How I Built This with Guy Raz - Advice Line with Troy Carter of Atom Factory

Episode Date: July 24, 2025

Former manager of Lady Gaga and Atom Factory founder Troy Carter joins Guy on the Advice Line, where they answer questions from three early-stage entrepreneurs. Plus, Troy’s advice for reaching new audiences when digital ads struggle to perform.First we meet Madelyn in Arizona, who’s trying to grow her postpartum frozen meal delivery service while preserving its focus on her local community. Then Tyler in Oregon, who wants to strengthen connections with influencers endorsing his water purification systems. And Gina in Minnesota, who’s looking to better market her matching dog and human clothing sets.Thank you to the founders of The Nest Prep, Guzzle H2O, and Good Thomas 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 Atom Factory’s founding story as told by Troy on the show in 2017.This episode was produced by Sam Paulson with music by Ramtin Arablouei. It was edited by Andrea Bruce. Our audio engineer was Neal Rauch.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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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 Guy Raz.com. And we'll put all this info in the podcast description. All right, let's get to it. Joining me today is Troy Carter, founder of Adam Factory, which managed stars like Lady Gaga and John Legend. Troy, welcome back to the show. It's great to have you on. Thank you for having me. Love being here. We love having you. You were first on the show. Troy was first on the show back in 2018. he told us about how he went from West Philadelphia to the heights of the music business in L.A. It's an amazing story. In L.A., he discovered and started managing the rapper Eve, but then it all came crashing down.

She left Troy as a client. His house was foreclosed on his car was repossessed. And at the lowest point, Troy, you were introduced to a then-unknown singer-songwriter called Lady Gaga. And, of course, you helped build her brand in her career. And it's just an amazing story. And if you guys have not heard that episode with Troy Carter, we'll put a link to it in the podcast description. It is so awesome. It's just amazing.

Anyway, after that, Troy, you became an investor. You got in early on companies like Uber and Lyft and Spotify. And you also had a stint at Spotify for a while. And now you are in the music distribution business. So you are still working with artists and creatists. Give us a quick update on what's going on in your life right now. Yeah, you know, when I left Spotify, I decided that. there was this opportunity in the independent music space to really help out independent music

artists with distribution and services and technology. So basically took, you know, my experience as a manager, my experience of working with artists and technology at Spotify, and now we're distributing independent artists. That's awesome. And, you know, it's interesting because you hear a lot of sort of conversations around, you know, Spotify and how it compensates people. And the reality is like if you are an independent artist and you own the rights and your recordings and everything like you get all the money right it's it's it's it's that but it's the way the money is distributed because if you are an artist and there's writers and there's composers and there's all kinds of people involved that you know that dollar gets split you know 20 different 50 different

ways yeah and for us you know we we like to work with artists who own all of their music we encourage them to keep it to hold on to their rights and you know if the music does well they do incredibly well yeah you when when i remember on the show is still so you'd be on the show since then a few times but your first episode the story of your life and just i still think about sometimes going up and down california on a van you know with with lady gaga before she was lady gaga um you guys also at the time use social media youtube to kind of help launch your career and back then and even until recently, that kind of digital discovery was new, right? And it's a different world now. I mean, social media platforms are, you know, they're saturated, right? Digital ads, we're hearing

from a lot of startup founders and even established companies, digital ads are not performing as well, right, and as they used to. So what are some ways that you're hearing about how entrepreneurs, creators, other people that you work with are building their brands and reaching audiences despite those challenges? Yeah, you know, we're having these conversations in real time. You know, I was just talking to my team a few weeks ago about, you know, even with my own habits, when I use search now, which I rarely do. But when I do, I'm basically reading the AI summary and not even sort of clicking through or whatever on whatever else. So discovery is definitely shifting now.

