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Hello and welcome to the advice line on how I built this lab.
I'm Guy Raz.
This is the place where we help try to solve your business challenges.
Each week, I'm joined by a legendary founder, a former guest on the show, who will help me.
Try to help you.
And if you're building something and you need advice, give us a call and you just might be the next guest on the show.
Our number is 1-800-433-1298.
Send us a one-minute message that tells us about your business and the issues or questions that you'd like help with.
And you can also send us a voice memo at hibt at id.wondery.com.
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And also, don't forget to sign up for my newsletter.
It's full of insights and ideas from some of the world's greatest entrepreneurs.
You can sign up for free at GuyRoz.com or on Substack.
And we'll put all of this info in the podcast description.
All right, let's get to it.
Joining me this week is Randy Hetrick.
He's the founder and inventor of TRX, the full body resistance strap exercise system.
Randy, it's great to have you back on the show.
Thanks for coming on.
Guy, it is so nice to see you and great to be back.
Thanks for having me.
It's awesome to have you.
You were first on the show back in 2017.
This is the early days of how I built this.
And just to remind people of your story, you were a Navy SEAL.
You were stationed in Southeast Asia for kind of grounded for a while.
And you and your buddies were kind of getting frustrated because you weren't able to work out.
And you had this idea to use like an old jujitsu belt, which you actually kind of brought with you, to do pull-ups or, I guess, upper body work.
So you throw it over a bathroom door and boom, I mean, you start using it for resistance training.
That was the genesis of TRX.
It's a pretty great story, isn't it?
And it happens to be true.
So yeah, those straps had pretty long legs as it turns out.
And it's just, it's so wild to me that that that you know you happen to have that, that belt, and it happened to have that idea.
And then it became this kind of legendary product.
Anyone.
You've got to check it out.
We will put a link to it in the episode description.
Randy, before we get to today's callers, it's been a few years since we last spoke, right?
2017.
And a lot has happened for you, for TRX.
I think two years after we spoke, you sold a controlling interest in TRX.
That was in 2019.
But then a bunch of other stuff happened.
Just bring us up to date on what's been going on in your life since you last spoke on the show.
Well, it is funny when you think about it.
Man, we were eight years ago.
Where'd that eight years go, Guy?
I'm not... You know, we packed in a lot in there.
But yeah, I...
I sold the business to some private equity guys and let's just say it was not a match made in heaven.
We, after a couple of years, decided, all right, I had to go and pursue my bliss elsewhere.
So I did.
And I started a company called Outfit, which is outdoor mobile fitness.
And you know, just as I was getting that thing up and rolling, it turned out that the opportunity came around to buy back my original baby.
And I went out and found a good buddy, my good pal, Jack Daly.
And we...
Hatched a plot to buy TRX out of what was kind of a troubled situation, let's just say.
That's awesome.
And so we ended up.
You know I ended up with a turnaround and a startup which is almost more fun than one guy should have, but it's been an incredible ride and TRX is doing great again.
And Outfit is this, as you say, it's a mobile exercise company.
Basically, it's a gym in a van.
And it's kind of a franchise model, right?
It's designed for – is that right?
People can buy a franchise and then run it as a gym wherever they live?
Yeah.
Well, we're just getting going on the franchising aspect because, you know, I felt at the beginning I needed to really understand the ins and outs of this business, which is pretty powerful pathbreaking, if you will.
You're not in the gym.
The gym.
Think of the gym as a rolling kind of a rolling storage unit full of functional training gear that comes out of the van.
The group fitness class goes on in parks parking lots, beach parking lots, like beautiful places outdoors.
And then in 10 minutes, it sets up and tears down and drives away.
And ultimately I'm very excited about it as an opportunity for veterans coming out of service, Because the cost of buy-in and the operating costs are so much lower without brick and mortar.
And, you know, as you know, I'm pretty passionate about the veteran space.
Two groups of people that I really love, veterans and trainers.
Yeah.
You know, it makes so much sense.
I mean I use like every time I do bike repair.
Now I get one of those mobile bike repair shops, comes to my house and everything's in that van.
And we're talking about light equipment, right?
Straps and functional equipment.
You're not like pulling out a treadmill out of the van or like a Peloton.
No, exactly.
You don't have fixed overhead.
That's anywhere near normal, what you would experience in a brick and mortar, but you have quite a big capacity.
You can train up to 50 people at a time.
So it's, you know, hey, have me back on in a few years and I'll tell you how it went.
Well, absolutely.
You know, Randy, the fitness market has changed so much since you started TRX, right?
I mean even easier in the sense that you can find a manufacturer easier, but harder, in that there's so much more stuff out there, so much more noise, you know and, as influencer, marketing and customer acquisition costs have gotten higher and higher.
If you were today?
