How I Built This with Guy Raz - Advice Line with Carlton Calvin of Razor

Episode Date: August 20, 2026

Today’s callers: Shawn from Saskatchewan weighs whether brand-building or licensing is best for his card-based party game. Then Shirin in Texas wants to differentiate her graphic stationery in a crowded Etsy marketplace. And Mark from New Jersey works through refocusing his line of craft spirits. Plus, Carlton’s recent efforts to pass on his trendspottting talent to the next generation.Thank you to the founders of Youlogy, Honey Bespoke Stationery & Paper Goods, and Little Water Distillery 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 the Razor founding story as told by Carlton Calvin in 2025.This episode was produced by Casey Herman with music by Ramtin Arablouei. It was edited by John Isabella. Our audio engineer was Annlie Huang.You can follow HIBT on X & Instagram and sign up for Guy’s free newsletter at guyraz.com or 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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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. Just each week, I'm joined by a legendary founder, a former guest on this show, who will help me try to help you. And if you're building something and you need advice, give us a call and you just might be the next guest on the show. Our number is 1-800-433-1298. Leave us a one-minute message that tells us about your business and the issues or questions that you like help with. All right, let's get to it.

This week I'm joined by Carlton Calvin. He's the founder and CEO of Razor USA. say you've probably seen a Razor scooter, maybe you've owned one or bought one for your kids. Carlton built Razor into a hugely successful company, turning an overnight craze into a classic toy. Carlton, it is great to have you back on the show. I love being here. Oh, we love having you. Well, so you were first on the show back in September of 2025.

And as always to anyone listening, if you haven't heard that episode, we'll put a link to it in the show notes. Really great story. And I have to say, as you will hear in the story, Carlton has a. uncanny way of knowing what kids want even before it happens, including how about two decades ago you caught wind of this sleek, collapsible aluminum scooter. It was trending in Japan. You saw the potential immediately. You reached out to a factory that was making them. You locked down the exclusive U.S. rights. And then you brought them to the U.S. and before long, it was a massive crazy. You were selling a million units at one point every single month. It makes me wonder,

Carlton, I mean, obviously, trends have changed and it's not a million units a month. And the technology has changed. You also have electric scooters and electric bikes and so many of the products you sell. But do people still buy the standard aluminum collapsible scooters? Absolutely. I think it's still our largest selling item by volume. So, you know, close to a million units a year, I would say. Wow. I know we talked about this when you were on the show about like, succession. You own this company. This is your company, right? Yeah, with partners. With partners. I just want to be 100%. I mean, it's privately owned, I should say, yeah. Yes. But, you know, you do a bunch of other things that we didn't really talk about on the show. You're interested in art and you support different initiatives. What do you sort of see your role in razor? I mean, do you at some point think that you want to focus on the other things that you're interested in? I absolutely am trying to do that. that. Yes, 100%. But this one part of it, I've got amazing people that work for me that are super

capable, but this weird talent that I have for the new product, that's very, very hard to find a new person. Yeah. You know, I'm getting on in my years, and I am trying to institutionalize at Razor my trend-seeking abilities. I am actively trying to. I'm actively trying to to see if I can figure out how to teach people. I'm kind of a fun analytical person and I'm trying to analyze and see if I can come up with like an algorithm for it in some way. In a sense, right, what you're saying is you have developed this instinct or you have an instinct, but you've honed it over the years because you've picked some losers. It's normal. We all have, right, but you've picked a lot of winners. And in a world where there's lots of people out there

in this space looking for the next winter, it's got to be like, almost like the analogy I think of is like going to the beach with a metal detector. You know, and you're just, it's like bottle cap, bottle cap, bottle cap, bottle cap for hours and hours. Then maybe you, you know, you get a quarter. And then if you're really lucky, you get a silver dollar, like once every month. Is looking for the next big toy kind of like that? It depends how energetic you are. And I think that what's been very satisfying to me is that in trying to develop this algorithm,

I'm exercising that organ much more aggressively than I have been in the last several years. I think for many years, I was even, I might say, passive, just like I don't have to go out and look. I'll just spot it when it comes. And it did. You know, it always came through for me. but now in the process of trying to make this transition, and I'm seeing a lot more opportunity.

