How I Built This with Guy Raz - Advice Line: New Offerings, Bigger Markets

Episode Date: May 14, 2026

Today’s callers: Kristina in Florida wants to take her local pottery workshops nationwide. Then Jim from Colorado wonders if retail is right for his quick release camera straps. And Will in Ohio hopes his business will change what consumers expect from tool rental services. Thank you to the founders of Seagrass Pottery, Lemur Strap and Tool Club for being a part of our show.If you’d like to be featured on a future Advice Line episode—where Guy and former show guests take questions from early-stage founders—leave us a one-minute message that tells us about your business and a specific question you’d like answered. Send a voice memo to [e-mail] or call 1-800-433-1298. And be sure to listen to our episodes with Chieh Huang of Boxed, Hernan Lopez of Wondery and David Neeleman of Jet Blue. This episode was produced by Kerry Thompson with music by Ramtin Arablouei. It was edited by John Isabella. Our audio engineer was Cena Loffredo.You can follow HIBT on X & Instagram and sign up for Guy’s free newsletter at guyraz.com or on SubstackSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This podcast is brought to you by Squarespace. I talk to entrepreneurs all the time who are looking for a way to upgrade their digital footprint. Well, whether you're just starting out or you're scaling your business, Squarespace is the easiest way to build a great website that stands out. It's an all-in-one website platform that gives you everything you need to claim your domain, showcase your products, and get paid. Anyone can use Squarespace's cutting-edge design tools to build an online presence that truly reflects what makes your business special. There are templates, intuitive drag-and-drop editing, and even an AI-enhanced website builder. Then, Squarespace's built-in analytics tools help you make smarter business decisions. Review website traffic, learn where to focus engagement, and track revenue all in one place.

Looking to grow your business, Squarespace even offers fast, easy business financing through Squarespace capital. Go to Squarespace.com slash built for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use offer code built to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Loans issued by Celtic Bank and serviced by Stripe. All loans subject to credit approval. One of my favorite places to visit is a small, rugged island in the Irish Sea, the Isle of Man. Last time we were there, instead of a hotel, we booked a home on Airbnb. It was an old stonehouse overlooking the water, big windows, ocean views.

And every morning we just sit there with coffee, watching the light. change. But honestly, the best part was the connection to the place. The host left us with a list of local spots, a tiny bakery, a coastal trail, and within a couple of days, we were talking to locals, finding places we never would have discovered otherwise. There's something I always look for when I book a home on Airbnb, not just a place to stay, but something that feels connected to where I am. And it got me thinking, while we were away, our own home was just sitting there empty. But if you host your home on Airbnb. It could be making you some extra cash, maybe for a renovation or even your next trip. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at Airbnb.ca slash host.

Hello and welcome to the advice line on how I built this lab. I'm Guy Raz. And this is the place where we help try to solve your business challenges. And as you know, each week I'm joined by a legendary founder of former guest from the show who will attempt with me to help. you. And this week, our episode is a bit of a mashup, three callers and three different former guests. And they're all talking about a similar challenge. How to introduce a novel product or service to bigger markets. By the way, if you're building something and you need advice or just one advice, give us a call. You just might be the next guest on this 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 some help with. Okay, let's get to it. So my first guest today is Che Wong. Che was first on the show in 2021, and he told the story of starting Boxed, an online retailer that delivered bulk-sized groceries and household essentials right to your home. If you want to hear the whole story,

we'll put a link to that episode in the podcast description. Anyway, here on the advice line, Che and I talked a caller through different approaches to turning her local pottery studios into a national brand. Hi, Che, hi, guy. I'm Christina Lattevers. I'm calling from Indi-Alanic, Florida.

I'm the founder of Seagrass Pottery. We're a professional pottery studio on Florida Space Coast. We design and create the most beautiful handmade pottery and we also host experiences that bring people together through clay. Awesome. Well, thanks for calling

and Christina. So you've got a pottery studio and you sell pottery and then you also have classes? That's correct. We also do workshops, classes. We have a community studio and we also host domestic and international retreats. Wow.

