Say you've always wanted to take that trip to Copenhagen just to soak up the design scene.
Here's the thing.
If you get smart with your money, you could do things like that.
With Empower, you can start making the most out of your money, so you can go out and live a little.
Isn't that why we work so hard?
To have some fun with our money, like building out that immersive, cutting-edge media room or surprising your partner with a one-of-a-kind weekend getaway.
So use Empower and get good at money so you can be a little bad.
Join their 19 million customers today at Empower.com.
Not an Empower client, paid or sponsored.
If you're a parent of a teen or have teens in your life, it can be hard to figure out the right way to approach social media and technology.
Ultimately, if you feel like your teens are ready, there are tools to help.
Instagram teen accounts have automatic protections for what your teens see and who can contact them.
Plus, time management tools like daily time limits and sleep mode.
And Instagram will continue adding built-in safety features to help create age-appropriate experiences.
Learn more about teen accounts and Instagram's ongoing work to protect teens online at Instagramcom.
Slash teen accounts.
That's Instagram.com slash teen accounts. in partnership with Airbnb.
Over the holidays, my family and I took a trip to Japan, a place I actually spent time in as a child, and it was incredibly special to return with my own kids.
And one of the things that made the trip so great was the home we booked on Airbnb.
It wasn't just somewhere to sleep.
It was part of the experience.
We had space to spread out, a cozy place to come back to each night, and even a kitchen where we could start our mornings together.
And when you take your own vacation, that's actually a great time to host your home on Airbnb.
Your space might be exactly what someone else needs to feel right at home, and the extra income from hosting could even help offset the cost of your next trip.
Your home might be worth more than you think.
Find out how much at airbnbcom host.
The founders on this show share something.
They pick their tools carefully.
What you build with shapes what you create.
Cloud is the AI for people who actually want to solve hard problems.
For developers, Cloud Code turns your terminal into a collaborator.
You stay in the flow while shipping real work.
For everyone else.
Co-work handles the tasks that pile up, so you can focus on the decisions that matter.
Here's what's different.
Claude isn't optimized to keep you scrolling.
Anthropic committed to no advertising in the product.
Your conversations won't be shaped by whoever paid for placement.
That's a business model decision. and it shows up in how the tool actually works.
For anyone building a company, navigating strategic questions or just trying to think something through having an AI that's genuinely helpful and that you can trust changes what's possible.
Try Claude for free at claudeaihibt and see why problem solvers choose Claude as their thinking partner.
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.
Leave us a one minute message that tells us about your business and the issues or questions that you'd like help with.
All right, let's get to it.
Joining me this week is WeWork co-founder Miguel McKelvey.
Miguel, welcome back to the show.
Thank you.
Happy to be here.
It's great to have you back on.
You've been on the show twice, first in 2017 and then again in 2022.
And for anyone who hasn't listened to either of those shows, I really encourage you to go back and listen.
We'll put a link to it in the show notes.
Basically, the stories about how Miguel came to entrepreneurship with a background in architecture.
In 2007, he met a guy named Adam Newman.
They shared an office space in Brooklyn.
And then from there, So much more detailed story.
WeWork was born by 2019.
The valuation reached $47 billion.
Now, a lot of people listening know what outlines of what happened from there.
Adam Neumann faced some accusations of mismanagement.
He was forced to resign.
The company withdrew a long anticipated IPO filing.
And then Miguel left in 2020.
WeWork, by the way, still exists today.
There are about 330 locations around the world.
But, you know, obviously down from its peak, Miguel, you know, it's been over six years since you moved on from WeWork and we've talked since then.
But now that you've had even more distance, how does it feel?
And I should point out, you were never accused of mismanagement.
You come out great in a lot of these documentaries and in the dramatization that was put out there.
We Crashed.
How does it feel when you look back on your experience there?
You know, I still look back a lot.
It obviously played such a huge role in my life and I get the opportunity to talk about it.
Um, not publicly that much but, like last night I spoke to a group of entrepreneurs at an accelerator and of course they're very curious about the experience.
And I love to share the stories of both the good times and the hard times.
And, um, You know, entrepreneurship is a roller coaster no matter what scale you're at.
You know, there's so many emotional layers to everything that happens.
And I think my perspective is that every one of those experiences is an opportunity to grow from and learn something about myself, about how to treat other people, about how to, you know, do business in the way that I think is the right way to do it.
And I still get lessons from it, because people you know, I literally will run into someone on the street, a former WeWork employee who will share something with me about how WeWork changed their life, something I may have known and forgotten or something I, you know, never even knew about.
And I get this incredible feeling of like wow, we did something really powerful and it touched a lot of people.
