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Hello and welcome to The Advice Line on how I built this lab.
I'm Guy Roz. 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 attempt with me to help you.
This week, we have a special episode.
It's a bit of a mashup, three callers, and three different former guests, but all tackling some version of the same question.
How do you get the word out about a growing business and reach new customers?
And by the way, 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.
You can also send us a voice memo at hibt at id .wundery .com and make sure to tell us how to reach you.
And also don't forget to sign up for my newsletter.
It's full of insights and ideas from the world's greatest entrepreneurs.
You can sign up for free at guyraus .com.
And we'll put all this info in the podcast description.
All right, let's get to it.
Our first guest today is Leah Sullivan, the founder of TaskRabbit, the online marketplace for services like cleaning, building furniture, running errands, and a whole lot more.
And Leah told the story of TaskRabbit on how I built this back in 2022.
It is such a cool story.
You can find it in our podcast queue and we'll put a link in the podcast description as well.
And as you'll hear, Leah had some fantastic advice for our callers when she joined me on the advice line earlier this month.
Hello, welcome to the advice line.
Hi, Guy and Leah. Hello, hello.
Tell us your name, where you're calling from, and a little bit about your business.
Sure, I'm Erin. I'm calling from Alameda, California.
And I am the CEO and co -founder of Hello Divorce.
Hello Divorce. Yep.
We are an online platform that transforms the notoriously complicated and messy and super expensive divorce journey into an easier, kinder, and much more equitable and affordable process through a platform that combines easy to use technology and tools with built -in access to expert support along the way.
Wow. So it's like a platform like LegalZoom or whatever to make an online will or whatever, trust.
You just speed through the divorce in a simple, straightforward way.
Similar, but from one platform, you not only complete your legal forms, and there's a lot, but you can also send them profiling with the court.
You can chat with a lawyer or a financial advisor or even a mediator to help you resolve conflict.
And you can get the resources you need for everything from dividing home equity to co -parenting challenges, and then to navigating post -divorce hurdles as well.
And what's your question for us today?
Okay. So when I started Hello Divorce, I knew it would be a great option for people who couldn't afford lawyers, but what surprised me in a good way was that even those who could afford an attorney have started to find value and be successful with us.
However, we continue to face this recurring challenge.
Most people still think they need to hire a lawyer to get divorced.
So how do we overcome this deeply rooted belief and build trust in the idea that an online divorce can work?
Right. Okay. Well, as somebody who has not experienced this and hopes never to, I'm curious how I'm assuming that you have a background in this, like maybe as an attorney or - Actually, I spent 15 years practicing law as a divorce attorney.
Right. And I saw just how broken the system is.
It is unfair. It ramps up conflict literally every step of the way.
And it's set up to make divorces longer and messier because lawyers get paid by the hour and it creates literally no incentive for us to add efficiencies or to work towards a resolution.
The longer the divorce goes, the more we get paid.
So I knew we could do better, but to truly make a difference, we had to help people opt out of the system altogether and provide much more holistic support.
And so basically it's like a flat fee that you pay?
Correct. So depending on the complexity of your divorce, customers pay between $400 and $3800 for a plan that covers their entire divorce.
And they can pay that as a flat fee or they can pay that over time.
And then from there, they can seek a la carte expert help to the extent that they need some extra advice along the way or help resolving conflict.
Leah Sullivan, I'm going to bring you in.
You may have questions of your own before we answer these questions.
Yeah. Well, first off, I mean, Erin, I'm always looking for founders that I say have product market fit and you as a founder, having experienced this industry.
I mean, it makes so much sense that you have built this company.
I love that you have seen where the gaps are and you have seen that it can be done a different way.
And that's what you want to tackle.
So I think that's so fantastic.
What percentage of divorces do you feel like this works for?
Does it work for everyone or are there outliers or like, I have had this experience myself, right?
It's a really big deal.
You don't want to mess it up.
And so you don't want to start down a path if you're not sure it's going to work.
Is it going to make it worse or is it actually going to be better to go this way?
So how do you think about that when you look at the customers that you've worked with to date and what percentage does it work for?
Yes. Well, that is on my mind all the time, primarily because women file for divorce 70 to 75 % of the time.
And that is their biggest fear.
So you get it. And it works for the vast majority of divorces.
And the reason being is because most divorces don't go to trial and most divorces don't happen overnight.
