How I Built This with Guy Raz - S'well: Sarah Kauss

Episode Date: April 6, 2020

In 2009, Sarah Kauss had a well-paying job in real estate development, but she was itching to do something more. On a hike in Tucson with her mom, she got an idea for a business while swigging warm water from a metal thermos: why not design a water bottle that kept cold things cold and hot things hot, but was also beautiful to look at? Just six years after launch, S'well reportedly made $100 million; but today, Sarah is especially focused on how the brand can help eliminate plastic waste around the world. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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It had tall windows, beautiful old details, and plenty of space for all of us. And being in that home on Airbnb, right in the middle of Vienna, walking distance from so much of the city, made it feel less like a visit and more like we were actually living there. Plus, taking a trip is the perfect time to host your space on Airbnb. Your place with all of its personal touches and its amazing location could make someone else's vacation even better. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at Airbnb.ca.com slash host. Hey, really quick before we start this brand new episode of How I Built This, I want to remind you about a new video series that we've just launched. It's sort of a How I Built This online, a live conversation with me and a different founder to,

talk about how they're handling the crisis, how it's affecting their business, and also how they're working to build resiliency and think creatively about ways to navigate through it. This Wednesday, April 8th, at 12 noon Eastern, I'll be talking with David Nealeman, the founder of JetBlue and Azul Airways about his industry and his ideas on how to move forward. And then on Friday, April 10th at 12 noon Eastern, I'll have Tristan Walker on. He's the founder of Walker & Company. It's a company that makes personal care products like the Bevel Razor, so we're going to catch up with him. You can join us live and please bring your questions.

Those conversations all happen at Facebook.com slash how I built this. You do not need a Facebook account to watch it. So just go to Facebook.com slash how I built this. Again, that's this Wednesday, April 8th, with David Nealiman at 12 noon eastern. And then Friday, April 10th, with Tristan Walker, also at 12 noon eastern. Find those conversations live at Facebook.com slash how I built. this, bring your questions, and I hope to see you there. You went to a trade show and you literally saw a table with knockoffs of your bottles there. Is that right? Yeah, so not only were

there swell bottles at this trade show, but the swell bottles had won in a ward and had a ribbon on a display case at the trade show. Was it the same logo with S-apostrophe well? Yeah, it was the same logo and it had the trademark symbol on the side of it. It was... What was your first reaction like? I almost passed out. From NPR, it's how I built this, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built. I'm Guy Raz, and on the show today,

how Sarah Cowes turned the humble thermos into a sleek accessory called Swell and watched her business grow by the tens of millions of dollars. So one of the common threads you might have noticed on the show is the element of design. Design matters a lot, and not just design of your product, but the design of your business, the logo, the colors you use, the customer interface. All of these things differentiate successful brands, especially when they're trying to break out of the pack. So, for example, think of spin drift sparkling water.

That is a crowded space, but spin drift stands out, not only for the quality of its product, but for the simple and clean design of it. Or SoulCycle, the founders of that company spent months coming up with the colors, gray-black-yellow, and the simple geometric logo, a bike wheel with spokes. So design matters. And that is in part the story of Swell. It's a water bottle, yes, a very good water bottle. But when Sarah Kowas launched it back in 2010, there were already lots of good bottles out there. thermos bottles that kept your drinks hot and cold,

camelback bottles with those foldable straws, squeezy plastic cycling bottles, but almost no bottle that looked sleek and beautiful, a bottle you'd want to put on your Instagram feed. And that was Sarah Kausa's great insight. That is how she broke through the pack. And as you will hear, she didn't have personal wealth and lots of her friends wondered why she was throwing away

perfectly safe career in accounting to pursue water bottles. But Sarah had a hunch that lots of people would want a better bottle, people who didn't want to buy and throw away single-use plastic, people who wanted a functional and nice-looking bottle at the same time. And she was right. In 2016, just six years after it launched, Swell reportedly did about $100 million in revenue. And by the way, Sarah managed to scale the company without ever taking a dime of outside money. She did it by building swell methodically and strategically. Anyway, right now, the company is dealing with the same economic anxiety that everyone else is facing, and I'll ask Sarah about that.

And because of the current situation, I couldn't interview her in a studio, so Sarah joined me from her home in Florida, which is where she grew up. I am sitting in my bedroom in Jupiter, Florida. The reason I'm sitting in my bedroom and not my home office is my son, who's just under two, likes to come and knock on the office door and say, Mama, Mama. So this was the quietest place in my house that I could hide. So it's a beautiful sunny day in Jupiter. I'm watching the boats on the Loxahatchee River go by.

It's a bit bizarre that it's so pretty out given what's going on in the world. And that river you're looking at, you actually, grew up by that very same river, right? Yes. Life was simple. It was easy. You could ride your bike outside and have all kinds of adventures. There was always some kind of something to be discovered, you know, something to be built.

It's a beautiful place to have grown up. Yeah. And tell me about what your dad did for a living. He ran and owned a car wash. He built and ran that business for, for. 40 years, you know, five, six days a week working at the car wash, which also had a gas station, a little shop and a few tenants, including an ice cream store that my mom ran and a plant nursery that he rented out. So he was a small business owner in Florida.