I mean, you are doing it right with your new company, but if you were to introduce a new product into the market today, what do you think you would do differently in order to break through all the noise and the millions of products available on Amazon and on social media?
Well, it is, it is a non-trivial question that you're posing there.
It's, it's a, uh, The clutter is just profound out there and trying to break out.
I mean, there's a couple of ways to do it.
Generally, one of them is kind of foreclosed, which is buy your way to exposure.
That for early stage companies rarely happens, unless you happen to come from a trust fund and can afford to do it.
So I would say that getting good, authentic influencers on board is a good way to do it, because those folks have large followings who trust what they say and are interested in what they do.
And that can be a relatively – inexpensive way to do it.
You're going to pay some equity in all likelihood.
But if you pick the right partner then you get somebody who will be excited about the business and will want to be a partner rather than just kind of a pay to play.
That can be an effective way to do it.
Yeah.
All right, Randy, let's bring in our first caller to the advice line.
Are you ready?
Ready when you are.
All right, great.
Welcome to the advice line.
Please join us.
Tell us your name, where you're calling from, and just a bit about your business.
Yes.
Hi, Guy and Randy.
I am so excited to be here.
So I'm Paige Say.
I'm the co-founder of Benny calling in from Toronto, Canada.
Benny is shaking up the energy market with naturopathic doctor formulated energy drinks for caffeine conscious or caffeine sensitive consumers.
Got it.
Okay.
Welcome to the show, Paige.
Thanks for calling in.
So Benny is a beverage, just like an energy drink, like a Red Bull or Monster, but I'm assuming different right.
You betcha.
Yeah, you said it, different.
Okay.
What makes it different?
Yeah.
So like I said, it's for caffeine conscious consumers like my co-founder and myself.
So it's less caffeine.
It's 85 milligrams of caffeine which, for energy drinks or even for a cup of coffee, is definitely on the light side.
And then we use some pretty unique ingredients.
So the base of the caffeine itself is yerba mate tea, which is a tea from South America that gives you a really nice kind of gentle, sustained boost, almost similar to a matcha.
And then we use a blend, a proprietor blend of adaptogens.
So we have lion's mane, reishi, and ginseng.
So it gives you a really nice sustained boost.
Nice.
Okay.
Well, thanks for calling in.
And tell me a little bit about how you started this.
I mean, when did it start and why?
Yeah, great question.
So I met my co-founder back in university.
We went to the University of Victoria and we really bonded over this shared love of wellness and entrepreneurship.
And she, like yourself Randi, was an athlete all through university and she was on a run one day in her fourth year and broke out into essentially anaphylactic shock.
So throat closed in, body covered in hives.
It was very scary and spent the next couple of months trying to figure out what was going on in hospitals and kind of with typical Western medicine and they sent her back saying she had exercise-induced anaphylaxia.
Wow.
So started peeling back the layers, and now it's so obvious.
But once she started cutting the excessive caffeine, you know the multiple coffees, the Red Bulls, the caffeine pills, she felt way better.
So we wanted to see if that was something that other people were dealing with.
And after doing some research and bringing on a naturopathic doctor, we found it was a really big problem.
So we thought, there's no one really putting this in a can in a fun, accessible, efficacious way.
All right.
Interesting.
She's taking caffeine pills and drinking excessive coffee.
That just seems a little extreme.
Tell me a little bit about the business.
So you started this.
How did you guys finance it and find a manufacturer and get into cans?
Did you raise money, for example?
Yeah, yeah.
Lots of people think it's our parents because we're so young, but we actually launched with a very small bank loan 25000, which was amazing, life-changing.
We couldn't have done it without it.
So that was our launch.
Started really in my co-founder, Julie's Kitchen.
Brought our naturopath doctor on, brought on kind of a team to help us formulate, got the formulation down and that was two years ago.
So since then, we've really bootstrapped it.
We've been profitable, which has been really great for a beverage business.
But We can't really grow that way, but now we're in about a thousand stores across Canada.
Nice.
So let's get your question.
Yeah, yeah.
So this is the How I Built This exclusive.
We've actually never shared this publicly.
I had to get permission from my co-founder, but we're launching in Target nationwide later this year.
So in all of their stores, thank you.
We're so excited, but we want to know beyond the obvious, the finances.
How can we really set ourselves up for success?
Wow.
Well, first of all, congratulations.
Lots to unpack here.
And before we get to your question, I want to bring Randy.
And Randy Hedrick.
Do you have any thoughts about her questions or do you have any questions for Paige?
Well, I mean, congratulations on the early success.
I think, you know, so it sounds like you've had pretty steep growth, right?
Yeah.
No, thank you.
It's been like a dream come true.
So much work, but a dream.
Yeah.
And you mentioned that you're profitable which, honestly like, if I can give anybody advice, including myself, it's always hey, get profitable as quickly as possible and stay profitable, because you make infinitely better decisions from that position.
