Every Step to Start an Ecommerce Business Revealed: Operators Build (E1)

If you've been listening and watching us for the last few years, I am sure you have asked this question. Can these guys build a nine-figure brand if they started over today? Or are they just lucky? Well, you're about to find out. Introducing Operator's Build is a new series where four ECOM Titans and a new 2D to C founder are going to build a supplement brand in public. From the ground up, and yes, we're starting a supplement company, and our reputations may even be at stake. We're going to document the entire thing. And we are here to learn as much as we are here to share and teach real failures, real fights, actual fights, real decisions, real wins on camera. There are 10 episodes that are coming. And number one, how do you start an e-commerce brand? Number two, how did we come up with the product for this brand? Number three, how to start a supplement company? This is a supplement company, after all, for the design of the product, the packaging, everything. You can watch us do this real time, five. From the first idea, how do you get to your first PO, that initial order, the big bet? Six, setting up the subscription business. This is a subscription for his company. This is our first time doing this. We want to take you through the whole thing. Seven, all things AI, we've built this company to be AI native from the start. Everybody's talking about it. We're actually going to show you how to do it. Eight, all things growth and marketing from launch to how we're thinking about scale, channels, the whole thing from scratch. Nine is all things offer, price, promo. And ten is the launch itself. At a season one, you're going to want to watch every episode. We have built nine figure brands before, but can we do it again? Today, boys, today is the how to start an e-commerce business episode. And for those of you that have watched and listened to us for a while, this is going to sound like a strange episode for us to do. Everybody here runs a big brand. Why are we going back in time and saying, how do we start an e-commerce business? Well, today is also episode one of a new series that we are calling operators build. And you're going to watch us build a brand in real time. And everybody that's on this episode are the co-founders of this brand. We've got Curtis, who is a new face. We have Sean, Mike, Cody, and myself. Today, we're going to go through the category we're building in. We're going to talk about some of the basics of how we thought about choosing this category, why we're doing this right now. Why are we going to record this in documented public? That seems kind of risky. So we should hit on that. And then after this episode, this is like a present day episode. We're going to take you back in time for a few. And we're going to go all the way back to last year at the beginning of this whole journey where we started working on the product. Because those of you that have done this before know that product takes a long-ass time. So if we were to try to record that, there would be nothing to talk about for like 12 months. So this is today. Today is the how to start an e-commerce business episode. This is operators build episode one. And if you've been following us for a while, I hope you like it. We are going to try not to make a fool of ourselves. I think is what Mike and I have agreed, as like priority number one, let's not make a fool of ourselves. Speak for yourself, Matt. Speak for myself, well, dude. So why don't we start off for everybody, Curtis, since you're the new face here. Why don't you start off and tell people the category we're building in and why you wanted to do this? Because we're all here because of you. This is your product idea. We liked it. We decided to back it. And then we can kind of go from there and talk about how we're going to do it all. Put me on the spot. Yeah, no worries, man. Yeah. Well, I appreciate you guys having me, and why did we tackle sleep? So I think the conversation started with myself and Matt were talking, I don't know, year and a half ago. I've been in the health and wellness space for the last 23 years, seeing the trends, everything from recovery, sleep, protein. And what we know is that over the last, let's say six or seven years, things to wearables, like aura, whoop, and even products like eight sleep, people care about their sleep. It's a big problem, it's a massive problem. If you look at, it's a one-graph business. I mean, if you look at the rise of anxiety and how that's correlated to the lack of sleep and awareness of sleep, and every is measuring it now, but they can't figure out how to shift and change it besides going to bed early, I guess. And so when we looked at it, we looked at also all the supplement brands that exist. And most of the time, the brands that win, they have a category, or they have a product or a skew that's either magnesium-focused, sleep-focused, recovery-focused, but no one's really built a brand around sleep itself. So you have all these brands that have multiple skews, but no one really actually owns the sleep and recovery side of it. And so when we looked at it, we're like, why don't we actually explore what that looks like? I think another factor in categories that for years, let's call it the last 40 years, people have dialed in their morning hygiene, morning routine, whether it's brushing their teeth, taking their supplements in the morning and getting fit and active. And no one really actually manages, owns or has mastered the sleep hygiene. So why don't we actually introduce a product that people can get regular, build habits around, and solve one of the biggest pain problems and pain points that people have in today's world, which is the sleep side of it. And that's kind of how this started. And Sean, from that, maybe when you first heard the idea for the product, because I think I brought my initial like, hey, I think we should try this with you. What about this product category? Did you like? And not like? Yeah. Well, yeah. First, you know, we're building a new product from scratch, Matt, you hit this. All of us have a ran nine figure brands currently running nine figure brands, and are basically I have the easy life, you know what I mean? I have an idea. I send it over on Slack, someone takes care of it. And some of the comments were like, look, these guys are out of touch. They're like, you know, we're in the, we're in the trenches, launching a new brand today, 1 million, 5 million, 10 million, does the operators advice really apply to us? So we said, hey, we're going to do it too. Can a bunch of CEOs remember how to log into Facebook ads? We're going to tell you got today. Can a bunch of CEOs actually set up email campaigns? Look, I think it's a great time to be building brands the best time ever. And we have learned from the failures of simple modern Ridge, Pila, Jones Road. Like all of these businesses have like the same problem, right? It's most of us are in Durables, which means we get money one time for a transaction, and then we have to beg those people to come back. And the best brands in Durables might get somebody back 20, 30% of the time. And all of us love the Zach Stux of the world, the Jordan Monards of the world who have launched these subscription brands and just scale them to the moon very, very fast. So we all want to taste of that. So I've been investing in looking to do more subscription brands, Ridge, Long, Skull, Culture, Internally. It is just another shot on goal for that, right? It's like health and wellness is the hottest category. Obesity is solved. So that's $20 billion in spend that has to go someplace else. And what are the failures of Ridge that we can port over here? It's like let's not sell something that's guaranteed for life. Let's sell something you put in your body so people have to buy it over and over again. So that's what drew me to this. One, I love the challenge. I want to see us launch a business that actually makes some amount of money. And then two, you know, right now there's a wave happening and we should ride that. Cody, why are you excited about this project? So I'm going to say that I'm coming in later. So I first of all told you guys, but I really appreciate you guys letting me in because I'm coming in later. But I saw Matt a few months back at the Meta conference and he was, we were catching up and he was telling me about it and I was like so jealous because I knew in my mind that I was going to step down from Jones Road and I'm like, this sounds like literally perfect for me. So I really appreciate you guys coming in. Kind of just good timing. I didn't even, you know, know there was an opportunity, but obviously I, you know, tweeted last week and stepped down. I just was, again, like Sean same thing. I mean, you know, this was my first business. This was a very big business for my first time doing this and made every mistake in the world. Myself, I was just also not enjoying it and trying to be just like honest about what I want to be doing and was just not enjoying what everything that comes or a lot of what comes with being a CEO of a non-figure business and just missed what I would consider the fun stuff, right? Like, yeah, I want to make money and all that, but I also want to like enjoy it. And so for me, like this next phase is about, you know, doing really fun things like things that just like fire me up to like wake up in the morning and start building with people that, you know, I can learn from and get energy from. And so this is kind of a perfect opportunity. I mean, same thing. I always told people that like if I'm ever going to do a D to C brand again, like it's got to be subscription, like bootstrapped, you know, bootstrapped company, like you can't go, you know, bleeding. You got to be profitable on first purchase and it just is playing these days is playing the game on hard mode. So I'm excited. It's like, it feels perfect for me. Like, I don't know if you guys noticed, I have like a like strength conditioning background. It's actually like where my wife and I met, we used to own like a few gyms at physical therapy clinic. So like really passionate about health and, you know, health and all all that stuff. Obviously, really into subscription. And like, I just want to go back to building. Like I, I've been working on this for about a week and a half and like just having more fun than I've had in like a year or two years, obviously, I'm like really AI-pilled. So