Wait, all of this was at the gas station. There was an ice cream shop and a nursery and a gas station and a car wash. It was genius. So you dropped your car off on one side and you had to walk through the retail establishments to pay for your car wash. And of course, you had to wait 15 to 20 minutes until your car was done. So why not buy a plant, an ice cream cone, and maybe some greeting cards while you're waiting? So it was sort of one-stop shopping. Yeah. So your mom and dad basically worked together every day. I mean, your dad was kind of running the facility. Your mom was running an ice cream shop. It sounds like they made it work. They made it work. Yeah. They're still really very close. And I think that, you know, building a business, building a family, you know, going through all that together, it's a unique opportunity to sort of talk about your day and talk about your lives together. But they certainly made it work.

What kind of kid were you in high school? What do you remember about you as a high school student? Oh, I was as awkward as they come in high school. I had terrible hairstyle. I wish somebody had told me at the time that those big bangs were going to come back and haunt me in later years. I was certainly not a popular girl. I was a bit of a nerd. I was co-president of the Save the Manatee Club with my best friend. Love it. I was at a club called Deca. It was a business club.

And I went to state and national conventions working on business problems. Wow. When I senior year, I was voted most likely to succeed in business. So you were already into business in high school. I remember those kids in high school. They would be mocked, you know. There's that kid. and the business club, and some of them were very briefcases.

But you were kind of like that? I was definitely like that. I actually, I think because I grew up with entrepreneurs that were always running a business, I think that I knew that I would go into business in some form or faction from a pretty young age. Yeah. So you went off to the University of Colorado, and you studied accounting, which is a very practical thing to study. And I guess your first job out of college was with Ernst & Young as a trainee or a junior CPA.

Correct, yeah. So I took the CPA exam right out of college and I went to work at Ernst & Young. I think the weekend after I graduated and I was in Denver for two years working as an auditor. And then I moved to Los Angeles and I was still at EY and I worked in the tax division for two years. And basically that means that you were your first two years, you were sent to. a client and you would just go through all their books and just make someone's life miserable by asking them, what's this, what's this for? What's that, right? I mean, is that sort of what you did? Yeah, that's basically right. I mean, I wouldn't say we were there to make everyone's lives miserable, but I can't say there was a single client that was ever happy to see us coming. You know,

that we give you this audit room somewhere in the basement without heat or air condition in a window and say, oh, how long are you staying? Can you leave tomorrow? Yeah, no one's like, whoo, here come the auditors. Welcome. All right. So you do that. And then you do tax auditing, too, after your first two years? Yeah, after my first two years in Denver, I was getting a little bit itchy to try to do something different. And this was 2000 where all the dot-com companies were really quite exciting. And I kept reading about the clients that EY had had in California, and they were all the dot-com

companies. They were mostly new media companies and really the first DTC companies that I went to go work with. And it was really a bit of the wild west because a lot of these internet companies were transacting, you know, potentially for the first time. And we were helping them think about and solve questions and problems that were absolutely brand new. So as non-glamorous as a tax role sounds, it was actually pretty interesting work just because of the types of individuals our clients were. It's amazing because this really does speak to how you were really kind of whether or not laying the groundwork for what you would eventually do, because all of those skills

would be crucial when you started your business eventually. I mean, just having that knowledge and the ability to think about financial issues from the beginning gave you a huge advantage. I agree. Absolutely. You know, in hindsight, almost everything that I did help lay the groundwork for where we are today, but it didn't feel like that at the time. I was such a restless soul, right? It was, I just couldn't wait to do the next thing. I just couldn't wait to do the next thing. and find myself and figure out what the universe had in store for me, that I didn't realize that all of that was potentially very valuable and necessary steps to get to where we are now.

Yeah. All right. So you do your thing at Ernst & Young and you decided to go to business school, to Harvard Business School. Yeah. And did you make that decision? Because you thought, all right, I've done this. Now I need to build a network of people or I need some new ideas about the next thing to do.

Or was that the thinking? It was. After a few years of really working with these clients, I just wanted to become one of my clients. And one of the common themes that my clients had were a lot of them had gone to business school. And so it was more just the gift of time of a couple of years to try to come up with some idea or some kind of what's next for me. Because I realized that I, I didn't aspire to be my boss or my boss's boss. But I met so many amazing. and fantastic people in business school that I wasn't really networking with to help me with my business. They were just my knucklehead friends that were helping me get through this experience of school that now happened to be, you know, the movers and shakers of business. So I don't know that I needed to go to school to learn finance or marketing or operations. But I think for me, it was the combination of the confidence plus the network of friends that kind of help support me through the times that I need it. Now, you were there from, from 2000.

in 2003, and I should mention, right, that you were there at a time where I don't think entrepreneurship was really being emphasized, right? Like most students were really kind of going there and they would end up at McKinsey or at a big finance firm on the partnership track. Is that, is that right? Like entrepreneurship wasn't really a thing quite yet. That's right. It really wasn't a thing when I was in business school. I think I took one half class on entrepreneurship, but it was more how to finance a business than how to start and grow a business. You know, now, of course, there's whole centers devoted to it, and there's a lot of resources that I wish that I had had. But no, it really wasn't a thing back when I was in school.

Do you think that going there in the back of your mind, you had this idea of maybe I'll graduate and become an entrepreneur, was that your thinking or not quite yet? You know, it was. I mean, even my essay before I went into business school, I wrote about how I wanted to start some company at some point and do something. I just really was looking for that big idea when I was in school. And, you know, unfortunately, I didn't find the idea while I was in school. I was still searching for it when I finished school. I was actually at HBS during the time of September 11th. So the economy took a real change from the time when I started in 2001 to the time when I left in 2003.