Yeah. That's great. So tell me a little about the business. How did it start? So I was working as an art educator and then I worked as a visual art content specialist for our school district where I oversaw 84 visual art programs. I really saw firsthand the power of the arts and how they can transform classrooms and communities. I always did pottery on the side and I just found a time and space and took a bold move and signed a little. lease, and we opened the studio in 2019, just three months before the pandemic. And in 2022,

we opened our second location. And here we are. Wow, so you've got two locations also in, in the area along the space coast. Tell me about your role. Are you making pottery? Are you teaching classes? Or do you, are you sort of overseeing the business? I'm kind of overseeing the business. I do a lot of the design work and a lot of, I still keep my hand in creating, because that's really what I'm passionate about. And then I also develop the curriculum. for the classes, and I really think that's what differentiates us from other studios. I think that there's a lot of great artists out there, but they aren't always great teachers. Yeah. And we really take that teaching aspect really seriously, because if you come into the studio and you have a bad

experience, I could technically turn you off clay forever. So that's just something we're really intentional about in our design. And the business is sustainable, profitable? Yes. Yep. Yep. So we're on track to do about 400,000 this year, total lifetime revenue at 1.2 million. And where is your, where do Most of your sales come from the wholesale side. So that's the interesting part, and that's part of the reason for my call. Yeah. We mostly are a B2B wholesale, but we do have a small percentage of retail. So you make stuff for like restaurants?

Yes, we do restaurants, mostly interior designers, businesses. Wow. We're about 30% B2B for wholesaling. And then we have 38%, which is classes and workshops. and then 30% is our community studio because we offer like a membership program where you can kind of use the studio space as your own when our classes aren't in session. Okay, so let's get to your question. Okay. So we built seagrass pottery as a scalable ecosystem, not a single location studio.

How would you approach positioning a brand like ours so it scales beyond location and starts to define an entirely new category? Okay, a lot to think about there. Che, I want to bring you in here. Thoughts your questions for Christina before we tackle her question. My initial thought is Christina love the fact that you're an educator and I love the fact that you became an entrepreneur. And I love the aspect if you can get fellow educators there in the summer. You talk about user acquisition and scalability. I'm sure they have students that love them.

And if they knew Christina was teaching in the summer, they would come and sign up. I just love it. And when you think about what the zeitgeist is, especially in physical locations like malls that have been pretty beaten down in recent years, is that malls, at least successful ones, are transitioning to not just selling things, but selling experiences. And shopping can be experienced. When you go into some stores and they make you kind of do the racetrack walk and there's little things everywhere, I'm seeing more, more successful malls have those type of experiences. And so I think you might be on target or on trend. And so bringing you in to their locations might actually have some benefits for them. And you might get preferential rates and treatment if you talk to some of the larger mall operators.

That was my initial reaction. That's interesting. Yeah, I'm curious, Christina. I mean, when you talk about scaling, what does that mean more physical locations, like in a, in your sort of dreamhouse world, what would that look like? Yeah, in my dream house world, seagrass pottery is the name that people think of when they want to create and maybe have an experience, maybe with their family or on a date, and they're just kind of doing something more meaningful than just, I don't know, going to the movies. And I do think there's this big draw.

We even see it in our retreats where people want to come visit us. We put them up in a bed and breakfast in town and they come in and they spend the week with us just immersed in clay. I think it recharges people in a way that a lot of other activities don't, especially when they're constantly on, like, devices or on screens. Just do the opposite and get totally away from that. There's something that is just super appealing and recharging. Yeah. It sounds like that part of the business is really what energizes you more than anything else, which makes sense. The only, what's interesting to me is that you have 30%, and it sounds like it's growing, 30% of your business is wholesale, is you.

you are, and I'm looking at your website, you have beautiful pottery that you make. What's interesting to me about the scalability question is you have something that can scale already, which is this wholesale business that you've created, where you are actually selling to interior designers and restaurants and beyond, you know, North Florida, let's hear, central Florida, you're all over the state and then all over the southeast and beyond. And the classes and the classroom is sort of a touch point that could remain in a few distinct locations where it becomes this destination. People know about seagrass because they bought a piece in a gift shop in Seattle and they want to come to one of your five locations in Florida because they know this beautiful pottery. I don't know.