And that is just endlessly fulfilling.
And so I don't shy away from it at all.
I'm happy to go back into it, even though there's a lot of pain there.
I think going into that pain is productive.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So it's interesting because right now right, we're looking at this, this moment where I wonder I'm just curious to get your take on it where there seems to be at least people are talking about a kind of a bubble with AI businesses right, companies I mean there's just the valuations are unbelievable, right.
You you, you experienced this with a company that you were at and companies around you where you just saw.
You know valuations go through the roof.
And I wonder whether you think there are any parallels between you know some of the crazy valuations you saw, even at WeWork, and what could possibly happen with some of these emerging AI companies.
One of the biggest differences I see is that WeWork was a very real-world problem.
It was very tangible.
And similar to Uber or Lyft, Airbnb some of these companies of my era that achieved great valuations.
You could really see the value in them in a tangible way.
Do people need a ride in a car?
For sure, they do.
Do they need a workspace?
For sure, they do.
The AI applications are so incredibly powerful and amazing, but because they can do so much and it's not yet clear exactly how to monetize them, it is a bit confusing to understand.
How will they be evaluated?
I kind of go back to even the earlier days of the dot-com boom, where it was like Everyone's super excited about what this technology is going to do, but no one's exactly sure if the business models are sound.
And who knows?
I mean, I know I'm diving into every AI tool I can find and loving it.
I'm barely paying anything for it.
I don't even know if I pay at all.
It might be a part of my Google bill, but I'm getting the benefit of incredible technology and not paying.
So that always feels a little bit scary of what's going to happen.
And of course, when you have big players who are competing, it can be a race to the bottom.
And that's scary too, because if Google wants to give their AI tools for free, what happens to ChatGPT?
These kind of things, they get dicey.
Yeah, for sure.
For sure.
Well, a lot of, a lot of interesting things that you're part of and you are, I mean you've done some mentoring.
I know you still, you know, go to incubators and talk to founders about their experiences.
So it sounds like a big part of what you've been doing and what you will continue to do is is just, you know, kind of be an advisor and mentor.
For me, that's super fulfilling.
I like engaging with people.
I'm super curious and ask a ton of questions.
Regardless of I know anything, I think I can be helpful in just getting people to think about things from different directions, different perspectives.
So I really enjoy it.
It's what kind of lights me up the most.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, let's put it to the test, Miguel, and bring in our first caller.
You ready?
Yep.
I'm ready.
All right.
All right.
Let's bring in our first caller.
Hello, caller.
Welcome to the Advice Line.
You're on with Miguel McKelvey.
Tell us your name, where you're calling from, and just briefly about your business.
Hi.
Hi, Guy.
Hi, Miguel.
Thank you so much for having me.
I'm a huge fan, so this is such a treat.
My name is Jane Barthel.
I live in Minneapolis Minnesota, and I am the founder and owner of Copa Threads, a women's pants brand that features small batch fun comfy, beautifully constructed pants.
Awesome.
Well, thanks for calling in, Jane.
So what kind of pants are they like?
Leisure or dress or what?
Tell me a little bit about what they look like.
I consider them a colorful and fun trouser.
They are intended to have the comfort of athletic pants but definitely have more sophistication, like a pant that you could wear out to dinner, you could wear traveling.
They're made of primarily 100% cotton canvas fabric.
So they actually have some structure.
So they have like a nice silhouette.
They're not like flowy pants.
And the main fabric is all printed.
So they have colorful designs, floral, geometric, birds.
They're just fun.
Cool.
And is this your main business right now?
I mean, it's a side hustle.
I have a full-time job in another industry.
Tell me, what's your full-time job?
My full-time job is I am a neonatologist.
So I take care of newborns in the newborn intensive care unit.
Cool.
I'm looking at your website and I wonder whether there's – I mean, they're obviously more elegant than scrubs, but is there?
– they seem like kind of easy to wear.
Is there a connection there?
Yes.
Okay.
I found, coming home from work, when people put on their more comfortable clothing, that it was a conundrum, because I wear scrubs every day and they're just the most comfortable pants you can wear.
So one day I deconstructed a pair of scrubs and started making pants just for fun, not to wear to work, but out of really fun colorful, funky fabrics.
And that's how this whole thing was kind of born because I would wear them around town.
I wore them to a concert.
And I would have friends, family, even strangers saying, oh, my God, I love your pants.
So that's kind of how it all started.
Are you selling the pants in stores or is it mainly through a website?
Almost all on my website.
I have just a few pairs at a local boutique in the suburb of Minneapolis where I live.
Yeah.
And where are they being manufactured, the pants?
In Northeast Minneapolis at a woman-owned factory.