The reality is you just got to be really, really, really great at what you do and have a really great product. You know, because in music, we've always been like the canary in a coal mine. So probably a decade ago when the barriers to entry to music went away because of technology and all of a sudden you have hundreds of thousands of artists release in music. you know, we figured out ways to be able to cut through the noise. But part of it was you got to take a really patient long-term approach and not expect things to happen overnight and not fall for the traps that happen

and taking shortcuts to sort of accelerate things. So, you know, I just think continuing to focus on product, on exceptional service, and to me it's a bit of a longer route, but it works. But the shortcuts and the growth hacks, you know, is going to be a little bit tougher right now. Before we get to our callers, one last question for you. I mean, a lot of people, a lot of founders, startup founders today, and we may get this question today too, ask me about working with influencers and celebrities, right? Because now you're seeing just an explosion of celebrity products. Not all of them work, right? We only hear about the occasional, you know, billion-dollar deals

over the Haley-Beavers of the world, but most of the time, they don't really pan out. What kind of advice do you, would you give to entrepreneurs, thinking about whether to work with celebrities or creators, even giving them equity in their product and the brand to, you know, boost it? You know, making sure that is not transactional. You know, if it was me sitting in that seat, I would want somebody who's in love with my product and mission-aligned with the vision of the company. and if you didn't have to pay them, that they still would promote your product.

Yeah. You know, and that's the type of relationship you need to have. If it's transactional, it usually doesn't work. Yeah, makes a lot of sense. All right, let's bring in our first caller. Welcome to the advice line you're on with me and Troy Carter. Tell us your name and where you're calling from and just one line about your business, please. Hello, Guy, Troy.

Thank you so much for having me. It's truly an honor. My name's Madeline Nasick Ellis. I am in Phoenix, Arizona, and my business is the nest prep. We produce and deliver custom postpartum meals and snacks to new families that have just had a baby and extending into toddlerhood families that just need to feed everybody around them. Nice. Awesome. Welcome to the show, Madeline. So you make fresh meals. Are they frozen or fresh? Yes, they're freezer-friendly. So everything that we make is intended to be stored in the freezer

so that you can stock up before the baby is born. That's the primary model that we have. So we deliver frozen. And this is designed, you designed this for people who postpartum. So a lot of times, I'm sure people listening have had like a meal train sent to you. Oh, our friend had a baby, let's do a meal train. Yes. So something like this is probably perfect. They can just order food.

And then the food is delivered to their front door and they've got it ready to go. Tell me how you came up with this idea or how did you decide to launch this business. Exactly. Yeah. So I have always just loved feeding people. I mean, since I was a kid, I can remember wanting to. feed people and cook. So I worked in food service management, really my whole career, and I just, I love it. Through that career, I started having babies of my own, and that would kind of be my

postpartum gift to my friends, you know, and especially ones having their second or third babies, they don't really need a lot more stuff. You'd pack up meals for them? Exactly. Put them, bring them to their door. Yep. Yeah, I would make things for them at home, at my home, and then pack it up for them, bring it, and, you know, help them reorganize the freezer a little bit, ask them what kind of things that they were into and liked. And I just, I loved it. And I remember doing it for myself when I was pregnant with my first baby. And I just had this daydream about how amazing it would be to do this for other people as a job.

And it took me, you know, having a couple more babies to actually make it happen. But once I decided it was time, I just designed the website and went all in. And who was doing all the cooking? So we have a team of four. The kitchen team is really two or three of us. And we have a beautiful commercial kitchen. We produce everything in the span of like two or three days, depending on our amount of orders,

which have just increased every week. So we have three of us on the team with nutrition and culinary backgrounds, and then one who's more in like operations management. Right. So this is a, but it's a labor-intensive business right now because you're a small team. Yeah. All right. Before we dig in more, tell us your question. Yeah. So right now we serve the Phoenix area. And every one of our customers, everyone that we talk to, expresses what a need this is. You know, the need to feed your family is not exclusive. So my question is when you have a business model like ours that not only takes pride in, but really focuses on utilizing the resources of like a local community, what's the first step to scaling that into other cities or nationally?

All right, Troy, you know this well, Troy, because you've invested in companies that have started in one place and had to expand all over the country. Food delivery service designed for postpartum parents looks like a cool business. It's in Phoenix right now, but down the road, maybe get it to Tucson and to Los Angeles and San Diego. And how does she start thinking about this? I guess what's the current distribution? So weekly, we have, you know, we have a couple hundred customers. customers right now. We also have a retail partnership with a local mom and baby sort of boutique workout class. They're sort of an all-encompassing location where they've agreed to have a branded

freezer of ours on site, and we actually stock that every week as well. People can go in and buy it on site. And what's the shelf life on the product? So we say on our labels anywhere from three to four months technically, it's really more like six to 12 just because everything is designed to be frozen. Once you take it out and prepare it for consumption, obviously the shelf life changes a little bit, but we have that on our labels. So, you know, you can stock up, but we have several families that order every week. So it's become a part of their weekly grocery delivery. What's the price point? So the price range on our website, the snacks are anywhere from like the 15, to $18 range and then our meals are $30 to $45.