that's a big, a big part of this as well, and then obviously excited to learn from you guys. So it just feels, it feels perfect timing, feels perfect opportunity. Sean, Cody has not forgotten how to log in to Facebook just so well. - He's the only one here who knows how to do it. - We'll see, I haven't done it yet. - You know Cody, we're gonna tell everybody you quit Jones Road for this. So if this ends up working out, that'll be the story. - Huge pay cut, like huge pay cut. - Yeah, huge pay cut. (laughing) - Yeah, you're making zero. (laughing) - But Zero direct reports and that's what matters. - Totally. - You have been listening to us talk for years about building nine-figure durable goods brands. Hexclad, Ridge, Simple Modern, Pila. When we sat down to build Winks, there was never a question it had to be a subscription brand. And being the veterans we are, we could work with anyone, but we decided to work with Ski-O to build Winks. Working with the team over at Ski-O has been awesome. We get to see all of the stuff that the fastest growing CPG brands are actually doing to acquire more subscribers and keep them longer. My favorite example of this has been incentivizing new customers to go from a monthly subscription to a quarterly subscription right after their first purchase, but before they get their first order. The team at Ski-O has been sharing insights on how much in-portal flexibility to give subscribers when to change frequency, when to offer product swaps, when to do gifting, what rewards should look like? What is cancel flow optimization? The list is freaking endless and they have shared it all. They have been incredible to work with. They are bringing so much value to this partnership. Almost feels a little unfair. If you run a subscription brand, you should be talking with the team over at Ski-O. They know their stuff. - This is still not a real company. So like, you know, this is episode one for everybody. Like we haven't launched it yet. We still got samples. I know one knows what they're really supposed to be doing. So this is very much like the early, you're seeing the cake being made. That's what people have asked for on this series. People wanna see us make mistakes, be stupid, fight. That's all gonna happen here. So it's gonna be some great content. - Yeah, I think you actually had a good point. So like one of the things that we're gonna try to do as we build this, when we say build in public, like we are going to record real work, right? So like when we talk channel strategy, when we talk, even creative, creative supply chain, how are we working with creators? We're just gonna record all that. So for some people, it's probably gonna be a little boring, but for people who are in the weeds, it's gonna be about as real as you could possibly get with how a business gets built. Like none of us have any roles. We have a company formed. We have decided to fund the company ourselves. So like all of us are putting our own money into this business and that's kind of how we're starting it. So like it is very much bootstrapped. And if you're watching and you've been watching or listening for a long time, like there are things that we have that somebody's starting from scratch to build a new e-con business would not have. Like we all know each other. We all have network, right? Like that stuff is an advantage. We're not gonna lie about that. But we're gonna try to keep this as like true and honest as possible. Like literally the last week and a half Cody and I have just been smashing out a bunch of stuff. Like we're using AI to do as much as we can 'cause we don't have any employees. We don't just tend on having any employees for a little while. Like we're gonna try to keep this as like scrappy and in the dirt and in the weeds as possible. I think Sean might even build some emails for us. Like we're gonna see what Sean remembers how to do. But yeah, this is, I think he had a good point, Sean. This is like, this is fresh. This is about a zero as you get. - Yeah, you know, we should probably just think about the Q&A we're gonna get. Okay, you said we bootstrapped it. How much is it gonna cost? If you wanted to launch a subscription brand from scratch right now, what are you spending? - Yeah, so I think what we've agreed on is we're gonna put, well let's start with like, from the beginning. When we went to go build the product, which we're gonna do an entire episode just on product, we committed $100,000 to creating the product, testing it. You're gonna see, you will see a full episode just on product because we put a lot of work into the product. Like that's Curtis's sort of genius and he knows that space really well. But I think Sean, like all in, we're probably gonna put about $500,000 into this business just to get it rolling. So I think for people listening like, you could probably do it for less. It doesn't mean that we need $500,000 on day one, but that's the amount of capital that we are committing to giving this a real shot. - So guys, we're putting $500,000 into this. $100,000 is going to product. $400,000 is going to everything else. At the end of those $400,000, when they've been spent, what does success look like to have everyone re-op and put more money into this thing? What are we looking for? - Mike, you wanna start? - Yeah, I think this is actually one of the places where I hope to contribute. What we've learned with these businesses is that the income statement, the P&L, of like how much money am I making today, doesn't necessarily tell you about the value you're creating. It's all about looking at the economics of the user. How much are we acquiring users for? What's their 30, 60, 90 day, 180 day user value, user profit, and that you really hone in on those metrics to help you understand, are you building something or you're just kind of flushing money down the toilet? So I think for me, when we burn through that $500,000, if we're seeing really good signs in terms of that spread between what we acquire a user for and what we think they'll be worth in the first half year of their life, year of their life, then I'm gonna be really excited but more capital behind it. But even if we're acquiring users, if that spread doesn't look good, I think myself, for sure, but I think all of us are going to be pretty skeptical about putting more money in until we can figure out how to get that compressed. So to me, that's what I'm gonna have my eye on is the individual user economics. And I think that's probably one of the more interesting things about this compared to simple water. I'm a simple water, I'm like we had to make money very first purchase, right? And here we know that it's pretty much impossible for us to make money on the first purchase. So the analytics and the projecting out of user values actually are gonna matter a lot. - That's actually okay. So maybe Cody, I'll go to you on this one 'cause I think the basic question is like what does it even mean to start an e-commerce business or a brand? Because what Sean's hitting on it, what Mike's hitting on is we're gonna seed the company with money. This is what every business has to do. Whether it's like $5,000 or in our case, we're putting in a half a million. But you still have to decide on what you're trying to build at the beginning, right? So maybe Cody, for you, when you heard about this or when you started getting involved, like did you look at this, like if you're gonna say like what does it mean to start an e-commerce business? Is this just a Shopify store? Do you think multi-channel, like how wide and how big do you go initially in your thinking about how to build the brand? Versus like day one, what am I trying to accomplish? - Well, I first came in and like wanted to know, like didn't want to have any opinions 'cause you guys had been at this and I had been thinking about it so I don't want to be like, oh yeah, we should do this, whatever. So I just wanted to like understand and what was cool was like nothing had been decided yet. And you know, there were opinions on, oh, should we just go D to C? Should we go TikTok shops? Should we go Amazon? Like I think that's the biggest thing is we just have to align on like how fast are we trying to grow this thing? And like what does success look like after that? And I think part of that is like what will decide if we continue? It's like are we all aligned, right? Like we've probably all been maybe hopefully not, but we've all been part of businesses where co-founders aren't aligned. And it's like I want this outcome, I want this outcome, like we need that. I think that's a really big one. And then we also need a product market fit. But I guess we should talk about that. It's like what does success look like? I don't know if we have clear ones or I know Matt, you and I have talked about it. It's like, we'll see. It was like the first question. Maybe we just, oh yes. Yeah, maybe we just bootstrap it. Maybe we go and raise like something like that. But I think we definitely need alignment. We definitely need to not hate each other by the end of whatever that time period is or the 500K. And then like, yeah, we should get alignment on how fast we're trying to grow and like what does success and a few years look like. Yeah, I think the first thing that Cody asked me was all right, how fast do you want to go, right? 