Wow.
And the material comes, the main canvas comes from a manufacturer in Florida.
And that's, I get that via a fabric sourcer I met who is out of Chicago.
Got it.
And before we get to your question, one last question for you.
Give me a sense of how you're doing.
I mean, overall sales, let's say for the last year or so.
So I just started last summer at the end of last June of 25.
And I've done about $15,000 in sales.
Great.
That's a good start.
Yeah.
All right.
All right.
Before I bring in Miguel, what is your question?
So my question is about scale.
I've built my business around local manufacturing with very high quality standards, leading to high costs and price point.
So how do I build demand and scale when my values limit how fast and how cheaply I can grow?
Got it.
Okay.
Miguel McKelvey, I want to bring you in.
Thoughts for Jane or questions that you might have for her?
Yeah.
First thing, the pants are great.
I'm sad you don't have them in men's size for a six foot eight man because I love the patterns.
Very cool.
Thank you.
I am curious, just one question.
I know you're getting attention for these beautiful patterns, but do people want them in black or gray or more neutral colors?
Yes, yes.
I've definitely heard that request, which could be another whole conversation.
You know, because I hear both that I should be following my customers' demands but then also kind of staying true to my brand, which is meant to be colorful, exciting pants.
Yeah.
And what is your exact bottleneck?
Is it that the factory can't produce as many pants as you need to sell?
Or is it also that you need enough customers who can spend $300 on a pair of pants?
Yeah, it's really more the latter.
It's finding the customer base of people who value high quality local manufacturing.
And really, I think of the pants as like wearable art.
When people say to me, when are you going to make black pants?
I say, well, go to Banana Republic.
I'm not making black pants.
Like the whole idea is that these are like an art form you're wearing.
Got it.
And one more question on that.
Where have you gotten the customers who have spent $15,000 so far?
I mean, of course, a huge part of my customer base is my friends and family and people who graciously want to support me.
But then also the boutique where I sell things locally is all local designers.
It's all high end.
It's all kind of in that price range.
So right now the price point is high, about 295 for a pair of, And you know this, and part of it is because it's made in a small factory in Minneapolis and you're sourcing the material, the fabric from the US.
So that makes sense.
But before I address it, what do you want this to be?
Do you want this to be a bigger brand?
Do you want it to be a bigger side hustle?
What is your ambition here?
I...
I would love for it to be a successful side hustle that could kind of slowly grow and eventually become potentially something bigger when I'm kind of more toward the end of my career in medicine.
Right now I'm 54.
I'll probably work in medicine for another, I don't know, six, eight, 10 years.
And it would be nice for this to be something kind of on the side that would evolve, and I've actually thought I'm working with my manufacturer on a new design for spring.
And I was thinking maybe it could evolve into a business that has like drops quarterly.
So I maintain the small batch, high quality standards.
Yeah.
Miguel, I'm curious to get your take on what I'm about to say, because I mean there are two obvious paths, right?
There's manufacture this more cheaply, right, which is maybe outsource it, go overseas.
Or the other option is keep it where your price point is at, but you got to do a better job at explaining why.
Like so.
So Miguel is an owner of part owner of a brand called American Giant.
We featured on the show.
It's a great brand made in the US.
Fabrics are sourced in the US.
Cotton is even picked in the US.
And you, from the moment you go to the website, you understand that it's a little bit.
It's a little bit more expensive than what you might pay for.
You know a Hanes t shirt, but you understand why.
Go to your website.
Nothing that you've told us is here.
You don't know.
It's what's made in a factory in Minneapolis by a group of women.
It's handmade.
These are hand.
Source is all I mean, because now I need to know why I'm paying 295.
And then but that story starts to make sense.
Miguel, do you, do you think that moves the needle, that that you know?
When people know those things, it moves the needle.
100%.
It moves the needle, but I think you have to tell that story over and over and over.
It's not just a one-time thing.
You need to be on Instagram telling your personal story and why you care about the product and the way it's made.
And then also have the story of the people making it and the story of where the fabric comes from.
All those things are really meaningful.
And giving your why will be what really translates to people.
So I would say doing that would be really powerful.
And then the other thing is, um, the products look great.
The UGC.
Like the reviews I'm looking at, like the women wearing the pants when they've taken their own photo.
Those are amazing.
If you could get some of those ambassadors who would do the same thing, who would go on to social media and share their story of why they love the pants um to their networks, that would be great.
Cause it really translates.
You know it, the fact that these bright um funky patterns um are so beautiful in a photo.
And there's one where actually a woman is standing with three other women and her pants compared to theirs.
It's like, you're like, those are some great pants.
