How I Built This with Guy Raz - Advice Line with Andy Dunn of Bonobos

Episode Date: April 17, 2025

Bonobos co-founder Andy Dunn joins Guy on the Advice Line to answer questions from three early-stage founders. Plus, Andy shares the motivation for his latest venture, Pie—a new social app that fosters in-person friendships and experiences.First, Michele in Connecticut asks about the best way to position her tennis-inspired athletic brand. Then Alek from Chicago, who’s wondering how to reach more health-conscious drinkers with his naturally-flavored vodka. And finally, Sabrina in Philadelphia weighs whether a DTC or wholesale strategy is best for her handmade biscotti.Thank you to the founders Top Banana, Broda Beverage Company and Haus of Biscotti for being a part of our show.If you’d like to be featured on a future Advice Line episode, 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 Bonobos’ founding story as told by Andy on the show in 2019.This episode was produced by Katherine Sypher 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 and on Substack.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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It had tall windows, beautiful old details, and plenty of space for all of us. And being in that home on Airbnb, right in the middle of Vienna, walking distance from so much of the city, made it feel less like a visit and more like we were actually living there. Plus, taking a trip is the perfect time to host your space on Airbnb. Your place with all of its personal touches and its amazing location could make someone else's vacation even better. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at Airbnb.ca.com slash host. Hello and welcome to the advice line on how I built this lab. I'm Guy Raz. This is the place where we help try to solve your business challenges.

Each week, I'm joined by a legendary founder, a former guest on the show who, will help me try to help you. And if you're building something and you need advice, give us a call and you just might be the next guest on the show. Our number is 1-800-433-1298. Send us a one-minute message that tells us about your business and the issues or questions that you'd like help with. You can also send us a voice memo at hibt at ID.wondry.com and make sure to tell us how to reach

you. And also, don't forget to sign up for my new. newsletter, it's full of insights and ideas from the world's greatest entrepreneurs. You can sign up for free at guyraz.com. And we'll put all this info in the podcast description. All right, let's get to it. Joining me this week is Andy Dunn, the co-founder of the menswear company Bonobos and the founder of a new social app called Pi, which is focused on bringing people together in real life. Andy, welcome back to the show. Thanks for having me. It's good to see again. It's great to have you back. You were first on the show in January of 2019, telling the story of building bonobos into a multi-million

dollar apparel brand. And if you guys haven't heard that episode, definitely go back and check it out. We'll put a link to it in the episode description. But the story basically is that you and your co-founder, Brian Spaley, you launched bonobos back in 2007. You were both students at Stanford's business school. And then in 2017, the brand was acquired by Walmart for around $300 million. But as we talked later on, because you came back onto the show, in the middle of all of this, you were dealing with some pretty significant mental health issues and eventually got diagnosed with bipolar disorder, which you went on to seek treatment for. And this has really become a really important part of your sort of purpose in life to talk

about this and to be open about it and to help other entrepreneurs understand that there are a lot of mental health challenges that are involved in starting a business. Totally. And it's funny. I got to see Brian two days ago in Austin. And after all we went through and some of the co-founder divorce stuff, it was good to see that people can evolve and relationships can evolve. And I think that goes for my journey with mental health.

My original relationship with mental health was to be in denial of the condition that I had, which is bipolar type one. And because it is classified as a severe mental illness, which sounds scary, can sound scarier than it is, but you have to deal with it. Yeah. So it was such a blessing that I got a wake-up call in 2016. It did not feel like a blessing at the time, you know, in the psych ward at Bellevue for a week, discharged into handcuffs, charged with assault. Yeah. Got to detail a lot of that in my memoir burn rate. And then in retrospect, best thing that ever happened to me, because it informed not only my new life's work of talking about it openly and trying to help other people on this

journey. It also inspired my new company, Pye, because of the next mental health challenge that I experienced. I thought I was sort of sorted out on mental health after I got my bipolar under control. And then we moved during the pandemic. You moved from New York to Chicago. I did. After, you know, 15 years, built bonobos up to 600 people there. My whole world was there. All my friends, got married there, had a kid there, and then all of a sudden we moved to Chicago during the pandemic. And then within about a year or two, I was miserable. I had no guy friends for the first time ever. And I didn't belong to any tribe or community beyond the family I was a part of. And that led to the formation of this new company pie. And basically, it's an app that's designed to help people

form friendships. It's interesting because I think, because we're about the same age. And these days men sort of over 40, they often, especially they have a family. They tend to focus on their families, their kids and their partners. And they may know a lot of their guys, but they don't actually develop bonds with other guys. It's very common. Totally. We could go so deep into this. We even at Pi had to introduce a series called dudes getting pancakes to create the lowest possible barrier to just meeting some new guys. Dudes getting pancakes. And it worked. And And it's been fun to reach outside of the people that I meet in the day to day and be more intentional about meeting new and different kinds of people and reengaging in things that I