So you will have time to use our software and complete everything you need to complete and have a lawyer, an incredible lawyer on the platform, review it with you if you'd like advice.
You'll have time to work with a financial advisor and have them really think through how you can come out of this in a much more resilient way.
In fact, the problem with the lawyer led divorce is that lawyers end up leading everything there is to lead about divorce when in reality, most of us should be working with a financial advisor or a real estate expert.
And so what I love about our platform is, yes, it's emotional, but it makes space for that and gives you the opportunity to connect with whoever you might need before you make that big decision to sign on the dotted line and sign your divorce judgment.
Okay. Yeah. I mean, I have a couple of ideas.
I mean, it is sort of, this is much higher stakes, but it is sort of reminiscent when we were first launching TaskRabbit.
Again, building that trust around, am I going to invite someone, a stranger, into my home?
People were really scared about that.
They were really nervous about that in the beginning.
And so there is this element of education I think that has to be done to overcome that and trust building.
You know, with TaskRabbit, we did it with background checking and we did it with, you know, utilizing social networks.
I think in your case, bringing in some more of those emotional support elements that sort of give people the trust and confidence that, listen, I've got you.
I know what you're going through.
We're going to, you know, support you through this.
Right now it feels very transactional, which is good.
It's fine. I mean, it makes me feel confident that you're going to be able to handle all of the paperwork and filings and, you know, keep sort of the trains running on time.
I think what I want to feel is that element of, I understand how to make this path a healthier, happier approach for you.
I mean, is it even possible to take some divorced uncouples and bring them to the forefront with some reviews of how it went, you know, with some videos of, hey, listen, yep, we got divorced and we feel better off for it.
And this is where we are today.
Thank you to Hello Divorce for making it so unconscious for us.
I love that. And I think that's actually what we do best, but kind of leaned away from because for the longest time we were leaning into the empathy and the storytelling and the videos and the testimonials.
But the problem was is that people didn't think we had the authority, like that we had the ability to handle their needs.
And so now it sounds like we need to go back, we need to find the balance.
It's a balance. It's a balance.
And you have the credibility, you have the background to say, I know how to do this.
I can handle the legal forms and the filings and all those things.
So it's a little bit of maybe bringing you to the forefront, too.
While you balance that empathy piece, I think building that credibility with directly as a founder with your customer base.
But you also have that empathy as well.
I mean, that's where this really all started, this is why you built what you built.
So actually, I think it's really about you, like you are the balance.
And maybe bringing that more to the forefront would be helpful.
Yeah, great, agreed.
100%. Aaron Levine, Hello, Divorce is the platform.
Good luck, congrats.
Thanks for calling in.
Thank you so much. We're going to take a quick break.
But when we come back, the founder of a premium olive oil company asks for advice from two founders with decades of experience in the food industry.
Stick around, you're listening to the advice line right here on How I Built This Lab.
I'm Molly Bloom, and my podcast Torched tells some of the greatest stories of scandal and redemption on the world's biggest stage, the Olympics.
It's no exaggeration to say at the Olympics, everything is on the line.
Metals, career, money, reputation.
And with so much at stake.
It's no wonder sometimes things can go awry.
If you've seen the movie Molly's game, then you know that I left my Olympic dreams behind to run some of the biggest poker games in the world.
Now I traded in my chips for a pen and a microphone.
On Torched, we'll be digging into some of the most memorable Olympic moments, like Greg Louganis is infamous dive and Boris and a shankos attempt to cheat at fencing.
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We usually know famous people for kind of one big thing, but what if we took a fresh perspective?
That is what famous and gravy is all about.
We tell celebrity biographies from a different point of view.
On each episode, we choose a famous figure who has died recently.
Muhammad Ali, Gene Wilder, Betty White, Harry Tyler Moore, Olivia Newton -John, Norm McDonald, Neil Armstrong.
And we look for stories that tell us something we didn't see before.
We consider what a celebrity life story tells us about ourselves.
And we're the only show that dares to answer the question, would you want that life?
I'm Michael Osborne and I'm Amit Kapoor.
We host Famous and Gravy.
Biographies from a different point of view.
Follow Famous and Gravy on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.
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My name is Georgia King and I am thrilled to be the host of And Away We Go, a brand new travel podcast on Wondery Plus, where we'll be whisked away on immersive adventures all around the world.
Where we go, what we do, what we eat, drink and listen to will all be up to my very special guests.