'Cause I think that's like you see some companies are like vertical lines straight up and they just choose to do that. But I mean, no matter what they found some sort of form of product market fit, they got what Mike is hitting on. Like they understood their CAC to LTV, they figured out the unit economics and then they just went blazing fast. I don't know, like do you guys have a strong opinion on this? But my answer to Cody when he asked like, how fast are you trying to go and what's the outlet? What's the goal? My gut was like as fast as we can, that's reasonable, right? So like, and then I think there is a question of the faster you want to go, you got to solve this working capital problem. And this is like fundamental to any. Like if you're beginning, if you're starting at zero in consumer and you're like, I'm going to start a Shopify store in Amazon business, a TikTok shops business. Like whatever your first channel is, working capital is like a major problem. We've talked about in the show a lot. The faster you grow, the more money you need. So I don't know Mike, if you have a strong opinion here, but let's say this is some strong opinions. My strong opinion is that we need to set a constraint of we're going to grow as fast as we can within this constraint. Because I think that if you don't have some kind of like lines painted on the field, then it's just kind of chaos, you know? Like so, I think we should set a constraint. And whether that's $500,000 or we say, hey, we'll go up to a million dollars or whatever. We know one thing to be true. The faster you try and grow, the less efficient you get. You lose efficiency as you try and go faster. And so that I think that when you're saying, well, how many miles per hour are we trying to drive? You really have to just kind of have some kind of efficiency constraint that says, well, we're not going to go past X. So. But for me, I think we will want to walk through, like, how much capital is kind of our maximum capital in, because, and this is the problem that a lot of e-commerce businesses run into. You might say, "Well, hey, my enterprise value, my revenue is growing, but if I'm having to burn two, three, five million dollars to get that enterprise value up, there's going to be a point where even with this group, we're like, hey, we don't want to be out of pocket this much cash, even if we're accruing this much enterprise value over on the other side." And so, anyway, that'd be my thought, is that, like, I think this first $500,000 probably gets us stood up, and hopefully gets us to a point where we really understand the numbers. Then we can kind of say, all right, in light of this, how much more do each one of us want to contribute, and then let's make this work. Like, this is our amount of money that we're giving ourselves to get to kind of sustaining cash flows, and we're going to grow as fast as we can within that. And one of the reasons why I think that discipline is really good is that the point of this exercises that we're trying to show, how much money does it cost to start an e-commerce business? How do you actually stand up an e-commerce business? How do you make decisions about growth rate? And I think it's generally unhelpful if our answer is just throw more money at it. Like, we have the ability to throw more money at this that other people don't have. And so, if I'm just like watching this episode, and if our solution to every problem or every difficulty we run into is like, hey, we all just contributed another million dollars to the entity, then what does that teach me about starting a company or building a company? So I think it's most helpful to other people, but also I think it's just what I've learned is like most of the mistakes I've made as an operator is not setting enough constraints because I got so excited about growth. Huh. Okay. What does it mean to start an e-commerce brand in 2026? First, we should identify that we are all mercenaries on this. We are not martyrs, right? And what I mean by that is we are looking for success and we're taking an educated guess on what that success is going to be, right? You know, element, that guy, he's a martyr. He was going to do that business if he made no money or if he's a billionaire, right? Like he really believes he's going to go out there. He's like, people need salt. He'd be on the street corner selling salt like it was methamphetamine, right? Now, to contrast this, we're going to be mercenaries in this business. We think subscription is necessary. We think sleep is a great category. We think we have the right formula to make this work. What that means though, is if it doesn't work, we're going to shut it down because we're not going to throw endless money at this thing and just pray for it to work, right? So what Mike's talking about with setting the discipline, what we're looking for is, is there a clear path to a $100 new customer pack? That is the gold standard, right? Now, if we get $200, I think it's still a winner, right? But like if we're out here spending $1,000 to acquire a customer, like the churn will just, it'll never pencil out, right? We're okay losing this $500,000 because at the end of the three or six months that it takes to build this business, we're going to be like, okay, the cohorts are worth x. That's what makes us mercenaries in this business, right? We're really trying to make those numbers actually pencil out. So what does an e-commerce business mean in 2026? So you're thinking about those things rationally. We are not in the irrational free money error anymore, like e-commerce is not going to the moon like COVID. You actually have to be like, principled in this approach and deploying this money as a weapon. So that's that's how I think about it. Shoplift is a CRO platform built for e-commerce operators. And the only one that's Shopify plus certified. We're using them for the new brand, the operators ourselves are launching. We've built a free CRO resource hub at shoplift.ai/operators. Real conversion benchmarks by category, the seasonal patterns, most tools hide, and practical CRO for how you actually run your store. Two ways in. Get your free benchmarks or start a free trial at shoplift. Go to shoplift.ai/operators. What about you? Do you have a strong take on like what needs to be true to keep going? In this? Well, I don't want to repeat everything that Mike, Sean, and yourself said about LTV and CAC. But if you think about, we have an opportunity to evaluate what product market fit is. If we can nail some level of product market fit by the time our first lump invests into the company, I think that's when we're going to have to evaluate if we move forward or not. Also, what's worth noting is that we have a unique advantage in the fact that we're starting a business with AI extremely relevant. What can we do to implement tools, agents, platforms that are AI driven, that we can keep our costs down, and that's another reason why I think to Mike's point that we can't go super fast. We don't want to go super slow, but what we can do is we can build in real time using AI tools so we can keep our head count down and be efficient, be effective, and build something in real time to show people that you might not need 500 grand to start a business, but can you implement AI tools to be more efficient, more effective and build an AI first company? Because you couldn't do what we can do today three, five years ago. That's actually great point. One of the things Mike and Sean that we've talked about, I know Cody and I talked about too, is like, of the money we're putting in, we want as much of this to go to marketing as possible. We really want to take that capital and go and test and just basically try as many things as we have to to figure out PMF, whatever we define as PMF, to figure out what CAC and TV look like. Curtis is hitting on product market fit that PMF would be what you hear a lot of us say. Mike, give us your take on what do you think that means? You started a supplement, not even supplement, but you literally have a product with Trevvy in market. You're the furthest ahead on this out of all of us right now. What does that look like for Wynx? Yeah, for sure. Well, I think there's two elements of product market fit and one is, are you solving a pain point problem and the market really is looking for solution and do you have a great solution? Do you have a great product? I think the great product piece, you just have to get your product out there. You have to sell some to people. You have to look at the reviews. You have to look at refund rates. You have to look at a churn retention, things like that that we're going to look at. We just don't know. We try. We'll try obviously to design a great product and I think that that actually can be one place where we're elite is being able to come to market with a truly great product. I think the days of like, "Hey, I'm just going to show up with a so-so product and meta is going to power this thing to be awesome." I just think those are over. I think you've got to have great product, plus great marketing, plus you really have to be addressing a need and we're going to find out if that's true and really the thing that will probably show that over time, like I said, is retention and your customer acquisition cost because my intuition for having talked to all the people that we know is that you're going to have insane customer acquisition cost if you're not getting some good word of mouth and that if you're not retaining people, if you're not getting people on subscription and retaining them, the economics just can't work because you just cannot make it work with acquiring people that make one or two purchases. You really have to have people that stick around. I actually think in going back to the discussion about how much money is this going to cost to start this business. I actually don't think we're going to burn through $400,000 really quick. I think the experience is actually going to be, we're going to feel like we're going quite slow at first because until you start to get some economics, you're really not going to want to ramp your spend at all. Another thing that is worth talking about here is what is the cost in time? All of us have very expensive time and so I actually don't think burning capital, burning money is really the bigger risk here. I think it's that it just takes us a lot of burning time to get to figuring out what it's going to take to get the product market fit. We're also doing something in a category that a lot of people are trying to do this. I think that this is obviously the playbook that is out there right now and a bunch of people are trying to replicate the strategy that Pablo Escobar proved that selling powder is one of the best business models in the world. If you can find a way, it's like the perfect Decomers product. If you can sell a powder, it's super light, it doesn't spoil. That's perfect from the fulfillment and super high margin. There's a lot of reasons why this is such an attractive category, but we've talked about this on Nine Ops all the time. The more attractive the category, the harder it is to get the product market fit because there's so many people that are going to compete in that space. I'm fired up. This is putting it on insane difficulty mode and saying with our chops that we've developed running all these companies, can we come in and can we compete with everybody in the world that is going after this in Ecomers and build something of value? I'm super excited to find out what the answer to that question is. I guess on the other side of that difficulty though is large tam, right? It is like sleep is a massive