Yeah. So you finish in 2003, and what did you do when you graduated? Oh, I had a really hard time finding a job when I graduated. So myself and just a couple of my friends, we actually, wound up staying at Harvard Business School, and the school created jobs for some of us. So you're working in a position that, you know, quite honestly, I was making less after business school than I did before. You've got a massive amount of student loans, and you also just don't know when the economy is going to get better. And it was a really strange

and difficult time for myself and a couple of my friends that wound up basically kind of sticking around and not finding our next step. All right. So you get a job at working at HBS for a while, And then I guess eventually you got a job with a real estate development firm? I did. So my previous roommate from before business school when I worked in California, she said, well, there's an interesting job at my company. I know you have no real estate experience, but they're looking for someone. And I was able to talk my way into international real estate development role for a number of years, helping to build big private partnerships from mostly laboratory buildings for scientists.

Huh. Tell me about your kind of your state of mind then. Were you happy? Was your life interesting? Were you thinking, all right, I'm on the right track now? You know, I was really unsettled at the time. I liked my job. I liked the people.

But professionally, I found myself sort of really wondering, was this all that there is? I certainly was finally, you know, making a pretty good, normal, decent salary, you know, being a VP at a public company. I had some stock options that invest over time and it was obviously helping me with my savings account, but helping me pay off my loans. I just, I sort of started to get a little bit itchy, almost the same way that when I was at EY, I knew that I didn't want to become my boss's boss. It was certainly a really interesting challenge to see if I could figure it out, but it wasn't necessarily the thing that was making me feel really excited about my career. And you were living in New York at the time, by the way?

I was. My company had put me up in a month-to-month rented apartment because I was doing a real estate project there. So I was really living in nomadic life. They put me up in a studio apartment there. So did you have time to think about or did you make time to think about what else you could do? Did you talk to people about it or did you kind of keep it inside? I kept it inside. You know, I would say that from the outside everyone thought that,

oh, things were going pretty well. I think I was at the point in my life that I didn't want to whine and moan about. They seem to be high class problems about, oh, you know, I'm not feeling fulfilled. But I was working so much. And I wasn't really making the time to think about what came next. I almost had to go on a, you know, a vacation with my mom and really step away from the day to day of my busy life to even have any type of, you know, reflection time. I literally had to get outside of my own life, you know, in a place that required you to put your Blackberry at the time away and not be so focused on, you know, the next ping that you're going to get on your email because I wasn't really making the time to think about my own personal situation and what came next. All right.

This is an important moment because I think it's around 2009. You and your mom going on a vacation hiking trip to Arizona. I guess your mom had been cancer-free and was celebrating. Yes, it was a really big, exciting moment. My mom had had breast cancer and was so brave and so strong and really got through it to the other side and was done taking all of the horrible medicine and we said, you know, if you can just get to the other side of this, we're going to go away and have a, you know, a fancy spa vacation. So we went off to Tucson, Arizona and it was one of those moments that because we were celebrating her health and really having those deep conversations and those thoughts

about, you know, life. You get one and, you know, what are you going to do with it? And, you know, how do you want to spend your time and what's really important? And my mom started it. And she said, you know, if I had to do it all over again, I would have been a painter. Wow. She said she loved to paint. And she taught painting classes in high school.

But she wanted to have a career and raise her family. And she studied something else and she did something else. And she said, you know, now that I got through this cancer thing, I'm going to take painting lessons. And she said to me, she said, what is it that that you've always wanted to do? And don't wait for a health scare. Don't, don't wait for, you know, until you get my age to go do it. You know, what is it that you wanted to do? And I don't, it just, it all came out of me just, just in that conversation. All right. So you're on this hike. This is intense, man. I'm like, your mom survived, like, she was telling you all these things and you're like, oh, my God, you must have been,

you must have been crying a lot and laughing. Like, it must be. Super intense. Because this is really the beginning of what would be the rest of your professional life. What happened on that hike? It was one of those things, Guy, that it was everything, everything just came together. I just, you know, I was walking with my reusable water bottle. So I, for many, many years, gave up single-use plastic. I think part of it was, you know, Boulder being part of me going to see you and, you know, being a very environmental school.

And, you know, I grew up recycling. So I always used a reusable bottle, but it was as hot in Arizona, and we're hiking for a long time. And so I'm walking with this metal bottle on a hot day and drinking hot water. So the first thing that occurred to me is, wouldn't it be great if somebody invented a water bottle that actually kept things cold? Right, right. And then I had just recently been at my business school reunion at Harvard, and they had a professor that made a presentation about climate change and talked about how those that are affected by the water crisis were, only going to become worse in the future. And so I had this idea on the hike that if there was a company that was creating a better water bottle, and you tried to tie it to a social mission by

by working on plastics and climate change and educating people about the water crisis, it could be really interesting to do something good while doing something good. Wow. So you're thinking, all right, maybe there's something to do with water, a water bottle, a better water bottle. You finish your hike, your trip to Arizona ends, you say goodbye to your mom, and you go back to New York, and you go back to your job. But does this idea, like, when you are on the flight back to New York, when you get back to your apartment, like, is this idea now planted in your head? It was. I started writing a little bit of a business plan. It's embarrassing to call it that now.

but it was more of an outline, a manifesto of what I thought this company could be. And what did you write? Oh, I wrote that we were going to be the water bottle partner to Fashion Week and the TED conference and sold in Bloomingdale's and, you know, changing the world. And, you know, I sat down and just started writing. Like, if a product could do all this, you know, how would it work? You know, of course there weren't any practical bits in there. There wasn't anything in there about the financial state. or, you know, how to do processes or procedures or manufacturing.