They usually feed four. So a typical average order for us is around $200. Got it. So is there a possibility of doing like a pilot program with a target or somebody along those lines? I've looked into sprouts. That would kind of be, that's kind of our local, you know, West Coast health grocery store. they have a pilot program available for people who are trying to get their products on shelves.

That is sort of a, it's one route that I see possibly happening, kind of taking that retail route. But we really have found that this delivery model is very well received by our customers. So I guess explain how the delivery model works. Yeah, so we, our order cutoff is Thursday every week. and then we use that Thursday to Monday time frame to prepare the meals. Monday is our delivery day around Phoenix right now. So we have a team that shows up to the kitchen Monday morning where we produce it all, grabs the bags with their labels,

and then they have a route on their phone. We've got a delivery driver app where they will take that to everyone's home that's ordered for that week. So we do it week after week deliveries every Monday. I would pilot a small market nearby. And just to make sure that you can replicate what people already love about your brand. So, you know, don't feel the pressure right away on scaling because I think that the experience is way more important than scale.

And especially since you have a small team at the moment, because once you start scaling as the CEO, your job changes now. You know, you leave the kitchen to manage people. And so, and you don't want to lose the magic of your brand within that transition. So I think being able to, you know, do a small pilot nearby might be the sort of way to sort of test it out to see whether or not it changes the experience for your customers. Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, I think that right now, you know, thinking about ways to scale it, you know, you. you should do it very slowly and methodically.

I mean, there are a couple of things here. Your price point is higher than, you know, than what a frozen meal would be. Obviously, the quality is better and it's, you know, prepared by chefs. So that makes a lot of sense. But there are meal delivery services in cities all across the country. So the question is, what is that thing you're offering, right? What is the value prop here? Is it the branding?

Is it the idea that this is for postpartum, you know, family? families, et cetera, and that could be interesting, you know, way to position it. I think that that you might want to start going to just literally to Tucson or, I don't know if you reach Prescott, Arizona, but a smaller, closer place that you can reach in, you know, a couple hours where you don't have to hire too many more people. Because if you're doing it in Tucson and you, and then eventually you've got a kitchen in Tucson and you can need a staff there, a team there. But it could be a great model for, how to think about expanding out of state. I would really try and focus on Arizona first and the, you know, the market's there and then see whether it's worth trying and, you know, going into Las Vegas or, you know, but I also, the other thing I would do is I would literally just do research on what cities, what parts of the countries are seeing the, you know, the highest number of births. I mean, literally, I would like go in and is it Columbus, Ohio? Is it, you know, in proportion of population? where are you seeing the highest number of births in proportion of population?

And then also, you know, you want to cross-reference that with affluence. That's what I was going to say, because it's probably not a direct correlation, you know, but you think higher births. And higher births usually equals lower education level. If you look at all of the data in terms of high birth rates and education level. And education usually equates directly to income. Yeah. What's the current size of the business?

We're approaching the six-figure mark. I would really focus on penetrating your own market first. Because you can grow to business there substantially. But it gives you the opportunity to really work out any kinks that you may need to work out before you know, you may need to work out before you know, you know, you scale. Yeah. I agree. You're too small right now to work with sprouts or any kind of national chain. But you're not too small to work with a local co-op. I mean, that could be an interesting way to try and test out, you know, how this might work in retail. I am all for that. I would

love to be able to saturate it here and really work out the kinks, like you said. I mean, food service is high overhead, high labor. And the goal is to be able to, have the service in other cities, but definitely not in some sort of rash decision or, you know, something that's not going to sustain itself. Yeah. All right, Madeline Nasik, the brand is called The Nest Prep. Good luck. Congrats.

Thanks for calling in. Congratulations. Thank you both. 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's Troy Carter, founder of Adam Factory and former manager of Lady Gaga, among others. And we are taking your calls, so let's bring in our next caller. Tell us your name, where you're calling from, and just one line about your business, please. Hi, Troy, hi, Guy. My name is Tyler Beck. I'm calling from Hood River, Oregon. Name of the company is Guzzle H-2O, and we build portable water purification equipment.