market. Yeah, it's like I just said, direct relationship, the bigger the tam, the more people that are going to be, it is going to be the absolute octagon here and I'm here for it. If you don't love competition, why start a business? Why be an entrepreneur? Part of the reason why I'm doing this is I want more competition in my life. This is my drug of choice is actually pushing myself. What can we do? I love the idea of trying to do that with you. this group. So I want to hit on, there's a few things that we have decided to do, starting this business that I think is relevant for people who are going to be listening. So the first, actually, let's start with what we did, what we're doing, what we're not doing. So what we're not doing is this is not a drop shipping business. This is, we have bought inventory. It is at a 3PL. So we are using a 3PL. We are not, none of us are using our own warehouses. We're going the normal route. It's at a 3PL. We are starting direct consumer. So this is like Shopify, meta ads out of the gate. We're running a playbook that we're all very familiar with. And we are, I guess, initially, also just single channel. So we're not trying to boil the ocean with our go-to-market. We'll do a whole episode on why we are choosing this, like around what our channel strategy is and how we're thinking of launching. But I think one of the key things when you're starting any business is like, we actually, while we know the market's big and we know powders are great and we understand all that, we also don't know what messages are going to connect with customers. So we don't know who our initial customer is. We don't know like that beachhead persona. We don't know the ones at scale. So like what Mike is hitting on is it is a little slow to figure some of that out of the gate, right? Like we're not just going to come out, hit the gas pedal. It's like, no, but there's a lot of discovery and in sort of like marketing that we have to go do just to figure out who the hell we're selling to. And we got to figure out roles with the team. Like what are the ways that we play together? We got like, you know, five cooks in the kitchen. And so like we've got a ton of chef expertise. But like somebody's got to run the food, you know, like somebody's got to do some of the other stuff. And I think that like that'll be fun too in a team that's just talented to figure out what is the way that each of us is able to contribute. And where do we defer to one another? Yeah. I think Cody's first favorite slack message to me right now. Is he's like, am I okay to do this? Or are you doing this? Basically, I feel so weird, like delegating work to a CEO to Matt. I'm like, I'm like, can you, can you, can you integrate this? Can you do it? But um, no, on the, Mike, I forgot what it was that you said you felt strongly about. But like one area that I definitely feel strongly about is just the low outbacks. Like I just think it is so hard to go backwards. I'm talking about all the lessons that we've learned from our businesses, like trying to again, for to be a D to C brand, like you have to have low outbacks at pretty much as impossible without it these days. You're as much of your P and L should be going to CAC as you can, you know, reasonably afford. And I think we're in such a great time with it with AI, obviously. But like that's, I think one of the biggest constraints we should give ourselves. Um, and it is, is so hard to do for an existing brand. So that's one of the things that excites me about this. Trust me. I've tried very, very hard at an existing nine figure business. It's really, really, really hard and really frustrating. So that's, and that's it where it's like before we go and hire an email agency, like I built all of our emails that we'll need, right? And so we can do that and then statics and then landing pages. So like we are able to have a really lean up X at least for now. But I also think that goes in like Connor McConnell talks about this all time, like high leverage businesses. Like if we're launching multi-channel from the beginning, like we need a lot more people to do that. And so I think before we need to, let's keep it very consolidated, right? We don't need massive time. And like let's dial things in, which really means low channels and low skews. And that allows us to keep low up. You guys have, I haven't like seen, you know, yeah, like do you guys have a number in your head of like opx percent of revenue that you think we should be targeting for this to be successful? Zero. Yeah. Well, like I've talked about this with brands. We are actually just chatting about it the other day. Like I wanted to be 1% and I think if you think about the three big drivers of your PNL, you've got your people costs, you've got your product costs and you've got marketing costs. And I think all of us are seeing a future where the people costs and the product costs have to be as small as possible that leaves us much room for your marketing cost to still be big and there's still to be a margin. I've one thing I would disagree with, by the way, that we've already said we should be on Amazon because we can stand that up. And that is the first time it's going to be a demand capture. Like I'm not saying we need to like, and also like I guess this is a place where I have personal experience where it's like you can automate a bunch of that stuff. And so Cody, I think your principle is really good, but I actually would say like the principle is more like you want to be as broad as you can with a small bit of an opx footprint as you possibly can. So if we can be on Amazon, this is also, as a side note, this is why a supplement companies like absolutely print in wholesale because they're it's a low school count. It's not complex. It's just money that comes in with almost no additional headcount. So actually like the best situation for us would be to get multi channel because we could we would find that we could get a lot bigger without growing that opx very much. So anyway, my one thought is like the best in class right now is that you have a demand creation engine, and then your demand capture engine is a combination of your website and Amazon. We should we should definitely at least stand that up. Yeah, and it's really just what positive signals do we see before we go to the next level, right? Because right now it's single-squeue, known employees selling on.com. If we get a $250 pack, okay, let's let's throw Amazon on there, right? If we get a $100 pack, we'll set up TikTok shop. The other thing is those can be very high leverage, meaning you don't need to do any work when they're set up, right? Like I get set up our Amazon in three hours. It's like we got all the assets, we got the listing, I could just set it up, right? So I agree with all that. Cool. So one of the things that we did guys that I would say is not maybe not normal for somebody starting a company. So like usually before you enter a new category, you start a new business, you would do some amount of testing of your idea before you even place your first PO. Like we have already bought our inventory. And I think it might be good to hit on like what would you do differently? If you were starting another brand, like another business, would you just do what we did, which is like we just really believe in the category. We worked on the product, we invested on the product, we ordered the product, like we ordered the inventory. Or would you do some amount of testing, customer message, like price, would you run ads first? Like Sean, I don't know if you've if you've got any strong views here. Unlike what would you advise somebody to do? Well, I don't think they should do what we've done. I mean, Curtis spent a year making this product the best to launch. And most people just don't have a year. Like I would just take whatever is off the shelf and start selling it. And then see if there's demand and then and then merge and then eventually land on the product you want, right? Like if you if you're proud of the thing you launched when you launch it, you launch too late. It's a very classic thing in tech. And we're very proud of the thing we launched. It's just, you know, I would have just launched the melatonin gummies or whatever, like whatever, whatever the earliest sleep thing I possibly could. And then once you get cacks, once you get traction, once the Amazon accounts set up, go towards the ultimate goal. So I think everyone's into this. It's not going to have $500,000, right? And what you seem to do is find whatever you possibly can to sell that's close enough if you squint to get to what you want to sell. I'm getting back into the weeds. And one of the things I'm probably the rustiest on is emails. I'm super excited to be using on the send. They're using them on links where AI pill. We we are using it to do everything. I'm running most of our email program from cloud and codex using the MCP and it's awesome. We also have email SMS and pop-ups all in one place. We have all of our flows. Welcome series. It's all talking to each other. I love the platform. The analytics are really good to highly recommend it, especially if you're in position the wings is in. New brand starting out. But if you're on their own platform and you're paying too much and you want to switch, they will do the migration completely for you. No lost data, no loss list takes only five days start to finish. And they are giving our listeners 30% off the first three months. Go to omnesend.com/nineoperators to try it out for yourself. All right, so then like this is the actual question for me because I wasn't involved at the beginning. Like why not take that 500 grand, put it across four or five different ideas, put 100 into them. I don't know, I'm like, am I cute, but I have talked to people that are doing that and like spinning things up with as little as possible. See what hits, give yourself a better chance to success and then go all in on that one. Well, that's a great question. We talk about this all the time. Is it like, what is that balance between putting shots on goal versus just having conviction? And I don't know what the answer this is. I think I can tell you where we came out, where we came out is make the best product that you can that ultimately efficacy is going to lead to retention and happy customers. And that's what's going to drive the business. So the product that we ended up building is one that is very scientifically proven. We have experts weighing in on and I'm sure