It's just a thought. And it may not be what you want to do. But from a scalability standpoint, that to me feels like your sort of clearest path. I think you're right on track because we do get a lot of people who like my work. And then that's like the segue into the experience part of it. I feel like it's almost a necessity because I think one builds trust with the customers. And that to me is so valuable. So I don't know that if I see a world one without the other, but I also see your

flight. So just something to think about. Yeah, Christina, I, you know, kind of echoing a little bit of what Guy just said, I don't like in terms of scaling physical locations, sorry if I'm a wet blanket on on this a little bit. I don't think, I cannot imagine a world where, and I'm not saying this is your end result that you want, but I can't imagine seagrass pottery being a billion dollar business if you don't scale the physical locations via franchising. I just don't see it. Meaning that I think Christina yourself, you are such a kind of force behind this brand that I don't see you flying around the country to 70 locations trying to make sure

everything's going well because we all work with 24 hours in a day. Now, with that said, I think there's a lot of folks that would find your idea compelling. And if you're able to create standard operating procedures around all of this, which is not like a weird art form or an esoteric art form, there's a lot of professionals that help you do that. That might be a way to scale. Now, the other thing was that I went to the website, amazing. I think you're going to have to decide who you are. Are you that physical location with wholesale as kind of like a secondary business? Or are you a wholesaler where you can come and touch and kind of design your own?

things. And right now when I go to the website, there's so much at the top that I'm like, Christina, it's time to pick. We're in the adolescence phase. You're doing a few hundred thousand in revenue. Let's pick what seagrass pottery really is when they grow up. It's going to be hard, but you have to do it because there's almost too much at the banner. Yeah, I mean, I think that's a great question to ask. Like, what do we want to be? And you can be a version of all of those things, but you have to hit the gas on probably one of those. Let's say the three things are, you know, classes and then the community studio and then the products. And you split that into you guys, retail and wholesale.

The store, seagrass pottery, has to be a store, which I think it probably is. And the wholesale side of it, I think you have to ask yourself whether you want to and are prepared to scale that up, which means that you have to really build a team to start making those products. I mean, I'm looking at your vases and your espresso cup. They're beautiful, absolutely beautiful. I don't know how easy it is to teach people to make those products, you know, as well as they're made and probably you could do it. But that, to me, feels like where the opportunity is. You know, the challenge, I'll just push back on the franchise challenge, which is, you know, you've got a vibe going, right?

I imagine there's a feeling that people have when they go into this space. To have somebody else take your brand and license it and replicate it, it's really hard. It's very hard to do if you're just selling chicken fingers, right? Now, try to do it when you're teaching people about how to make pottery in the way that you want people to be taught. So the franchise model is tricky because, you know, you're not going to have the same kind of quality control. That being said, I think it's worth thinking about maybe just a few more locations. Maybe you've got four stores instead of two. Maybe you've got five.

And each of those stores does multiple things. It's a space. It's a studio, but it's also a place to showcase this beautiful work that you've created. And again, I don't want to pressure you or push you in any direction. But if you were asking me and you said, hey, I need you to write me a check to put into this. would say, I'll do it, but here's where I want you to go. I also think, Christina, I feel like being the entrepreneur, the tech entrepreneur in me, there's two modes.

It's either I'm not starting a business or I'm like going like a million miles a minute and we're driving this thing all the way to the moon. But there could be a really good business here without you actually franchising all across the entire country. You know, I look at businesses kind of like painting with a twist or, you know, those places where you go and paint your own pottery. And I know there's a lot less entail there because you just take the product and you leave. There's no like waiting for the kiln to fire. But they're just, and I also would love like a place where you could go, you know, anywhere in the country and have that

kind of brand loyalty and know that you're going to have a good experience, you know, if you're interested in clay or wanted to create something for yourself, you know. So, you know, my immediate thought when I went to the website and saw kind of the pottery classes, I'm dating myself. But if you ever get to that level and you do a TV conversation, you have to get Demi Moore to do it. You've got to recreate that scene. But outside of that, what might be interesting is kind of what Guy was saying before on the franchise model,

perhaps a red flag and a counterpoint to what I even suggested, is that some of those locations that you just mentioned where you just paint, they might have trimmed down the experience so much because that is the level in which they can have quality control. And if you're putting people on pottery wheels all across the country, it might get pretty gnarly pretty quickly on what the end result is when people go home. And so, yeah, a counterpoint even to kind of my original point to think about. Thank you very much.