Cool. portable for like RVs and like that kind of thing? Yeah, so our flagship product is like a box that's got a carbon filter, a UV sterilizer, a pump and a pump, filter, and purify 35 gallons of water on a battery charge, and it will fill up like a five-gallon Jerry can in about seven minutes. Wow, so you can just like park your RV next to a river or like a lake and just get that water purified? Fill up your onboard tanks with clean drinking water. Yeah. So we've got a lot of customers that with RVs, the van size RVs are really popular these days. A lot of people just doing

you know, car camping and adventure travel, you know, in vehicles where they need to source water. And then, you know, all kinds of people with off-grade residences and like hunting camps and that kind of thing that would use a product like ours. And then we also have point of use systems that you can install in an adventure vehicle or an RV that treats the water coming out of your tank and cleans it as you use it because most people with an RV don't want to drink the water that's coming out of the out of the onboard tank because it either tastes like plastic or you know they're worried that it's got mildew or bacteria in it so the UV ensures that it's safe so that's just so you can really literally go up to any body of water not not the ocean obviously

that's desalination, but pretty much most relatively clean bodies of water, and you can get clean drinking water from this product. Any fresh water source, yeah. That's awesome. Tell me how you came to this. Are you an engineer? Is this your background? How did you start this business?

Yeah, so my business partner is actually a professional sailor, and he put up a Facebook rant five or six years ago. He was traveling with his sailing team, and they would be at some international water. front and there's water on tap, but to support the team, they would go by bottled water. And so they'd get to the end of the event and the dumpster is full of single use plastic bottles. And so he was like, wait a minute, we are, you know, sailing on the ocean. All the plastic trash ends up in the ocean. You know, we can't keep doing this.

So I picked up on it and I've known Sean for a while. Sean is a sailor. Sean Couverow, yeah. And yeah, so we just started, like the first project was to see if we could put a drinking water treatment system in a case that they could travel around the world with. And so. Wow. Yeah. That's how it started.

So, all right. So now you guys have this business going. Tell me a little bit about your sales. Like, what, how did you guys do last year? Yeah. So we did about $800,000 last year. Yeah. What's the price point?

And like how many units is that? Yeah. So we've got products that. range from $200 up to $1,000 is like the flagship system. Got it. All right. And before we dig in deeper, what's your question for us? I guess there's a small brand trying to grow awareness.

How should we think about working with micro-influencers particularly? Like we have a lot of people that, you know, YouTubers and people on Instagram that are doing, like we have people that drive from the north side of Alaska to the tip of South America. And so they'll bring our equipment. And so we have great relationships with them, but we'd like to give these relationships some longevity. And we've basically found that, you know, as we call bigger influencers, they don't call us back. So we're sort of, you know, thinking if we had more structure to our program with working with these people, you know, we might have a little more success. Not that we're not having success, but it seems like it could work a little smoother and with a little more clarity for everybody involved.

So before I bring in Troy, just really quickly, how, I mean, what has it, what's been the return like on working with micro-influencers? Are you actually seeing a significant boost in sales or is it a mixed bag? It's a mixed bag. And, you know, that is another reason I'm asking the question. I would say, you know, it kind of ranges from you end up with a whole community that adopts your product because you pick the person that is talking to that community and it's super successful and you'll even end up with, you know, we'll end up with deals with. with RV manufacturers to sell OEM equipment to them, like that would be the most successful and then sort of the least successful is you just sort of never hear from again. So, yeah. All right, Troy Carter, I want to bring you in. This is very unusual because this is not like a simple kind of consumer product. I mean, this is for people who are traveling RVs, boats, right, recreational. And that's off-grid.

And there are a lot of people like that. Yeah, like these are the kind of categories that I actually. like. And what I mean by that is the types of influencers in this space carry a lot of weight. You know, so when you find the right people, they have the YouTube following or TikTok following or whatever else, you want to know what type of gear that they're using. You know, you're sort of following a story, you know, and that's what's great about it. What I would say from a structure standpoint, figuring out some sort of equity pool with advisory shares. When I look at advisory deals that work really well, is somebody who loves your product, you know, and that part,