It was more of just a thought piece about what could happen if this really worked. So what was your first, what do you remember your first step being? I mean, here you are. You are working for a real estate development company, no background in manufacturing or supply chain or design even. What was the first thing that you remember doing after writing down your manifesto? Well, I remember going to the Sporting Good Store, Paragon Sports in Union Square, and I purchased one of every water bottle on the market and started using them myself and passing them out to my friends and asking them to use them as well, just to try to get some feedback on how it could work better, how it could look better, how it could be packaged better, really just trying to educate myself on what was out there and what I wanted to build. And what did you find out?

Well, I mean, I found out that there were a lot of bottles out there, right? This was a very crowded marketplace. But what I discovered was there wasn't anything that really looked great. I mean, everything was appropriate for the gym. Everything was fine for hiking, right? But there wasn't anything that I thought could catch like wildfire, like a fashion accessory, a thing. And so I thought it really needed to catch your eye. When I designed this, it really needed to be beautiful, for lack of a better word.

And there were some bottles that were functional, but they were marketed for extreme camping and hiking. And that wasn't the market I was going to try to go after. And so I just thought if I could convert the non-converted, so if I can convert people to use a water bottle that haven't, because it actually works, right? It's like the thermos. It keeps things hot and cold. But in a way that it's the thing to do instead of the, you know, the Evianns and the Fiji's. and the smart waters. You know, if I could try to go after sort of that set that was using what they were drinking as more of a statements, the bottle needed to really be a statement piece.

Yeah. When you started to talk to friends and other people about this, I'm assuming people were like, Sarah, there are millions of bottles out there? Like, you know, are you sure you want to get into this? Did anybody say that? No, that's exactly what they said. Everybody, you know, closest friends included thought this was a foolhardy idea. I actually went to a business school, a classmate's wedding, and I was explaining, oh, I, you know, I just quit my job and I'm just getting ready to launch this company. And I, what do you think about the idea? And one of my good friends jumped into the conversation and felt the need to defend me. And she said, but she used to have a really good job. And she felt so uncomfortable for me that I was explaining myself to a perfect stranger at this wedding that she almost wanted to defend my honor by saying, well, I used to have a business guard that made sense to people.

What did it take for you to quit your job? I'm assuming when you quit that job, you figured, well, if this doesn't work, I can get another job like it again. Is that what you were thinking? No, that's right. I think my downside risk protection was, you know, I still had my CPA at the time. So I thought, okay, if this really doesn't work out, I guess I could always go back to, you know, helping people with their taxes, which I really didn't want to do. So I was super motivated. But, yeah, so I always thought there would at least be something for me to do if this went sideways. And how much money did you have to live off? Like, what was your runway? So I had $30,000 in the bank at the time. That you had saved up from your job. Correct. And that was going to last you, you know, it could last you a while. But you'll

also need that money, I guess, to start the company. Right. To start the company to buy the first initial inventory, build the first website. It seemed like a lot to me at the time, but when I really started getting into, you know, beginning to build the business, it actually wasn't going to take me very far. So let's start with how you began to build the business. First of all, you have an idea for a water bottle that's going to be a beautiful bottle that's going to do everything that a really good thermos does, but it's going to look cooler. Who do you call? Like, where did you go? I started designing the product actually in PowerPoint. Of course, now we have, you know, 3D printers and engineers on the team. We do things properly. But, you know, back then, I started with a line drawing that I had made myself.

And I thought, okay, how do I take this drawing and turn it into an actual product? And I just wound up taking my business girlfriends out for coffees and say, this is what I'm struggling with. This is what I really need your help. how do I find a factory? How do I do this? And I wound up finding a friend of mine in school whose dad had made some products and could put me in touch with the right people and kind of send me on my way. Wow. So eventually you land on somebody who can help you design the bottle? Correct. And how did you land on that design of the bottle that most people listening now will recognize? You know, I wanted it to be really classic and really simple. I wanted it to be something beautiful and iconic enough that could be sold in the MoMA store.

But I didn't want it to be like the ones in the sporting goods store with, you know, the carabiners on the top and, you know, the neoprene on the side and the neon colors with the reflective tape. And I just wanted it, you know, the whole idea was just to try to encourage people to drink tap water and not to use so much plastic. And so I wanted it to be as sleek and elegant as possible. And so I really just tried to make it functional more. than anything. All right. So you've got a prototype. And then where do you get it made? Is it again, like the father of that friend from business school kind of connected you to possible like factories in China that could make a prototype? Yeah. So I actually originally really wanted to make the bottle in the U.S. and spent a fair amount of time reaching out to factories in the U.S. And I couldn't find anyone

that was interested in working with me. We just didn't have the scale. And we, you know, I couldn't say that I wanted to make, you know, thousands or millions of pieces, you know, day one until I had the demand. And so I wound up finding that the factories that I had been connected with in China were willing to take a risk on small entrepreneurs and do a small run until we were really up and running. So what was your initial run? How many bottles? So I made 3,000 pieces and they were all blue. They were all the same size. They were all exactly the same. And I had them shipped to my apartment. How much do that cost you? Oh, it was the majority of my savings at the time.