Oh yeah.
I'm looking down with the one that's She's at like a music festival.
Yeah.
I mean that sells the product itself, but you got to get that out there as much as you can and then put the why behind it.
Right.
Another thing I would suggest would be going to a local restaurant and gifting the pants to some of the servers and asking them to wear them, or a coffee shop where people can see them behind the counter, because they really jump off the page.
I'm sure... the more they're in public, people will say, hey, where are those pants from?
Just brainstorm everywhere someone could see these pants.
Because they don't need to work that hard.
Just showing up does a lot for these pants.
But you need to get them out there.
I've said, a big marker of success for me would be if I saw a stranger, someone I don't know, wearing my pants at our local grocery store.
That's one of my goals.
Yeah.
Yeah.
No, I mean, it's awesome.
I think you need to really double down on the story here.
Yeah.
And not just on the website, but anywhere you can.
So people understand what they're buying.
I mean, they're buying something that's artisanal, right?
That's a real craft-made product.
Right.
Right.
Exactly.
That isn't just made in a giant factory in California, put on a huge container ship.
So that that, to me, is is critical.
I think and and, as miguel said, you want to use any channel you can to to tell that story and to and, and for people to understand where it's coming from yeah, and how it's made.
Right for sure yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
The brand is called copa threads.
Uh, jane artel, thank you so much for calling in.
Good luck, thank you.
All right, we're going to take a very short break.
Back in just a few minutes.
I'm Guy Raz and you're listening to the advice line on how I built this lab.
As you've heard on this show, running a small business means hustling and figuring it all out a lot of times on your own.
But that doesn't mean you have to spend every night guessing at tax forms or looking for onboarding docs.
Gusto handles all of that, so you can spend your time on the parts of your business you actually love.
Gusto is online payroll and benefit software built for small businesses.
It's all in one, remote friendly and incredibly easy to use.
So you can pay, hire, onboard and support your team from anywhere.
Gusto does it all.
Automatic payroll tax, filing simple direct deposits, health benefits, commuter benefits, workers' comp 401k, and Gusto has options for nearly every budget.
You get unlimited payroll runs for one monthly price with no hidden fees and no surprises.
Try Gusto today at gusto.com slash built. and get three months free when you run your first payroll.
That's three months of free payroll at gusto.com.
One more time, gusto.com.
But simplifies everything can be such a game changer.
For millions of businesses, that tool is Shopify.
We'll be right back.
Start your business today with the industry's best business partner, Shopify, and start hearing.
Sign up for your $1 per month trial today at shopify.com slash built.
Go to shopify.com slash built.
That's shopify.com slash built.
Welcome back to the advice line on how I built this lab.
I'm Guy Raz.
And my guest today is Miguel McKelvey, co-founder of WeWork.
And we are taking your calls.
And let's bring in our next caller.
Hi, Guy and Miguel.
My name is Melissa Jensky.
I'm in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
I'm the co-founder of Good Reef.
We're an online gifting company that specializes in care packages for life's twists and turns.
So anything from loss of a loved one, loss of a pet infertility miscarriage, cancer and illness, mental health and wellness breakup, job loss and more.
Wow.
OK, well, welcome to the show.
So.
All right.
So good grief.
These are care packages that you send to somebody who's going through a rough time.
Yeah, so we've intentionally chosen products that are practical and support healing and self-care.
So we have a ton of books and journals focused on specific type of losses consumables like teas cookies, chocolate for all the emotional eating.
Cozy things like socks and candles, sleep masks, hot cold packs, and then some beauty and wellness.
So bath soaks, aromatherapy type products.
Lots of eye gels for all the puffy crying eyes.
And then we also have some services that you can add to your care package to book, things like one-on-one grief, coaching and things like that.
That's cool.
How did this idea come about?
Yeah, so we are a family-run business.
My sister is my co-founder, Kristen.
She's in the U.K., And it was really born out of personal experience.
I always like to joke that I got the short straws in the family.
When I was 29, I was diagnosed with an autoimmune condition called rheumatoid arthritis.
And then in my 30s, I experienced infertility and a miscarriage.
And around that same time, we had a family member whose spouse died by suicide.
And it really just hit me that I think as a society, we're not super great.
You know we are super great at celebrating all the good stuff the weddings, anniversaries and new babies.
When it comes to the tough stuff, I think we can really fall short.
We don't know what to say.
We don't know what to say.
Exactly.
We don't know what to say.
We don't know what to do.
Sometimes we say the wrong thing.
Sometimes we don't say anything at all.
So I really wanted to fix that.
And during the pandemic, we were home working like everyone else.
And my sister and I just started talking more.