you'll hear me repeat a million times because if it's not authentic, it's not worth it. But being able to call on that person a few times a year for, you know, for, you know, you're not, you're feedback on product, helping you develop product, you know, hey, this is our next iteration. I want you to give us some feedback on how you're thinking about it. And then the other piece, too, is making sure that in some of the content that you do, that there's some sort of call to action. because I think that's how you can really test conversion to, you know, sort of directly, but just making sure that is a clear call to action as well.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's interesting. Those are great ideas. Typically, we don't even set up an agreement with these people. Like, it's, you know, we'll have exchange emails and like this is what we'd like to get. And I can see how thinking the deliverable stuff. three a little bit more and building in some things like product development and event appearances

could be great. Yeah. Yeah, look, you know, even with my business, we set aside advisory shares. You know, so it's certain artists I call, some product people I call, and they're just incredibly helpful, you know, and so, and sometimes you may need somebody to do something forward facing, but a lot of times it's just the behind-the-scenes things that actually move the needle the most. Yeah. Yeah, that's interesting. You know, we did an episode on Solo Stove a couple years ago on the show, and it's worth listening to because the founders of that brand,

they really were, they're not, I mean, they were campers, but they were not like necessarily, you know, that was their passion, but they were looking for a category and a product that they thought could do really well. And they found that campers had a really hard time, just, you know, quickly building a fire in a safe way. And that's how they came up with Solo Stove. They really kind of researched a space and they came up with it and it turned out to be an amazing product and a hugely successful brand. And I think that there are some insights in there that might be helpful for you.

I mean, you're dealing with people who are outdoors, building tents, right? They're RVs. They're traveling. Yeah. And to have a great access to great, clean, potable water, you know, is that simple is a bonus. There's also, yeah, people that are just interested in preparedness and, you know, having, like, we've got a home product as well, so people just want higher quality water in their home. Right. Right.

When the apocalypse happens. Yeah. And, you know, we've done a lot of work with, I'm not sure if you're familiar with charity water, but I've been to Ethiopia quite a few times with them on trips. and when I think about the problem you're solving is a huge market, you know, sort of outside of campers as well. So I think it's a big opportunity that sort of extends out of, you know, just the core market you're focused on too. Sounds like a great, great business.

It's a cool product. The brand is called Guzzle H2O. Tyler Beck. Thanks for calling in. Thanks, you have a new customer. I'm going to order one. All right. Sounds good.

Awesome. All right. Thanks for calling in. Bye, bye. Yeah, I mean, listen, judging by what's happening in the world today and, you know, all the changes in politics in our country, who knows, Armageddon might be close at hand. I'm a prepper guy. You never know. 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 calls with Troy Carter. So let's bring on our next call. Hello, welcome caller. Hi, Guy. Hi, Troy. Thank you for having me. I'm very excited to be here. My name is Gina Davis, and I am calling in from Minneapolis, Minnesota, and our company is Good Thomas. We are in e-commerce gift shop for dog lovers, best known for our matching outfits seen on Shark Tank and playful gifts like the dog father embroidered hat. All right, welcome to the show, Gina. So matching outfits, let's dive in this. You sell matching outfits for humans and dogs. We do. Yes. So your dog, I love my dog, Kiki, very much, but she's very little. So you could put basically a dog shirt on Kiki and a dog shirt on me, and we would walk down the street.

We'd be matching. That's it. Yep. And kids too. And you also make like dog accessories, like, tell me a little bit more about what else you saw. Yeah, so we have fun little poop bags that say freshes daisies on them. We have playful hats like the dog father, DeMilf, not for everyone, but certain people love it. dog mommy, things like that.

But our main bread and butter is definitely the matching outfits and clothing. And you mentioned you were on Shark Tank at one point back in because you said, when did you start the company? We started in 2014, actually. We were on Shark Tank in 2019. And had a Shark Tank must have been huge, right? It must have boosted sales. It was. It was amazing.

I mean, I was a big fan of the show. And my husband and I went on. And it actually aired in November, which is, our, the biggest, Christmas, yeah. Yeah, Q4 is massive for us. So it was, it was great. And we made an on-air deal with Cuban,

so we were very happy. Amazing. You made the right person. He's been on the show. He's awesome. So now, I'm sure you did it very well then after that, but how have sales been since then? Have you sustained those sales,

or has been a bit tough? Highs and lows, of course, like most businesses. That was great for our business. And then 2020 was, you know, following that and pandemic hit. And we actually were lucky, one of those businesses that did good during the pandemic. So we saw continuous growth.

