How I Built This with Guy Raz - Advice Line with Neil Blumenthal of Warby Parker

Episode Date: January 15, 2026

Warby Parker co-founder Neil Blumenthal joins Guy on the Advice Line, where they answer questions from three early-stage entrepreneurs. Plus, how AI integrations with glasses are helping us see the world in a whole new way.First we meet Kimber in Utah, who wants to take her chewable toothpaste gummies mainstream. Then Brian in California, who’s wondering how to vet franchisees for his light therapy studios. And Tanner in Tennessee, who needs help building a team he can trust to scale his country club-inspired lifestyle brand.Thank you to the founders of Pearl Pop, Salt and Light Wellness, and Cowboy Country Club 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 Warby Parker’s founding story as told by Neil and his co-founder Dave on the show in 2016.This episode was produced by Sam Paulson with music by Ramtin Arablouei. It was edited by John Isabella. Our audio engineer was Cena Loffredo.You can follow HIBT on X & Instagram and sign up for Guy’s free newsletter at guyraz.com or on 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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Airbnb.ca 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 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. Joining me today is Neil Blumenthal, co-founder and co-CEO of Warby Parker. Neil, welcome back to the show. Thanks for having me. It's great to be back. Great to have you back. You were first on the show back in 2016,

telling us how you and a few friends from your MBA program at Wharton basically realized that glass is way too expensive than they had to be, and you decided to do something about it. And of course, your brand Warby Parker was the result. It's been an amazing success story. And you guys really changed the way people buy glasses. And by the way, for those of you listening who haven't heard that episode, we will put a link to it in the show notes. It's such an awesome story and well worth going back. I want to ask you a quick question before we get to our callers about your co-founder, Dave Gilboa, because he was also on the show with you. you, you guys are still the co-CEOs of Orby Parker all these years later since you founded the

company back in 2010. 10, yeah. That's about 15 years. This is quite uncommon, right? We've seen it with like Wayfair and some other brands where the co-founders are still really running the thing together. But it's uncommon, right, to have such a long working relationship that's successful co-CEOs, you're both the CEOs.

How do you explain it? I mean, for me, I think a lot of it is just chemistry. People have chemistry that just happens to work, but it still takes work. What works in your relationship to make that possible? Completely. I think it comes down to trust and respect. We implicitly trust each other to make any sort of decision, but also to seek each other's advice. and if I am thinking through a challenge, you know, I immediately want to share it with Dave because I know that, you know, whatever ideas I have, he'll enhance them and make them better. And we still sit next to each other.

So for 15 years, we've been sitting next to each other in between meetings. We're constantly talking to each other. You know, often we might call each other on the way to work or late at night, much to our wife's chagrin, but it's just been a lovely partnership in which we both make each other better. It's really great. And, you know, I know glasses, or the technology of glasses have been around for a long time. It's basically, you know, ground-down glass and in frames, right? But I know you guys are really leaning into AI. Can you talk about how you're integrating AI into the actual products that you make? Yeah, we're really excited.

we're working with Google to launch AI glasses. They're sort of Warby Parker branded, intelligent eyewear. If you think about it, right, your glasses sit on your face. They're able to see what you see, hear, what you hear, and you can look at a plant or a building or a piece of art, and you can learn more about it. Being able to communicate with somebody in another language, where as they're speaking, your glasses,

could be translating in real time. So, you know, these are things that are really helpful and useful for all of us. Yeah, I mean, not to, you know, make any comparisons, but I have a pair of meta glasses. They're really cool. The audio quality is great. And also not having to look down at a phone. It's really nice. Absolutely.

Yeah, just, you know, the freedom to not take your phone out of your pocket for an hour. Right? We are beholden to these mobile devices. and I'm excited for that day where it can stay in your pocket or on your desk for a little longer. Yeah, for sure. All right, let's take our first, let's bring on our first caller. Welcome to the advice line. You are on with Neil Blumenthal, co-founder of Warby Parker.

Please tell us your name where you're calling from and a little bit about your business. Hi, my name is Kimber Crandall. I'm calling in from Utah and I'm the co-founder of Pearl Pop. Pearl Pop is the first soft and chewy toothpaste, looks more like and feels like a gummy and tastes like a treat, but it actually treats your teeth with clean ingredients too. Okay, awesome. Kimber, I met you. I met you.