I bet. I actually convinced the factory to let me do a 50% down payment and a 50% payment 30 days later. So that helped a little bit. But I had a bit of a fire under me to sell. And the name Swell was on the side, the logo and everything was printed on it? Yes. How did you come up with it? Oh, I wish I could say that I came up with the name myself.

Unfortunately, I'm an accountant at heart. So I actually originally named the company, Can't Live Without It, because I thought you can't live without water. Yeah, I thought I was a genius. I actually spent $1,000 on the URL, can't live without it.com, which is available if anyone's interested. Yeah, no, it turned out that was a terrible name for a water bottle company because I actually hired a team to help me build the first website.

And I had them sign an NDA and I tell them my big top secret idea for starting this water bottle company that's going to change the world. And they said, okay, what are you going to call it? And I told them, can't live without it. And they just started laughing, just like you did, just now, Guy. And they said, you know, we like you. And we're going to tell you this. No one's going to buy this product if you call it, can't live without it.

And so even though I hired them to create the website, on the side, they helped me come up with some other names. And they actually came up with the name Swell. And as soon as I heard it, I knew that that was the right name. But I'm imagining that Swell existed, like Swell.com or their company is like Swell. Swell existed. So Swell actually turned out to be really difficult to register. But it was actually a business school friend of mine that said to me, you know, how are things going with Swell? And I said, oh, we can't use the name.

and we have to go back to the drawing board. She was a banker. I don't know how she came up with this idea, but she said, well, why don't you put an apostrophe in the word swell? And then it's a logo and not a word. And of course, I called my attorney and said, hey, can we do this? And he said, sure, yeah, that's no problem.

Of course, this is after he had billed me for lots of time and hours and expenses and didn't come up with the idea itself. But it was the way that we were able to register. That's crazy because you look at it and you think it just works perfectly. Yeah, I think the word swell. I mean, it works perfectly because it's so positive. You know, it's so old-fashioned of a word,

and the idea of swell is so old-fashioned. You know, I was trying to harken back to the time that people weren't walking around with plastic water bottles, and they were drinking water out of the tap or their filter at home. And the fact that we build wells for people, you know, we bring clean drinking water to people in need, you know, so the fact that we're separating the S with the word well

sort of leans into the mission of what we're doing. It's everything that I was looking to do sort of wrapped up into a word, which it turned out quite lucky for us. All right. So it's 2010. You are in New York, living in New York still. Correct. These 3,000 bottles arrive from China.

And then what? Like, how do you start to think about getting people's attention and creating awareness around it? What did you do? I literally just packed up and went into stores. And I asked to speak to the buyer or speak to the owner in the case of smaller stores and just explain. She said, this is me. I'm Sarah.

This is my product. This is what I'm trying to do. How many can I put you down for? Were you nervous doing that? I was really nervous. I have to say, I am not a natural-born salesperson. But I had to sell the inventory because I had to pay off the other payment. Were there days where you would walk around store to store and walk in?

just feel like there was no interest or... There were days and weeks, actually, that I would sort of pound the pavement and try to find people to buy the product and I would only get nose. It was a bit depressing in the beginning. You know, I wrote that manifesto, that small business plan and said, you know, we're going to be sold in Bloomingdale's. And the buyer said, no way, we don't sell water bottles. You know, in those early days, I got a lot of nose before I got a few people to start saying yes.

When we come back in just a moment, how Sarah got those buyers on board and how swell began to get a lot of attention, including from people you don't want to get a lot of attention from, copycats and counterfeiters. Stay with this. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This from NPR. Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's 2010, Sarah Kaus has 3,000 brand new swell bottles in her apartment. and she starts pitching them store by store in New York City. And when she can't get any traction with stores? Yeah, I'd say, you know what, I really think if you used the product, I really think if you tried it, you would understand how great this is.

And lo and behold, oftentimes I get a call back and say, you know, I tried this. I put ice cubes in last night or I made tea before I went to bed and it's still hot, it's still cold. Come back and tell me a little bit more about this product. So, you know, I had to take a little bit of a risk and give away some products. in some cases, to try to get people to really understand it worked like I said it was going to. So did you eventually sell all 3,000 of those bottles? I did. I did. So it took a number of months, but I eventually sold all of those bottles, some on the website on swell.com. And who knew about the website? How would people even find out about it?

I put it on my Facebook page. I told my friends and family members, and I asked if they would repost it as well. and created a swell Facebook page, and I just asked people to start liking it. I also started to reach out to the press at that time as well, myself. How did you do that? So I went to Barnes & Noble, and I didn't buy the magazines, but I wrote down the address of almost every editor, mostly women's fashion magazines, and I started writing letters. And every day I tried to send out a couple of boxes to different editors with a letter and saying, you know, this is my product, this is what I'm trying to do.