So we decided to spend the year looking at if we really wanted to raise this outside capital through friends and family, et cetera. And we decided that the best way for us to scale was through digital advertising. We're seeing around 10x return on ad spend. So it seemed, you know, like the best way to go. 86% of millennials said that they would dress their dogs, and clothing, so the market potential was huge. So we raised that outside capital in 2021. And then in the summer of 2022, the Apple Privacy Act happened. And our digital ad spend or

return on ads went from 10x to 8x to 5x. And now we are lucky to hit 3x. Wow. Well, how much did you guys spend on ads? That first year, it was around $100,000. That was the money you raised in 2022? We raised 150 and 50 went to inventory. Before we dive into this more, what's your question for us? So our question is just related to that, or my question is that, you know, ads used to perform really well for us. And ever since that change with Apple privacy, the return on ad spend has declined. And so how can we scale effectively and authentically as an e-commerce brand? And, you know, make the return back that we need. All right. So a lot going on here. Troy, we talked about this a little bit.

Ad spend, digital marketing. I mean, people are getting hammered. I mean, I, so many brands on how I built this basically built their brands off Facebook ads. You know, it was like, it was like shooting fish in a barrel, right? People literally said that, and it's completely changed now. You know, you spend money on an ad on Facebook or on, you know, Instagram, wherever, and it just does not convert. So, let's dive into it. Tell me a little bit about your social footprint and your social strategy. Yeah, so when we launched the brand, Instagram was just starting to take off.

And that's kind of how we grew the business so organically. Not everyone wants to take a picture of themselves in a shirt that they love, but almost everyone wants to take a picture of their dog and post it in a shirt. And so the word spread, we couldn't get inventory in stock. and so did our social media following. So we have around 100,000 followers, which is great. But also, Instagram has changed meta drastically, you know, in recent years. And now we can hardly even reach our 100,000 followers through organic posts.

So they almost have to be paid to reach them. So our business has just changed completely. And we continue to post. We work with some influencers, but it's not our main focus anymore. And we're just trying to figure out how to reach, you know, the massive audience set of people that would love our product. Yeah. And what's the, I guess, outside of ads,

is there a brand strategy that lives outside of ads? So we do some local markets, but it's pretty, you know, the return is pretty small there. And also our audience, I'm in Minneapolis now. I went to school in L.A., but our customer is not huge here. It's mostly L.A., New York and big. cities. We've also done some trade shows to try to focus on wholesale, but we have found that

the return is best spent on online, just because when we've been in retail, you see our products hanging up on a hanger, and it just doesn't do it justice. People don't even know what it is. You really need to see a photo, like on our website of a dog and their, you know, human matching. And that's what I was thinking, like, you know, and that's why I was asking about the social footprint because this is a brand that's born for social, you know, for Instagram and TikTok. And it's almost like a marketer's dream in terms of being able to have. Dog and man. Yes.

It's like, it's like, it's a marketist's dream. And then you can have a lot of fun with it. And I feel like you could get a lot of earned media versus paid media sort of based off of event-based marketing. And what I mean by that, it's like, you know, fashion shows, pop-ups, you know, things that you can do that that's going to get more word or mouth than anything else. Because I just feel like you're never going to get that return back from ads. That era's over with.

You know, so I feel like the storytelling piece of it is the way you could sort of get the attention you need around it. I mean, your website is great, and you've got great photos on it. You've done a great job with it, really, really. And the pictures of people with their dogs are funny. The guy with the cucumbers on his eyes and a bathrobe and the dog with a cucumber on his eyes. It's very funny.

And it's good stuff. And I think that makes sense. Troy, how do they get sort of these images, you know, out there in a way that, as you say, is organic? So it's storytelling. So we went through a similar problem, right? And one of the things that we talked about was we have to make our social profiles valuable to artists, whether they're artists with Venice or whether they're with somebody else. And what we started doing was we started doing case studies on artists who broke out. So whether it was Chaparone, whether it's Billy Island. whether, you know, whatever these new breakout artists were, we basically spent a month studying how they broke and then breaking that down and then telling artists,

these are the steps that this artist took and this is how you can do it as an independent artist. And it became incredibly valuable. And it started traveling essentially. So a lot of our customers who have come in have actually come in through our case studies. The thing is you own a relationship, you know, like people's relationships with their pets are sacred.