You came to one of my book signings for my kid's book, Wow, in the World, and I'm so psyched to have you on the show. So before we dive into all your question, let's talk a little bit about Pearl Pop. These are, it's a, they're gummies. They look and they sort of have the texture like a gummy candy, but it's basically toothpaste. You chew on it, and then you brush your teeth. But it's not like foam, right? It's not, it doesn't foam up. Tell me how it works.

That's right. There is no foam, and that's because we don't have sulfates. As we were formulating this, we wanted it to have cleaner ingredients. And so that was part of the process. So you pop it in your mouth, chew for a few seconds, and then you start brushing. And you brush those pearl bits into your teeth until it mostly dissolves. So about two minutes, spit, don't rinse. Then the nanohydroxyapitite and the xylitol can keep working even after you brush.

Okay. So this nano hydroxyl appetite, this is replaces fluoride. These do not have fluoride. Correct. Tell me why you don't have fluoride in there. There is a huge market when we were initially starting out doing this. About 50% from our surveys and studies showed that 50% either don't want fluoride or they're looking for an alternative because they don't, they aren't passionate about fluoride. So we thought, let's go after that audience first since they are looking for something and need an alternative.

All right, fair enough. Okay, Kimber, tell us a little bit about how you got into this because I know this because I met you. You were a TV reporter. Yes. One of you, Emmys and, yeah, lived out that life. And now this is part two for me. Tell me what was the, like, what precipitated that pivot to just completely start something new? Yes.

In 2020, I became a single mom of four little girls at the time they were between the ages of one and seven. And I knew I needed to revamp my career and figure out what to do. And so I applied to BYU to their executive MBA program. And this started out as a class project. We were in an entrepreneurial class. We were studying parents of young kids and bedtime as the pain point. Well, what about bedtime was hard? It's that you needed to get your kids to brush their teeth.

You asked them five times. They squirt it out all over the sink. You finally just send them to bed. You've yelled at them. You feel like a bad parent. Okay. So if we can just stop right there and give your kids something that makes them actually want to brush and with cleaner ingredients, then you're going to smile more confidently and your kids will

too. Got it. And all direct to consumers, it's all being sold to the website, right? Mostly through the website, we do have some small retailers like local stores that are carrying it. Nice. Okay. That's great. Tell us what question you brought in for us today.

Yeah. The question I brought is with something that requires so much education and is completely new to the market, how do you create a movement or a moment that changes the consumer habits and spreads awareness to essentially take it from something that's a niche to a mainstream product and behavior. All right, Neil Bloomfield, I want to bring you, you don't have to answer the question right away, but any questions for Kimber or thoughts? Sure.

You know, what I think is really interesting about your business is that you effectively have two customers, right? Yes. You have the child that is sort of using the toothpaste, and then you have the parent, right, that is generally the decision maker, the purchase. what have you learned about those two different customers on how they make decisions around sort of dental care or brushing teeth or purchasing toothbrushes and toothpaste? That's a great question.

So what we have found is that for kids, they want it to be fun. They want the flavors to be fun. So, right, we've got peach rings, groovy grape, bubble gum. And then for the parents, they want to know that it works. In fact, the science has proven to look so good that we had a lot of parents that were using. peach rings and bubble gun themselves. And so they requested that we come out with an adult line. So we now have mint kiss for adults as well. So the adults really care more about the science and the kids care about the fun. You know, it does feel a lot like the early days of Warby Parker.

And one of the things that I'm struck by in your story is that there's so many sort of messages and selling points, right, that this makes bedtime easier. This is actually better for your health and it's a cleaner product. We spent a lot of time at Warby trying to understand how do you prioritize a bunch of these different messages and it should all come back to what is most important for the customer. We were trying to message glasses for a fraction of the price, great style and design, buying online.

We have a social mission, right? For every pair of glasses we sell, we distribute one to someone in need. And after survey, after survey, what we found was what mattered first and foremost was how these glasses look on your face. Second price. You know, third quality. Last, if at all, would be the social mission. Wow. So we almost never lead with the social mission.