we have a whole episode about how we got there, but it's going to be a very effective product that actually solves the problem. And right now, like you've got, I mean, gummies are so huge, but also with gummies, like there's all kinds of problems with that form factor. Like I guess adults love eating candy. And so like gummies are pretty close to candy. Like I like eating gummies. So like I understand the appeal. But in terms of like, if you're actually trying to solve a problem, I'm really uncertain that gummies are the best way to solve it. In fact, I know they're not the best way to solve it. So I don't know. I think you have to kind of like ask this question between how much am I trying to crowdsource judgment versus having judgment and discernment myself? And And this is coming up over and over again in an AI age of, okay, in an age where the computers can do everything, what's my role, and I think it has to be editing and judgment and discernment. So for us, we're like, we're going to go big on what we think is the best product. We did a similar thing with Trebi, and there are times that I've been like, man, if I could reorder that, I would have done A, B, and C differently, but also like, we've got the best reviewed electrolyte now, and I think that that's going to power the business to success. And so I'm always a believer if you have the best product that in the end that wins. And I think that that's where we came out. I'm pretty happy with the product that we did. I certainly know from like a scientific basis, like we were really intentional there. Honestly, Cody, it'll be interesting for us when we do like the kind of post-mortem on this. Should we have done that? And I do think some of this is that we haven't talked about yet, is like, what are we trying to do? And if the answer was we were trying to make a quick buck, like definitely we should have just out of gummy out there last summer and just immediately tried it. But I think if you're like, hey, we're really trying to build enterprise value. And I don't know that we actually kind of really clearly said that either. Yeah. And this like, what is a good outcome? And I think that one of the things we should really like emphasize is that with a group like this, it's basically pouring in their time that's very valuable for sweat equity. Like it needs to be a really big enterprise value outcome for this thing to make sense. That's what I was going to say. I think Cody, the like taking 500,000, making 500,000 dollar bets, to me is, it's not how I operate. I'm tend to be with Mike. I tend to be, I do the work and the research to get high conviction on something and then I go all in. And the reason for that is what Mike is hitting is that I'm not looking to make like five, 20 million dollar businesses. Like I would rather go all in on something with high conviction in a large market where you put the right team together and you can actually like take a decent chunk of it. That sounds more interesting to me. So like that's like sort of the business side of how I thought about it. The other side of it was in this category in particular, like Curtis knows this because I've known Curtis a long time. But I happen to have a child, my daughter's almost 11, but she's an awful sleeper. Like I think I've said this in the show, like she has been a terrible sleeper her whole life. Sleep is the thing that plagues my house, my wife is a terrible sleeper. I'm a great sleeper, but this is a product that is like very close to home for me. So I think it also was a let's do it right because I know the power of like if you can just figure sleep out, it is extremely important, right? And I've been on the other side of that where we haven't figured it out and this product is freaking awesome. So I'm, yeah, I think I'm more like concentration of bet and I'm with Mike that like if we're going to do something and put our time into it, our time is valuable, let's just go big on something then test a bunch. Yeah. I think we should. And I don't know. This is the time of the place to figure out what the goals are. Maybe we, you know, Sean just hopped off because yeah, I think we totally shook because one of the things that's exciting to me, like I agree all of that is like if this works, it also feels very repeatable is obviously with with our network, with the funding, you know, with with audience, which I don't know if we want to use. It's like, all right, cool. How do we, how do we spin up a few of them? How do we, you know, do more? And then like that would be like for me, it's like, I don't know if it doesn't sound that much fun trying to build a $300 brand, like $1 million brand, like maybe you guys would be better there. Maybe I could be more of the starter if we did more of those. So I think it would be, I think we should, yeah, the earlier we get alignment on that, I think the better. Of course. What do you, though? I want to hear your thoughts first on like the, the why not try multiple things? Why this one? Yeah. Or speed to, speed to market. I mean, I think at the end of the day, that's how this conversation started. You know, Sean, you know, had mentioned, you know, most times you bring something to market, you know, in a very bootstrapped, quick way, assess, evaluate the market, see how it responds, iterate the product, iterate, you know, on root for a product market fit. And this did take longer than we all expected. Myself included it. It totally did. Like a lot longer. There was delays. There was, you know, challenges. I think the category we play in, I think also it was important to actually analyze and evaluate the assumptions that we made is that we're launching a product that is speaking to both adults and kids to families. It's a consumable product. It's consumable. And so it's not a hard physical product that people don't consume, that you can iterate over time. I mean, at the end of the day, efficacy is being scrutinized more and more often and more frequently with, you know, supplements, we're trying to market to a family oriented product. I think that's even more important. I think there's a lot of reasons why we wanted to do it right the first time and spend the money on quality, efficacy, ingredients product. And then, therefore, we layered on marketing. The one good thing that we have is that we all have experience, both running businesses, but also we got four to five guys that are marketing savants. And so when you look at that, that is the biggest problem and challenge I think people have. It's usually not the product. It's actually how do we drive our cost of acquisition down over time and figure out how we actually bring this thing to market. And I think our experience allows us to make a lot more assumptions than most people, so we can spend a little bit more time on getting the product right beforehand versus, you know, getting it into market and then trying to figure that out. I would say that we are making a lot more assumptions than we typically all would, but I think our experience and our time running businesses and understanding this market allows us to do that. That's a fair point. But we sort of did skip some steps. Something that you said, Cody, that I think is interesting is, you know, that you don't really want to run a $300 million brand. I want to challenge that is you don't want to run a $300 million brand the way that it was trending with John's road. But I think that part of this experiment, part of the experiment that I'm running internally with my brands is how big can your brand get without getting away from a very, very small team? And that could be a really fun part of this is like, can you get to nine figures with five people working on the project? Can you get to 200 million, 300 million? I don't know if that's even possible here. But I think it's interesting and I think it's more possible than ever before. And one of the things that I think all of us have experienced is leaders is that as the organization gets bigger, so much of your time starts to be like managing and things other than like doing the work and scaling the thing. And so I think it's an interesting kind of challenge for this. And when we talk about success criteria is how much can we scale this up without adding people? And that being an interesting constraint is like realistically, how big can the business get when you're using AI and you're using these tools, how big can you get without adding all of the parts of business building that are maybe more of a drain than life giving for this group? Yeah. I'm with Co. I think I'm with both of you guys there. I think I'm not anti people. I think it should be said. Like, I actually like building companies with people. I think that's actually part of the fun. Right? This is the reason why we're all here. We're friends. I mean, Mike Sean and I are business partners in this media company that owns this podcast. So I think I'm with you, Cody, there is like an old way to build a company. And then we're going to go and part of our goal here is to say, like, can we find a new way or an a version of the old way that we all like? And then just see how far we go. I think Cody are also hitting on an important question, which is like, what are the other goals of this? Right? And the reason that we decided to do this and why we're doing it publicly and we'll share this publicly is we'd like to launch a brand every year as a group, right? Like that's that's sort of one of our ideas. So like if we go all in on an idea like this and we put our full weight behind it to what Curtis is hitting on is like, we're pretty good at go to market. We're pretty good marketers. We've all done it a bunch of times. If we figure it out and we have a model we like, then we are also looking for a model that we can repeat in the future. So that was definitely part of of the conversation, Cody, what you're asking? Yeah. No, fair and and also agree with Mike's point like that's partly why that's probably why this is so fun is because we can take our experience and and what would we not do again, second, you know, second time and like, all right, yeah, like Mike, that's a really good point and pushback. But it's like, all right, I'm not going to do a non subscription brand again. We're not going to do durables. But also like, here's how we want to build a team. Here's how we want to build culture. Like, that's what's fun. And then the other thing that's fun about it to me is like, is I really feel like I'm the dumbest person in the room. And so I feel like we have so much to learn from each other and I didn't feel like that. I felt like I was the smartest person in the room for a while. And so it's great to be like, Hey, I actually think Mike is going to be a way better leader than me or Matt is going to be a way better leader for me is going to be better at that phase and maybe I'm better for standing up a new website and getting, you know, and getting into a meta account. So I think that's the other thing that's fun, but maybe that's a good segue for us figuring out like, what are our roles? How do we divide? Who's calling? I don't want to say calling the shots, but like, how are we thinking about that even good like for people listening as well? Yeah. Actually, it's funny. We're already starting to see this Cody, right? It's like, we have vendors. We have partners that we brought on to help us build the company. And they're one of their first questions is like, okay, who approves things? You know, I'm like, I don't want to say me all the time. I'm like, sometimes I'm basically like, no, Cody will do that. But yeah, no, I think the air, I would say like less role and more like areas of accountability is how I would guide us to think about this, you know, like Mike has already hit on the Amazon thing. I'm not going to do that. Like that is absolutely going to be it. and accountability area for Mike. And Mike's probably also gonna be sort of like taking lead and accountable for like all things modeling and financials, right? 