I think if you're really out there looking, you can see more. But it is rare. The things that really shift the culture are rare. But if you keep your eyes open, there's more than you would on an early think. One that's probably people already know just burst like maybe two months ago is hacky sacks are coming back in a huge way.

Huh. And Razor already has hacky sacks in the store, you know, in the store shipping this week. I mean, we moved very quickly to hop on that trend. But I've got many more on my plate right now. Carlton, I'm curious about, and earlier this year, you won a patent infringement case against some competitors who are doing copycats of one of your products of the hoverboard, I think. And so you won that. And I, you know, from the outside perspective, you hear, oh, they won and you'd assume, oh, you got a bunch of money and whatever. actually, it can be a mixed bag, right?

It costs a lot of money. It costs a lot of time. And in the end, it may or may not resolve the problem. How has that been for you? I think that's a deep insight. I think I've learned a lot pursuing patents over the years. I think they're most helpful for an inventor going after a big company or big companies battling each other.

My biggest challenge is we want our patent law. That helps me clean up the market, but actually getting all those damages, they're very small copycats. So there's no assets. They don't actually have much money. No, there's no deep pockets at all. So it costs millions and millions of dollars to do a patent case. And then you get nothing except helping to clean up the market. It's very, very challenging.

It's kind of demoralizing when you think about it because it's like the system and the courts work so slowly. I guess by nature, by definition, they have to. but it really does disincentivize brands from protecting their products and just, I guess, many brands are saying, you know what, we're just going to focus on brand, the brand, rather than trying to go after these copycats, because it's going to be a waste of our time. That's exactly right. I just think that the copycats are, again, just to the point, they're so thin that there's, I mean, the patent system functions like in drugs or, you know, where you have big deep pocket of people to sue.

So you've got to focus on the brand. And you got to be, you got to focus on being quick and delivering a good product. Yeah. Yeah. Carlton, we've got callers waiting online for your wise advice. So you ready to take our first call? Sure. All right.

Let's bring in our first caller. You are on the line with Carlton Calvin, the founder of Razor. Please tell us your name and where you're calling from and a little bit about your business. Hi, guy. Hi, Carlton. Thanks for having me. My name's Sean Barassah. I'm calling from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada.

Wow. And I'm calling about a party game that I created called eulogy. So the premise is everyone playing is at a funeral, and the game helps you create the character you're there to mourn the loss out. And then the winning player gets to pick who's going to perform the eulogy for the character you just made. Wow, this sounds depressing, but I don't, I think it might be wrong. I think this might actually be more of a funny game, right?

I would be surprised if based on the layout of the game, if anyone could make it a serious game. Sorry, it's a serious subject, but the game itself just usually gets ridiculous. So in round one, you pull a portrait, and it's kind of like Cartesian's humanity game flow. So each player takes a turn being the judge. In round one, they flip a portrait, and everyone else writes a name down that they think goes with that portrait. Put them into the game box, and then they'll read one out. the judge picks their favorite name, and we've named the character whose funeral we're at.

The rest of the rounds are all different life stages. So birth and toddler, school age, young adult, career, family life, old age and death. So you bring them to life through all these different rounds

in that same format, you write the answers, and then you kill them, and someone's got to perform the eulogy. Wow. And then how do you win? So each round has a point. So if you write the answer that the judge selects for that round,

so round two, a prompt would be something like, we didn't have toys growing up, so we played with blank. And the judge will pick their favorite of all the players who submitted. Got it. Okay. And it's called eulogy, but spelled Y-O-U-Logy. And how long have you been, when did you launch this idea? So this was a COVID baby.

Like I kind of, I'm an extrovert, and I lost all my social outlets. And then I, most of my mind, I tell people. And then I had the people in my bubble. I don't know if you guys had the bubble in the States where you could hang out with a certain amount of friends. And I was like, do you guys want to play a homemade board game? And everyone was kind of like, oh, yeah, I want to play your homemade board game. But then when they left, they were like, oh, my, like, they wanted to play again and again. Like, it was a long night.