And I think we were both pretty frustrated with our jobs.
And I was like, hey, I have this business idea.
What do you think?
And she was like, yeah, let's do it.
I don't I think I was crazy because I was working full time.
I had a two and a half year old at home.
I don't even know how I pulled it off.
But we worked.
We launched in six months.
So we launched in April of 2021.
And, you know, I think, you know, I know that a box of stuff isn't going to fix anything.
It's not going to take away grieving, but we really just hope it provides an icebreaker bridge for people to connect and really show up with genuine care and empathy.
And Melissa, these are you're selling on entirely through your website.
Yes.
I'll direct to consumer online.
And tell me a little bit about how the business is doing.
Yeah.
So for the past three years we've been right around 200000 in revenue and just can't seem to break past that.
This past year was pretty challenging for us.
And so we were down like 7% from the year before.
And how are you marketing mainly?
Yeah.
So previously we were doing all Google ads.
That's where we saw the best row ads.
I think one of the challenges I think with us is the intent to buy isn't always there when people discover us.
Right.
So when we first launched, we tried some social, but we ended up we had such a limited budget that we ended up just going to Google ads.
We were getting great returns and for whatever reason, it completely collapsed last summer.
And so now we're really in a place where we're having to diversify our marketing efforts.
And yeah, I think it's also challenging because we have so many scenarios and we touch upon so many different types of grief and loss.
It's great because we have lots of opportunities, but it's also like sometimes overwhelming, because it's like where do you go with it and what do you do?
So it sounds like that's kind of your challenge or the question that you brought, right?
Yeah.
Like what growth channels should we prioritize?
And especially, I think AI has really changed how we paid media works and how customers are discovering brands um.
So yeah, we're trying to just find yeah, where do we put our effort?
You know, limited time and resources and what will move the needle nice, all right.
Uh, miguel kelby, i want you to jump in here, meet melissa and thoughts about uh, the business, the dilemma questions.
The first thing that came up for me when I was looking at your website was the content side of things.
I would be so confused in one of these moments of what to do.
So even before I was going to buy a gift, I was thinking could I have a guide of just how to think about it, or how to feel about it?
And especially now with AI.
I imagine I would go ask Gemini or someone like hey, this just happened in my life.
What do I do?
And so it seems like tuning the content side, both for SEO and also for AI, is essential.
And I don't know how much you have this, but having a web page for literally every single web search you can imagine that someone might make in one of these scenarios would be really smart.
Because if someone goes in and they say x just happened, what do i do?
You want to come up first in that uh, in that search, and and then if you optimize that page for ai crawling, you know it's possible that when the person goes to ai to ask that question, they're going to find you as well.
I would look at the same thing across everything.
Like can you make tiktok videos that answer these questions?
Can you make youtube videos that answer these questions?
Like everywhere you could have content to answer this question, you want to be there to help people deal with it.
Yeah, that makes sense.
Melissa, I wonder aside from marketing through influencers or, you know, doing social media ads, have you done any work with partners at all?
You know not sort of paid media, but with, like hospice organizations, or you know, oncology centers, or I mean even funeral homes, or I don't know.
Have you tried any of that?
Yeah.
So we've definitely have done like lots of cold outreach for, like funeral homes and things like that.
We did work with Erica Sinner to launch a Pets.
She wrote a book called Pets Are Families.
We worked with her to launch a custom care package.
This past year, we launched an employee gifting program as well.
We get a lot of repeat customers.
We were seeing lots of orders come in from places like Chewy, Nike, Microsoft, Gates Foundation.
But it's just so hard to get a foot in the door.
I basically begged the Gates Foundation customer to put me in touch with HR and she was like no, I can't do that.
And so there's just so much potential.
But yeah, it's just hard to get a foot in, I think.
And I think maybe part of it's like starting maybe starting more locally.
Yeah, I mean, for sure.
I would start locally in Santa Fe.
You know, I mean, you've got obviously smaller, probably smaller businesses there.
But it would seem to me that, and it sounds like you're trying that channel, that second channel, right?
That B2B gifting channel working with HR teams could really be game changer.
Yeah.
Definitely.
Yeah, right on.
I mean, managed grief in the workplace costs employers, you know, $75 billion a year and up.
So like, it's a huge, huge opportunity.
I was wondering, have you tried any direct mail?
Have you ever, you know, have you made any printed cards that you've sent out to people, or anything like that?
We haven't, no.
Besides just like some flyers, like in local coffee shops, but no direct mailers, no.
Yeah, I mean.
To me it seems like this is like a back of mind thing, that you know it's.
It's almost like that thing you want to have on the refrigerator for when that time comes.