Awesome. The company is called Seagrass pottery. Christina, thanks so much for calling in. Good luck. Thanks for having me. All right. Yeah, you know, this East Fork pottery was really blown up into a national brand. Heath here in the Bay Area.

And by the way, it's interesting because if you if you buy pottery like where you are in New Jersey or New York City or San Francisco, Los Angeles, it's very expensive as it should be. These are beautiful handmade things. And I'm looking at her prices and they're about half. I was thinking the same thing because I've been, you know, when you kind of go into some of these stores, especially the fine furnishing stores, you'd look at the bottom of some of these things and you're like, did they switch the price tag? because this has an extra zero on it. Right. So I can see why that part is compelling, especially if she's making them to order.

No one's touching these prices currently available, I think. So I think she has room to go up, and there's plenty of margin in this stuff. Yes. We're going to take a quick break, but when we come back, Arnon Lopez, the founder of Wondery, joins me on the advice line.

Stay with us. You're listening to a special mash-up episode of the advice line right here on how I built this lab. Hey, welcome back to the device line on how I built this lab. I'm Guy Raz, and my next return guest is Ernan Lopez, founder of the podcasting network Wondery. Arnon first came on the show back in 2023, and we will put a link to that episode in the show notes. It's an amazing story of how he left his job as a TV executive, inspired by this new thing called podcasting, and built it into a hugely successful network that was acquired by Amazon. Anyway, when Arnon joined me on the advice line, we helped a caller who generally sells a sales. stuff through the internet. Figure out whether it makes sense to sell in retail. All right, let's

bring our next caller. Welcome to the advice line. You're on with Ernan Lopez, founded Wondery. Tell us your name where you're calling from and a little bit about your business. Hi, everyone. I'm Jim Kursley from Boulder, Colorado. I developed and patented a camera carrying system for professional and aspiring amateurs alike. It's called the lemur strap. Awesome. Jim, thanks for calling in. Welcome to the show. How does it work? It's a, okay, it's a strap around. your neck, I'm assuming, but what makes it different or special? Yeah, so I've always been an avid photographer. It's not my business.

It's more a hobby. I got my first camera when I was 12 years old from my dad, who was an actual movie producer. But I took it very seriously, and I loved carrying my camera around until one day I didn't really love carrying my camera around because it was so big and awkward and heavy. Yeah. Yeah, and you guys have probably carried around large, you know, SLR-style cameras at one point in your life. So I tried every camera strap out there on the market. And I thought, you know, there's got to be a better way.

So I just started tooling around with some aluminum parts and pieces. And I realized if I hung the camera from the bottom, the lens would point down and the screen on the back of the camera would point up where it was like safe from getting scratched and knocking off your belt buckle and the rivets on your jeans. And all of a sudden, I'm like, I've got. something here because this camera is way more comfortable to carry it's no longer the unruly camera that's like rotating around your body and bouncing up and down and yeah so that was the first thing uh that i took care of was like the hanging position yeah and then the second thing that i tackled was the ability to remove the camera from the strap in a nanosecond like literally

like less than a second that if you see like a cheetah yeah And you want to capture the cheetah, you can grab your camera. So it, so because when you wear a camera, right, it usually, the lens is pointing outwards, right? Yeah. And, and, but this way, it slides into this, like, what do you call it? Well, yeah, so it's a base plate, but it has a little receiver that mounts to your camera via a tripod adapter. So you can just slide it in and quick release it. Yep.

I just use the quick release feature when I want to, you know, go up high. You've all seen the perp walks, right, where the, you know, the accused person is, you know, some celebrity is surrounded by all these people carrying their cameras. And they're all holding their cameras above their heads and their straps are hanging in their faces. And so now you can just press this little button. It releases in a less than a second. That's cool. And then when you want your hands free, you just click it right back in. You swing the camera around behind your back where it likes to stay. That's why we named it Lamer, because you're because lemur moms carry their little babies around on their backs.