'Cause that's also like knowing Mike, that's like another zone of genius for him. - That's how I wanna help. I think that I wanna be, and I'm happy to do some of like the organizing leadership stuff also, but I'm also happy, you know, like I trust and Matt, I trust your leading. I trust all you guys as leaders. So it's like I'd happily follow any of you. And I'm kinda happy to serve in that. But yeah, I love, I think the numbers really matter here. And I think that just like you, Cody, one of the things that is awesome so far is to watch how like you needed basically zero spin up time. You're like, I know exactly how I'm attacking this and you just started to attack it on the marketing end. And that's exactly how it'll be for me on the Amazon numbers modeling. And it's like I'm ready to go, you know? And part of that is that we're all able to draw from the experience of things that we're, you know, building with our own companies or that we've built outside of this project, but it'll be a lot of fun. And that's what I think more than anything else, what I wanna be able to do with the group is be able to say, here is what the numbers say. And based on that, how do we wanna proceed? And I think that's so much of these businesses. Like, hey, if we want to do a, then just know that's gonna mean B, C, and D. Or we could do this thing over here, and that comes with this other set of trade-offs. And I think that being able to kind of not only plot out the numbers, but then qualitatively communicate, what does that mean? In terms of the decisions that we're making, is probably the role that I'll be the best in. This episode is brought to you by Siral. You're practically renting attention on meta ads and rent only goes one direction up. Influencer marketing done as one-off campaigns is just another form of rent. The fix is a system, seed products at scale, convert the winners into affiliates, put your best performers on long-term retainers. That's what Siral is built for, finding perfect fit creators with their AI, managing personalized outreach at scale, built-in product shipping, one-click payouts, and tracking posts and ROI of all your campaigns, so that your team can run influencer marketing like a machine. We're using them for the new brand that operators is launching. Check it out at getseral.com, that's g-e-t-s-a-r-a-l.com. - Yeah, yeah, I think, and then just taking it a little further, 'cause we should have this conversation, like I think Curtis, your, your clearly product, right? And sort of like, I would say product and then like key relationships with creators, you've got a lot of big ones there, just giving your background like in sports, particularly. And I also think Curtis' like face of brand, right? Like none of us can probably get on a podcast and talk with intelligence about sleep health and sleep hygiene and wellness in the way that you can. Like you've been in the space for so damn long, like you are the like a longevity guy. I'm not, like when I have a question, I call you. Like literally that's my life, guys. Like I call Curtis for all this crap. So I think that's another clear area of accountability. Honestly, I think the glorious lines are going to be between Cody, myself, and Sean, because it's like, all things like marketing, all of us are probably deepest there. And I think right now, like Cody, you and I are trying to figure out like, okay, day to day, who's doing what, right? Like I'm taking most things copywriting. Cody, he'll take most things like building out the systems and I'll contribute to it, right? Like I've got a pretty good ad builder. I'll add that into Cody's, Cody's code base. So I think some of it's going to be pretty obvious, but then who takes sort of lead on, like for our creative teams, like who is actually approving or looking at all of that stuff, right? Is that Cody, is that me, is that Sean? Like I think some of that still has to be sorted out. I think the other answer to Cody is like, we're also not deep enough there yet to have hit a point where it's like, oh, oh, somebody needs to actually own this. Yeah, no, I agree with you. No, one of the, the one agency we have that we brought on, they sent something there today and they're like, Matt and Cody take a look and it was like a messaging thing. I'm like, oh, I'm gonna let Matt get that, but I agree with that and it's like, and it's also like, I'm also totally cool. Like for me, it's like whoever's faster. Like we kind of almost can read each other's brain at this point and like, I can hop in if whatever it is. Like I also want us to move fast. So I don't want us to be like, oh, we need to go get approvals from this person or worry about stepping on toes, but also have the respect and like, hey, like, he's got more strength here. Yeah, you know, it's actually like Mike, this is an interesting one, right? The, usually in a business, there is actually like pretty clearly defined roles in a traditional business. Like you would have somebody who owns finance and somebody who owns supply chain and somebody who owns marketing. I think the interesting thing with how we're gonna try to construct this company is, this is a little more like a hedge fund, right? Like we're all pretty capable in most things and I actually have like, it's not just trust and leadership. I actually just have trust, like, I'm pretty sure I could trust any one of you guys to make any of the calls. Like you've done this a long time. And I think that I'm saying that because what Cody had on earlier of like, you know, building up a large company, I actually wonder if this is sort of like gonna be a, if we're like, directionally correct in that the future of business building is actually just like smaller, much higher capability teams working together. So like it might only be a 10 person company and it's just 'cause you got 10 superstars that are just like max leveraged with tooling and outside partners and AI and whatever the hell else. Like that is a question for me. As we're building is like how far can we take this? Yeah, I think the general environment of a startup, all of us have been a part of several of these is that everybody's a generalist to some extent. Yeah, because there's just whatever needs to be done has to get done and somebody's got to do it and you know, you're at the beginning of a business. So who's an expert? Nobody's an expert at those things. Now in this case, a lot of the things that need to be done, we are coming in as experts in them, but there'll be other things that we're not and we're gonna have to learn. I think the single biggest threat to this model and this experiment is responsibility and having a single like authority on things where it's very clear, this needs to get done and this person is doing it because everybody's task is kind of nobody's task and we need to make sure that there's real clear accountability not because we're worried about the follow through the drive of any individual principles but because it just might be ambiguous and you nailed it. It's like, oh, we really need to figure out which of these ways we're going with this aspect of our email marketing and if it's kind of like, well, we've got three awesome people kind of that are giving input here but it's not really clear who's in charge of it or when we need to get this done then it just doesn't get done or we're pulling in different directions. So that's probably to me what we're going to have to really work on. Like if you tell me, here's what I want from you, Mike, or whoever's job it is to kind of like, it'll get done and it'll get done the best I can. But also it's like if it's not clear, if it's just kind of more general like, yeah, Mike, you're in charge of the numbers then it's very easy that there might be a deliverable or something that Cody needs that he doesn't get because it's just not clear to me that I need to execute on this thing and get it done. So that's probably the piece that we'll have to work on the most. - Well, I think the other one that's really important like in addition to that is when we disagree what do we do? 