so, um, I, I tried to avoid that so, so much because I, I just see people that have so much money that are so miserable because they don't have any fulfillment. They have no reason actually for existing or waking up every day, and they know that. Like, deep down,…

AI assessment note: “we, as human beings, need to, um, have a purpose in life”

Q Well, let's double click on that for a second. You said growing quickly at filter by was a one way door. How did you think about that decision?

A Well, I don't know that I said that explicitly, but I don't know that that would be untrue. You know, I committed to my entrepreneurial journey fully, um, when I made that decision, and so for me, it's ultimately a decision that I knew that I was going to own completely, and there was no failing, and so, you know, if I was going to frame it in the one-way door world, it would be around that. It's like, I'm burning all the boats and I'm all in on my vision. And, you know, there was, you know, long convoluted story about how I ultimately got into that, that business. But when I left my job at Goldman and, you know, I didn't know exactly what I was going to do, but I was determined to make it successful and to make it something big. And, you know, a big motivation for me going so public with my personal brand in the last couple of months is Really about burning the boats behind me because, you know, I'm on a mission to build the world's leading indoor air quality company, and, you know, I don't want there to be any other option for me, and I know if I come here, and I tell you that, and I tell the people that are watching that, that I've effectively burned all the boats, and I'm fully committed to that because I'm going to wake up every day and work towards that bigger vision, and so that was a very calculated one-way door As you put it, because I don't want to give myself any oth…

AI assessment note: “It's like, I'm burning all the boats and I'm all in on my vision.”

Q So where did you land on this? What's your business operating system?

A For me, it is different based off departments. It's like every, every department is different, and that's, that was kind of the nuanced thing that I found. So like how we operate Within our marketing department is very different than how we operate in our manufacturing facilities, for instance. And so I have a, one person who I should mention is I have a chief of staff, um, named Coran, who actually, um, gave me COVID when, um, she, on her second day of the job, um, when I'd hired her here in, in New York, just before, um, COVID, just before the COVID lockdowns, and, and we always laugh because she gave me COVID, and, um, she was my executive assistant at the time. And then was very instrumental in helping me manage the people part of the, of the, of our business through COVID up to now. And, um, so now she has the title of chief of staff. And, um, so she's the one that would kind of be responsible for helping me in this organizational structure more or less. And so, you know, we really, in the last couple of years have started to outline how we expect different departments to Operate and behave. It's like in our manufacturing, you know, where, like, some of our manufacturing plants have 350 people or whatnot there, um, that do various functions, um, from shipping to actually manufacturing, um, to material management and this kind of stuff. Like, we actually built out, like, a …

AI assessment note: “For me, it is different based off departments.”

Q We're down like eight levels in the inception here. I want to come back to marketing in a second, but what have you worked with Dr. Garner? What are the lessons that you've learned in terms of, uh, management level hiring?

A The most important thing that I get from her, and I would recommend from, for anybody, um, to consider is, first of all, I'm a bootstrapped entrepreneur. I own my own business. I don't have a board of directors, and so I don't have accountability that's baked in, right? And I ultimately Have the power to make effectively any decision within my business, and you know, and that's great, super important for me, but also accountability is very important, and having her in my life was me forcing that accountability, or one of the ways that I was forcing that accountability, because I know if I tell her in a week that I'm going to focus on X, Y, or Z next week, that she's going to be asking about it, and the next week we're asking for an update, and I want to be able to Um, deliver on that because that's just how I'm built. And so for me, the most important, um, you know, thing with her has been, has been building that accountability. Um, but then the second part of it is having somebody to bounce around things that are maybe going on in my head and help me to become self-aware about, you know, what I deep down know the right answer is because I think so often we know in our gut and like the actions that we need to be taking, um, And, you know, they say that the easiest person to fool is yourself at the end of the day, and so it's so easy to talk yourself into, um, believing, you kno…

AI assessment note: “the most important, um, you know, thing with her has been, has been building that accountability.”