Wow. So you decided to turn this into a business. Yeah. So right now we did a Kickstarter in 2024. And then we got our product in 2025. now. And I have a vision to make this, replicate the basic game structure with different life events. So you're going to kind of get the same game flow. If you know how to play one of our games,

you'll know how to play them all. You'll get an entirely different experience based on based on what you're doing. Got it. Okay. And is this your full-time job, Sean? No, by day I'm a registered nurse at the pediatric hospital in the operating room. So amazing. Okay. So you have and how many copies of the game have you sold so far? We've sold just shy of a thousand. And then on top that we've given some away. So we've got about an inventory of about 500 currently. Got it. Okay. And before we dive in further, tell us what your question is for us. Well, I've created something that like I've proven to myself as special. People have told me this is special. I have visions of this being the next household

name and party games is my question is basically how do I get it there? Got it. Carlton, please say hello to Sean. Before we answer his question, do you have any questions or our thoughts for Sean? I think I understand. So, you know, again, I've been in the toy business for a long time. I do know that, you know, a very, very traditional way of getting your game out there is to bring it to a publisher, a toy, another toy company. And I think that's a super solid way to do it. You know, I would often suggest to people who invent toys, it really depends on whether you love being in business, like, which I did. You know, I do. I mean, the day I started doing Scorpion Pogs, I was like hooked for the experience of selling and packing up the stuff and sending it out and bookkeeping and everything. I loved it. So if you love being in business, be in business.

If you love inventing toys, then I would say, you know, I would license it for sure. Yeah. I work with inventors and they've done extremely well from me. Carlton, I have a question for you because I'm thinking about this licensing question, which is, and you know this. And I've got a kids media company. We make kids podcasts. And I think I've told you about it, we actually have a line of toys. And my general sense is that toy companies don't actually buy ideas.

often. You are definitely right. That is the sad, that's a sad half of the other side of it. And I was going to sort of give you that little bit of a warning. The people who buy games are going to look at hundreds or thousands of games and buy one. So your chances of getting, it's a great thing if you can make it happen, is what I would say. They want a proven product, right? They want something that already has traction, which is, and it sort of gets to the, idea of like, and Carlton, I think you're getting to this, which is that Sean needs to prove this out more. Like a thousand units is great, but it's like you need like a 10,000 units sold or like retailers asking to carry it. The other thing I would say is, you know, the upside of you

scale it yourself is huge. I mean, I mean, we had, we did exploding kittens on this show. They've got like a bunch of different card games and they built this on their own. own, you know. I guess if you were able to just luckily get this, you know, this becomes a hit, you own the thing. But I think before you even think about trying to pitch it to somebody, you've got to prove that, you know, that there's demand for this, right? For sure. Yeah. Striking, like the lightning would be striking if somebody brought it from you without any track record, like Guy is saying. Right. I would assume you would have to go into these, this licensing strategy, assuming you were going to be rejected. And then I agree, build it on your own,

which is also, that's extremely challenging. You have to go to all the toy conventions and get it into every mom and pop little store and you have to go knock on the doors yourself and you have to have game night. I mean, you must know all this. I kind of knew this answer going in almost, right? Like, you have to build it yourself.

I'm not opposed to that. So that's such sound advice is like, keep putting in the work. Now I'm at the stage where people are coming back to the convention. and they're like, hey, we played this, and it's so fun. So it's such a rewarding thing to actually be on the ground level. And so that is the part that I really enjoy. Yeah, I mean, trade shows, you've got to get into trade shows. Obviously, you've got a full-time job as a nurse.

You have a very important job, but maybe you plans to go to a trade show if one's coming up. I mean, right now, and you know this, Sean, people are looking for community, or at least people are talking about wanting to look for community. And, you know, there are games cafes here in the Bay Area. Some of them are doing very well. People are showing up to be together. And so you're on to something. You've got something interesting.

Now you've got to get into more hands. Not easy, I admit. And I will give you one more compliment. You have a very unique sounding game. You know what I mean? And that's a good edge. So if there's something that's an interesting story to it, it does have the potential to get some traction.

on Instagram or in some kind of a news format. For sure. I like the story. Yeah. And thanks for saying that because that is a really fun part because people will introduce me to people that they've created and then tell me all about the person they've created. So that's pretty fun. Sean Barras said the game is called Ulogy. Y-O-U-Logy. Good luck.