So they have their paws free so they can swing from tree branches like I do. Tell me a little bit. So you launched this, I think, did you say in 2025? We launched it via Kickstarter in August of 2024. And then after the Kickstarter campaign ended, we went to direct-to-consumer sales in November of 24. and then we've had one full year, 2025, where we've done direct-to-consumer sales exclusively, and now we're entering into our second full year, 2026.

And so you're not in stores at all? So that is kind of a great segue to my question. Oh, great, let's hear it. Okay, great. So we have been pretty much direct-to-consumer. We were contacted by B&H photography and electronics, giant out of New York City. I'm sure you guys have heard of B&H. We were pretty honored to have them reach out to us. Famous camera story, yeah. And so we're like, okay, that would be ridiculous not to take them up on this offer and start selling through a retail outlet. But it became abundantly obvious

that this cuts way down on our margins, you know, our per strap margin. But we have been experiencing a higher volume of sales, and we definitely have more exposure, people going on B&H to look for their photography equipment. So in order to attract more investment capital, would you recommend expanding further into retail to increase volume, or should we focus more on our direct-to-consumer sales where we definitely get a higher margin per strap, but we're going to grow at a much slower rate, I would say. All right, and I want to bring you in here. First of all, thoughts for Jim.

Thank you. And it sounds like an amazing product that I wish I could visualize because my first question would be, do you have a distinctive look that people would recognize immediately when they're seeing your, from the description, it sounds like it is, but I'm asking from the point of view of color or branding or look. I'm thinking about the early beats headphones. Remember that when people start for the first time to see that B, that essentially got Apple to notice them

and buy the company. Is that part of your branding in any way? If not, could it be? Yeah, so we did put a lot of effort and thought into that. Our logo looks like a little lemur paw. We have two different base colors. One is black anodized because photographers are a very kind of conservative crowd

that they don't like change very much. They like things to be black. They like things, you know, think about how cameras look the same almost as they did, you know, 50, 60, 70 years ago. But then we also made a bronze colored one. And then that one jumps out much more like off the base because I thought, yeah, we need a signature color. You know, we need people to recognize that this is something different attached to your camera. but we sell probably 50% bronze and 50% black because the black thing just will not die.

Right, that's great. So my bias always typically goes towards direct-to-consumer, build your direct-to-consumer relationship and outlet as fast as you can because those are the relationships that you're going to own over time. The only difference for your case is that looks like your product is something that they will buy only once. Or is there a use case for them buying more or any add-ons

or any more products down the line? Yeah, there's not a whole lot of potential for that. A lot of people have two cameras. And we are developing a accessory that allows you to use two cameras at one time. This is like the holy grail of camera equipment. But yes, people are going to be one, two, and that's about the lifetime commitment.

that. Right. Yeah. And that's a problem. I mean, it's a good, good and bad problem because you make a quality product and, right, you want to have high quality product. This is the problem that like temperpedic mattresses have, right? You buy it once. But, so it seems like accessories here, right? Different kinds of accessories is, is, it would be an interesting play in the long term. I mean, the strap, right? Interesting. I'm sure photographers love it. But Aronan is right. You've, you know, you're, you're, you know, you're. get to buy the strap and the base plate and now you want to think about, okay, what other things can we offer? How can we make other accessories or come up with other solutions for photographers? Yeah, because, you know, one, everybody always says, you know, one product does not a business to make. And we, we understand that. And Hernin's answer, you know, try to build this direct-to-consumer kind of relationship, confidence, whatever. That is really what we've been trying to do over the last year. You know, grow the company organically, make sure that we are offering really good customer service, we're getting the orders out on time. You know, we're kind of scaling really,

really slowly so that we can get those all-important five-star reviews. And so I kind of, what I expected to hear was, oh, you got to sell as many straps as possible. Go. retail everywhere, you know, increase volume, increase it, increase it, increase it. But you do that at your own peril because you could end up with, you know, a lot of unhappy customers. Yes. And also you start to get, like if you go through Amazon as well, you know, eventually you're going to get knockoffs. But it doesn't mean that you shouldn't do that. I mean, I think that what's interesting about this product is it's something that photographer, I think photographers are going to love, right? If they see. it and it makes sense that you're going to go after B&H or specialty stores where photographers already trust the store. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

To me, I think the retail play is important, but I agree with Hernan is the direct-to-consumer here is what's interesting, but you've got to expand the product line. Right. And what I was going to, the reason why I asked you the question of if they look distinctive is I was going towards a marketing idea, which is how do you get? the product in the hands of photographers who have a strong Instagram or YouTube audience who occasionally put themselves as the subject

because B&H is the ideal retailer for you, but they're not many BNHs, BNHs around the wall. I mean, best buy perhaps, but there isn't a brand where people could go and discover your product and without seeing it in action, understanding what he does.