And you guys, it sounds like, are in a really great spot with that.
You know a huge key account early in your business.
And so your is your main question you guys are unable, I presume, to finance or to finance it from from your own cashflow is kind of where we're headed right.
Totally.
So yeah, we're exploring like, you know, bringing on more investors.
We've done a very small, you know, friends and family, which has been good.
But PO financing, like even just knowing, like how much money, I think the number is like infinite right.
Like we're up against the biggest players in the world with like the biggest budgets in the world.
So just kind of navigating from like where we want to be to like how do we work our way back from kind of obscurity in Canada?
Yeah.
Paige, give me a sense right now of what you guys are doing in terms of sales.
Yeah.
So we launched about two years ago.
We've done just, I think, over $500,000 to date.
Target, obviously, their POs are going to be way bigger.
And are you launching in all 2000-plus stores simultaneously or are you going to start in a region?
Yeah.
So we're launching with a limited edition flavor for the holidays in November and December.
Our buyer is leaning in really deeply with us.
He has a really good relationship with a lot of other energy drink brands that have kind of grown over the last few years.
So he's kind of replicating their success and what they did.
So an LTO limited edition flavor in the holidays and then launching all stores in January, which is intimidating.
Yeah.
Do you have somebody you're working with who is experienced, particularly with a retailer like Target?
You know, we've had this on the show where people go into Target, Walmart too early.
And then you know they're out for a few years and they have to come back, and then they get to come back and they're OK.
But sometimes, you know, these big, big box stores, they give you one chance initially.
And so there's a lot of pressure, right, because you want to sell this thing.
So my first question is do you have somebody that you've identified that you can work with in addition to the buyer?
Yeah.
Yeah, we do, which has been great.
They've been really, really awesome, kind of a broker team.
And then we've got some great advisors.
Some of them have been past guests who we love.
But even still, it's like there's a million and one, you know, ways it could go.
And like you said, exactly that guy.
It's like a one shot, it feels like.
So we don't want to don't want to blow it.
Yeah.
You guys must sell TRX at Target, right?
We don't sell at Target but we do big box retail through Dick's and we obviously do a lot on Amazon.
But what I was going to mention to Paige was that very, very early, at about the same point in our evolution, we had a great big opportunity with a massive big box retailer called Costco.
And it was so tempting.
Yeah.
And I flew up there to Issaquah and sat around a big table and ultimately ended up saying no.
And the reason that I said no was because I was in the same spot you were.
I was going to have to take on a big chunk of debt in order to finance this pilot.
And the put rights are the thing that you want to really make sure that you understand.
Meaning like if the product –
Those guys are no dummies.
That's why they have gigantic businesses.
And generally they will have terms that if the business doesn't work exactly as they hope it will, as the product doesn't work exactly as they hope, they can put it back to you.
In our case, we had product problems that ended up coming out shortly after We passed this up.
Had I not passed it up for that reason, there would have never been a TRX.
So I would just sort of throw that out there.
And if you have a great advisor who's very familiar with big box retail, then they'll, I'm sure, be telling you something similar.
But that is not a trivial decision to make, to do it or not to do it.
And you really got to know your product.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, Paige.
The other thing is you want to do everything in your power to harness your followers, your fans, anybody that you can possibly get to go to those stores and to buy the product.
Obviously, I'm assuming you're going to work on, you know, some kind of sampling demos and things like that.
But a quick question for you.
I'm curious because I'm looking at the cans.
They're really nice, beautiful.
Who is your target audience?
I mean, you mentioned people.
You call them caffeine-conscious.
So people who are looking for a little bit of a hit, but not sort of a jittery buzz.
Is it women?
Is it men?
Is it both?
Who is your kind of typical customer?
Yeah, we call them our friends with Benny.
So it's typically that kind of 18 to 35 young woman, some men, but usually students, young professionals, someone that either can do like one coffee a day and it's kind of their afternoon pick me up, or someone like my co-founder who really just can't like handle that much.
And it's kind of their their go to pick me up in that way.
You know the reason why I ask is because and you may know this story also Randy, about Monster Energy which is they really focused on a specific demo when they launched.
You know, it was like guys who listen to metal who are into MMA and motocross.
Like, no joke.
I mean, that is how that brand just went through the roof.
And I think it's interesting because that is definitely a category of customer, right?
And I feel like... there isn't really an energy drink that targets women.
It's like extreme sports.
It's like you know, Red Bull and Monster and you know, but I don't feel like there are many drinks out there that are energy drinks for women.
Yeah, that's exactly it.
We kind of say what would Red Bull be doing with their community, for this community in 2025 if they were doing it today?
And you mentioned Pilates, but there are so many opportunities that to me would be so clear and so aligned with what you're trying to do.
Have you guys started to explore certain collaborations with brands that might not be –
Obviously, everybody wants everybody to buy their products.