And often many of our customers don't find out about that until after they've purchased with us. So, you know, it's interesting. You mentioned efficacy, right? if that is the most important thing, that might be what you lead with. One of the things that also I'm jealous of is that you can provide samples to people. Yes. Yes. And you sell a product that has frequency and repeat use, whereas, you know, the average American buys glasses once every two years. That's it. Right. So I totally agree with you, Neil. I mean, I feel like the other thing is it's a non-fluoride product. Now, I'm going to just say this flat out. I use fluoride toothpaste. I will say that my

dentist, this is very unusual, he is one of these very rare dentists that doesn't use fluoride. So I know both sides of this world, right? I don't have strong feelings on it either way. But people who do have strong feelings on it, that is a tribe. And they share information. They amplify what works. So I feel like you, you know, it's not like you need to change everyone's habits at once. you really need to lean into this tribe because the tribe that you're talking about amplifies these things in ways that other people don't. Does that make sense? Definitely.

What I might think about is who are these customer segments, which are the biggest ones and sort of rank order them and go after them sort of piece by piece? So for example, if, you know, parents that don't want a fluoride-free toothpaste is particularly large, you know, how do you sort of use that messaging and go on as many, you know, parent podcasts as possible to speak about it or advertise on those mediums? And then the question is, okay, well, how do you get this product in the hands of as many kids as possible? And that might be partnering with places where kids have birthdays and more and more stores and distribution. You know, if most of the people already buy their toothpaste through existing stores, you know, how can you be alongside where those other products are?

Because at the end of the day, changing habits is really hard and you almost don't want to change. You want to take the world as it is and then sort of insert your product into it. Yeah. I mean, there are probably millions, but you want to really focus on like 10,000 parents, right, who live on. TikTok or on Facebook groups who are who sort of gather around some of these issues of brushing, fluoride free, et cetera. Sampling makes is to me I completely agree with Neil. It's like sample, sample, sample, you can make these small packets and you, whoever is willing to give a daycare center, swim school, summer camps, you know, Neil said birthday party goodie bags. You know, because what,

what you have, right, your product essentially is a gummy toothpaste. But what it makes me think of, Neil and I were talking about this earlier off Mike, Jeff Rader, who co-founded Warby Parker and then went on to start Harry's. They have a product that they now bought called Lumi Deodorant, right? Neil, is that right? Yeah, exactly. And Loomy Deodorant, I believe, was started by a doctor. And that was the marketing of it was your doctor has solved, you know, underarm deodor.

What if you thought of your brand as like, you know, like the mom who finally fixed brushing, something like that? I love that idea. Yeah, and partnering too with Dennis and orthodontists so that we have that science backing, right? Because they are using it. They're liking it. I got text from an endodontist the other day that said he has had major sensitivity issues. Nothing's worked for his teeth with cold. And he's used sensitine, all the things. And this is finally breaking through for him. Amazing. So I think, yeah, you're right. As we partner with more of those authority voices, that would be a great start. And there the question also is how important is the parents to have that credibility from the medical and dental community?

Yeah. You know, at Warby Parker, for example, people generally trust glasses and you put it on and you can see it works. However, if you're going to go and get an eye exam, right, and we now hire hundreds of doctors, it's really important to demonstrate, hey, these doctors are some of the best in the country. They're highly credentialed. They're using top of the line equipment. So again, depending on in that hierarchy of how people make decisions, right, whether you want it blessed by, you know, the American Dental Association or whatever group it is to give added credibility. Yeah, I mean, that may be tricky because of the fluoride issue. I'm not, but another, I mean, building on that, right, this ingredient you're using, and I don't know it, right, I'm sure I've heard of it, but not a nano.

hydroxy appetite, right? Nanohyroxy appetite. Right, okay. It may be worth really, you know, leaning into that as well. And you may already be doing that. But, you know, it sounds like there are plenty of dentists who are using this as a replacement for fluoride. So it seems to me like those are also the partners you want to try and reach out to and work

with and just offer samples to them and let them pass them out in their offices. Definitely. We especially find with pediatric dentists because their parent population is younger, right? Like in their 30s, maybe low 40s, those people are more aware of fluoride and nanohydroxyapotide and realize that there's an alternative. Another idea, because you were saying, how do you build a moment? And, you know, we took advantage when there was a solar eclipse that was going to be across the whole continental U.S. So we created all these solar eclipse.

viewers and we made them blue, Warby Blue, and we gave out thousands of them. If I think about where do I run the risk of cavities, for example, it's when I eat candy. And when do you eat candy the most? Perhaps it's around Halloween. So, you know, is there an opportunity to break through and create a moment when, you know, parents are worried, oh, my kids are going to be bouncing off the wall because they're eating so much candy and is this bad, you know, for their teeth, you know, that might be a marketing moment. There might be a there there, but I think the bottom line is just, you know, when can you sort of insert yourself into the conversation? Yes. Yeah. You don't really need to convince all of America right away, right?