Thanks for calling in. Thanks so much for having me. Appreciate you guys. All right. We're going to take a quick break, but we'll be right back with another caller and another round of advice. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to the advice line right here on how I built this lab. We get support from Engine. A lot of founders start with a product or an idea, but at some point, the business become something else. Think about Brian Scudamore.

He started 1-800-God junk with one truck and a vision to make junk removal a real brand. That worked, and then it became hundreds of crews across multiple cities. trucks on the road every day, routes changing by the hour, and a team that had to be in the right place before the customer even called. Or Barrel Stafford, who started Bobos by baking oat bars in her kitchen. Next thing she knows, she's flying to retail meetings, demoing at trade shows, managing distributors coast to coast, running a national food brand out of what used to be a family recipe. Or Tom Hale, who built backroads around the idea that active travel could be a premium experience. That means guides in six countries, gear shipments, guest logistics,

thousands of moving pieces that all have to land before a single trip begins. Different businesses, same truth. Here's what I've noticed after talking to hundreds of founders. The hard part is rarely the big idea. It's what happens when the idea works. Suddenly, you've got people on the move and all the logistics that come with it. That's the real test. And that's why I think engine is worth knowing about. Engine is the fastest growing modern travel and spend platform in the country, built for small and medium-sized businesses. The average business traveler spends 45 minutes booking a single trip on a legacy platform. With Engine, that drops to as little as two and a half minutes. Last year, Engine customers saved $318 million on travel. Average savings of 26% on

hotel bookings, no contracts, no booking fees. More than a thousand businesses join Engine every month. Join them and get $500 when your business signs up and starts traveling at engine.com slash built. Welcome back to the advice line on how I built this lab. I'm Guy Raz, and my guest today is Carlton Calvin, co-founder, president, and CEO of Razor USA. Carlton, let's bring in our next caller.

Welcome to the advice line. please tell us your name, your name of your company, where you're calling from, and just a little bit about your business, please. Hi, Guy. Hi, Carlton. I'm so excited to be here with you guys. I am Shereen Tippett. I'm calling from Houston, Texas, where it is 1,000 degrees. And I have a business called Honey Bespoke Stationary and Paper Goods. I am a designer of stationary such as flat note cards, birthday invitations, birth announcements, and one of my biggest sellers right now is collegiate.

it stationary and I have licenses with a number of big schools. So yeah, I sell paper goods, yeah. Amazing. I'm looking at your website and so you design all of the cards or stationary, like I see personalized stationery with, you know, note cards with people's names on it. And you've done licensing deals with some universities like Indiana and Clemson and Texas. So that's cool. And tell me a little bit about how the business is doing. It's doing well. My revenue last year was, 120,000, nearly 120,000, which is funny because I talk to people about it. And I think people think it's just like a little side job, like a fun thing that I'm doing, like a little hobby, your cute little Etsy business. I'll get that kind of comment. But I'm like, no, it's actually,

it's doing pretty well. I'm not doing as well this year. It's been a little bit slower. But like I mentioned, I sell predominantly on Etsy. And that marketplace gets very saturated with competitors. So yeah, that's been, that's part of why I'm calling today. So let's jump into it. What's your question for us? So my question is, I do sell predominantly on Etsy, but I have a website, which I also build my website all by myself. I've done all of it by myself with my AI partner. Good. So I want to know how I transition from keeping my customer base on Etsy, because there are people who are shopping specifically there, but also shifting over to my own website. How do I get found in the sea of other stationers? You know, I was listening to Carlton's episode, well back,

and you had mentioned, you weren't the first scooter, but you set yourself apart. How do I set myself apart? Okay, I want to bring Carlton in. Carlton, please meet Shereen. Tippet, Honeybyspoke, making stationary, and pretty good business, $120,000. thousand dollars in sales last year but of course crowd of space and everybody everybody wants to know this how do you stand out so before you answer the question any questions that you might have for sure in your thoughts well i would say i'm not an expert on how to drive people to a direct sales website so i am someone who sells at retail and that's what i i think you could stand out by doing the hard work

and trying to get into stores, into stationary stores. And even, I mean, my initial thing that sounded really good was probably getting to the stationary stores associated with the schools that you have license them from. And I've got questions about that too,

but I'll let Guy, Guy, do you have any other? Yeah, I mean, I think that's an interesting idea, especially if you're talking about like cards, right? Sort of, you know, you've got some beautiful designs here. I'm looking at them. And you could, a lot of what you do, of course, is personalized.