Like you want men to buy your products.
You want young and old people to buy our products.
But having a core committed tribe of customers is not a bad idea.
Have you started to kind of reach out to potential collaboration partners?
Yeah.
Do you mean like on like a limited like flavor with them?
Yeah, a flavor or some kind of offer or some kind of something.
Yeah, for sure, for sure.
We've got them kind of on the works with different creators, but I love the idea of like.
If it was, I'm trying to think like what would be the modern, like equivalent, like a soul cycle or something like that, where it's their flavor.
But I feel like it says women owned here.
And normally my advice is like, well, you know, you really want to appeal to everybody.
You want to be kind of careful about those things.
But in this case, I think it makes a lot of sense for you to lean into that.
I think it really does.
No, this is such good advice.
And like in TRX, I don't know if we'll do a collab, but we'll find the right partner.
It would have to be black and yellow, but it would work.
It could work.
No, I think that one other point that that bolsters the idea of focusing is the reality that at this point in your evolution you don't have a lot of resources.
You really do kind of have to focus.
And it sounds to me like you're far enough along to have pretty high level of confidence in that kind of hierarchy of consumer targets, starting with you've got the woman and you've got her age group.
That then allows you to stretch those resources to the maximum effect, versus a shotgun, where now you're taking them and spreading them so thinly that they don't really make an impression on anyone.
So I agree.
I like the idea of your current target.
Yeah, especially because it's going to be potentially a cheaper way to market, right?
Because you're going to need to balance marketing dollars and production dollars, right?
And you mentioned you've got an advisor who's on the show in the past.
Who is that?
Yeah, Tara Bosch from Smart Suites.
Smart Suites.
Oh, she's wonderful.
Yeah, we're so lucky to have her.
Yeah, she's great.
Cool.
Randy, any last minute thoughts?
Well, I mean, I think, an advisor that knows the space.
The more relevant that advisor's experience is, the more directly relevant that she's going to be to you.
So that sounds amazing.
It sounds like exactly the right person.
And if she's dealt with big box retail distribution so much, the better.
It sounds like you guys are off and running.
And man, I wish you the best of luck.
Yeah, good luck, Paige.
The brand is called Benny.
Paige Say, thanks for calling in.
Thanks so much, guys.
Congrats.
Yeah, this is a tough category beverages, because there's a lot of competition, and even energy drinks, right?
And obviously dominated by the big players, you know, the Cokes and the Pepsi-Cos.
But there's always an opportunity.
You know we've talked about this on the show a million times that there's no such thing as a saturated market right.
Is that there's always going to be an audience, people who are interested in your particular product or item.
And two things that I really love about her space is one it's coming as a product guy that makes durable products.
I can tell you that the idea of consumables and recurring revenues is fantastic.
And while her space is heavily competed, it's also the kind of space where, if she creates something unique, which it sounds like they're on their way to doing it, There are a ton of strategic acquirers out there right looking to snap that up and roll it in.
Stay with us because after the break we'll talk to another founder working to take their business to the next level.
That's after the break.
I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to The Advice Line right here on How I Built This Lab.
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Welcome back to the advice line on how I built this lab.
I'm Guy Raz.
And my guest today is TRX founder, Randy Hetrick.
And Randy is with me to take your calls.
And hello, let's bring our next caller.
Hi, Randy.
Hi, Guy.
Thank you so much for having me.
My name is Kerry Jones, and I live in the ski resort town of Whistler, British Columbia in Canada.
I'm the president and co-founder of Peaked Pies.
We're an Australian bakery cafe group and at Peaked Pies we make from scratch five-inch individual Australian savory meat pies.
Awesome.
Thanks for calling in, Keri.
I've had them.
They're not yours in particular because I have to go to Whistler, but meat pies are delicious.
They're basically.
I mean, every culture makes a version of these Cornish pasties or, you know, some kind of calzone or something right.
Some bread or pastry stuffed with meat or cheese or savory stuff.
So tell me a bit about the business.
Yeah.
So meat pies in Australia are very iconic.
They're kind of called the traditional national dish.
And when I moved to Whistler in 2009 for a ski season, Whistler is basically run and overrun with Australians.
And there was no meat pie shops here, which I thought was really strange.
And that's when I met my now husband and co-founder.
He's amazing in the kitchen.
And he heard me talk about, oh, I miss the Australian meat pies.
And he then heard everyone else saying it.
So he started making them at home.
He's Canadian.
And then friends started coming over and then we joked, oh, we should open a pie shop.
And that was 2013.
We opened a pie shop.
So they are hot grab and go.
So you come into our little cafe, it's quick service.
The display case is right in front of you.
It's a custom made, just exactly like you'd find a in Australia.
So they're hot, ready to go.
We bake all throughout the day and we just top up this heated display case.
So someone walks in, they say, I'll have a steak, bacon and cheese pie.