And here's a sample. I would love it if you could try it. And if you like it, could you write about it. And how would you know that it was the right editor? I mean, because, you know, a person could be a features editor, but the person who writes about products could be an assistant editor and you would never know. I would not know. But I would hopefully guess that if this, what I thought was a beautiful product would show up on their desk and they weren't the right person, that potentially they would pass it along. I also had a hunch that even if they weren't the right person and a product arrived, that they might just use it anyway. way. And that, you know, maybe that's one way that I could win people over. You know, having a swell bottle sit on the desk in someone's office as they're trying to think of story ideas, you know, potentially they'll think about us. And when you initially reached out to the editors, did you write a letter saying, hey, I'm Sarah Kaus, this is me, I started this business, I'm making, did. Did you tell a little bit about yourself? I did. I told them about myself.

You know, I told them about what I was trying to do. I talked about how much play. plastic was in the ocean. I talked about how many people, women and girls primarily are affected by the water crisis and how we're trying to give back to UNICEF and make a difference in the world. And I talked about the product. You know, I said, this is a hydration fashion accessory. This is not a water bottle. You've never seen anything like it before. And this is why it's important to your reader. Were you thinking initially that this should be something that women would want to use out and about, particularly women? Yeah. So actually my target in the beginning was women because I was really making something for myself and, you know, friends like me.

And I thought, you know, women also do a lot of the shopping for the household. So if you really want to get in with a group, if you target someone, why not try to make this fashion accessory and appeal to not just women, but to their spouses and their families, their kids. So, you know, it really did start with women as the target. Now we're actually pretty balanced in our customers being women Amen. But that's really where the idea started in the beginning. Meantime, did you order more bottles from China? Or did you still, did you kind of hold off until you sold all 3,000? Well, at this time, I was still working through my first 3,000. And I got a call back from Oprah's magazine, from the O Magazine, I've quite sent one of my

samples to. Oh, wow. Because you can imagine O Magazine, they get a thousand samples a week. Or a day. Or day. What happened was the editor called and said, I got your bottle. Wow. I took it on my family vacation to Peru, and it worked. I used it every day. I kept my water cold.

We really want to run this product, and we want to run it on the O list, which is the must-have list for the summer. But the catch was, she said, you need to send me one of every color you have because color looks good on a page. And you only had them in blue. I only had blue. And of course, I still remember what I said. I said, well, I'm standing in the warehouse. right now. Which was what?

Your apartment? Yeah, like my kitchen living room. You're a tiny apartment. Oh, you said, I'm staying in the warehouse. I can bring you as many as you want, but they only come in blue. And it was this heartbreaking moment because she said, well, call me back when you have more colors because we really need colors to go on the page. Oh.

And so you said. I said I will. And I literally hung up the phone. I walked out the door. I went to Barnes & Noble. I purchased a pantone color book. I picked out six additional colors, and I called the factory. And I said, listen, I need you to make me two bottles each in these six colors and FedEx them here.

I need one for Oprah's Magazine and one for myself to take pictures to put on the website so we can show that we're selling these products. And that's how we went from one color to seven. And we were featured then in the summer of 2011 in Oprah's Magazine, which was a really big milestone for the business. Yeah. We talked to Sarah Blakely three years ago on this show, and, you know, there was the Oprah effect for Spanx. What happened to swell? I have to imagine, like, people, all of a sudden, your web traffic went up. Well, the web traffic went up so much that we, and I say we, I was still the only employee. I had to really work on the back end of the website because we crashed immediately. So there was absolutely an Oprah effect. But I would say more than anything, it was sort of this stamp of confidence in the business that either gave me, more confidence as I went into retailers, or it gave retailers more confidence to try the product and put it on the shelf. I made a little sign that said, you know, as featured in Oprah's magazine, and that certainly helped, you know, opening up retail doors. How were you fulfilling web orders?

I mean, there must have been a lag time between the time somebody ordered it, because now when you order something, you expect to get it in two days or three days. But I imagine you didn't have the, you weren't able to fulfill all these orders that were coming in through the website quickly. Well, at the point that I had ordered the additional inventory, I realized I was going to need a fulfillment center. So at that point, I wasn't actually sending the orders myself from the post office. So I had set up a fulfillment center, luckily, and, you know, worked with a company that basically works with direct-to-consumer companies. So surprisingly, even though we were a pretty small company, orders were going out in a day or two. Wow. All right. So you start to fulfill orders and you're now getting more interest from so. smaller boutiques, but you also had a pretty big turning point in addition to the O Magazine 2011. When you landed a deal with crate and barrel, they ordered a few thousand bottles. How did that happen?

Did they approach you? Do they hear about you through, you know, just media attention? You know, I think crate and barrel did hear about us through media attention, but the way that I actually met them was through a trade show. So I had been going to some of the gift trade shows and standing in a little booth, almost like a science fair booth, you know, where you stand there next to your poster board and you say, oh, hi, this is my product. And I remember being very excited to meet the buyer from Crate and Barrel. And, you know, they said they were going to put us in all of their stores,

but also their catalogs that would go to so many homes in America. So that was a really big exciting turning point. That first full year, which was 2011, do you remember how many trade shows you went to? I went to 17 trade shows that year and was exhausting. I would stay on friends' couches and start doing customer service for the e-commerce site or billing credit cards, you know, being the only employee and doing all of the jobs, you know. And of course, my friends would want to talk. You hadn't seen them in years and you said, oh, can I crash at your place in Atlanta? The last thing you want to do after talking about a water bottle all day and talk to anybody. So those were trying times, that's for sure. But that must have been really, I mean, going to all

those trade shows must have been absolutely crucial because that's where you've got the critical mass where you meet those retailers and distributors. Correct. So, crate and barrel, was that a huge deal for you? I mean, you'd already had the O Magazine thing, but was the Creighton Barrel an even bigger thing? You know, Creighton Barrel was a bigger thing because it gave us a bigger stance. It gave us, you know, national attention.