That's the way I would imagine it is that if I just saw the brand out of context, I would probably forget about it.
But if I had it in the back of my mind when that time came up, I would go, oh, that's where I go.
But that recall is difficult.
So I don't know.
I kind of imagine, if you've got this thing and you sort of remembered, you put it on the refrigerator, you put it in a drawer somewhere, and then that time comes and you go oh, let me go find that card that I saw a couple of months ago.
That's the kind of thing you need is for the person to have recall of this option when they are searching for something.
That again, is a very difficult problem to solve.
Yeah, that could be really interesting.
The more times someone touches a brand, the more likely they are to recall it.
And you might need to touch them three, four, or five times, and that card could potentially win.
I would say canvas your neighborhood with some cards through the mail slot and just see, does that result in anything?
Maybe it would.
Yeah, I love that idea.
Also, Miguel, you mentioned the socials and the messaging.
And increasingly, the AI scrapers are going to be what matters, right?
That's the new SEO, right?
And so when people ask, hey, where do I go for X, Y, and Z?
These AI assistants are going to be making decisions based on what they're seeing out there in the language they're seeing.
I mean, when you do put a little bit of money into socials, are you direct in the way you are connecting, trying to connect with people like what to send someone after a miscarriage, like when you don't know what to say, or something like do you, do you have language that's really clear, like that?
Not really.
I mean, most of our Google paid ads were Google shopping and stuff like that.
We tried some.
We had to bring on an ad agency last summer to try to fix things and get us back on track and it didn't work.
But we did try meta and did some more kind of out there messaging and just didn't really see much happen.
We are focusing a lot on SEO and blog writing to try to get those AI crawlers.
We have seen a handful of orders come from AI.
But I think this idea of just a clear message that Miguel was alluding to, like people want to help, right.
When something happens to somebody, our instinct is to help and often we don't know how to help.
And so maybe it's like literally a message is like how do you help somebody who just got a horrible diagnosis?
Here's how you comfort somebody who had a miscarriage and they click, you know.
Or here's how you show support to somebody you know who's struggling with infertility.
Yeah.
What you want to telegraph is your problem is you don't know how to help and we are your solution.
Yeah.
We can solve the problem.
Yeah, I would just as a point on that.
I was speaking to someone who worked on SEO for a payments company.
I won't say which one.
They said they have literally thousands of SEO pages for every single thing that someone might need a payment for.
Oh my goodness, okay.
And that's I was overwhelmed by that.
But I was also like, it's so smart.
You want to be the answer in that moment when someone needs you.
And a lot of that is just you've got to be at kind of the top of the list.
Cranking out.
Yeah, all of that.
And also, are you doing any email follow up?
Like, do you send out a weekly or a monthly newsletter to the people who have purchased?
Yes, we do have an email that goes out a couple twice a month.
Got it.
So you are staying in front of mind with the people who have purchased before.
And what's your repeat business like?
Are people typically coming back after they buy the first time?
Yeah, our return customer rates around 20 percent.
And I do, you know, once a month to field some customer service calls.
I just had one the other day and I asked her how she found out about us.
And it was she had been gifted something.
So I think that happens a lot.
Someone's gifted, been gifted a care package and they come back to buy it for someone else.
Got it.
Yeah, I mean again.
It seems like, because this is so situational, you need people to think of you in that exact right moment.
So the more often you touch them, and this is, I think, a big debate amongst email, and I'm not an email expert, but
Email, when it's there, you find it.
When it's pushed down 200 emails in your inbox, the chance that you find it is low.
So maybe experimenting with one of these AI products that can help you with some email automation to just test some different things would be helpful, because you want to stay front of mind for your customers.
So whenever that moment comes, they think of you first.
Yeah, definitely.
Yeah, absolutely.
The brand is called Good Grief.
Melissa Jensky, thanks for calling in.
Good luck.
Thank you so much.
All right.
We're going to take another quick break here.
I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to The Advice Line right here on How I Built This Lab.
Welcome back to The Advice Line on How I Built This Lab.
I'm Guy Raz, and today I'm taking calls with WeWork co-founder Miguel McKelvey.
Miguel, ready for our next caller?
Let's do it.
All right, cool.
Welcome to The Advice Line.
You're on with Miguel McKelvey.
Please tell us your name, where you're calling from, and just a little bit about your business.
I'm Lee Wright.
I'm near Boston in Marlboro, and I'm the founder of The History List Store.
We We provide things for people who are passionate about history.
Nearly everything we offer is designed by us.
Nearly everything we offer is made in America.
Awesome.
Welcome to the show, Lee.
So the history list is a – it's a – help me understand a little bit.