We have a little twist on it.
So we say, do you want to get that peaked?
And then they add mashed potatoes, mushy peas and gravy.
We put it in a box and out they go.
They literally have a homemade hot dish within like a minute and a half.
Wow.
All right.
And how many cafes do you have?
So we have three corporate-owned stores that are Peaked Pies.
We have built a 3000 square foot production facility now and we are in the process of building our first franchise location.
Nice.
Okay.
So you're starting to think about, and you have a franchisee already?
We do.
Yes.
Yes.
It's our very first one.
Yep.
Amazing.
Okay.
Lots to talk about.
Before we do, tell us what your question is.
Yeah, so I've been listening to How I Built This for a long time and I've noticed a common theme from some of your entrepreneurs which have credited their growth to bringing on the right strategic investor.
My husband and I have bootstrapped Peaked Pies.
It's just been us.
We don't come from money.
We've put a lot into this over the years and we're definitely at a point now where where we're looking to bring on a strategic investor and I'm a confident person, I'm happy to reach out and talk to people, but it's getting.
Then, once we're in those meetings, what would you say are some smart questions for us to ask a potential strategic investor?
What information do you think we can request from them to help us evaluate if they're truly the right fit for us?
All right.
This is a great question for you Randy, because you have dealt with this in good and bad ways, I know.
So first of all, thoughts or questions or answers for Kerry?
Well, I mean, I love the franchise model for what you're doing here.
And interestingly Kerry, we're at the same – it's kind of roughly the same place with our franchises, right in terms of rollout.
So while I'm not going to position myself as a deep expert in franchising.
I am an empathetic early stage franchisor with you.
And to Guy's point, yes, I have had both good and not so good experiences with capital partners.
And that I've thought an awful lot about.
And so I think one.
This seems to me at first glance.
I pulled up your site, which is really beautiful, by the way.
It seems to me to be to lend itself very well to a franchise model because, in general, I think the things that make The best franchises are the simplest concepts, right.
The more complicated the concept, the less well a franchise structure works, because all of that complication has to be trained into your franchisee or the whole thing falls on its face.
So this one looks to be a great fit for that.
And obviously a franchise is a great way for you to scale rapidly in a relatively capitalized way.
My first kind of question to you, just as a general pushback, was okay, but since you're doing this as a franchise and franchises can grow as fast or as slow as you want them to, since you are the franchisor selecting how many you take on, are you sure that you really need and want external capital?
It's not, it is the capital, yes, but it is the strategic part of it as well.
It's my husband and I, like we, it is just us.
We didn't go to college.
We didn't, we don't have university degrees in this.
We have, you know, as a lot of founders don't have really.
And so it's now that growth of, like someone who's experienced in really the operation side of things, the um, franchise development uh, and with that the capital um as well.
So marketing and and so forth, like we've, we're really looking for someone who can partner with us to really boost to this.
Well, I think that's a great answer, and self-awareness in a uh in a in an operator, in a in a in an entrepreneur, is a very valuable thing.
We, as Clint Eastwood said, right?
A man's got to know his limitations.
So that's all great stuff.
I would say that my initial impression and then I'll pass the mic back to Guy is just to make sure that what you described was a lack of domain expertise in certain areas of this, which you can get with team members who bring that right.
And I would just be, I would be very careful expecting too much from your investor unless and we can talk about this in a second unless you really get the right one, which is easy to say you're going to do.
It turns out to be hard to do.
And so that's just kind of a pathway that you can choose between the right path and the left path.
Do we build it ourselves by getting some money and then hiring team members with expertise?
Or Do we bring in that strategic investor early and have that person help us do it all?
Yeah, I think I think Randy what what, what you're saying is and Carrie, I think is really great advice is, you can bring in an investor, but that investor ultimately may talk a big talk about how they can help you strategically.
But they're investing in 20 other things and they're focused on unless it's an investor operator, somebody who says you know what I'm going to put money in and I'm going to be your CFO or the operations chief.
I think there's an argument to be made here, that that you can do one of three things, or maybe even more than that.
You can bring on an investor who might just be a silent partner or not a great investor, or you can bring on I try to identify really great operators, people who have experiences, particularly in sort of small to medium sized franchise operations building them out, who are sort of semi-retired they come in for some equity.
And that is one option.
Or you do a third option, which is you bring those people in and you raise money in addition to that, because having folks with operational experience like that is very attractive to strategic investors as well.
They're going to want to see that you've got somebody who worked for a Panera or a, a Dave's hot chicken or whatever.
I'm just throwing names out there.
Whatever other businesses that have a franchise model that know the playbook.
This is a really interesting idea.
It's a really interesting product.
I could see something like this having you know strong appeal, particularly in Canada where you've got a huge sort of, you know, Anglo expat population right.
People are already familiar with this kind of food.