But there are lots of things that, you know, are just universal, right? There's a card store near where I live, and they have beautiful embossed cards. And they're lovely. And they're like $7 to $10, sometimes more. And I buy them, believe it or not. You know, I wonder if you have tried. First of all, have you done paid advertising? Yes.

And that is one of those things where I did it in, I started. at the end of March for the first time on meta and did for about a month or two and my sales skyrocketed. Awesome. But, no, not so awesome because I don't know. I felt like I was just throwing money out there. I was like, oh, okay, let's put 100 here. I wasn't doing it smartly just because it's confusing to me.

I'm a one woman show. I'm doing all of this, literally everything by myself. So the advertising, I think, would help. I just don't understand how to do it. And how were you advertising? Were you doing social media videos? Were you doing just stills? No, just stills.

I have what's called flat lays. Like when you look at my website and you see the picture, I just boost that. I boosted on Instagram. I boosted on Facebook. And most of my sales were coming through the Instagram. I did look at that data. But it would lead traffic to my website, which was great. But.

But, yeah, then it slowed down. Yeah, yeah. Okay, let me ask you question. How did you learn how to design cards? Well, it was another COVID story. I had time at home. I had a seven-month-old baby, and we were being very protective of her during COVID. So we were at home all day long.

So I decided I loved playing on the computer. I liked doing things on the computer, graphic design things. And long story short, I took an Adobe course on YouTube. But you learn this by watching videos, basically. Very much. So this is important because I think that you can do a similar version of this with how to advertise. I could imagine you taking your iPhone and putting on a tripod and angling it and a video of you sketching designs and a video of you being kind of the face of this brand and putting some money behind. Not too much money.

Yeah. And seeing how that does because I think that there's something about you making this. will resonate in a way that is different than just seeing a static image of stationary. I agree with you. And because when I look at other people in this marketplace, other women who have these businesses are men, but it's predominantly women, the one difference between the two of us is I'm not putting my face out there. I'm not putting videos of myself out there just because I'm not comfortable on camera, really, to be honest with you. But I realize when people see a person, it makes a difference.

And so I have thought maybe that would make a difference. You've got a great story. Yeah. I don't know. Carlton, what do you think? I'm 100% there. I mean, I think you're doing very well. I mean, I'm only seeing you on Zoom, but I think you're doing very well on Zoom.

Thank you. Yeah, you look great on camera. You should be on camera. That's just so. That's another way of saying that. Thank you. Thank you. You're photogenic.

And I think you could develop a following on Instagram or TikTok and just like, you can even have your narrating it, right? Like, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. voiceover like, you know, I couldn't find cards that I loved, so I decided to make them myself. And I've never thought of this. Yeah. You know, and it's like your voiceover with you, just images of you like putting a card together and, you know, it's your design table, something like that.

It could be a cool thing. Just a short 30. It's not easy to do. I'm not saying easy, but you can figure it out. And I'd almost say you'd have to do it because paying for advertising is always a very challenging thing in your kind of space. If you can develop your own following, that's everything for what you're trying to do. And also try to get into the stores. I would say that too. Like if you can get up the nerve and get up the budget to go to a show and just start building that, you have to, I mean, I could give you the whole thing with sales reps and the whole thing. You have to get a line together.

But there's like tens of thousands of stores out there you could be selling it. Right. People are so focused on the Internet. But getting some of that old-fashioned get into the stores. But if you're going to do it on the internet, you have to have a social presence. And you have to, and you have something to take advantage of. I do. I was hoping that you wouldn't say that, but I think that you are correct.

And then I have considered going to the big marketplaces. There's a big Dallas market. There's one in Atlanta. And I actually was reached out to by the Dallas market, the lady who puts that together just a few months ago. And I thought, maybe I should put some money into doing that. Maybe I'll see a return on that. You need to go to the markets and you need to get right.