Right. Yeah. And so we've really worked the influencer angle. We have, you know, National Geo influencers. And so, but, you know, there is that all important, you know, cost of acquisition. And, you know, we do have to spend money on Instagram and with meta ads. And we're ramping sales. You know, they're going up.

They're not probably going up like the hockey stick curve that you want to see. but it may be too early for that. How do you deal with inventory shortages and things? You can't just sell 100,000 straps when you don't have them landed in the United States. So for me, just to go to Hernan's thing, though, about visibility and recognition, the more that we get the strap into prominent photographer's hands

that other people notice, it's like, oh, look at it, there's one of those lemur straps. then obviously that can create like sort of a viral moment. I do think it's worth, and you may have heard this episode, we've done in Viori, that brand, the story that they told early on was very clear. And it's similar here, which is, you know, Joe Kudla surfs and exercises and runs and also like wants to be around his kids. And he wanted one pair of shorts.

And he created that. That was the idea. And he went to yoga and the same pair of shorts, right? You swim and whatever, and he did that. And your story as a photographer and as somebody who had this problem will resonate, obviously, with photographers because they all have this problem. And so I feel like you want to tell your story and the craft behind this product. I think that would be worth kind of leaning into, especially on social media. Literally, you saying, tell that story in 15, 20.

seconds, just like that. Yeah, that's an interesting addition to, like, what we have been doing. What we have been doing works, and then all of a sudden it doesn't work, and then it works again. But this is a nice kind of like arrow to put in the quiver, just kind of this, the founder's story and make that a prominent part of our outreach. Yeah, I like that. I would, again, encourage the overarching advice is, yes, leaning to retail, don't overdo it. it go very strategically into the places where you can find consumers that otherwise would not become aware of you. The minute that you overexpose your product, you invite copycats and you cheapen your brand. Okay. Yes. That's great advice. The brand is called Leamer Strap.

Jim Kersley. Thanks for calling in. Good luck. Thanks, you guys. Thank you. Congratulations. We're going to take another quick break, but when we come back, another caller with another question for a former guest. Stay with us. You're listening to a special mashup episode of the advice line right here on how I built this lab. Hey, welcome back to the advice line on how I built this lab. I'm Guy Raz. And my last return guest today is David Nealiman. He's the founder of not just one, but five different airlines, including JetBlue. David was first on the show back in 2019 to tell that story, and he's been on the show two more times and we'll put a link to all of those episodes and the show notes. David joined me on the advice line to help a caller who was trying to

create a new business model for tool rentals. All right, let's bring in our final caller. Welcome to the advice line. Your own with David Nealman. Please introduce yourself, tell us your name where you're calling from and a little bit about your business. Yes, hi guy. Hi, David. Thank you for having me on the show today. My name is William Carroll and I'm the co-founder of Tool Club in Cincinnati, Ohio. Tool Club is a modern delivery first equipment rental service that gives DIYers and pros an easier way to access the equipment they need for their projects. We handle the delivery and pickup so our customers can focus on getting the job done without all the friction that typically comes with it.

Cool. Welcome to the show. Will, thanks for calling in. Okay, so Tool Club, it's a rental business. You're based in Cincinnati. People can rent pretty much any tool that any power tool or heavy duty tool that they need to do a DIY project. Yeah, anything from a power washer all the way to a dump trailer or skid steer. We've got a catalog that spreads wide that hopefully will cover any homeowner or DIY projects. Awesome. And are you, this is your full-time business? It is. Yes. We launched over the holidays last year. And this is my full-time operator job here. Awesome. Are you, I imagine you're a pretty handy guy. I mean, what were you doing before this? Were you a contractor or were you doing this kind of work for people?