used to love doing, but I just hadn't done in a long time, like playing basketball and chess and poker and things I like doing that just kind of went by the wayside as I entered into fatherhood. It's really interesting. And I think there is an incredible business opportunity there, right? It's like men's groups, men's clubs kind of like faded away. And I do think we're a moment where people are looking for a connection. and community and in ways that feel organic. Andy, one of the things often comes up on how I built

this, and I try to address it, the loneliness of being an entrepreneur. And you started this with Brian and then you guys had a falling out. But even so, I mean, even when you have a partner, the stress, the anxiety, the sleepless nights, it requires a lot of work to withstand it. and and I wonder now that you have been able to really figure out what was going on in your head while you were running bonobos, if you could kind of give that person advice and say, hey, here's what you want to think about when you're taking care of yourself. What would you've done differently? I would get tactical with my advice. I would say stop glamorizing low sleep. I think that's table stick. for all of us as good rest. And it's hard. It's hard with a startup and it's hard with family life. And with both, with both I actually find it's easier. I remember meeting an entrepreneur who said, look, I built three companies. She said, I built one with young kids, one with older kids and one

with no kids. And she said, which do you think was the easiest to build? And I said no kids. And she said, what do you mean? She said, well, I knew I had these other beings to care for or they would die. And so I had a clear sense of perspective and I had a boundary and a barrier where I couldn't work all the time. And then the other one that's been just super helpful has been quitting drinking. Giving that up was hard, but it's helped because it just sort of, it increases the quality of sleep. So I would say take these tactical steps and I found building pie is much easier for me than bonobos because my mental fitness regime is in a much better place and I have a lot more perspective. and I have the benefit of having a win under my belt,

so I don't have the same existential identity thing happening, which is like, oh, if this company fails, I'm a failure. And so, you know, Pai, I feel like can enhance how I feel about myself, but it's not the end-all be-all. Yeah. No, it's a really, really important perspective. I think a perspective that a lot of founders just don't get a chance to hear. And we should talk about that more on the show.

We will, I promise. So in that spirit, why don't we take some calls? Can't wait. I was so psyched for this guy. I am too. I can't wait. So let's bring our first caller. Welcome to the advice line.

You are on with me and Andy Dunn, co-founder of Bonobos. Please tell us your name, where you're calling from, and just a little bit about your business. Hi, guy. Hi, Andy. Hello. Thanks for having me. My name is Michelle Cozantino, and I'm from Westport, Connecticut. I'm the founder of Top Banana.

We make vintage-inspired tennis. Apparel for Women. Cool. Well, welcome to the show, Michelle, thanks for calling. So Westport, Connecticut. And you make tennis apparel. Like, is it athletic apparel, like to play tennis? Or is it sort of tennis clothing inspired?

A lot of people do purchase it that don't play tennis. And they just ask me if they can walk their dog in it. But it actually is made to play tennis. It's made out of sport fabric that has stretch, moisture management, sun protection. You can go play a three-hour. match in it. But you can also just wear it and kind of look cool. And it's, as you say, it's a kind of a retro look. Like, tell me a little bit about the story. How did you start this business? Well, I started this business during COVID and my children were being homeschooled

at the time. And I was following the state curriculum. And there were many more hours in the day. So I took a few hours and I decided to teach them what I knew something about. And I am a serial entrepreneur. I was a graphic designer and then I went to grad school for fashion design. So I started teaching them how to start a brand and then how to start an apparel line. Wow. So you started this brand. It came out of COVID. And I guess I would describe it as sort of like a like a kind of a country club look a little bit. Not not in a just kind of, that's the first thing that comes to mind. Like somebody kind of hanging out in Nantucket in the summer Bar Harbor like Martha's Vineyard. Yeah, I think that the country called Look is very popular right now, but it didn't start that way for me.

When I was a kid, you could just go to the park and play tennis. There was no barrier for tennis, so I didn't really want to make it elite. And during COVID, everybody came out to play tennis and all levels kind of played together. There was something really magical about the way community came together during the pandemic. and that was sort of the impetus for the brand rather than make it exclusive, make it fancy. Yeah. It's kind of for everyone. All right, Michelle, before we get to more questions, tell us what your question is for us today.

So I originally started my target audience was someone like myself. I'm a Gen Xer, and I had just left New York City and I moved to the suburbs and I was picking up a new hobby. Now I'm expanding my target audience to Gen Y because Gen X ends at least. like 45. No, I want to go down to 30. And I find they're a very different crew to market to. So my question is, out of all the options, what is best for Gen Y? Is it influencers? Is it collaborations? Is it Google ads? Is it Instagram? Or is it TikTok? Because Gen Xers, I don't know. We're not really on TikTok. Yeah. All right. All right. We'll get to your question. I want to bring an Andy Dunn because I think you know a little bit about apparel, Andy.