And the whole thing is about getting reps. Okay. Okay. That's good to know. I never even thought of that. Yep. All right. Well, you have, you get some marching order, Shereen.

Thank you so much. Thank you so much. All right. The brand is called Honey Bespoke. Good luck. Thanks so much for listening. Thank you for your time. Bye.

Thank you. All right. We're going to take another quick break, but we'll be right back with another caller. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz. And you're listening to the advice line right here on how I built this lab. Welcome back to the advice line on how I built this lab. I'm Guy Raz, and today I'm taking your calls with Carlton Calvin.

He's the co-founder, president, and CEO of Razor USA, the Scooter Company. Let's get back into it and take another call. Let's go. All right, let's bring our caller and hello. Welcome to the Vice Line. Please tell us your name, where you're calling from, and just one quick line about your business, please. Yeah, my name is Mark Gantor. I own Little Water Distillery in Atlantic City.

We're a craft spirits distillery, and we've been going since 2016. Awesome. Welcome to the show, Mark. And tell me what do you guys do? I mean, I'm assuming vodka and gin. Yeah, so we make, I really do this without actually giving the brand names. Rusty Revolver gin, 48 blocks vodka, Liberty Rum, Prosperity Rum, 16 knots bourbon. And 48 blocks espresso martini, 48 blocks chocolate martini, and then a barrel-aged old-fashioned. Wow. Okay. Those three have really been kind of running the show for us recently. All right. I got it. Okay. So tell me a little.

So this is Little Water Distillery based in Atlantic City. You mentioned you started in 2016. Did you come from like the spirits world? Were you in this world when you launched it? Yeah, not entirely. Not entirely. I worked for Total Wine and More on the design development side. Really kind of building out their retail facilities and kind of getting them to the point

where we turned them over to the operator. So I was familiar with the industry. I had some contacts within the retail industry. But the whole thing started with just a random gift for a 70-year-old man. And my father turned 70 in 2013. My brother and I bought him a copper pot still. And we as a father and son spent time together really kind of playing with it. And we became aware of the craft distillation laws being enacted in New Jersey and applied for one of the earlier licenses.

And we're like, I guess we're doing this. So we got to put the business plan together and launched, left our careers and kind of went cold turkey and then launched the business. And tell me a little bit about where you sell. your spirits are mostly restaurants and bars? Are you in shops or both? So the spirits industry, the alcohol industry is regulated in the U.S. And it's challenging. So in New Jersey, with this license, we're able to manufacture operated tasting room so we can sell retail out of our tasting space, direct distribute, or go through distributors. And we initially went, you know, we did direct distribution because we get to keep a lot of that margin back at home. But

you quickly see you're wearing a lot of hats for a small business. I mean, you're a manufacturer, you're marketing, you're now distributing. You have to have a vehicle or vehicles on the road. You have to have salespeople employed. But then you're also operating on the retail side. You have a tasting room. So you're doing almost hospitality. And you have to staff that's a complete different staff than you'd have.

See, but a tasting room and you are still in spirits. We're manufacturing. And then we're also taking them in the market. We're also branding them. And we also have quite a few skews for what we do. I'm so envious of a brand like Tito's. They make vodka. It comes in three sizes.

That's it. Yeah. You know. And how is the business, how is the business doing? Like, are you guys profitable? Are you, what's talking a little bit about how it's? No. We had some ups and downs.

Obviously, we went through COVID. And we kind of came through that with shining colors because of, so we pivoted and produced a huge amount of hand sanitizer during that period. During COVID. During COVID. So we actually were able to really turn a profit that year. But I've taken on a fair amount of debt in recent years. And I'm so jealous of some of these other.