We've got Ben Schwartz taking us on a whirlwind trip around Disneyland.
We'll eat a bowl of life changing pasta with Jimmy O.
Yang in Tuscany, Italy.
And how do you feel about a spot of sugaring off with Emily Hampshire in Montreal?
And Away We Go will immerse you in some of the wonders of the world.
We're gonna be seeing some yellows and vibrant oranges.
And the shoes clicking against the cobblestone.
If you're looking to get somebody in the mood, have a look at the Chicago skyline.
You can listen to And Away We Go exclusively with Wondery Plus.
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Georgia, do you know what joy sounds like?
I think I'm hearing it right now.
Welcome back to the Advice Line on how I built this lab.
I'm Guy Roz. Our next return guests are the husband and wife team behind Mod Pizza and Seattle Coffee Company, Scott and Ali Svensson.
When they were first on the show, they told the story of how they brought pizza to the fast casual industry.
After selling their coffee company to Starbucks, we'll stick a link to that full episode in the podcast description.
Anyway, when Scott and Ali came back onto the Advice Line, they offered some really great advice to our callers.
Hello, hello caller, please introduce yourself, tell us your name, where you're calling from and just a little bit about your business briefly.
Hi there. It's great to be here.
My name is Kaveh Nirmafidi.
I'm calling from San Diego, California and I'm the co -founder of Aficio 22.
We're a mission driven premium olive oil company sourcing our single origin olive oil from central California.
All right. And what's your question for us today?
My question is, given our growth aspirations for Aficio 22, what is the best strategy to scale our brand nationwide and enhance our distribution channels?
Got it. Okay, great.
Well, thanks for calling in, Kaveh.
Tell us a little bit about the business.
So you're in Southern California, you said?
That is correct. We're currently based in San Diego.
We participate in various weekly farmers markets between San Diego all the way to Malibu.
We also align ourselves with various wine festivals, mostly in California.
And so you source your olive oil from California and it's called Aficio 22.
Yeah, tell me about that name.
So Aficio is driven from Aficionado and the 22 is we're launched in December of 2022.
We're also mission driven.
So we allocate 2 % of our total sales to two youth organizations in San Diego.
Kaveh, tell me how you got into the olive oil business.
That's a great question.
I mean, olive oil was always a staple in my mom's kitchen.
Whether we use salad dressings or she made stews, it was always a staple ingredient.
And my brothers and I really developed an appreciation for the flavor profile, the health benefits that comes with using olive oil.
And what were you doing?
I mean, did you do this right out of school?
Did you were you doing something else in life when you started this?
Similar to Scott, my background is in banking and finance.
I led a team of investment advisors.
Cool. All right. Before we get to your question, Scott, Ali, questions for Kaveh, do you have any further questions for him about the brand that he's starting?
Yeah, yeah, Kaveh, your business sounds really neat.
And it's a fantastic product.
I'm curious where you're connecting with customers today.
It sounds like through the farmers markets and wine festivals, is that your primary distribution channel today?
Scott, one thing that we're really proud of, we're able to have the opportunity to move into for Mother's Day weekend, this past Mother's Day weekend, we were able to get into Nordstrom.
And we had a sellout today events on the 15th and 16th of May.
We're really proud of that, the amount of traffic that we receive and the amount of overwhelming support, positive response that gave us the confidence to continue to move forward and propel.
The farmers markets currently and the wine festivals and various events across the state is currently where we're growing and where we get a chance to speak to our customers and develop that relationship.
And we're trying to organically grow from here.
It's quite challenging trying to get distribution outside of California for the time being.
Yeah. Just out of curiosity, how did you end up generating that opportunity with Nordstrom?
Great question. One of our customers visited us at a farmers markets.
She loved the product.
She was a huge advocate.
She reached back to Nordstrom.
They have apparently a committee that helps with pop up and collaboration with local brands and met with them.
Their head of team development came and visited us again at our farmers market.
She loved the product.
She loved the design.
She loved our interaction with our customers, because when we do tastings, it's more than just people come and check out the bottle.
And we talk about the story.
We allow them to sample our products.
We provide an interactive and engaging customer experience so that when they leave, they have a really good feeling about our product and what we're trying to do.
That's fabulous. Have you experienced any other retail distribution?
Have you gotten your product into any other outlets?
I've tried with Whole Foods.