To be honest, this is kind of a 180 for me. Majority of my career was actually in the golf industry. I was a PGA professional for many years. And then joined an equipment manufacturer on the sales side for about five years. And then, you know, reached a certain level in that industry and decided to move on. And I'm a first time homeowner like my brother and founder. And we just noticed that any time a project comes up, there are some pain points involved, whether you're buying equipment, renting equipment, or hiring someone, we're hoping to create a solution that fixes all those pain points.

Right. Because most people, something happens in their house and they're going to call somebody, right, most of the time. Or if they're really handy, they might go and buy a piece of equipment that they might only use once every five years. So I guess your value proposition is, hey, you don't need to do that. You can rent this stuff for a fraction of price. It's high quality. and you don't even have to store it at your house. Exactly. Yeah, that's one of the big pain points when it comes to ownership is high up front costs. And then you have to figure out where you're going to store it, maintain it. And most of the time, it's a tool that you use once or twice, and it sits there collecting dust most of the year. And you guys deliver the stuff to homes? We do.

We are 100% delivery base. So that's our biggest differentiator between the standard rental systems in that we deliver and pick up the products. So eliminating any of those hassles that come into the kind of archaic rental industry that still exists today. Got it. All right. And your question for us? Yeah. So tool ownership and traditional rentals already exist.

But Tool Club is really trying to introduce a new model centered around convenience and that delivery-based access to equipment. So the question is, how can we change consumer behaviors so that when a project does come up, people instinctively think about access. tools through Tool Club instead of buying them or hiring someone. All right. David Neelman, I want to bring you in here. I think you're probably pretty handy. I have a feeling you're pretty handy. You have to be when you have, you know, nine kids and you have, you know, so many projects

that come up at home for sure. Yeah. All right. So Will's got this, I think it's a great business idea, right? But how do you get people to change your behavior, right? When, when, when, because oftentimes you don't, there's a project you can plan for, like, you want to retail your bathroom or, or, or you want to redo your deck or something. But sometimes things happen and you're just like, oh, God, this, the wall is leaking. I have to fix this.

So how do you start to get people to think instinctively about like, I got to call the tool club rather than like, oh, I got to go to Home Depot or I got to go to call up the, you know, the plumber? You know, I'm just sitting here thinking, you know, obviously, when somebody does it, they'll do it over and over. again. I assume you have a lot of repeat business of people coming back. We are still very much in the early startup phase, you know, launching last year over the holidays. And unfortunately, we had a pretty harsh winter here in Cincinnati. Luckily, that is starting to change. So we have a little bit of initial consumer base in our initial inventory. But because of that kind of harsh weather and just getting into the spring, our revenue is a little bit low at the moment. Yeah. So I think, I think,

I think, I don't know, what idea would be come up with some projects that would be perceived to be maybe difficult or that people charge a lot for. And maybe what you would do is create those projects and do them and show the tools that you would use to do it on social media, have an Instagram thing. And you could become the Mr. DIY at home. and let me show you the tools that you need, and you can be it tiling a floor or laying cement or whatever, things that somebody would charge a lot of money for.

And you could talk about, I bid this out. It cost $15,000, and I was able to do it for $4,000. And look at this beautiful floor that we were able to do, and these are the tools that you would use. I think that's a great idea. I think you could do two different paths. You can appeal to two different kinds of customers, right? you know, the people who are who are capable of retiling their bathroom floor who know how to do it and who, you know, who want to save thousands of dollars by doing it themselves.

But there's also the other kind of customer who's not necessarily super handy, but could probably power wash their deck, right? Who could probably, and so I had my deck power washed, I don't know, before winter, right? And I think it cost me, I don't know, 500 bucks. It was not cheap, right? And they did a great job. It's clean. It was clean. Now it's back to, you know, we're not back to it.

But I'm looking at your website. I could have just gotten a power washer for $100 and done it myself. And I could do that. I mean, it's not really, yeah, if your experience, you might be a little bit better. But if I could save $500, I'd do it myself. Exactly. I would really lean into those use cases and see if both on your website, social media, you can basically do videos on it.