callers because they were starting out that, you know, they're early on in the operation and the process and they have, you know, nowhere to go but up. And we've kind of seen some contraction of our sales and we recently made the decision to work through distributors because we just couldn't figure out, we couldn't get the direct distribution model working to the point where it's profitable for us. Bars and restaurants and liquor stores are some extent, they're used to working with distributors. They're used to having like one sales guy come in and have a thousand skews or 500 skews or whatever. So we decided to make this strategic decision to go through distribution. All right. So before we get to Carlton, tell us your question. So like I said, I'm jealous of

those brands that have one product or two products. That's part of our challenge. We have too many out there. But we have one product, our 48 blocks espresso martini, which is really best in class. It's truly the best product out there. It's price of the premium, and it's a premium product. And the industry is trading down. A lot of what you see is coming out in cans, you know, smaller, like where qualities being kind of traded out for convenience. How do we take this product from where we are, which is a solid but very small local

reputation to this is the industry standard for the best espresso. All right. I want to bring in Carlson, Calvin Coulton. First of all, say a little to Mark. Hi, Mark. Hi. Thank you. And as you heard, he's got this brand. But of course, it's a challenging in general in this industry across the board, wine and spirits.

But he's got to make some decisions here. So thoughts or questions for Mark? Yeah. I mean, my overall, I do like this idea of focusing. I do like the idea of, you know, you're really trying to tell your story about how do I get my story about my product. out there, which is making a good story out of it. You need to get out and be the face of your product. You have to have an Instagram presence. You have to have a TikTok presence. Again, you're in a highly regulated industry. I don't even know what you could do, but you could show how you distill

the process of distilling and what makes yours better and show it. The other thought is if you could get some influencer or somebody with a reputation for judging quality to endorse your product, probably out of just affection for you. I think you're on to something there for sure, Carlton. I want to double down on that. Mark, I question for you, what are your best selling? You've got rum to rams, gin, vodka, espresso, martyco, what are the three top bestsellers?

So 40 blocks espresso martini, 408 blocks chocolate martini. And they're aligned. Expressor and chocolate, both, again, top. And the chocolate martini, the espresso martini are made with vodka. The vodka-based, and our vodka is called 48 blocks. Okay. So it's a, the bottle, the espresso martini has the espresso and vodka in there and you just chill it and pour it over a glass, in a glass, basically. Cocktail shake it with ice, shake it, and the coffee we use is from la cologne. We use a cold press on espresso and espresso from

La Cologne. Oh, fantastic coffee. But, you know, no one in the industry is talking about the quality of the coffee and the quality ingredients. They're simply pushing convenience. I mean, it sounds like you're already moving in this direction, but I think, I think you've got to reduce skews, right? Because you're talking about a challenge around cash and debt, right? And as you probably know, many companies that die, don't die because the demand goes away necessarily. They die because they run out of cash. So I think if you want to optimize, and it sounds like you do, you want to optimize for cash for the moment, simplify the product line. And then you focus on the highest channel margins. Maybe you continue to make smaller quantities of the other ones for the tasting room.

I don't know, but really lean into those, especially the chocolate and the espresso martinis. And you build around those while you can serve cash because, and you want to talk about what you just mentioned. It's La Cologne coffee. What kind of chocolate are using in the chocolate? Yeah, so it's a custom roasted chocolate from a small producer, a small chocolate. here called the dairy chocolates in North Carolina. I mean, amazing. You know, you've got La Cologne coffee, this high-quality chocolate.

I think that could, I mean, is that realistic to really double down on especially those two products and maybe sunset, some of the other skews? Yeah, it's, you know, it's hard, right? That's the challenge, right? It's emotionally hard, which is a terrible, a terrible reason, terrible excuse, but kind of getting past it. And then also limiting the experience of the tasting room. That's where, you know, that piece, which is weekly revenue that's very important. We've got to figure out how to keep that interesting while we focus on these distributed products, these two distribution products, and really grow them. Because that's where, you know, we're limited by the four walls in the tasting room, but the market is vast and endless.

I hear you, right? And that's hard, right? Because it's going to come to a point where you're going to have to make a decision and it's going to be painful. We've had many examples of this on the show over the years where people, are like, we abandoned, you know, our main product, and we went with this product. MailChimp. It's a great. MailChimp is a classic. You should listen to that episode. They were a website building business. That was 90% of their revenue, but they saw that there was potential in this email list site, and they basically dropped 90% of revenue instantly. But Mailchimp, you know, I don't want to sell for many billions of dollars. The point I'm making is that there is going to be pain, but you never know what's going to be. emerge from it. I mean, in five years time, you might be the martini brand. You got espresso

martini, chocolate martini. You're making dirty martinis and pickle juice martinis. And your story is, we put the best ingredients in the bottle. That might actually be what you are in the future. I'm not saying it's going to happen, but that sort of sets you in ideally a more efficient course. And I would just add, my experience is always, it's so rare to find anything that resonates with the consumer that if you've got one thing that does resonate or two things that resonate, really focus. You don't have time for anything that doesn't sell in my world. I have one more question for Carl and specifically about kind of the trends because you're, you have that, as you said, a gift of identifying trends.