So first of all, any thoughts on what Michelle is building? Yeah, first of all, I was just checking out the brand on Instagram and on the site. I love the brand name. Oh, thanks. And I love the vibe, the aesthetic, the colors, that sort of firecracker red. I would right off the bat encourage you to be clear that this is an elite brand just based on the price point. And I think I used to, I agree. I used to be delusional about this at Bonova.

where I thought, oh, we are disintermediating the brick and mortar channel. And then, you know, it's a $100 pair of pants. And when I got, we, you know, it was sort of counterintuitive. We sold the brand of Walmart. When I got to Walmart, I realized, oh, something like 75% of American men would never pay more than $40 for a pair of chinos. And I had this light bulb moment of I've lived most of my adult life in the Bay Area or New York City. And I'm so proximate to people of means that I think of $100 as a reasonable price for a pair of pants. So I would just embrace what guy said around like the appeal. And just jumping to your question, I think it's all about Instagram for the evolution

you're making because Gen X is there and Gen Y is there in droves. I wouldn't worry about TikTok yet. And I would find maybe 50 or 100 ambassadors or more and just gift them product if you can afford to and see if you can 10X your Instagram following because the quality of the brand and the aesthetic is way under penetrated on Instagram. in terms of what I'm seeing of like likes followership and engagement. Right. Okay.

I like that idea. Yeah, Andy, I think that's exactly right. I mean, Bonobos was and, you know, is a premium brand, right? Like, you know that you're going to pay a little bit more for something and you're going to get more. I'm looking at your website. And it is, I mean, first of all, now that I've dug digging into a bit, your products are made in New York. They're made in the United States. You're using high-quality fabrics.

That is not clear from just, I mean, if you were just looking at this site, some of these dresses are like $225. Some people might think that's a lot, but you're not just making this in a giant factory in China. They're made here in the United States. I love the aesthetic. I love that retro. It looks almost like an airline flight attendants, you know. Yeah, it's like flight of the concord. It's like a jet age kind of look.

It's dope. Hey. This is a dope looking brand, Michelle. And it has so much potential as a lifestyle brand because of the way you named it. Top banana, you know, it's that woman who's like, you know, the alpha female who's having fun looks good. And I think it has so much potential if you can kind of cross the Rubicon to Gen Y. I'm excited for you. I like the idea of embracing the price point.

It is expensive because it is made in New York and the fabrics are really nice. And Michelle, what about, you know, in terms of resources, like, do you have some money or any money to spend, for example, on maybe help with a PR agency or a branding agency or an influence or marketing agency? Yeah, that is definitely something I'm looking into. Originally, I went out and I aimed a little high. I contacted, do you know, Morgan Riddle? Morgan Riddle is Taylor Fritz's girlfriend who sits on the sideline of every tennis match. And she just blew up and she has one of my dresses and I was like, oh, this is amazing.

And then the next week she was in the New York Times as like the most influential woman in men's tennis. And I was like, ooh, that's. Wow. So her price went straight up. Like to do one post? Oh, yes. And so I think I aimed a little too high. I think I need to find influencers and marketers that are kind of a little more affordable because I'm a small brand.

Yeah. You know, in this regard, I'm an investor, angel investor in a brand called Caraway. It's pots and pans and kitchenware. And what he did that I thought was so smart is he actually built an army of something like 3,000 Instagram partners. It was just value exchange for free product. So I think the move is don't pay people. Send them product.

It'll take some work to figure out who those folks are. I wanted to ask you a question. And what about pickle? What about pickle? What about Piddle? So my first, my first line was all white because of the requirements for the tennis. And I had so many people requesting color for pickle and paddle that I moved into colors. And I'm sort of changing the brand now to be like racket sports instead of just tennis apparel. Pickle is on fire. I don't know if you've been playing, but there's so much growth in that category. I mean, tennis is cool. And I can tell it's an interesting. but I love to play tennis, but I've jumped on the pickle wagon, and I feel like there's a lot of

potential with that as well. On the note of Taylor's girlfriend, I would actually encourage you to think about whether it's her or someone else, giving between 10 and 40 percent of the company to someone like that because that's the difference between building a $50 million brand and a $5 million brand. And so there's not really any brand this day and age that gets big that isn't carried to market it by someone like that without raising a ton of money and giving it to Mark Zuckerberg. So if you can find someone brand aligned, and it's probably someone who at some point

like you send the product to and loves it. Okay. And you just give them a big chunk of the company to lead in with you because that can be the thing that, you know, 10 to 100 X is the value. And if I could go back and do bonobos again, I wish I understood how much better it is to dilute your brand by giving the equity to someone like that, then. running Instagram ads. Really?

Oh, 100%. I mean, Andy, I want to, and we'll just push back for a sec. I think that there is an argument to be made, but there's also a risk there, right? That if that influencer or that brand ambassador goes south, right? Like, it's going to kill your brand, too, right? It could also be a problem. Not to say it's not worth taking that risk. It's just a risk worth considering.