I'm looking at the website, but help me understand what you sell.
So I started out as a content site the history list for information about events, and so on and so forth.
And this is really an outgrowth of that.
Like T-shirts, hats.
Yeah.
Exactly, exactly.
And like our, you know we do some fun things.
The Thomas Jefferson breakup letter t-shirt for Valentine's Day.
We do also offer very selected antiques and rare finds, things that could be a ship's passport signed by John Tyler, a World War I or World War II poster, that sort of thing.
So, all right.
So it's a combination of like products like T-shirts and prints and caps, even jewelry.
But then you also have some antiques that you sell.
And I guess the thing that jumps out at me is the T-shirt that says Huzzah, which is cool, which is what they would chant during the Revolutionary War.
Like that was sort of a, right?
It is.
It is.
And then you see in the dot in the exclamation mark, it says 1776.
Right.
All right.
And tell me how the business is doing.
So we did about 750000 last year and it's really been driven by my passion for helping connect people to history.
And we have customers that come in, they're going to buy something for a relative perhaps.
And we have other customers who place 50 different orders, 60, 75, and so forth.
And we get great feedback, great reviews.
People really love the things that Okay.
And mainly you sell through the website or entirely through the website?
The vast majority through the website.
We sell through some selected historic sites.
We have some partners that go, for example, to reenactments and so forth, right?
They'll set up a tent and offer our things.
Awesome.
Okay.
Before we dive in further, what's your question for us?
So this is the 250th anniversary of the founding of the country.
Yes, indeed.
How do we increase our customer base and drive down the cost of customer acquisition?
All right.
Miguel McKelvey, I want to bring you in.
A cool, really cool stuff on this site.
And here we are.
Year 250 of America's founding.
Thoughts, ideas, answers?
Well, first, you said you wanted to bring down the cost of customer acquisition.
What is it costing you now?
Blended CAC around $20.
$20?
$20.
Is that not very low?
I would love to acquire customers for $20.
That sounds great.
It's not bad.
A lot of the things we do are through Facebook and so forth.
We have tried a number of kind of the obvious things in terms of either reaching out partnerships to publishers, trying to do more with historians sites,
But the thing that we just keep coming back to is social.
Right.
So what's your average order value?
$80.
OK, so you're spending $20 to get an $80 customer.
And then what's your margin?
If someone spends $80 on that, what's your gross margin?
Yeah, so overall, the margin's around 50%.
Not bad.
One of the challenges, of course, is making things in the United States.
But our customer base, I think, values that.
I certainly value that.
And it reinforces our made by America message.
Yeah.
I mean, I'm thinking this all sounds pretty good.
You got $750,000 on a 50% margin.
You're only spending $20 per customer.
All that sounds great.
If I was...
Going just on that, I would be saying just spend more money on more advertising at $20 per customer.
It sounds like you have great stories to tell, and you just may need to go directly to the public with these stories.
I don't know if you have a TikTok, for example, but...
People love to learn through TikTok.
You might need to go post a TikTok a day with a cool historical narrative and people will start gravitating directly to you.
So TikTok is interesting.
We've talked a lot about it.
We have about 60,000 followers on Facebook, about, what, 14,000 or whatever on Insta.
We've debated whether or not our target market is on TikTok, but I think it's worth giving it a try.
Generally, our target market skews older.
It's only a matter of time.
We always say the older people are on these other platforms, but age is always elevating and the platforms people are on are always changing.
And again, I think what you find in the difference between TikTok and Instagram is, you know narrative, like rough storytelling, real people in front of a camera.
That's really on tiktok these days and it's it's less so on on some of these other platforms.
So it's worth experimentation.
At least that's a great idea.
Let me throw something out there, because you mentioned that your audience is older, and I think that's probably true and that's still a very valuable audience.
I mean, you definitely don't want to ignore those folks.
I wonder a couple things here.
First of all, Facebook is where I would really focus because that's where there's an older crowd.
But forget about social media for a sec.
I think that there are two opportunities here.
One is if you've got some cash and you don't need a whole lot, I would seed little advertisements on history podcasts and or try and collaborate.
See if you can contact some of these history podcasts.
They're huge, by the way.
And see if you can make bespoke things for them that would drive their audience to your site.
Like some of them probably don't have merch.
Maybe you can be a merch person for them.
Absolutely.
So that's a great idea.
We tried that early on, and it didn't pay off.
I, some time ago, talked directly to a fellow who puts together just a great podcast series.
It's one I think you guys are probably familiar with.
And that was the pitch, right?
Like, hey, you don't have merch.
I can help you there.
And the answer was, we're going to do our own merch.
Well, but maybe you can buy advertising, right?