You really just need to get, and I think you're doing it. You need to convince one circle of parents who tell every other parent. Think of so many products we've done, RX bars, a great example. They started with Crossfitters and it just blew up from there. I think you really want to double down on the people who are attracted to what your value proposition is and let them be your force multipliers. I love that idea. It would just be amazing too if we can, yeah, just get the word out through the people that are already using it, which is a lot of times what we find, right? There was a big influencer who posted the other day about us. And I asked her, I was like, hey, how did you find out? And she said it was actually from one of her friends that came over to

her house, brought it into her kitchen and said, try this right now. Your kids need this. So hopefully that'll just keep happening over and over. Awesome. Kimber Crandall, the brand is called Pearl Pop. Good luck. Thanks so much for calling in. Thanks for coming to see me in San Francisco.

Well, thank you so much for having me. And I can just only hope that we're going to change toothpaste like Neil, like you changed eyewear and just something I've learned from this podcast is if you don't dream and go for it, we'll never know. So we'll just try. Never know. Good luck. Thank you.

All right. So great to meet you. Thank you. 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. Welcome back to the advice line on how I built this lab. I'm Guy Raz, and my guest today is Neil Blumenthal, co-founder of Warby Parker, and we are taking your calls. And Neil, are you ready for our next call?

Ready and excited. All right, let's bring in our next caller. Welcome to the advice line. You're on with Neil Blumenthal, co-founder of Warby Parker. Please tell us your name, where you're calling from, and just a line about your business. Hi, Guy, hi, Neil. It's an honor to be on the show with you two legends today. My name's Brian DeMint. I'm the CEO and co-founder of Salt and Light Wellness. We are a three studio chain of wellness centers here in Southern California, and we specialize in Southern California. Awesome. Welcome to the show, Brian. So you have got three locations in Southern California around L.A. where are you? Yeah, we're kind of like wedged below L.A. in Orange County, but above San Diego in the Inland Empire. Yeah. Okay. I love the light thing. I do my morning light dog walk every morning. You know, make sure to get the dopamine levels up and going. And it is actually really amazing and effective. Okay. So these are, this is a light there, but these are not like sun tanning salons. You go in and

you, what, you sit in front of red lights and tell me a little bit more about what you do. Like, what's the experience? Yeah. Yeah. With our modern busy schedules, it's not always feasible for people to get outside at the right times of the day to get their proper doses of red light, infrared light, and a healthy dose of UV. So at salt and light, we make that easy. We mimic kind of the full outdoor exposure if you were to go to the beach, say, for example, because we also pair it with salt therapy and cold plunge for contrast with our infrared light. You get a salt room. You get the cold plunge.

Nice. I just did a cold plunge in the San Francisco Bay. It was so freaking cold. I can't believe I was in that water, but it was. All right. So you probably felt great afterwards. I felt amazing. It does really, you know, it reduces inflammation, lowers blood sugar.

It all does all those things. Okay. Brian, tell me. How did you start the business and give us sort of the basic story here? Yeah, yeah. So my wife and I, we founded it out of college in 2008. So Neil, we're right there with you when you guys started as well. We just always believed in sunshine.

I was an athlete growing up. And because my athletic background, we had this idea of the team room. Division I sports, professional sports, after they trained, they have a place to go and recover. We're in a hobbyist culture as well, especially here in Southern California. And people treat their hobbies every bit as serious as a Division I athlete does in college. And adult hobbyists actually have the money to spend on their recovery and take care of themselves. And so that's the market that we really looked to integrate with. Yeah.