You know, you mentioned that you want to keep this as a direct-to-consumer brand, But I wonder whether it might be worthwhile, at least trying to get the product into some boutiques. I mean, we've done so many stories like this. Aviator Nation is a great example. Tom's, you know, Blake Mikoski started selling them in boutiques in Venice. To me, there's an opportunity. You're in Westport, Connecticut. I mean, there's some great boutiques on Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket or in Connecticut. I would look at places like that where people go, especially go on vacation in the summer.

and I try to identify some cool boutiques where you could, you know, put these there on consignment. Andy, what do you think? Yeah, totally agree. I mean, I'll just share with you, Michelle. I spent 13 years building something that I think in retrospect is an impossible business model, which is due to C apparel. Like, I don't actually think it works. Don't see that. I don't think it works.

Like, the math doesn't work on it because it's too expensive to acquire, acquire customers. right? It's so, it's a cartel that controls the digital highway, right? It's Bezos and Zuckerberg and Apple. So I love the idea of, yeah, leveraging wholesale and celebrity and influencer. I mean, just think about what we've done at Monique and Andy. My sister's brand the last few years, we did a partnership with Paris Hilton, and we launched Walmart. And now all of a sudden, the business looks good, whereas when it was a pure play DDC, it was challenging. Now, look, it's hard to get wholesale accounts going. They don't pay on time. It's a time-intensive sell-in.

But I like the idea, Guy. Yeah. I like that, too. I mean, everything that you guys said about the wholesale to retail model, I was avoiding initially because, A, I was still building out this product. It has to be useful for, I wanted to learn as much as I could about the actual product. And all the things you said about chasing the money and all that, I knew. But I do think I'm at a phase right now where I could go to a trade show and sell to, like,

the Four Seasons gift shops. And I think because the women I know, when I go on vacation, that's when I buy things. I'm like excited. I have time. You're a little freer with your money. Like you're in, you know, on vacation. Right. Exactly.

Four Seasons gift shops is a great idea. Yeah. Okay. That kind of an account because it also can scale, right? The thing that's hard about boutiques is like it's good for the brand, but it can't scale beyond end of one sometimes, which is why sometimes distribution is cool. But if you have something like that where if it works, you can then go out to 50 doors. That's cool.

So that's what I'm looking at next. I'm looking at hotels who have resorts that have tennis and grabbing them, trying to get them excited. And pickle. And pickle bowl. Yeah. All that. I mean. Let's get out of just the tennis mindset.

I know. It's bad. Rack it, right? It's going to help you because like, for example, I was just down in South Carolina with my family. had, you know, there's 15 clay tennis courts, right? Empty. And then there were 10 pickleball courts, packed. Packed.

Totally packed. Yeah. I agree. I'm on it. Rackets. Racquet sports. Michelle Cousantino, the brand is called Top Banana. Thanks for calling in.

Good luck. Thank you very much, guys. So impressed with what you've done. Bye-bye. Congrats. Thanks. How was that trip to South Carolina? It was cool.

Yeah. Yeah, I was going to say South Carolina, like Kiowa, Island. And, like, again, you want to hit up these sort of tennis kind of golf and tennis kind of places, right? Yeah, that was the thing I thought was most interesting about her was she wasn't in a reality-based relationship with who her customer was. Right. Or at least at the beginning of our conversation. And I think it's so important to know who your customer is so you can just really sled at that. It's $200 dress, right?

This is a discretionary purchase. And that affluent customer is a great customer. So, you know, going after it. I think she can build something big. Stay with us because after the break, we'll talk to another founder working to take their business to the next level. That's after the break. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to the advice line right here on how I built this lab. Welcome back to the advice line on how I built this lab.

I'm Guy Raz. And my guest today is Andy Dunn, co-founder of Bonobos and a new social app called Pi. Andy, what do you say? Should we take another call? Let's do it. I can't wait. Hello, welcome to the advice line. You're on with Andy Dunn from Bonobos.

Tell us your name where you're calling from and a little bit about your business. Hey guys. How you doing? My name is Alex Supak. I'm from Glenview, Illinois, which is just outside of Chicago. So, hi, Andy. What's up, Alex? I'm the co-founder of Broda Beverage Company, which is an alcohol brand that uses real ingredients and high-quality production methods focused on transparency. So we offer truly unique and fresh flavors while providing a better-for-you experience. All right. Let's talk about this. Thanks for calling, Alec. Tell me what is the beverage, you make? Yeah. So our Trojan horse in the market is the traditional lemon, honey, and ginger vodka. It's a Polish alcohol. And the way we make it is we zest the lemons, peel the ginger,

infuse it into the vodka, filter it out, juice the lemons, add in a raw honey that we're getting from Michigan, blend it, age it, bottle it. So no preservatives, none of the weird stuff. And so tell me a little bit about how you, where this idea came from. I'm assuming, based on your last name maybe there's like a family connection here yes yeah my last name is very polish both my parents came from poland um and this is my uncle's recipe um and so his nickname was broda which means beard and polish that's the name of our company uh it's because his wife and kids never saw him without a beard so everyone called him that um but yeah it's uh he he got the recipe from from his father from his father before him and uh he taught my brother who is 12 years uh my senior and then i kind of got messing

around with it. And I've always had a little bit of an entrepreneurial bug. And here we are a couple years later. If you don't mind me asking, how old are you? 24. So you are, this, is this your, I'm assuming this is your first company, right? Yes, sir. Yep. Congrats. And, and tell me a little bit about how you got out of the ground. There's, there's a lot of roadblocks with alcohol, but, um, it started off kind of my sophomore junior year of college, just trying to figure out if this is a viable product for the market. I joined an incubator program at my college, SMU. in Dallas. I won a couple pitch competitions.