And in some cases, from a press perspective, they really want a retailer to tell their readers to go to. And so we started to sort of get a little bit more press because we had better retail placement. It was also the first time we figured out how to make a barcode sticker. Craton Varyl was our first national account, so it was the first time we had to read a vendor guide. Oh, yeah. And so they had these requirements that said you have to actually have a skew number and a barcode sticker. So I googled how to do it. And I printed out the barcode stickers on my home printer,

invited my girlfriends over, and we had pizza and wine and stuck all the stickers on. I actually shipped the bottles from my warehouse to the house to put the stickers on. because the stuff that was in our warehouse wasn't compliant with their vendor guide. And so it was a real learning opportunity to say, hey, listen, if you're going to start working with some of these really big partners, you're going to have to get smarter on how to service them. Meantime, it's just you. You are the company. You are swell. It was just me. Wow.

Yeah. Do you remember what your sales were in your first year? I think my sales in the first year were just under $100,000. All right. So by the way, did you ever think, okay, now I've got to go out and raise some money if I want to scale this thing? I considered it, but then quickly discounted it because I thought, you know what, this is going to be a big waste of time. And I'm not really sure if it's going to work. And so why don't I just wait until we're bigger and more successful because we'll have a better pitch and a better story to tell to investors if that's the path we want to go down?

So your idea was, let me get some traction and then I'll find the money to scale it. Exactly. Right. Okay. Make sense. So you continue to kind of get attention and you're in crate and barrel. And by 2012, you did like $2 million in revenue. Did you, I'm assuming by that point, you had to hire people to help you. I did. I hired my first employee that year. Her name is Katie and it was her first job out of college. And she showed up to come work with me. She was very brave. I remember the first time I saw a really, because of notice a swell bottle was at the TED conference in 2013. Was that a deliberate strategy in your mind? Like, let me put these in these in the TED bags because you have to, because right, it's a barter system. Like, Ted is not really buying them from you. Ted does not buy it. It's a donation. It's a donation. It's an expensive, you know, two, three thousand people that go every year. And so, you know, but it was, it was very deliberate because as you can imagine being a,

As scrappy as I was starting so well, I didn't have a marketing budget. And so I thought, how do I get my bottle in the hands of influencers, of people that are sort of on the cutting edge of ideas? Ted being one of those real obvious places. And I had sent a bottle to Ted and said, you know, again, this is my bottle and this is my story. And, you know, surprisingly, they called me back. And even though that's really what I wanted, it was a huge decision. to pull the trigger and make the donation because it was expensive and it was product that I had to basically give away and not sell with the hopes of, you know, something coming out of it.

How did you know that donating all these bottles into the TED gift bag, how were you able to track whether that was going to be, you know, whether there was going to be a return on that investment? You know, it is hard to track, but we can try to see where orders come from. You know, on the website we have a little, how did you hear about us, line? So we try to see, you know, are people talking about TED there? But we have a pretty big corporate business where we actually work with big companies and we put their logos on bottles. And some of the first bigger corporate orders that we received were CEOs and founders of companies that had attended TED. They actually wrote to us from the TED conference. So we wanted the same thing.

Yeah, exactly. And so in a couple years ago, Shonda Rhymes was one of the TED speakers. and she wrote into, you know, info at Swell Bottle herself and said, oh, hi, I'm Shonda, and I just got a Swell bottle at the TED conference. And she purchased Swells for all six of her shows at the time. Wow. And the cool thing about that was then you had the likes of, you know, Carrie Washington and all of those amazing stars that she has access to because of her shows, all walking around

with the Swell bottle. So it's really hard to really quantify, but when you pull back and you think, you know, how did I meet Shonda? How did we meet LinkedIn? how did we get a bottle to Guy Raz? It was a big, you know, calculated expense, but at the same time, it certainly has paid off for us. Now, I read that like a year after you started swell, you went to China to go visit the factory that was making the bottles for you. And then you went to a trade show in Hong Kong and you literally saw a table with knockoffs of your bottles there.

Is that right? That is a true story. What happened? Yeah. So I had gone to so many trade shows, you know, over the first. year and here I am in Hong Kong and I saw a big, you know, promotion for a trade show. And I thought, great. I spend all my free time at trade shows now. Why don't I go check out this show and see what it's like? And not only were there swell bottles at this trade show,

but the swell bottles had won an award and had a ribbon on a display case at the trade show. What? Yes. Was it the same logo with S-apostrophe well? Yeah, it was the same logo and it had the trademark symbol on the side. Oh my God. And it was all of our colors. It was everything. It was as if we had gone to the show ourselves. Oh, my God. What was your first reaction? Like, what's going? Like, you must have passed out. I'm sure. I'm sure. And I was there with my boyfriend at the time, who's now my husband. And luckily he kept his wits about him and went over and started talking to someone standing by this, you know, display case. What do you say? They say, hey, what are you doing?