I mean, it's cool because you think of like a stretch lab and we can talk more about that later. But yeah, I mean, the fact that people wear whoops, there's, you know, even Hoka shoes were designed for people who wanted to train like professionals. Tell me a little bit about the business. How is the business doing? Are they, I mean, you've got three locations. I'm assuming that they're sustainable, that you're turning a profit. Yeah, we opened as a red light and UV studio, but nobody knew what red light was in 2008. Our name used to be perfect tan. We would, we knew the market understood tanning. That wasn't what I believed in. We would always make sure to coach people on appropriate times. We didn't run it like, you know, a fake and bake type of establishment. And I think that bore out results in the long run. But we actually rebranded to Salt and Light about three years ago. Rebranding and refocusing our marketing as the Salt and Light brand gave us a pop of about 30% over our previous operations. Just out of curiosity, and you may not be able to talk about specifics. But roughly, in terms of revenue, give me a range.

What does one of these locations, what can they do a year? Yeah, one studio, our top performance studio, does about $575,000 per year. Okay. Great. Okay. So before we dive in further, tell us your question. Yeah. So they get about a dozen inquiries per week from people all around the country who want to open a salt and light. My question for you guys is how do we properly vet these people, especially with the volume? I mean, we're a fairly small operation. So a dozen per week is actually a lot for me. How do we properly vet these people to ensure that we're getting people who align with our brand values and that we can create sustainable scaling? Awesome. Great question and a very solvable one. Neil, I want to bring you in. First of all, questions or thoughts for Brian? Sure. Well, congratulations. I love the rebrand, and it immediately evokes health and wellness for me, so exactly what the mission of the company is. I'm not an expert in franchising per se, right? Warby Parker owns and operates all of our own stores, of which we have over 300. We certainly go through quite a vetting process to hire our store leaders, and I actually

still interview every single one. Wow. Wow. We think that the key to success is people and culture. And if you look at enduring brands, right, it all comes down to people in culture. And what is culture? It's shared values, shared rituals, right, and a shared mission. So I think you're on the right track here and saying like, hey, selecting is really important. So I think the first thing is putting out into the world.

what the company stands for, what your mission and your values are, then people are already self-selecting, right, and reaching out to you? Then do you actually want to put some barriers in place? Yes. So that way you can narrow without investing too much time who you might want to work with. And that might be an application process. You know, it's interesting. Now, I would say that if you do.

do license or franchise, your business model changes quite a bit. You now have a new customer, and those customers are the franchisees. So it's just something to think about as you decide on your strategy. How do you want to be spending your time, and are you going to build a product for franchisees? Yeah, Brian, I couldn't agree more with Neil's advice. You know, we have an episode on Jimbury. And Jimberie went into the franchising direction, and the founder, she reached out to somebody who had expertise in franchising, which really helped the business. But that's down the road.

I mean, in the short term, you know, as Neil said, you want to build some barriers in just to make your workflow more efficient, right? So if there's inbound, you basically create a questionnaire with like 15 and 20 questions, ask about their business experience. They're available capital, any demographic information. where they are, why they're motivated. And that alone, just that barrier to entry is going to eliminate like 60 to 70 percent of the endowed because people who are just not going to bother filling it out. And then once somebody fills it out, you can go to the next step and actually have a conversation with them. And really what you're looking for is, right, you know, are these people, do they believe in what you're doing? You know, not only are they coachable

and are they somebody who won't work with, but do they really believe in this, right? Because people who are looking for a passive income stream, that's not your person here, right? You're still too early. You've got three locations. Those first five franchises, we've learned from all our interviews

that we've done with franchise businesses on this show, they're critical. Those first five are going to define so much of the culture. They can elevate the brand, they can dilute it, They have such a huge impact. So you want to be really, really careful. Once you, let's say, land on somebody you're interested, even before you hit the go button,

you want to make sure that they do a shadowing period with you, that they spend time working the front desk, that they sit in on your meetings, you know? And even then you want to figure out some kind of trial basis because it's a huge responsibility. Wow. That's, yeah, hearing that's kind of like a breath of fresh air. I appreciate just even the sifting, the workflow that you, that you suggested there. And you said something about people, ensuring people are passionate, not only about the leadership role and the operator role, but the branding side of it. For Neil, do you have, you know, I know there's companies that have, you know, they're famous for the types of questions they ask in interviews. Do you have any kind of indicators of, wow, this person really gets the brand? Is there a specific type of question you would ask or something that you know that this is the question that, ensures there's alignment? Yeah, usually it's not one particular question, although I'll share an example. Sometimes I'll ask, do you remember when you first heard about the brand? And we're now 15 years in, so that question is perhaps not as relevant as it was, you know,

five or ten years ago, but it starts a conversation and I can start to suss out. Are they a customer? do they believe in our mission? Are they a glasses wear and can really empathize with customers? So what it does is it immediately invites a conversation where the individual can start to share what they know and what they love about the brand. And frankly, if they don't know a lot, then how could they possibly love the brand or the mission? Right?