That gave me some confidence. And then just kind of studying up, figuring out, you know, what licensing you need, find a correct copacter, which took forever because no one wants to use real, real fruits and raw honey. And they want the easiest way to make it. Definitely no aging processes because that takes up time and resources. So, yeah, there was a steep learning curve, and that's it took about two years before we could actually get onto shelves.

So our co-packer is local to Chicago. So they buy a vodka from a big guy and then they distill it one more time. But then they let us come in and do all the fruit processing ourselves. So me, my mom, my dad, my friend's girlfriend, everyone's coming in and we call it a lemon party. And yeah, just juice a lot of stuff. Got it. Give me a sense of where you guys are right now. You say you launched it about a year ago.

And it's all direct to consumer. Are you selling it in stores? And if so, what do you, what kind of reverend? revenue you are you looking at in your first year? We're mainly in stores. So at... In Chicago, the Chicago area? Chicago, yeah, that's where we're launching right now.

So we're in stores like grocery chains, also mom and pop liquor stores. We're in a couple liquor chains as well. And then restaurants and bars, because that kind of helps build up the brand name. Yeah, we do have online sales to 44 states, and our revenue is around in 95K right now. Meng of K, K, the first year, pretty good. That's great. Yeah. And tell us what your pain point is.

What's your question for us? Yeah, so our question is, I'm not sure if you're familiar, but the alcohol industry is one of hidden ingredients. So we want to know how we can effectively educate consumers about this issue while positioning our product as both a better for you, transparent, and more delicious alternative. Okay, I want to bring Andy in. I've got a lot of thoughts about that. Andy, I know you don't drink anymore. I still drink. I want to drink now after hearing Al to talk about this.

And I'm going to try this. So I will give you my feedback as somebody who does enjoy a drink. Andy, first to you thoughts about what about Broda? First, I love the brand identity. And while Guy was talking, I was looking at your Instagram and your site, the branding, the story. You're doing a pretty good job. I feel like you're kind of good at this, like building in public, storytelling about the ingredients. Your followerships are lower than I would guess. It's a nice looking grid. I'm curious, like, why do you need help with the storytelling? It looks like you're good at it. Yeah, I mean, it's because when I'm doing tastings, I do at least two to three tastings every weekend just to try to get it out there. And, you know, repeating the pitch over and over, everyone seems to be shocked with the fact that, oh, there's an ingredient list on the back of this bottle because you're just not trained to look at it. And the problem is a lot of people are trying to be healthier during the week.

But when it comes to the weekend, I call it informed and winding. trying to understand what's in your drink, but nobody knows all these hidden things because they're not required to share them. So that's kind of what I want to get at because obviously our flavor is different, but how do we also explain that the actual contents are different as well? Interesting, because I sort of my instinctive reaction is to say, I'm not convinced that people who are going for a drink are that worried about the health implications, even if they might be healthy and they might work out and they might go to the gym every day. There's all kinds of swirling, conflicting information about alcohol in general. It's been coming out over the last few

years. To me, the idea of trying to make the case that this is a better option than another cocktail because the ingredients are healthier or cleaner or whatever words you use to me, I'm not sure that's going to be the best argument to make because I think at the end of the day, people are consuming based on what they like, on the taste. And that, to me, is your strongest argument. Right. Can I give a counterpoint on that guy? Please.

Because I think, actually, if I hear you make that argument, like, here's a deal. The problem with vodka is it's so competitive. Very competitive. Right. It's so competitive. And so if you're going to stand out, what if it is the case that for, you know, the Gen Z demo that Alec is in? Because I don't think you're going to switch older people who are, you know, stuck on, you know, now Grey Goose is what Absolute used to be. for the grandfather generation?

Yes. Given that it's a generation that is more plant-based and more sober, curious, and all that, for the component of that group that wants to go out and have some vodka on a Friday night or have a couple of nice cocktails with dinner, maybe this is a differentiator. So maybe part of the way to break through the noise here is to go on this really difficult journey of getting the consumer who is predisposed to care about ingredients to care about ingredients in this category, which I agree with you guys, a category where normally, hey, you're putting ETOH poison in your body, who cares what else is going into it?

Well, maybe that can evolve. I don't know, Alec, does that resonate with you or how are you thinking about it? And I'd like to say that I think both of you guys are right in a certain way. So the reason that we don't put the ingredient label on the front, like RX bar, for example, is because we still want to have that fun, you know, sexiness within an alcohol brand. It's more of like, to guys' point, it's not the most important. Obviously, flavor is most important. But what's really part of our backbone is the ingredients.