I've tried with some of the local boutique shops.
It's kind of hard to get your foot into the door.
But on the one man show, essentially, I do all the farmers markets.
I do all the filling of the bottles, packing, shipping.
So it's marketing, sales, distribution, accounting.
As you can imagine, we're quite scrappy, but I'm confident with my skill sets, we can grow the product.
First of all, congratulations on starting something that's special, that's mission -based.
That's really cool and important.
So thank you. I do have one question before we can help answer your question.
And that's around your subscription situation.
I know that was mentioned, or I think I saw it on your website.
And I just want to know what's the status of that right now?
So it's actually growing, Ali, as we speak.
I actually have subscribers joining on a weekly basis.
So it's not a tremendous growth we're seeing right now.
But as I increase the awareness at farmers markets, at wine festivals, anyone approaches us, I usually talk about our subscription plan.
And it's quite flexible in terms of the frequency and the number of bottles that customers want us to ship to them.
Okay. Kaveh, a couple of questions for you.
The first is, your price point is high.
So obviously you have a premium product.
I think it's about 45 bucks a bottle right now.
Is that right? That is correct.
Which makes it, I think, challenging for some retailers, because they want to put that on the shelves and they need you to get your price point down.
What are the possibilities for getting your price point down?
I mean, is there a world where you're able to reduce the cost?
Currently our cost of goods sold is high because everything is worked on in the US.
With the exception of our bottles, glass bottles, naked arrives in the US from Italy and Spain.
We work on it locally in the US, whether we UV protected, labeling the labor, the California olive oil in itself is very expensive.
And everything is certified olive oil extra virgin through the California olive oil council.
All those things pose a challenge in terms of reducing the cost of goods sold.
The next way to go about this business is to reduce our cost of goods sold through our glass manufacturer to move over to Asia, which would significantly reduce our production cost.
And obviously we can pass on those savings to our customers and eventually be able to have the opportunity to go into retail.
You know, it's interesting.
Before we answer your question, I'm looking at your website and the bottles are absolutely beautiful.
I mean, clearly this is a beautiful design.
But what you just told me about the quality of the bottles and the quality of the olive oil, it's not doesn't jump out at you right away.
The thing that you emphasize initially on the website is the mission, which is awesome, you know, allocating 2 % to, to supporting kids, but, and Scott and Allie, you know, correct me if I'm wrong here, but I think ultimately consumers, you know, they might like the mission, but they're gonna, they're
gonna be interested in this product based on its quality, based on what makes it really great, because you guys have a mission with Mod Pizza.
I mean, you, you, one of your biggest missions is you employ formerly incarcerated people in the shops.
Amazing. But I don't think people go to Mod Pizza for that reason, maybe one, 2 % of customers do, but they go to it because they like the pizza.
Yeah, Guy, I think you've hit on an incredibly important point.
And Kavi, it feels like you've have all of the foundations for this, which is ultimately the consumer is going to focus on the quality of the product.
And that's what's going to bring them in.
It's going to bring them back.
The, the mission will then create that, that incremental emotional connection with the consumer that I think will build loyalty over time, but it's not likely going to be the thing that necessarily brings people in in the first place.
And it feels to me, that example that you gave with Nordstroms is such a great example of building a followership, building disciples of the brand, and then having them help you extend and grow the business.
And that's maybe an extreme example where somebody went to bat for you and actually helped open the doors at Nordstroms.
But man, going into the farmer's markets, the wine festivals, and trying to find a way to leverage, build that community, build that followership, and then leverage that into having those individuals advocating for you with their local gourmet shop or their local, and, and starting to kind of build
it that way. And, and, and having that groundswell, if you will, if somebody who wants that super high quality product, as Guy said, now they might love the product, they might go to bat for you once they learn of the mission behind it, but it's going to be driven by their, their appreciation for the quality.
The only thing I would add is first thing that came to mind when I saw your, your profile was the importance of things like gift guides.
And I'm sure you're very familiar with, Brightland has done an incredible job, I think, of getting into the mindset of gift guides.
And when you mentioned Nordstrom, I thought, well, you're not far from there.
If you did that for Mother's Day, that kind of getting yourself into those publications and that kind of thing would be huge.
And, and I also, you know, your mission is, as we've already discussed, as being something that people discover, don't underestimate the importance of working with the organizations that you are supporting.