They didn't do their homework, which, you know, if they didn't do their homework on an interview you with the CEO of the company. Like, am I going to trust them with the four walls of a store and managing people? Yeah. I mean, you can, yeah, I mean, you ask them, what does salt and light mean to you? What does that phrase mean to you? Tell me about your own, you know, how light therapy solved challenges that you had. You know, you really want to interrogate their own personal wellness journey to see why they're, you know, they're interested and to gauge their passion.

I'm just curious, are you getting out inbound from people outside of California? Yeah, yeah. Last week I had about an hour phone call or video call with a gentleman from Nashville, Arizona, Northern California. So, yeah, I mean, obviously Northern California is in California, but yes, it's all around. What's funny to me is it's almost counterintuitive in that these are all places with lots of sun. I'm sitting here in New York, and during the winter it gets dark at 4. 30. Like, I want you to open up here next to my office. Yeah. You know, I think that if you, down the road, if you do work with some of these franchisees, you might want to look at what Orange Theory or Stretch Lab did, which is they built regional density first, right? You know, you want to start by maybe building out five to 10 locations within an hour or two drive from HQ before you go to Nashville. or Dallas or somewhere else.

Like you really want to sort of test the model and be able to really have oversight. Because down the road, if this does catch, you know, fire, you want to look at what other franchise brands have done, right? Like five guys. You're going to want to build like an academy where you train people, where they learn about the science of light and then obviously the business model and how to get, you know, acquire members and, you know, the protocols and, you know, the history and then the values and all those things, you're going to have to develop a very specific disciplined program.

That's going to come way down the road. But even before you get there, you really want to think about keeping it really tight and close before you think about going out of state or even into northern California. Yeah. And being within close proximity allows you to provide greater support to the different locations and to physically be there and visit more frequently. Yeah. Thank you for that. And we have seen that in our existing location. There is a bit of a network effect amongst the three, which is great. And yeah, I mean, we're right next door to Orange County and San Diego County. So those probably are, yeah, I appreciate the advice. That's probably a good market to move into. Awesome. Awesome. Brian DeMint, the brand is called Salt and Light Wellness. Good luck, man. Thanks so much for calling in. Thank you so much. Keep us posted. Yeah. Thanks. 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. 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 Neil Blumenthal, co-founder of Warby Parker, and let's bring in our next caller. Hello. Hey, Neil and Guy. My name is Tanner McCraney. I'm calling out of Nashville, Tennessee, and I'm the founder and president of the Cowboy Country Club,

which is our made-up country club and golf brand that invites anyone to join and claim membership to. So our members represent those who can seamlessly transition from the country to the country club. Okay, welcome to the show. So wait, it's a made-up country club. What do you do? What do you sell? So our business kind of has two sides. We've got the merch and then we've got the membership.

But we don't really say that we have customers. Everyone who buys something is a member. And so for clothing, it's everything that you'd find in a pro shop, hats, quarterships, hoodies, vests, t-shirt, pickleball paddle. and then we've got the membership stuff. Oh, wow. So as a member of this virtual club, what do you get? So our membership box is a subscription where you actually get a bag tag with your name on it and member number. It doesn't actually mean anything.

It's just for fun. But you also get a head cover, golf towel. You get teas, basically a swag bag to trick out your golf bag. All right, Cowboy Country Club, a made-up golf club, and you sell hats and apparel. And tell me the story about this. Like, what, how did this happen? Absolutely. So growing up, my parents were members of a golf club.