And I've talked to many people that when they hear, oh, raw honey, like, wow. Like, you know, if I don't drink often, but if I do, like, I would love to have that. Or it's just kind of, we're trying to make them ask the question themselves. Like, do you actually want to know what it is? that you are drinking. So, guys, I'm all in on this. I'm all in on the ingredients. You know, so for example, I was just looking up here on Claude A.I.,

what's raw honey good for? It's soothing for coughs. What's ginger good for? It's good for digestion in the stomach. Maybe it's not on the packaging, but I would encourage you that maybe it is on the front. I don't think if you're going to be known for something, be known for it. Be loud and proud. Put it everywhere.

Communicate those benefits. I don't know. I think it's kind of fun. You know, I just had a thought here, and this is like a wild kind of just a throwing spaghetti at the wall here, but it might actually stick. Because you mentioned this idea, Andy, that, you know, lemon and ginger is great for digestion and honey for the throat. And like, you know, and so what if you took a risk here and try to think of your competitors, not as the cocktail that people are going to have at the bar, but as like Yeagermeister or Furnay, you know, one of these sort of digestifs, right? And you kind of create a Broda shot culture. Like, do a shot of Broda.

And maybe you're doing this already, but you go to the bar and you pour shot, you're like, you know, Prost. What do they say in Polish? Nasdrovia. Whoa. Nzdrovia, right? And you boom, and you shoot that at the bar and everyone's going, Nazdrovia. And it means for your health in Polish. There you go.

The one thing is that with alcohol, you have to be very careful with, you know, saying healthy versus, That's why we say better for you because at the end of the day. Don't say it. Don't put on the label. You could just say it when you're at the bar. Yeah. Yeah. And one of our best accounts is actually a bar in Lincoln Park that does now is doing

$3 shots. It used to be seven, but it's been doing so well that they're, they're, you know, trying to, they're making it their special. So, and in Polish culture, that is also how you drink it. You don't mix it. You don't dilute it. It's, oh, this is amazing. There's a million alcohols to compete with.

But in the shot culture, there's like, five. Yeah. Right. Right. That's what you want to do. Broda shots. Okay. I guess the Polish people haven't haven't had it wrong since the 16th century. No. No. And that's a part of the story, which is so cool. And got to be careful. Obviously, this is a heavily regulated industry. Very much so. And all kinds of Surgeon General's warnings coming out about alcohol in recent. But I think that, look, human beings have been fermenting and distilling grains and fruits for, thousands of years and consuming it. And it is part of, you know, human behavior in general, most parts of the world. And so I think that that focusing on the traditional side of it, how it's consumed, it's a very much about community. It's very much about being together. And you're selling an

experience. You're not selling a product. Right. That's what I think you got to focus on. Yeah. 100%. Alec, Nostrovia. Nostrovia. Broda beverage company. Congratulations. Congrats, man. Good luck. Thanks so much. I appreciate it, guys. Nice to meet you. Great to meet you. Keep going. I'm sorry. I know that it's very wise that you gave up booze. And I will say I have massively reduced my consumption to maybe like a glass of wine a week now, really. And I sleep much better. And now maybe Broda shots. I know. Broda shot at night. But Andy, you know, and I don't, are you 50? You're not 50 yet, right? 46. Yeah. So once you're, I just turned 50. And even 46, at that point, your body is just like, nah, I cannot do these things. Oh, it's different.

No, my doctors told me I'm going to die in five different ways. You know, you have that appointment. And it's like, oh, wow, I'm not going to live forever. How do I prolong? The beauty is you can turn it all around your 40. So if you are under 45 and you're listening, you can abuse your body, but then it just has to end. It must end. It must.

All good things come to an end. All right, we're going to take another quick break, but we'll be right back with another caller. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to The Advice Line right here on how I built this lab. Welcome back to the advice line on how I built this lab. I'm Guy Raz, and today I'm taking your calls with Andy Dunn. So, Andy, let's bring on our next caller. Let's dive in.

Hello, welcome to the advice line. You're on with Andy Dunn. Co-founder of Bonobos, please tell us your name, where you're calling from, and a little bit about your business. Hey, I, hey, Andy. My name is Sabrina Nass. I'm the founder of House of Biscotti based in Philadelphia, PA. We're a Biscata company that's obsessed with reinventing the Biscotti. So no more sad looking Biscotties in glass jars near the counter that look untouched and unloved. At House Biscotti, we're all about fun flavors, fun packaging, and a very tasty biscotti to pair with your morning coffee. I love it. Sabrina, welcome the show. Thank you, House of Biscotti. Okay, so it's a great idea. Tell me how this came about. Are you a baker? Did you have a business before? Tell me about it. No, no, no, no, no, none of the above. My background is actually in tech. I used to write code for a living. Now I'm an engineering leader focusing on the AI space.