And part of the challenge right now with what we're doing is not following. a trend, which is trying to take what we do and put it into cans, because cans are extremely trendy right now. But I feel like the consumer perceives like a lower quality product in the can, and we're trying to maintain a position of premium quality. What do I do? And so my general analysis is you want to be on those trends early. But if you can perceive a trend in your business, like cans, like that, I even, even I'm seeing, you know, and I don't drink, but I'm seeing trends in the alcohol world. And I think there is for sure this notion where, like, I have my vision.

I'm going to stand out and be very different. I'm like, don't fight the culture. Just like because American Idol, you know, came out and, you know, did a, you know, singing contest on TV. You'll notice there were 27 other singing contests that came out after them. Some of them exceeded American Idol. And being second, being third, being 10th, you want to be inside the culture. So I'm not saying it's these cans. But if you can see anything that's happening in your industry and you're one of the early people to notice, that's a huge advantage.

Are there, there must be maybe not. Are there espresso martinis in cans? Oh, there's quite a few. Tons. Okay. Yeah. By the way, just as an aside, is there a world where you have like a sort of a white, Russian meats and espresso martini where it's, you've got the espresso and the vodka,

but you add a little bit of cream or milk? Yeah. I mean, there's, this core can have extensions to this line. You know, we can do various, we combine the chocolate and the espresso and make a moccatini, which is very, very trendy. And there's no, there's no R&D to that. We just add them together in a can. Yeah.

I think there's somebody to this martini thing. Anyway, you, I think you've got, you've got a sense of what you got to do. It's not going to be easy, Mark. I do not envy you, but it's probably what's going to be best for the business. Thank you so much. Yeah, it's a little water distillery. Mark Gander, thanks so much for calling in. Thank you for having me.

Carlton, before I let you go, I want to ask you a question that I've been asking everybody who comes back on, which is now that now you have all of this experience, if you could go back to when you were first starting out, what advice could you now, would you now give to your former self? I mean, I made so many mistakes when I was starting. You know, and this gentleman was also in the distillery, you think, oh, I don't want to give up my margin to a sales rep because they'll take five or 10 or 15%. But you have to delegate. You have to give the sales reps. They're so much better at selling. And you can't do it all.

So that was a big, huge thing that I, you know, took me a long time to figure out. Then just trying to do, it's very fun and satisfying to do everything yourself, but you can't. You have to delegate it all out. And it really, that transformed my business. Yeah. That's Carlton Calvin, co-founder, president and CEO of Razor USA. Carlton, thanks so much for coming back on the show. My pleasure.

And by the way, if you haven't heard Carlton's original how I built this episode, please go back and check it out. We will put a link to it in the show notes. And here is one of my favorite moments from that interview. Wait, so in June of 2000, you were selling a million a month. Yes. And January of 2001, you couldn't sell one that sales stopped? Yes. It doesn't make sense.

It makes no sense. It doesn't make sense unless you understand crazes. It happened to me so many times. And no matter how many times the retailers go through this, no matter how many times I went through this, everybody's thinking to themselves, this time is different. Yeah. Like this time, it's going to sell a million a month for the next three years. And they can't even just do simple math. that there's not that many people.

Hey, thanks so much for listening to the show this week. 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 at 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 Casey Herman with music composed by Ramtin Eroble. He was edited by John Isabella and our audio engineer was On Lee Huang. Our production team at How I Built This also includes Alex Chung, Carla Estevez, Sam Paulson, Chris Messini, Elaine Coates, J.C. Howard, Catherine Seifers, Carrie Thompson and Neva Grant. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to the advice line on how I built this lab. Thanks again to Engine for their support. If your business is growing and your team is traveling, Engine makes it simple and saves you money doing it.

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