So I had a community to play with and talk about golf with. And then I went off to college, had a great community there to play with. Then after graduation, I went and took a finance job in Atlanta. And being there, I didn't have anyone to play with. I felt excluded from the game, nowhere to call home. And I figured that I could solve my own problem of feeling excluded by creating my own country club and inviting people to join. It was a crazy idea, but we built a social media following where I told my story and talked about why this was something that I was so passionate about. And our first drop sold out in 12 seconds.

Wow. How did you get? So you keep saying we. Is there more than you? Well, I just call it the club. It's a we. Tanner is the we. And okay, I got you.

And how long have you been doing this now? How many years? Almost three years. And what are you doing in sales per year right now? So this year, if it shakes out how it should, we should be at around $1.5 million. Wow. That's incredible. And this is entirely direct to consumer. No, not necessarily. So last year we started our wholesale business and we're in around 100 retail stores nationwide. And how did you get people to even become aware of this? What did you do?

We took on some really great mentors that talked about us going to trade shows. And so our first trade show was in Dallas, Texas. We set up a booth. I had no idea what we were doing. Again, the Wii was you, or was it you? So I actually hired my best friend from high school to take over our wholesale department. But him and I went to Texas and set up a booth and were able to get 30 retailers, and that just snowballed into where we're at today. Wow. And so, and okay, that's amazing. You created this brand out of nothing, and you've already, you're doing one and a half to two million sales here.

Before we dive in further, what's your question for us? One thing that I've noticed about myself personally is I struggle to delegate. And so my question to you guys is, in looking to scale, how do you let go of the day-to-day core responsibilities in order to build a scalable team and a scalable brand? Got it. Okay. Neil Blumenthal, I want to bring you in. Cowboy Country Club.

Congratulations on all the success to date. And to your question about, like, how do you delegate what I've always found that delegation is hard, right, especially when you're building a business yourself. and you really want things to be done right and up to a very high standard. And sometimes you're doing things that you've never learned how to do. So then it's hard to hire somebody to do something that you don't know how to do. How do you even evaluate somebody for that? And what I would do early on is meet with a lot of other entrepreneurs

or just people in sort of similar industries to better understand what the different departments a company has and what the different roles folks had. So a role like a merchant. And that could mean different things at different companies. So if you speak to three different companies, you might have three different versions of merchandising. But at the end of the day, right, merchants are setting the product strategy, right? They're determining the collection. And I found that the better that I understood individual roles and the more comfortable that I

came to like an organizational structure, then that made it easier to let go of certain roles and responsibilities because I grew more comfortable with the work that needed to be done. So that made it easier to write a position description to evaluate somebody and hire somebody to do that work. And you're right on the money there because it seems like I'm so stuck working in the business rather than on the business. And so you're Absolutely right that taking those roles and looking out to hires is the right place I need to be in. Yeah. I mean, you are, all right, the thing you want to sounds like what you want to do is you want to build the culture, the community, and the demand.

And, and, Neil, this is probably, I mean, I'm curious about your, your, you started your business with partners and everybody had different skill sets. It seems like maybe, in your case, Tanner, you want to look for like a product and operations person, right? Like that's really, not necessarily a designer or, but somebody who has, let's say, five years of experience in apparel. Like somebody who's now sort of mid-level working at a business, it's like, let's say, two to three rungs above yours. Because that's, you just want somebody with some experience in apparel who can handle operations and product and who can develop relationships with factories and figure out the margins and the supply chain stuff and forecast. So it sounds like that's what is keeping you sort of occupied right now. Yep. Where we've had trouble hiring at times is when we try and hire somebody that comes from a much larger company,

because they might thrive in an existing environment where systems are fully built out and processes are fully established, whereas you're in a growth stage now, and you literally have to write the HR manual. You have to figure out the flow. Yeah, we have nothing. Right. You have to be coming up with pricing. You have to literally be talking with the warehouse and figuring out how to connect your systems with the warehouse. So you really need entrepreneurial folks. Your first 10 hires have to be really entrepreneurial and problem solvers. And those folks tend to be at smaller organizations. Absolutely.

I think that we need to kind of break down the business, what roles? Am I the best at or want to be an expert in? And then look for those people like you were saying that could come in and make a difference. And one of our biggest goals for the next year is to bring fulfillment and warehousing in-house, because we've been using a 3PL since we've started, essentially. And I think getting our entire team in one location would be a great way to kind of build a culture and then bring people into that.