You know, just fun little videos, maybe with some friends and be like, hey, why, you know, I could get my, there's somebody calling up, it's $500 to Power Wash. I got to call the Tool Club. And then you guys show up and you're like, yeah, for $100, you could do this all yourself.

You know, just something simple like that that most people, or like a yard cleanup, you know, you've got leaf blowers. Something like that, you know, getting somebody to do all that leaf blowing for you it costs a few hundred bucks. How much is it to rent a leafblower, $35? We have a couple different options, but they start as low as $30.

Yeah, I mean, great. Give me the $35 leaf blower and some trash bags, I'm good to go. Absolutely. That's a great idea because there's a lot of things that anyone could do and save a bunch of money and really make their place look a lot better. But being on YouTube and video and having people just click through your videos and see all the things they could do in their house, using your tools.

And then you create that repeat business and word of mouth where you know, you may even have some neighbor kids who want to start a power washing business using your equipment and making some money. Yeah, I think as you're starting your business too,

you want to make sure to collect email addresses, right? Will so, you know, I got my grill cleaned because that's a big pain in the butt. I should have done it myself, but it could take me hours and hours. So I called this company

and they did it in like an hour and a half. And it's sparkling clean. It was really expensive. They're so smart twice a year. I'm getting an email from them saying, hey, it's time to clean your grill. And it's usually just at the right time. You could have a message that people get,

hey, spring is coming. Book your power washer now to get ready to spend time outdoors. And so you really want to focus on those first time users, get their information, and you follow up. And you can offer credit. credit for the next project to get people motivated, not to be like annoying, but to say, hey, we're here for you. You know, anytime you need us, we're here for you.

Yeah, absolutely. Those are great ideas. And we use currently a Shopify stack that does capture all of that data. And we've been doing some regular newsletters and anything we can to grow our awareness. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know about, I don't know about in Cincinnati or in Provo, David, but there's a shortage. of contractors in the Bay Area. It is really hard to find them because, you know, cost of living's high and contractors, they charge a lot here. So a lot more people are doing DIY stuff. And that's another area where, you know, some contractors, they're just, they're, they don't have the capacity. So it's possible you may want to go to contractors and say, hey, when there's overflow or you don't have capacity, like, and you've got DIY clients, refer us. And maybe we can work with you guys if, you know, you guys need equipment on a project?

Absolutely. I think, you know, just thinking, you know, on the theme of these children that getting away from screens and video games and all that, maybe there could be a little business here where you could enlist kids in the neighborhood to do lawn mowing and leaf cleanup and power washing, where you could provide them the equipment to do that and then they pay you for it. And you did because maybe they want to do it. They just don't have the know-how, but you could create little entrepreneur clubs where kids are actually out doing work using your equipment and you make money, they make money, and the homeowner pays less.

Absolutely. We've talked about offering the services or being a people connector of some sort. Certainly recognize those areas of extra revenue. And the thought that contractors, to your points, are very behind in their schedules and sometimes they can't accommodate people. So those are areas that we're looking into, absolutely. Awesome. Well, the brand is called, the company's called Tool Club. Will Carroll, thanks for calling in. Good luck, man. Thank you very much. Congratulations. Hey, thanks so much for listening to this special mash-up edition of the Advice Line. And special thanks to Che Wong,

Arnon Lopez, and David Nealeman for joining me today. Again, if you haven't heard their original episodes or their full episodes of Advice Line, you'll definitely want to check them out. We'll have links to all those episodes in the show notes. And by the way, please make sure to check out my newsletter. You can sign up for it for free at gairoz.com or on Substack. And of course, if you are working on a business and you'd like to be on this show, send us a one minute message that tells us a little bit about your business and the questions or issues that you're currently facing

because we would love to try and help you solve them. You can send us a voice memo at hibt and ID.wondery.com 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 Carrie Thompson with music composed by Rumtin Araflui. It was edited by John Isabella and our audio engineer was Sina LaFredo. Our production staff also includes Casey Herman, Carla Estevez, J.C. Howard, Sam Paulson, Catherine Seifer, Chris Massini, Alex Chung, Neva Grant, and Elaine Coe.

I'm Guy Raz and you've been listening to the advice line right here on how I built this lab.