'Cause I think we're all used to being able to call the shots and being, you know, CEO and we got final say and this is going to be really, I don't want to say it's challenging but you know, it's kind of, there's going to be times where it's hard for me. There's also times where I'm like, hey, this is not my, like, it's actually nice not having the responsibility. Mike being like, hey, we should go on Amazon. I'm like, great, like, I have full trust in that. Like, thank you for making that decision. But we do have to at least figure that out of how we're going to make decisions when we don't all see eye to eye on something. - Yep. You know what we should do is this is kind of how you get to culture and I think culture always matters. You know, like having a really clear understanding of what you want, the way I think about culture is the norms of how you will operate, basically. Like the value structure and the norms of how we're going to work with each other. And this is a good example of why talking about culture early on can be really helpful. So one thing that I would propose for our culture, cultural mindset is that we have a very data driven approach to making decisions. And so one of the reasons why that's so great is that often we will be faced with decisions that we don't know the answer to. And we don't have the data to make the decision. And it will come down to, like you said Cody, okay, we have different opinions. Who's opinion are we gonna go with? But the thing that makes that easier today just, especially for really talented people, like let's say you and I have a different perspective on how we should handle funnels or free gifts or subscriptions, whatever. Well, it's a much easier for me to say all right Cody, let's go with your thought process. If I know that we're going to be checking in on the numbers and making sure that the data validates that that was the right way to go. And that you and I both know, if that is not working out the way that we hoped in the numbers, then we're gonna be willing to pivot and take another direction. What makes people dig in is where they feel like it's not really data driven. And so I just have to fight tooth and nail for my way or it's not gonna happen even if it is the best. So I think if we can create that kind of a culture early on of low-level. ego we're going to be willing to do what the numbers say and sometimes we're going to get these forks in a road where we don't know which is best and we'll try one fork and if it doesn't work out the way that we think it will in the data them we're willing to go the other way and that we don't the way that I think about it is mainly like that we're not finding identity in our ideas so like if I have an idea and the group uses it great that doesn't mean that I'm you know smarter or better than anybody else in the group and if it doesn't get used that's fine too that doesn't that's not a poor reflection on me either because I just want the group to win so I think there's some things like that that we can spend some time defining or maybe those will just organically get defined over the first few weeks but I am a big believer in culture and really clarity on culture among us is going to be part of what will make the venture successful yeah we're going to figure it out I think it's a great call Mike because I think it's I think Cody and myself I know Curtis like we're all very data driven person people and then the absence of data step one is probably go get some so like run some experiments right and then the absence of that it's it's debate and then we're all smart guys so like you know having a culture of like we don't care who's right it's just about what's right and how quickly can we actually get to what we feel is right yeah in the absence of data so I think that'll be an interesting challenge right culture of curiosity helps a ton with that oh man totally because in a culture of curiosity it's more about questions than answers and so no matter what path we pick it's not like okay we figured it out it's more like in the learning continues you know going down this path and I love that I love being around people that are curious and love asking questions and one of the things that I've learned about myself is that when I'm in environments like that is that I love being proven wrong I love having a perspective and then through some kind of experiment or data realizing that actually that wasn't the best way to view it and so I would love it if in this process I have lots of ideas that are proven wrong as we operate the company because that just means I'm getting better at my understanding of people markets and processes yeah exactly and so and maybe like I said that early on and maybe that is really the principle is that we want to have a culture of learning and learning requires curiosity and question asking and low ego most AI tools right now are all promise and no delivery you know exactly what I am talking about super fancy launch videos this is why I'm loving what rich panel is doing they have AI and support smashed together made a practical made it useful made it valuable to brands today not on some future promise and instead of asking you to spend weeks writing prompts and uploading help docs and babysitting they flipped the whole script their AI builds your support team for you and everything it needs I've watched it it works it's freaking amazing rich panel even guarantees 50% of your support volume will be automated by AI within 30 days or your money back I call that a no-brainer offer if you are interested go to richpanel.com/demo not for some generic demo but do actually book a call and watch them build your actual support team what do you guys think that uh should we have a business plan like does do you need a business plan is that even something that we do anymore like I know we've done a lot of planning and a lot of thinking on this but um like a actual like business plan I don't even know what the hell that is but I think that's a question that people are gonna ask I will I uh I was I was just about to ask because like I feel this interesting tension and and and I was gonna ask about this and like do we do core values things like that there's there is one side that's just like nothing matters if you don't have customers just like everything is PMF and you should only be focusing on the things that are gonna that are gonna actually grow the company and then another is like maybe I sometimes I feel a little arrogance like alright if this does take off like I have so many things where I feel like we didn't build the right way at Jones Road that like I want to set those up from the beginning like I want to bring on a data warehouse from the beginning like I want to have this financial model it's like if you know where you're kind of going it is really so I don't know like I'm not answering the question but I think just more generally it's like how much do we spend the time building those things now that like don't even matter when you're small but we just know it's gonna be we might look back and be like hey it's really nice that we have this brand deck or we have this core value document because it gets everybody on the same page and ensures we build things correctly that's a great point um Michael Curtis do you guys have a strong opinion on do you need a business plan? I think that at its core what a business plan represents is a theory that you have about the market and about a problem the market has and need the market has and how you're gonna address it and I think the data really clearly shows that when you are first entering a market your theory is almost always wrong like almost always yes and this is why like there's a there's a famous like business plan competition that I think maybe it's MIT or Wharton or like one of those you know really prestigious colleges holds and I looked at something where it was like out of the last 10 winners like nine of them had gone on to actually try something in market and like all but one head pivoted really significantly from the initial business plan or something it was something crazy like that and I think it just shows that your your ability to create a very good theory with no data is gonna be low but I think so like do we have to have a business plan do you have to have like do we have to print it off at kinkos and put everybody's ass and I don't need to do that but do we need to have clarity around our kind of theory about the market and our proposed solution yes because otherwise we're gonna talk past each other like there does need to be a collective understanding of the idea behind the brand and how that idea is evolving so in that respect yes we need to have like that theory but I think a lot of the kind of traditional business plan stuff is like and here's how we're gonna handle supply chain and here's how we're gonna do this and here's how we're gonna do that and the point that you're making Cody that I think is really relevant here is if you're kind of fundamental central premise is wrong then none of that matters right it's all irrelevant until you understand if you're central premise of like what you're the need you're addressing how you're solving a problem for the market until you get that right nothing else basically matters how do you answer a question of team when you don't know that you can't how do you answer the question of channels until you know that you can't how do you answer the question of how you're gonna run your supply chain or whatever else you just can't so what we need to do as quickly as possible is find a central premise that works and that's what product market that is and then it'll be well it's so much easier to kind of start to flesh out all those other pieces yeah it's it's funny all that is true Mike and I think then for people listening like we still did the basics right like we still when Curtis and I initially started talking about this product it was like still what's you know we still looked at like what do we think this thing's gonna cost you know we set up an LLC we got all the people were done we bought a domain right like we went out we like we figured out the name like we did all these basic things so like there was no formal plan and that was maybe that's part of it like we just know what to do I'll make another comment which I've been finding very fun to watch is as we go through this process everybody has like a natural place that they're strong in and that they default to that place like when I first when we first brought this to the guys Mike immediately went and it's like I got to figure out the model like what could this possibly look at because you can just know like that's Mike's happy place right and Curtis's happy place is product like he's he's focused on you know like what how do I make the best thing and what's the brand going to be and what are we trying to do and Cody is like coming at it AI first fully red pill well yeah I like I had done I had done some like cloud research before when I was considering starting my own thing and I was like oh I know that's a growing category I like have been doing that and like here are the angles I could work for it that's what I did to I'm like I went after a research and angle I'm like okay who's the customer you know like what is everybody saying on Reddit what's all like who are all the existing players in the market