I saw that Big Brothers Big Sisters is one of the groups you donate, that's a fantastic organization.
And you should make sure that they're, you know, talking to all of their people and their supporters for you on your behalf and make it easy for them, provide them with information, links to things, subscription, application, whatever, but helping them help you might not be a bad idea.
I love it. I love it.
I mean, that's a great example of if you could have them help you extend and market your brand to their community.
And if you could get a bunch of the supporters of Big Brothers Big Sisters to start being subscribers to your product, that gets that flywheel turning of people who have a direct connection with your purpose, who want to support.
You know, and I think we're all in different ways answering your question about how to grow your brand nationwide and enhance your distribution channels.
And they do a great job with particularly flavored olive oils, basil and hot pepper and things like that.
There's another brand, Grazo, which I'm sure you're familiar with in the squeezy bottle.
And what they do so well is they've got two options, drizzle or sizzle, right?
You know, you're going to use it to drizzle on olive oil on a salad, or you're going to use it to cook with.
And so you basically know what to do with it.
What you've done here is you've got three options, delicate, medium, and bold.
And one of my suggestions, especially for kind of building out the brand, is to say maybe in parentheses underneath, delicate, you know, great for salad dressing, medium, you know, drizzle this on your tomatoes, and then bold, and you know, use this with, eat this, dip your bread in it, just something
small, simple like that, to kind of do a version of what Grazo did, but certainly appealing to consumers who are really, you know, open and interested in trying and working with a premium olive oil.
And perhaps also you could partner up or become friends with certain chefs in your area, get them to love your product, and perhaps even feature it with some of their dishes or in their restaurants, kind of to Guy's point, having them promote what what what olive oil goes great with, you know, dipping
their bread or things like that, you create more ambassadors of people that can really help inspire consumers.
Oh, that's a great point.
We actually do custom recipes every week or every two weeks with a local chef or Instagram influencers, they come up with cool recipes that we showcase on our social media.
Fantastic. And to your point, gift idea is a fantastic thing.
We're actually revamping our packaging with the new custom boxes with inserts.
Nice. So that should really separate us from, you know, the competition hopefully.
Everybody who signs up and subscribes, every email you collect, start a newsletter, make sure their recipes in it once a week, send that out, even if it's to 200 people, or 500 and so on.
recipes with your olive oil at work.
Kaveh, the brand is called a fisio 22.
Good luck. Awesome products.
And we'll we're gonna keep our eye on on on you and your growth.
Guys, Scott, Ali, thank you for this opportunity.
And thank you for allowing me to share my story with you.
Nice to meet you. Congratulations, and best of luck.
Kaveh. You know, I was in Italy, the earlier this summer, and I went to a restaurant, and it's Italian, but they get at the end of the meal, they gave me and my wife a little bottle of olive oil.
And so this is the olive oil we use in our restaurant.
And they tell you the story, there's a little sort of letter that comes then it tells you how they source it.
And it was a delicious restaurant.
And I thought, what a cool idea.
So cool. A beautiful little bottle.
Yeah. Yes. What a fun business.
Yeah. And I mean, to be in a business where you love your product, and you love all of the mystery and the magic around it.
What a neat business.
We're going to take another quick break.
But when we come back, another caller with another question for another former guest.
Stay with us. You're listening to a special mashup edition of the advice line right here on How I Built This Lab.
At a time when we're debating where policing is going, we're going to tell you where the police came from.
They wanted me to write about the New York City Police Department, but without using the words violence or corruption, which is effectively impossible.
A story of how the largest and most influential police department in the country became one of the most violent and corrupt organizations in the world.
Doesn't matter if you're you know, a self emancipated black person, or if you're free or they're just sending people back to the south, kidnapping them.
When officers with the power to fight the danger, become the danger.
I was terrified. I'm not going to talk to the police because they're the ones who are perpetrating this.
Who am I going to talk to?
From Wondery and Crooked Media, I'm Chingerot Kumonika, and this is Empire City, the untold origin story of the NYPD.
Follow Empire City on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.
You can binge all episodes of Empire City early and ad -free right now by joining Wondery Plus.
Welcome back to How I Built This Lab.
I'm Guy Roz. And joining me next is Holly Faggard.
Back in 2020, Holly told the story of how a friend's skin cancer diagnosis inspired her to launch her sunscreen brand Supergoop.
And if you want to hear that incredible story, just check out the link in the podcast description.