I mean that's what I'm saying.
Well, exactly, and that was my next question.
And they are a podcast that's carried by one of the large podcast networks and they're handling the advertising.
And it's going to advertisers with large budgets, more brand budgets than –
Look for smaller shows.
I mean, yes, you can ask the big one.
Go to a smaller show that isn't doing that, that has an audience of 10,000, not 100,000.
What I'm saying is there's always a way, especially if you're trying to reach a very specific audience.
The other thing I would consider doing is make your own.
I mean, if you have your own, even if you are reaching just a fraction of your followers on TikTok and your customers.
Maybe you've got a newsletter.
Now you've got a podcast that you can once a week, where maybe you're highlighting some cool thing in history and you're also talking about how it inspired something that you guys make or sell.
That's a good idea.
Our newsletter is very successful.
We have a 50% open rate.
We mail to folks every Saturday with the new merchandise, every Thursday night with our rare finds.
One other thing would be finding those really niche, interesting facts.
I don't know how much you're doing this on social media already, but sharing things that are surprising, that are wow, I didn't know that.
In small bits.
People... a lot of people, this is a niche for, right?
You know your niche, right?
Then there's a whole other group of people who don't put themselves in that niche but could be attracted to it with something you know, a little less obscure, or maybe something obscure that's really accessible and fun.
So I would sort of, continue to expand the edges of your appeal and just experiment.
Try, whether it's podcast, whether it's one of these other platforms, just try to get more experiments out there to see what catches on.
Well, we're very fortunate.
We have one of the most successful history folks on social, History Dame, doing our social.
And she just does a fabulous job, doing Exactly what you're talking about putting out some of these things, whether or not that's something obscure or something that is just very timely, like the 250th.
Awesome.
Well, it sounds like you've got some momentum there.
And listen, I mean, it sounds like you've got some ideas in place.
And I think you should try a podcast, Lee.
Well, thanks.
Thanks.
And Guy, I think you had a master's degree in history.
Isn't that right?
I do.
Well, I hope we see you someday.
And I really want to thank you both for the great podcast.
I think this is one of the really indispensable resources for people who are founders.
Oh, thank you so much.
That's our goal here.
Leright, the brand is called The History List.
Good luck.
Thanks so much for calling in.
All right.
Miguel, one of the questions I ask every founder who comes back on the show is if you could go back to when you were starting out building.
Your business certainly WeWork and others and you could go back and give yourself advice about something you know now that you've learned.
That would have been helpful for you to know back then.
What could have been helpful back then for you to know?
I think what would be helpful for me to know is –
To be more critical about the things that I was bad at.
To think more critically about things that I avoided.
Because I think I knew, for example, that I really didn't care about money.
It wasn't a motivator for me.
So as soon as I had an opportunity to hire a CFO and never think about money again, I did it.
But that sort of um, out of sight, out of mind, it's not a great model for entrepreneurship.
You know, i think you have to be responsible for everything when you're a founder, and so that's what i would say is like really go back and like go through all the things and say okay, you love this, you don't like this.
But if you let that go, what's going to happen?
And i would encourage people you know myself and others to do that, to kind of go into the things that you don't like as much as you do the things that you love.
I love that.
That's Miguel McKelvey, co-founder of WeWork.
Miguel, thanks so much for joining the show.
Thank you.
And, by the way, if you haven't heard Miguel's original How I Built This episode, you've got to go back and check it out, both of them.
We will put links to them in the podcast description.
And here's one of my favorite moments from those interviews.
So they showed it to us.
I'm like, wow.
Like for me as coming from a design background, I'm like, this is sick.
This is as good as it gets.
And they're basically like, okay, here's the building.
What would you do with it?
So basically I go home and I start thinking of a concept of a name.
I buy the domain.
I build a website.
I design some floor plans, really simple.
Do like a quick like business model.
I stayed up all night.
Wait, wait.
You did this in one night?
Yeah, basically because we had been challenged with like, what are you going to do?
And we have no credibility, right?
So my thought was if I do all this stuff and come back tomorrow, it'll seem like we were planning it for weeks in advance, right?
Thanks so much for listening to the show, because we would love to try and help you solve them.
You can send us a voice memo at hibt, at idwonderycom, or call us at 1-800-433-1298.
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 Sam Paulson, with music composed by Ramteen Arablui.
It was edited by John Isabella, and our audio engineer was Kwesi Lee.
Our production staff also includes Alex Chung, Elaine Coates, Noor Gill, Neva Grant, Casey Herman, Chris Messini, Catherine Seifer, Carrie Thompson and Ramel Wood.
I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to The Advice Line on How I Built This Lab.