which is getting at what you're saying Mike it's like we we did all of this work to kind of come up with a strong thesis on why we want to pursue this so like is that a business plan no but it is pre work to doing yeah yeah you got to do work it's just to be clear not saying another saying that no business plan means no work I just think I think that I guess what I'm saying is that things are so fluid early on and a business plan is more rigid and that you just need to expect really high fluidity another thing that was really interesting about what you were saying is that one of the things I've learned is depending on your personality what you tend to do is triangulate onto the all the things that need to be done based on your area that you're the most comfortable so I tend to start with numbers and kind of say like what are the numbers that are required to get to this business and then I work my way down until like what does that mean for acquisition what does that mean for product what does that mean you know and uh whereas I think other people like Cody like you just said you start very high like what is market what are the demand patterns of the market um what are the marketing flows that would be required all these different things and I think that that's really interesting and just more indicative of our different skill sets of the way that we kind of gradually you know pull back the layers on the onion looks a little different depending on you know what your best at yeah yeah I think I think the two like I don't care about business plan you got to know you know, two things, like, is there a market for this? And so for me, how I would think about that is like, there's so many available trends data, right? Just look at Google search trends. Look at like the brands that are doing well, is there existing demand, and is it going to be growing, right? And then if we are successful, if we can then get product market fit, can it even be a viable business? And that's where then you have to go and model it and understand what your margins look like. 'Cause there could be a great market for it, but if you're only gonna be able to do it, you know, if it's whatever it is, right? If you're trying to do a D to C beverage brand, like that's never gonna be a viable business. - Yeah, yeah, it's, you know, starting a brand is sort of like, you pick your category, can you make a product in it that's like different, or I mean, different, not just better. Who is the target market? So like, who are we actually gonna go serve? What are the, if you've got partners, it's like, okay, how are each of us gonna divide the company up and like have different roles, areas of accountability, responsibilities? And then it's like, the go-to market, it's like, well, what do we think step one, two, three? Is like, where do you find your first customers? We've already said, like, well, we're gonna go and just try to acquire them with the thing that we know how to use, which is paid advertising. But these are all questions that, like, anybody starting a new brand today, a new e-commerce business, this is what you have to answer. Like, these are the basics of it. So, is it a business plan? No, but it's the work you have to do, right? It doesn't need to be a formal document. So, I was all in on AI at Jones Road, but it's really hard to get large teams of people to change. But on Wings, I don't have teams, 'cause we're trying to keep up excess lean as possible. So, we're going all in on AI and Runnith is a big part of that. Runnith and Motion are sponsored the show, and we've been partnering closely with them to help RunnWings day-to-day. It is the AI brain for our whole team. We are shipping as much creative as we can as many angles as we can. We have it plugged in to all of our accounts, our email account, Shopify, NorthBeam, all of our analytics. So, it's got the whole thing. It is our AI creative strategist and much more than that. It's really our AI co-worker. If we use it, Hexclad uses it, Jones Road uses it. It is the best AI brain for econ brands on the planet. If you don't use things like this, I seriously think you're going to fall behind. I highly recommend it. So, go to Runnith.com and Book It Strategy Session. Just mention the operator sent you and you'll get a thousand dollars in credits when you sign up. I think people, you know, didn't what they didn't see is that we actually did a lot of research and you know, battered ideas after ideas, after ideas that figured out what product, what category, where did we want to win, what was going to work, what wasn't going to work. Like the amount of conversations I had with Matt are low and around thoughts and ideas before it came up with even a sleep product, you know, and you know, then we built it to do list, a to do list to bring this to market. You talk about speed. I mean, I think gone to the days when you put a, you know, a 30-page business plan together before you even know what you're building. Like, I think in today's world with how fast business moves, you know, look at AI, you know, and adapting to that, let alone, you know, the consumer market. You know, I think a business plan is really good for growth and keeping the train on the tracks. But to get there, you know, you have to cover the fundamentals like Matt, what you said and Mike, like what you said. But 90% of it might change the minute you bring it to market. So, you know, you have to be, you know, adaptable and resourceful enough to, you know, shift and change. And that's why I think it's, you know, we're lucky enough that we actually know what need to get done, you know, need to get a business license, need to get a co-man, need to get a freaking, you know, formula, I needed to do this type of stuff. And it was more of a to do list for us rather than a business plan. And I think we can, you know, further enhance what you would call a business plan. Once we get to market and have the data to actually create it, to keep the train going in the direction we need to. I think also business plans, you know, Cody, you talked about, you know, everything from culture and core values associated with that. And what the brand looks like, the identity you name it. I think once we, you know, the five of us have a fairly good understanding of who we're going after and what that represents, the more that you scale from a resource in people like a head count perspective, the more that that's important, right? Because, you know, you don't want the dilution of purpose, dilution of identity, dilution of you name it. Like when you start hiring marketing, you know, building a marketing team, you don't want other people's egos or experience or identities being reflected, being reflected into the brand when the brand actually has its own. And so it's, I think that's when it's also important. - Yeah, totally. - Picking your co-founders is a such a huge part of starting a business. It is basically like getting married in a business sense. It's your, it's your workspace. And one of the things that I have learned through my career so far is that if you're going to found something and you're going to have co-founders, you should be exceptionally picky about who those people should be. They should be people that you admire, people that you want to learn from, people you want to spend a lot of time around, people that you're willing to have some fights with, because that's what's going to come. And I think that I'm the most excited, probably, because I really love the co-founding group that I'm going to be doing this with. - Hell yeah. - You guys are going to be a lot of fun to build with. And that was my first requirement of doing this is like, am I, are these people that I want to be partners with at this level? And like you said, Matt, I think the experience doing operators has really taught us a lot about our enjoyment of working together. I think it's going to be great. And I think it's going to be one of the things that sets us up to be successful here. - Okay, so we've covered what is an econ business? What is a brand? How are you building a brand in 2026? We've talked about, do you need a business plan or not? We've talked about success criteria for winning for us. So like, we're putting a decent chunk of change into this business. We need to know like, what does traction look like? And do we want to keep going? There is target audience, there is product. You guys know the category. It is sleep. Our domain is getwinks.com. That's it. It's simple, easy to spell, WINKS, winks. And what I think, as a listener, watcher of this new series, you should expect from us as like, we are going to try to do as much work in public as possible. Like, we want you guys to see the process. You can already see Cody is like literally just asking questions 'cause he is the newest mentor of the team. And he's not afraid to ask those questions and we're just going to beat them up. And then we're going to try to show you everything that we're building in like as close to real time as possible. I think to set the expectation every episode that gets dropped is probably a month, maybe six weeks delayed from what had actually happened. So you're going to hear this when we release it, and it's probably recorded about a month before we actually release it. So that's just sex-sextation setting. The next sort of like number of episodes of this show of this series is going to be as close to the order in which we would do things if you were building a company. So this is like the very intro to how the hell do you start a business and what do you think about? And what's coming is going to be us getting into the weeds on every single topic from the product, to the packaging, to the go-to market, the channel strategy, the how the hell are we sourced and creative, all of that stuff for a brand new company, all of that is going to get covered. So I hope this was helpful and I hope you stick around and watch the rest of what we're now calling operators build as we build Wynx, a frickin' sleep supplement. And Mike, it's funny, Mike and I, Cody, we're texting, I think last weekend, Mike's like, "Hey, we're co-founding a business together." Mike, Mike, it's literally our second one. - Like we already all went together, too. So, yes, we are. But it's number two now. - Physical businesses feel a little different, they feel a little more-- - They do, yeah, this one feels more real. - Yeah. - Yeah. - All right, boys, episode one, in the tank, in the bank, that's the pod.