Holly was also the perfect founder to answer some advice line questions from some of our up and coming entrepreneurs.
All right, let's bring in our next caller.
Hello, welcome to the show.
Hey, Guy. Hey, Holly.
How are you? Hello.
Please introduce yourself, tell us your name, where you're calling from, and just a bit about your business.
My name is Eric Wolk.
I am calling from the lovely beach town of Margate, New Jersey.
I am the co -founder of JetSetMeds .com.
We provide our patients with a physician -curated travel medical kit.
The kit includes about a dozen prescription medications and about a half a dozen over -the -counter medications and some first aid supplies.
And it leaves our patients feeling pretty comfortable while they're traveling overseas in case the inevitable happens.
Yep. And what's your question for us, Eric?
This is a product that is a bit unique and I think requires as much education as it does marketing to the potential consumer.
And so there's so many channels and so many options these days and how I could potentially reach my audience.
And so keeping in mind that we're trying to educate while marketing, what channels do you think I should spend my time and my energy pursuing?
All right. We'll get to your question in a moment, Eric.
Let me ask you a couple of questions first.
You're an MD, right?
Yeah. So I'm a board -certified emergency medicine doctor.
I worked 15 years in a very busy level one trauma center.
And I started a boutique concierge medical practice about four years ago.
And one of the things that I started doing for my patients was providing them with these travel kits after the fourth, fifth, or sixth time that I found myself on the phone with a pharmacist in Paris trying to speak French, trying to explain to them what medication I was trying to ask them to provide
for my patient. I said there has to be a better way.
And my co -founder is also a physician.
He's a urologic surgeon.
He had a little bit of experience in e -commerce.
And so we put together this travel kit and we're live as of a month ago.
Okay. So you've got these kits and I should mention that when I used to go overseas for a covered war, it's a war correspondent 25 years ago, Afghanistan, Iraq.
I always traveled with doxycycline with amoxicillin.
And that's essentially what you do, right?
Like people can basically, can you have people travel with these things just in case?
Exactly. Yeah. So, you know, in my, my 15 years of doing this, it's really the same 10 or 12 medications that come up over and over again.
And we're able to meet the needs of probably about 95 % of the different issues that may occur, antibiotics being one of those, but also things just like anti -nausea medications, topical medications, steroid creams, antibiotic ointments.
It's all in the kit.
And because there's prescriptions involved, the way it works is our patients come to our site, they fill out a brief medical intake survey.
Based on the answers they provide us with that survey, our physicians have to go through and determine to make sure that the kit is safe for them to have.
So if somebody has an allergy to blank medication, we're not prescribing said medication.
Once our physician deems it's safe for the person to have that kit, it all happens on the back end where the prescriptions that get sent to a third party logistic pharmacy, they build the kit for us and it gets shipped directly to the consumer.
And some of it is prescription medication, some of it's over the counter medication.
That's right. Got it.
All right. Let me bring the expert in.
Holly Thagard has built a multi -million dollar business in skincare and sunscreen.
Holly, interesting idea, curated custom made kit here.
I'm looking at these are not cheap, but they're very reasonably priced, 400 bucks for the starter kit.
What are your thoughts about what Eric is trying to do here?
And also his question.
So I have one question for you.
So with the purchase of this kit, do they have access to you while they're on their trip?
Not to me personally, but to our doctor network, which is a physician network that we partnered with to help support the kits.
Like through texts or emails or something like that?
Exactly. Yeah. Through text, through chat.
That's exactly right.
Well, having just returned from South Africa about a month ago, our family, we did take medicine with us, but we have a concierge doctor as well.
And she, um, we've had that relationship for gosh, five years or so.
Um, and I know that's kind of a newer concept in doctoring.
Um, she's what we've learned from that experience is she's incredibly hands -on and wants to be at the, you know, text of anything that would ever go wrong.
And, and, uh, and so to, to kind of think about your question in what channels to focus on, um, I think thinking about the bigger part of our population that even still goes to an urgent care clinic and doesn't have access beyond maybe a primary doctor.
When it's actually very difficult to even get in touch with primary doctors, you have to go through the administrative office, the nurse, the nurse, then contacts the doctor.
So I wonder if marketing towards urgent care, even in the form of pamphlets and posters and things that like bringing awareness, cause as you said, we need to let the world know that this is a possibility.