And I would really spend time.
I mean, you can, You can troll LinkedIn and do – just do searches on LinkedIn and find people who have experience in building franchises, who are semi-retired.
I mean, I think, Randy's – Randy, your suggestion here, if I'm getting it right, which I am, is find the right operators.
Yes.
Yeah.
I'd be very careful about going – toward a financial investor who has been involved in franchises before, because you have to find out at what stage, because that makes a huge difference, right.
Were they involved and do they have an operator on their team who was successfully involved in an early stage franchise, which is where you guys are?
A very, very, very different game, right?
Where we are now than where –
A 10-year-old franchisor is with 1,000 units or more.
And I like the idea that Guy is recommending a lot of finding a successful retired or kind of quasi-retired operator who – did really well and is now out there bouncing around, interested in cool projects, and would get involved with you as an advisor for a little bit of equity, and who may say you know what, I'd like to do this for a couple of years and come out of retirement, because that's the kind of like perfect early stage investor that you may find.
And and you also might just find people who love the concept, who want to put up some cash, which then allow you to pair a good advisor with some new hires and get yourself another, you know two three, four years down the road.
And then look at, cause you know, things change fast, right?
In an early stage business and a couple of years can, you know, make all the difference.
Yeah.
And Randy, you'd said that you had been brought on an investor and then you were able to buy them back out.
Was there any signs, or would you say, are there any red flags?
That potentially, you know, I think that's what I'd be worried about is bringing on someone as a strategic investor and them not being as strategic as they claim.
I would say that's more common than not, right?
Yes.
Investors who claim to be bringing.
The famous word is synergies to what you're doing and experience, because they will show you that they were involved in some – you know successful brand that you like.
But then if you really scratched, you'd find out that, you know, the involvement was pretty shallow.
And so I'd be careful of that.
I'd really look for somebody who had deep expertise in a pretty narrow, you know, field of business right.
Franchising, food franchising.
Yeah, I agree.
And that's really where you can do your diligence.
You know, where you identify somebody who has had experience as an executive or an operator in some capacity with a franchise model, that you can now start to call people up and really dig into this person's background.
Somebody who's, you know, again, semi-retired, might be interested in getting some equity.
I would also, by the way, just reach out to some of these people who've been on our shows.
Cold, you know, contact them on Instagram or LinkedIn, see if they'll get back to you.
Can't promise it.
But I think...
That's really the best strategy for you right now is to find somebody who's willing to take a risk, who's interested, who loves this brand, this product and is willing to take a risk for some equity, because it may not work obviously, but of course the hope is that it will.
Right.
Okay.
And even if somebody passes, by the way, ask them – get something from them.
Find out because it's easy to be like, ah, the person just doesn't get it.
But, and I know, believe me, but try not to do that.
Try to ask, like, wait a minute, what is it that you don't like?
Right?
Don't just let them go.
Get something out of them, because you're going to come away from that conversation with some really useful intel.
And also ask them if they don't like it.
Hey, is there somebody you know of or you can think of who this might be more interesting to?
That's also worth asking.
Amazing.
No, I really, really appreciate that.
That's been some really good thoughts.
Awesome.
Kerry Jones, the company's called Peaked Pies.
Good luck.
Congrats.
Keep us posted.
Thank you.
All right.
We're going to take another quick break, but we'll be right back with another caller.
Stay with us.
I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to The Advice Line right here on How I Built This Lab.
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Welcome back to The Advice Line on How I Built This Lab.
I'm Guy Raz, and today I'm taking your calls with Randy Hetrick of TRX.
Randy, you ready to take the next call?
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
All right, let's bring in our final caller.
Welcome to The Advice Line.
You are on with Randy Hetrick, founder of TRX.
Welcome to the show.
Tell us your name, where you're calling from, and just a line or two about your business, please.
Hi guys.
Thank you so much for having me here.
I'm Catherine Perry and I am the co-founder and VP of Adapt Apparel.
We're a modern adaptive clothing brand.
Adapt creates stylish, easy to use clothing designed for people with disabilities, aging loved ones and anyone recovering from surgery or managing medical conditions.
And I'm calling in from Williamstown, Ontario.
Awesome.
Thank you so much for calling in and congrats.
Adapt apparel.
So this is comfortable clothing that is designed for people if I got this right with mobility issues or maybe who had surgery.
So what does that mean?
There's like a bunch of ways to put it on and take it off.
And like, give me a description of what an outfit would be like.
Absolutely.
So it's easy and accessible clothing.
So, for example, if you have had a knee or a hip replacement and you're post-op and you're recovering with your chirograph on your knee, we have our signature and patent pending zipper that comes all the way down that you can rehab in.
Or maybe you're going through cancer treatment, infusion dialysis, right?
It is clothing that you can use for those uses.
I get you.
So how did you come up with this idea?
Yeah.
Okay.