And so you find in ways to add value to that relationship, that creates stickiness. And that stickiness creates trust, and trust then creates conversion. So I just would sort of really focus around the, the the the the storytelling and probably less on ad strategy yeah are you familiar with the brand melbourne the golf brand no i am not they're an incredible case study they've done incredible work in terms of partnerships so they basically took a supreme model where they found okay what type of partnerships

can we form that keep people coming back. So whether it's with a Nike or whether it's with Wooten Klan or whether it's like they find these really interesting partnerships and their customer keeps coming back buying a new version of something that they bought already based off of this new type of partnership. And so if you can make it a fashion or cultural. thing that sort of sits outside of just your brand, is that a way to be able to get the repeat customers and sort of the cultural impact around it as well? You know, so if it's, I'm making it up, if it's a Louis Vuitton or something that you

partner with, you know, with a dog and human outfit or whether it's, you know, a supreme, like whoever it might be. but something that you know your customer better than I would ever know your customer. But just thinking about these sort of partnerships that could keep it interest in. But Melbourne, you should study that brand. Like they've taken the golf world by storm. It was a boring category. They've taken it by storm.

That's a great idea. Thank you. The brand is called Good Thomas. Gina Davis. Thanks for calling in. Thank you for having me. Honestly, it's such a pleasure. And I do feel like being an entrepreneur can be kind of a lonely thing,

especially when you don't have other friends that are in the same game as you. And so listening to this podcast has been truly life-changing, making me feel like I'm not alone and part of a community. So thank you. That's why we do it, Gina. Thanks for calling in. Thank you so much. Troy, great advice.

Wow. You, I mean, not wow. I know you're a superstar. Great advice. Really great advice. because you understand that it's not, you know, there's no quick switch here, but I mean, you understand how quickly the dynamics are changing in the marketplace. It is.

And, you know, I kind of felt bad, you know, because as we're talking about ads, nobody has the answer. But I feel like entrepreneurs who, like who we just spoke with, they have stories that they can tell. And so I think being able to, you know, know, tell the stories. I think it builds a stronger, less transactional connection anyway. Troy, I still remember so visually. And you guys have to hear the story. It's so good. Troy's story is amazing. You know, you were talking about when you were young and, you met like

the Fresh Prince and then you got involved in like booking shows and it was like cash. You had to like bring paper bags full of cash, right? In West Philadelphia to pay the venues or to collect the tickets and you had to be really careful that you wouldn't get robbed. When you think about you who you were back then and what you knew and didn't know really because you didn't know what you know now, if you could go back to him now with everything you know and all your perspective, what do you think would have been helpful for him to know back then? Not to panic. You know, when things hit the fan, you start feeling uncomfortable. Don't panic. You know, And I think the years of experience, I probably would have saved myself a lot of strife if I knew how to take slower breaths and just not react so quickly or so rashly.

But the other big piece that I think is probably even more important than that is showing myself grace. I think I was really tough on myself a lot of times when things didn't go so well. but being able to give myself a little bit more grace. Troy, thanks so much for coming back on the show. It's great having you. Thanks for having me, Guy. I missed you. Yeah, you too.

And by the way, if you guys haven't heard the Adam Factory episode, go back and check it out. It's truly, it's so good. We'll put a link to it in the podcast and the show notes on your podcast app. So check it out. And here's one of my favorite moments from that episode. So what happened to the business? It was over. You know, I didn't have the cash flow.

And the phone started ringing. And it was the landlord of that building saying, you know what, rent hasn't been paid. You know, all of my vendors, you know, started calling me. My house was under foreclosure. And my wife and my mother-in-law ended up pawning their wedding rings to, you know, to save the house. Wow. You know, and with me, you know, I never, you know, considered suicide. But I know why people do.

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're 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 you are 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. You can leave a message there and make sure to tell us how to reach you.

And by the way, we'll put all of this in the podcast description as well. This episode was produced by Sam Paulson with music composed by Remteen Arablewe. It was edited by Andrea Bruce. And our audio engineer was Neil Rouch. Our production team at How I Built This also includes Alex Chung, Carla Estevez, Casey Herman, Elaine Coates, J.C. Howard, Catherine Seifer, Carrie Thompson, and Neva Grant. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to the advice line on how I built this lab.