And the reason why that's so relevant to this story is because during the pandemic, I desperately just wanted to do something in between meetings. And I realized walking to get a cup of coffee was a great new habit, like fantastic, new habitual act. But very expensive. Quite expensive. Indeed. Especially if you purchase. a croissant or a Danish, which then led me to the decision that maybe a croissant every day

is not the healthiest. And this is where I decided it's time to reinvent the biscadie. It's the perfect treat. You can dunk it. You can save it for later. It won't go stale like a croissant. And then to point back to my tech experiences, I've worked on a lot of great engineering teams that included studying how customers engage with their favorite products. And what I learned from those experiences is that people love habits. People love, or, you know, romanticizing those habits and what better habit to elevate than pairing your morning coffee with a biscottie, right? Okay. And so this is, is this your full-time job now?

No. No, you're still a coder. You're still doing this work. Okay. This is your side hustle. Yes, I enjoy health insurance. Yes. Okay.

So, and tell me how, so are you making this in like a commercial kitchen space that you're renting the space out? And so you're making them all yourself? Yep. Yep. Scotties are the weekend. baking, fulfilling, manufacturing, sending invoices, cold calling, all of that good stuff. Awesome. And where are you selling right now? So we're available in over 20 distinct stores and coffee shops across the U.S.

We've definitely not scaled to a big box retailer, as you could assume. I would like to make like a few key decisions before approaching that route. And there are reorders, which is another, you know, good signal. But this might be the perfect segue to my question. Yes, please. Please ask your question. Okay. Super.

What I'd like your all's help with is figuring out first discovery of eatbiscati.com, which is the website. And then second, how in the world once the customer's actually on the website, how do I increase sales? My sales on the website are pennies. Got it. Okay. Andy Dunn. Come on in. Here's a hot take, Sabrina.

And this is so cool because it's a category everyone knows but no one owns, which is so intriguing, right? Like, you don't usually have a category where there's just no... Who owns Biscotti? No one owns Biscotti. That's going to be Sabrina. Yeah. So here's my hot take. You can't increase sales on the website and you shouldn't try. Okay. I'm being a little bit cheeky because I think over time you can, what I would probably do is just focus on subscription because the unit economics of non-subscription. I mean, by the way, no one's going to subscribe. But given that you're talking about it as a habit, I think what you should aim for a subscription. And by the way, later, if the company's really big, it's going to be an Amazon subscription,

right, or in a Walmart subscription. But I would put all my energy into wholesale if I were you. Let's go get Whole Foods. What's the skew that Whole Foods wants that's maybe exclusive? Let's get Walmart. Let's get Amazon. Let's get Albertsons. Let's get Target.

Let's go after all of that. And most importantly, let's get you working on this full time. Because we can't build a big brand if you're not full time. So what would it take for you to be able to go all of it? in on this. Is that something you want to do? And what would it take to do that? What kind of revenue or what would the step be? Yeah, that's a good question. It is something I'd want to pivot towards full time. The milestone that I wanted to hit this year was, and this is very helpful feedback thus far, the milestone I wanted to hit was sales on website so that when I have my pitch deck or when I go to

get external funding or investors, I have a beautiful slide that says, like I was able to unlock some minimal traction online. That's been like my focus this year because I put so much focus on just building and bootstrapping and launching last year. Is there a number that you would need to hit before you would, because I'm assuming that you probably have, I'm given your credentials and what you do, you're probably paid well. You probably have a good benefits package. Like that's hard to leave. It is. Do you have savings?

I do have a lot. I'm so grateful for making the decision as a 19-year-old to go the tech route. So I do have savings. I guess I'm thinking a lot because I'm kind of an entrepreneur as well at work. Like I do pitch some of the harder products to ship. And I always think of the pitch deck. And the thing that's been blocking in my mind is when I go into those meetings to pitch or even a cold call email, I just feel like they're going to ask.

about online sales. And if I say it's just been like my parents. Oh, no, no, say you, no, say you don't disclose. Oh, I don't disclose. Say we've got a lot of momentum. We don't disclose our numbers. Okay. I love that. That means I'm not doing any sales. I hear that all the time. Thank you, Andy. Don't disclose. But what I would do is do enough that it's growing. So you could say we're growing we don't disclose numbers, but we're growing 22% month on month. One thing you should do is like, look at pricing a little bit because price matters online. And a lot of times entrepreneurs price to the margin rather than the market. Because they say we need this margin.

But sometimes that doesn't matter if the market doesn't emerge. So you need a price that's compelling, even if you take it on the chin on the margin in the near term. I see. When you build a lot of demand, you'll get that back. So it's okay if you're a unit economic negative or break even now to establish the market. and you will need to win on price later. I don't care what else your story is. You will need to win on price to be compelling in the grocery channel.

Yeah. No one's going to be like, oh, it's premium Biscotti. I'll pay 80% more. You've got to be like head to head. In fact, I would want you to be the least expensive Biscotti on the market with the best brand. If you think about why did something like Warby Parker work or Harry's work, it's because they price disrupted Luxottica and Gillette, respectively. So it's this weird thing where you've got to be cooler and better and cheaper.

If you want to break through and build something that's not just a niche brand. Yeah. And as I thought, you've got a price problem. So you've got, I'm just checking your website, it's $14 for 8.25 ounces. It's a bit expensive. And La Dolce Vita, classic Italian almond biscotti with a kind of a cool container, although my wife would point out it's still, you know, single plastics is 40 ounces. Yeah. for 1382.