So I was a special education teacher and a phys ed teacher for 21 years.
I retired and I have my own health and wellness business to this day.
During that time, I was called upon to be a primary caregiver for both my parents, who have Alzheimer's, and mobility issues.
When my father was dying, the nurses said to me Catherine, your father really needs adaptive clothing.
And I said, Like most of us, I have no idea what you're talking about, but direct me in the direction.
I did a quick deep dive and I was like, no, that's institutional looking.
Where's the dignity in this?
I'm not putting my father in this clothing.
And that's how we start.
I said, we're going to do better and we must do better.
And that's how we launched in October of 24.
So they're like, I'm looking at the website, this like comfortable sort of like sweatsuit type kind of athleisure wear, but really with zippers down the sides of the legs and down the sides of the arms and like easy buttons that you just, snaps that you just like break away that you can open easily.
So it's really designed, clearly inspired by your own experience with your parents.
And it doesn't scream.
I have a mobility issue, or perhaps I have a cognitive issue because of, you know, Alzheimer's.
Let's give an example.
My mom wears it all the time.
She feels good and she looks good.
That's awesome.
And tell me a little bit about how you're doing in terms of sales, right?
You're selling entirely through your website?
Yeah.
So we started with, you know, direct-to-consumer market.
And we now are, I would say, 40% on direct-to-consumer.
And 60% is, you know, selling.
We're with long-term care homes.
We're with... medical distribution centers, physio clinics, hospitals.
So we're really a hybrid of a model right now.
And I think we can serve the masses with that type of model.
Cool.
And tell us your question.
So my question is so ADAPT apparel.
It was born from a personal mission and was to create dignified, functional clothing for people with mobility challenges.
We've seen a strong interest from the long-term care, rehab, infusion clinics.
But as we grow, we wonder, are we spreading ourselves too thin?
Should we narrow our focus to scale or are we actually serving the sectors?
It's giving us a competitive edge.
It's a really, really cool idea.
I love the idea.
Randy Hetrick, I want to bring you in on this.
Clothing for people with, you know, coming out of the hospital or aging or mobility issues.
I mean, it just seems like a no brainer to me.
Well, I mean, first of all, I love Catherine's kind of combination of deep domain expertise and then the passion right from having worked with her own parents.
And that you put those two things together and you've got really a pretty special recipe.
Just to start with that, that deep domain, expertise and passion.
Right.
And you're going to need both obviously, as you go forward.
I love you know the the when you think about the fashion space or the apparel space.
Fashion apparel is notoriously fickle and you know, read that as risky.
Functional apparel is starting to kind of have its day.
And I don't think that it's necessarily.
I mean, we're seeing this in the fitness space too, like functional apparel beginning to pop up.
And I think it's very interesting.
At this point maybe nichey right still, but i think there's a huge potential audience if you can, if you can break through.
As to your question, i mean you're asking kind of that that, that great question of hey, how early do i focus?
Which is, you know, which is a not a non-trivial question.
I mean it's you got to stay nimble enough to find the, the kind of the vein, but but then focus as you begin to scale.
That's what we said too, Randy.
You know, for the first year you're collecting your data, your analytics and everything right.
And don't be afraid to pivot.
And as we, you know, navigate the murky waters, we're in the muddy water system right now.
Do we branch or do we stay within where the story started?
I mean, I think it's a little bit of both, but I think it's about timeframes, right?
You're only a year into this thing, and you've got a really innovative idea and product.
And Randy, to your point, I mean, at leisure wear, and you could call anything functional, right?
I mean, Viore shorts are functional.
It's a billion-dollar business, right?
Huge business.
Lululemons of the world.
This is really specific for – and I think a lot of people, not just elderly people, but anyone who's been in a hospital can identify with the need for something like this.
And I think right now in my view – you're best teed up to really work with hospitals, care facilities, rehab facilities, infusion clinics and really try and make inroads with those institutions, because that's where you're going to obviously find your initial customers.
One just sort of observation here is you've got a really interesting logo, which I think is a thumbprint or a fingerprint.
I'm so glad you asked.
Our logo is my mother's thumbprint.
I love it.
It's a really cool logo.
It looks distinctive.
It looks like something you can really build out as a recognizable brand.
But I think for now...
You really want to make, you want to get traction with those places where people are, you know are in need of this.
Right.
You're not necessarily going to have an easy time with these hanging up at.
You know, Dick's Sporting Goods right now, maybe in five years.
But right now you want these where your potential customers are.
Yeah, it's a great point because you know we've had interest from retailers and we you know our team will sit around and discuss that.
You know, is this something that we really want to?
Does it align with our core values?
And that's really important to us.
I'm going to follow right where Guy was heading us too.
You guys are brand spanking new.
I know it probably doesn't feel that way to you, right?
Because it's like everybody talks about.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But to the rest of us, right?