They can, they can access, um, prescription drugs this easily before maybe a big, maybe a big vacation.
I, I have a Holly, I have a slightly different take, which is, cause I think you're right.
Right. You, you know, looking into those kind of urgent care kind of places, but, but like to me, what you're doing here, it seems like a great opportunity for an employer to offer this as a benefit to their employees, you know, a big consulting firm, a big law firm.
They have people who travel all around the world, every single day, sales reps, companies with a lot of employees who then have access to this.
It's a benefit. It's part of the package that they get as part of just being an employee.
Um, and, and I, and, you know, your question is about how do we take our, our, our money and spend it?
And, and there's a million ways to skin that cap.
But one way might be to look for a consulting firm that can help you, uh, get access to some big companies to make the case for, for why this should be a benefit.
Okay. We're always thinking at Supergoop of ways to make our team more comfortable, to make, to give our team benefits, things that they need to make their life happier.
And, and I think this definitely would be one if we had a lot of international, and we, we do, we have an office in Singapore in Paris and we have people traveling internationally as we've launched the Middle East two years ago.
And we have, you know, I mean, there's things that come up and the last thing that we would want is for our, um, anyone in our brand or our company to be uncomfortable and to not have access to the medicine that they need.
So be your B to B, just go, kind of go that route.
I don't think it's one of the other, but I think that's a really promising channel for you because this is something that, you know, um, you could sell to like, my family's going to, you know, we just got back from Italy for three weeks.
We could have gone and done that, but selling a kit, a one -off kit, you know, to a family every five or seven years, uh, is one, is one channel, but, but having a company that has people traveling all the time that will then need to renew the kits, because, you know, medicine as you know, right, it,
it expires. Um, that to me seems like a really cool opportunity to really think about working with, um, you know, corporate partners.
And I would imagine you can use your FSA dollars for this too as well.
100 % HSA and FSA both.
That's right. Yeah.
But, but the luxury market is, is one, it's certainly an opportunity, but it is limited at a certain point, right?
You really want to get this in front of, because a lot of people, you know, if you're, if you're working for a big company and the company is going to pay the 400 bucks for the kit, it's worth their, it's worth the dollar spend for them because if it could prevent, you know, if it could keep their employee
healthy and working while they're overseas, um, they're, they're, they're on board with that.
And then from a marketing, I mean, I think also getting in touch with, with the, the travel and leisure, wall street off duty, all these, all these, uh, you know, magazines and, and media outlets that could bring help bring awareness to pay before your next trip or, Right.
I think part of one of the challenges I'm running into is as opposed to 2005, when it was media, it was print.
Now there's, there's social, there's YouTube, there's Facebook influencers, micro influencers.
It's like, it's very overwhelming.
And I feel like I'm getting a little scatterbrained.
There's too many choices.
And so I'm really trying to make sure I spend my time, you know, going down the right path and I'm not spinning my wheels.
I think that, that there, and look, when you talk about social, social media strategy, that can take time.
But what you bring to the table is your expertise.
You are a medical doctor, you have over 20 years of experience in emergency medicine.
So, and that carries a lot of weight, especially when you're sitting across a table from, you know, somebody who makes purchasing decisions for a company, right?
But at the same time, makes a lot of sense if you're trying to do social media.
I would put you out there, put your part, your co -founder out there, you're both doctors.
I'd put yourselves out there in your scrubs talking about, you know, how important it is to be safe and healthy when you travel and just start, start experimenting with, with videos.
Right. Right. Right.
No. Yeah. I love that.
That's great feedback.
I appreciate it. We're, we're testing all our channels and, you know, seeing, seeing what's, what's, what's going to work.
It's a really exciting time, actually, in the, I think in the phase in the journey of an entrepreneur, like we're, we're 18 months to get to where we are and we're a month out of a, of a launch.
And so it's an exciting time, a challenging time.
And so we'll see what happens.
Yeah. Eric, good luck.
The brand's called Jet Set Meds.
So cool. Congrats on taking the leap and we're cheering on, man.
Thank you so much. Thanks for your time, Holly and Guy.
I appreciate it. Thank you.
Yeah, nice visiting with you.
All right. Take care.
Hey, thanks so much for listening to this special mashup edition of the Advice Line this week and a special thanks to Leah Sullivan of TaskRabbit Scott and Ali Svensson of Mod Pizza and Holly Thaggart of Supergoop for joining me on the show.
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