Having people in one location definitely is key to culture. And you saw that the companies that seem to function best during the pandemic, for example, had earned all the goodwill from a strong culture and strong relationships before the pandemic. So that way, when people did go to work remote, they were able to sort of leverage a lot of that culture that had already been built. One thing that I would just think about long and hard is what are the things that you want to be expert in and that you should do yourselves versus what are things that might be a commodity and can be outsourced? And, you know, your brand, the design of your products, right? That is core to you guys, and that's unique. packing a hat or a shirt into a box and shipping that to a customer, that might not be something

that you want to do in-house because there's lots of experts that can do that. And they may have economies of scale and could even do it cheaper than you could do it yourself. Neil, just a quick question. I mean, is there a world where at this level maybe he even thinks about like a fractional head of ops? I mean, you know, he's still small. I mean, and one and a half to two million is great, but it may, you know, it may make sense to tap into like a freelancer at this point, or what do you think? Yeah, I think that's a great idea. And, you know, especially if you can define specific projects, that works really well for

contract work and, you know, getting somebody to come on for a period of time. They have some pattern recognition because they've seen this before. and not everything needs to be permanent, not every relationship, right, needs to extend for a decade. You know, what I often tell our team at Warby is this train is going for a very long journey and people get on at different points in the journey and they get off at different points in the journey. And that's completely okay. And we can stay close with those folks and we hope that their time at Warby, they're thriving, they're learning, they're growing.

But, you know, people leave and the needs of the businesses change over time. That's something I struggle with is I want to find the perfect person for permanent. And knowing that, you know, it's trained, like you said, is a good perspective. Yeah. The other thing is say is that you want to ask that person, you know, some basic questions. Like, what does Cowboy Country Club sell? And if they say, well, you sell hats and shirts and, you know, and that's not the right fit. You want somebody who understands that you're selling an identity.

You're belonging to this club. It's sort of a tongue and cheek, wink and an odd thing, but it's something deeper, right? You're building a brand. You're not just... Lifestyle brand. Yeah. And that's the person that you want to take a chance on. Absolutely.

I really appreciate it. All great advice. Yeah. Well, the brand is called Cowboy Country Club, Tanner McCraney. Thanks for calling in. Good luck, man. Thanks for calling. Of course.

Thank you, guys. Yeah. Wow, super cool. Neil, before I let you go, I want to ask you a question I've been asking everyone who joins me on the show, which is knowing what you know now, if you could go back and say, hey, here's where I know and here's some advice I'm going to give you, Neil, 15 years ago. Is there something that would have been helpful? I think it was continue to build relationships. with folks that were a couple steps ahead of you, because that's where we tended to get the most sort of actionable advice from,

from founders who were, you know, a few years in front of us and could share lessons of failures. You know, speaking with the founders of Bonobos, for example, who were also building a brand and raising venture capital, and they had given us tons of advice, which was super helpful. speaking to friends that had worked in venture because it was also unusual that not a pure tech company was raising capital. So we had to learn the language of venture capital to raise money for a tech-enabled brand. You know, none of us had run an e-commerce business before. So

speaking to folks that had run e-commerce businesses. So I wish that this podcast was available back then because it would have made our lives a lot easier. Well, that's where we call you guys to help the people now. Thank you so much for coming back on the show, Neil. It's great, great having you back, and hopefully we'll have you back again and again. Thank you for having me. That's Neil Blumenthal, co-founder and co-CEO of Warby Parker. And by the way, if you haven't heard the Warby Parker episode, go back and check it out.

Incredible story. So good. Here's one of my favorite moments from that episode. We hadn't told anyone that the site was live. We just want to drive any traffic to it because we weren't sure it would work. So I get an order and then 10 minutes later we get another order and then another order and then another order. And we kind of go from this feeling of elatement to, oh crap, we don't have this much inventory. 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 guyraz.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.wondry.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 Sam Paulson with

music composed by Ramtin Arablui. It was edited by John Isabella and our audio engineer with Sina LaFredo. Our production staff also includes Alex Chung, Elaine Coates, Neva Grant, Casey Herman, J.C. Howard, Chris Messini, Catherine Seifer, Carrie Thompson, and Rommel Wood. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to The Advice Line on How I Built This Lab.