To the rest of the world, you're brand new.
And I think that it's really, really important to find your advocacy early.
From wherever it is, find that advocacy, that people really get it and care and want to pick up your banner and help carry it forward.
Because when you think about retail, it's pretty easy really to sell in.
But what you really got to focus on with retail is sell through, right?
And that's where a lot of early brands that their buyers are out there in retail looking for things to buy.
They're under pressure to bring in some new things.
And so they'll find you maybe bring you in.
But if you don't have some momentum, if you don't have some advocacy out there, it could be the worst decision you ever made, because you can finance right.
A buy-in, put it in there and then nobody buys it.
And then the retail rejects you.
And for maybe ever, but certainly for a long time, that retailer's burned.
And so I wouldn't rush too fast to worry about retail or broadening your.
You know your, your target.
I'd actually try to to find the real spot where you're hitting the target, as an evidenced by feedback from those early customers.
And then focus on that, right?
Learn from them.
Okay.
Make your, make some mistakes in a forgiving environment.
I appreciate that so much.
Awesome.
I think it's a great product.
It's a great idea.
Catherine Perry, Adapt Apparel.
Congrats.
Thanks so much for calling in.
Thanks, guys.
Best of luck.
Thank you.
Thanks.
So, Randy, entrepreneurship alive and well in North America, clearly.
So I get so excited by listening to these folks' concepts.
Guy and I could listen to even more of this.
Yeah.
I am reminded every day with what I do, how much innovation.
I mean, and look, this isn't like a laser AI product, but it's a really innovative product.
And we're talking about something that people need.
It's just a reminder of how much cool stuff people are creating all the time.
You know, without fail in my life experience forget just my business experience the things that always do the best are the things that start by solving a problem.
And then the broader held that problem is, the faster the adoption and the more meteoric the rise of the product.
But if you can solve a problem, and it does seem like she's solving one, my parents are.
And, you know, my dad just passed away and dealing with spending a lot of time in the hospitals.
I haven't seen anything like this.
So it definitely seems like if she can you know, if she can learn early and get it right that there's a great early mover advantage.
For sure.
Yeah.
Randy, a question I ask all of our returning guests.
Which I want to ask you is that when you look back at your time building TRX and we I mean again you guys have got to hear this episode.
I'm going to say this again and again.
It's so good.
And there's so much we didn't even talk about about that episode on this show, including how you took on all the copycats.
But if you were going back in time, when you were really getting this off the ground, knowing what you know now?
You know all the experience you have now what do you think would have been helpful for you to know?
What advice would you give your younger self?
You know, coming out of Stanford Business School, when I did, I think it was crippled a little bit by the false sense that, if you know, if you can't get your business to be worth a hundred million bucks in three years, then it's not worth doing right.
Because, you know, I graduated from Stanford in 03.
It was kind of on the back of the first dot-com bubble burst, but there was an awful lot of kind of that thinking in the Valley.
And what I would tell myself honestly is like, a little more patient.
I really can't say it enough.
Get profitable as early as possible and stay profitable and make decisions from a mindset that I want to try to maintain profitability.
And even if I have to go underwater a little bit to do it, a little bit's fine.
Deeply, less fine.
And because you know honestly, when you're living in a profitable world, the clock ticks more slowly, you think more clearly.
And I just that would probably be the biggest piece of advice that I'd give myself to you know, answer your question is be patient, stay profitable, focus on my customers and and grow at an organic rate rather than some artificially powered nitrous oxide powered rate.
That may not work, may take you in the wrong direction.
That's the inventor and founder of TRX, Randy Hetrick.
Randy, thanks so much for being with us.
Great to be with you, Guy.
Thanks for having me back.
And, of course, if you haven't heard Randy's original How I Built This episode please please please, do take the time to go back and check it out.
It is so good.
I will put a link to it in the podcast description.
And here is one of my favorite moments from that interview.
The manufacturer that I had started with didn't have a depth of manufacturing experience in the kind of product that I was bringing, which is this product has to be very durable.
And so one of the very early large lots of inventory we ordered arrived and we'd sold out of everything.
So of course we were out of stock by the time it arrived and desperate to ship.
Well, we hooked up.
The first suspension trainer leaned back and the handles just cracked like potato chips.
Hey, thanks so much for listening to the show this week.
And by the way, please make sure to check out my newsletter.
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Leave a message there and make sure to tell us how to reach you, and we'll put all of this information in the podcast description as well.
This episode was produced by Catherine Seifer with music composed by Ramtin Arablui.
It was edited by Andrea Bruce.
Our engineers were Robert Rodriguez and Kwesi Lee.
Our production staff also includes Alex Chung, Carla Estevez, Casey Herman, Carrie Thompson, Chris Massini, Ramel Wood, Sam Paulson, Neva Grant and Elaine Coates.
I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This.
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