So I think you've got a dream bigger on what this would look like at scale and be willing, you know, do all the work to figure out your... Take it of chin. Yeah, big time. Yep. No, I wrote down that sentence, least expensive biscotti with the best brand. Yeah. I think that's a great idea.

I would also, and I'm sure you know about this, Sabrina, I would look at that, you know, that famous biscotti you get from, it's all over Italy. It's called Antonio Matai or Matte. Yeah, I know what I'm talking about. It looks almost like a bag of coffee, but because it's so, it's like perfectly stacked with biscotti. It's like it might even be cheaper than the packaging you're using now. And I like that guy, like the packaging not being plastic. So there might be some wiggle room in there to win on packaging and product.

Anyways, this is cool. Yeah. That's really helpful. So ditch, ditch e-commerce. Great. Ditchie commerce, yes. Ditch it. It's stupid.

No one wants to invest in it either. All of them. money is going into profitable wholesale-led brands now, not into D to C brands. So you'll raise more capital on better terms if you want to over time if you get the Omni kind of wholesale-led equation working, especially in CPG. Yes. This is really helpful. Thank you so much.

Sabrina, thank you for calling in House of Biscotti. Good luck. We're sharing you on. Quit your job. Resign tomorrow. Okay. Thanks. That's advice you're going to give.

I'm not going to give a tech, you know. know, mogul, that advice. She's, she's like a coder. She'll be fine. She's, she's, she's, earning hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. Yeah, she could, her next job. She should keep it for now. Keep the job for now. Keep one foot in house of Biscotti. And then over time, you know, when the, you know, when like the water level on that goes up and on the other side starts to go down, and you jump, you jump ship. All right. Half-built house of Biscotti. I can get buying that. Yeah. Andy, I mean, hopefully we didn't just like destroy a bunch of businesses today.

I think we did okay. I mean, it's so fun seeing these folks. They actually, all of these have interesting potential. Yeah. Well, I think that if in the end they make it, hopefully they'll, you know, they'll remember this moment. Andy, before I let you go, you know, now knowing what you know about business now and having all this experience, if you could go back and give yourself advice, not necessarily run the

mental health challenges, but just about like. operational advice or, you know, or decision-making advice. What do you think would have been helpful for you or in the early days that you wish you kind of knew? Yeah, I think it is that just to worry a lot less about what other people think. I think for a long time, I wanted to be liked so badly that I was not able to make the tough organizational decisions fast enough that I needed to make. Right. Like Ipenobos, we didn't do a layoff until our 12th year. The truth is capitalism at times requires layoffs. It just does. You hire more people in good times. Things change. You got to be surgical and the company emerges better for it. So I feel so free to worry less because I know these things pass. I think the other thing that goes side by side with that is just telling people the truth earlier.

So in a non-defensive way, saying things like, gosh, I got that work and it just wasn't good. Yeah. Like that was bad work product. And just saying what I think, without being mean, you know, without ad hominem attacks, which some entrepreneurs get into, it takes a lot of work and focus to say, I'm just going to do what's right for the company. I'm going to say what's on my mind. And gosh, like, that is saving me a lot of cycles compared to bonobos.

We did a lot of spin for me wanting for those characteristics of candor and courage. Yeah, makes a lot of sense. Andy Dunn, co-founder of Bonobos and also Pi an app that helps users find and organize live social events and develop new friendships. Andy, thanks so much for joining us. Thanks for having me, Guy. And by the way, if you haven't heard Andy's original how I built this episode about how he built Bonobos, you've got to go back and give it a listen. It's a great episode. We'll put a link to it in the podcast description. And here's one of my favorite moments from that interview. How were you able to kind of stay optimistic? I mean, were you just looking at projections and saying, this is going to be fine? Stay optimistic. What makes you think that I was optimistic? I was defiant in the face of a terrifying reality. Companies don't die because the companies fail. They die because the entrepreneur gives up. And that was the approach.

Just keep the lights on, keep growing. And that's what we did. Thanks so much for listening to the show this week. Please make sure to check out my newsletter. You can sign up for it for free at gairoes.com. Each week, it's packed with tons of insights from entrepreneurs and my own observations and experiences interviewing some of the greatest entrepreneurs ever. And if you're working on a business and you'd like to be on this show,

send us a one-minute message that tells us about your business, the issues or questions you'd like help with, and hopefully we can help you with them. And make sure to tell us how to reach you. You can send us a voice memo at hibt at ID.wondry.com or call us at 1-800-433-1298, and leave a message there, and we'll put all this in the podcast description as well. This episode was produced by Catherine Seifer with music composed by Rumtina Arablui. It was edited by John Isabella, and our audio engineer was Sina LaFredo. Our production staff also includes Alex Chung, Elaine Coates, Casey Herman, J.C. Howard,

Iman, Ma'Ani, Chris Messini, Carrie Thompson, Neva Grant, and Sam Paulson. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This.