Yeah, he said, oh, hi, tell me about this. And the gentleman that was working in the booth was super smiley and happy. And he pulled out as busy. And he pulled out as busy. business card and gave it to us and said, oh, hi, I'm from Swell. And his business card also had swell on it. Of course, I had never seen this man before. So what'd you do? We contacted the officials that were running the show and showed them my business card and showed them the Swell website in the U.S. and said, listen, this is a counterfeit company. This is not Swell. We are not showing at the show. We found someone that had the keys to the display case and we took all of the samples. out, stuffed it all into our bags, and we went back to our hotel. I mean, we couldn't believe what we had just seen. I can't imagine you had a budget to hire lawyers at that time. No, I mean,

I had done, you know, the initial registration of the patents and design patents and intellectual property, but certainly didn't have a lawyer on staff or really the budget. You know, unfortunately, we did have to hire some attorneys, and we really did have to try to get to the bottom of it to make sure that this was stopped immediately. You did eventually win a lawsuit. You received $19 million in damages against defendants that were accused of trademark infringement. These were similar. These are just knockoffs. These were counterfeiters who were making bottles and calling them swell. Correct. So we've had a number of lawsuits, that one included, of individuals and companies that are making products that directly affringe upon our intellectual property rights.

I mean, we talked about this a little bit with Randy Hedrick of TRX because TRX straps massively counterfeited. He spent years and years and years in litigation eventually won. I mean, it can eat up a huge part of a company's budget and take away from marketing and other things and just time and like mental space, right? I mean, just dealing with all that is a lot. It is a lot. I mean, it absolutely affects the bottom line. I think it's hard to quantify. But I think you're right.

I think more than that, it's the brain space. It's the opportunity cost of time when you have your time and attention or your team or the fact that you're spending money on legal and not on product development or marketing. It really creates a lot of stress and strain on the organization. It also creates a fair amount of confusion for customers in the marketplace. We hear from customers through customer service that they bought us well, what they think is as well. and it's not working. It's not keeping things hot and cold or it dense or the paint is coming off.

And we ask the customer, hey, send us a picture of it and it's not real. I think that's the thing that I have the hardest time with is it's not just that they didn't buy the product from us. It's just that customers are having an inferior experience. And it could really be turning customers off from our brand because they're not getting the real thing. And I think that's where it really gets my blood boiling. So as you were growing, 2012, you do $2 million in revenue. 2013 Starbucks approaches you. They want to put your bottles in some of its stores in two cities, Atlanta and Austin.

They did great. They sold out. But you wanted them in all the Starbucks. How did you get them into all the Starbucks? So I actually was at Starbucks headquarters for a meeting with our buyers, talking about the program that we were doing in Austin and Atlanta. and it was very fortunate because at the time, this was in December 2014, they were opening this new store in Seattle called the Roastery. And it was sort of this Willy Wonka Chocolate Factory coffee experience. Yeah, I've been there.

See the beans roasted. It's amazing. It's the neatest. So my buyer said, hey, there's an opening tonight of a new store. Why don't you come to the opening? And so I go to the roastery opening and who's standing at the coffee bar waiting for a new store. his espresso, but Howard Schultz. And so, yeah, I just had this moment where I realized that this was my time to try a much bigger pitch for swell at Starbucks. So I asked my buyer, I said, hey, do you want to

come with me? I think that's your boss over there. And she said, oh, God, no. She said, I'd be way too nervous to speak with the CEO. And so I said, okay, well, here, hold my bag. And so I give her my purse. I grab my swell bottle and I beeline over to Howard before anyone else can get to him. And I just told him my story and said, hey, listen, we're both C.E. And so I said, we're both C. Eos here. I'm running a much smaller company. You're running a much bigger one. But we could be doing so much more business with you if you could just give us the opportunity to sell in more stores. Wow. And he listened. He said, okay, well, here's my card. And why don't you contact me? And after the holidays, we'll sit down and have a meeting. And he was true to his word. He had me in for

an hour and a half the following February. Yeah. And we hatched a plan. It was one of those incredible moments where I really would have kicked myself if I hadn't done it, but I still can't believe I actually did it. And that meeting led to Starbucks putting swell bottles in like, I think, 14,000 of its locations around the world? That's right. So I think 10,000 stores in the U.S. and Canada, 25 countries in Europe all over Asia, Russia, South Africa, it was incredible.

And if you hadn't done that, if you hadn't. you know, had the courage to go up to him, had you been too nervous, that may never have happened. Absolutely. I had a moment before I went to go talk to him and I was grabbing my swell and thinking about what I wanted to say. And I just thought, how am I going to get on the plane tomorrow back from Seattle and live with myself if I don't go do it? I mean, the worst that can happen is he says, no, thank you, leave me alone. And the best is that something comes to this. And so I thought, well, I've got absolutely nothing to lose. And it worked out. You know, from that, you know, we sold a lot of product, but more than that, you know, we became more of a household name.

Yeah. We had a sign in all the Starbucks that said, you know, Starbucks's favorite hydration fashion accessory is swell with our logo bigger than the Starbucks logo. I mean, that's better than sales. That's brand recognition. That's incredible. I think by 2015 that year, your sales hit $50 million. dollars you had not raised any money you had not gone to investors did you at that point kind of give up on that idea and say i don't i don't need to do this anymore we were actually having some investors come to us i'm sure and we had some really interesting conversations but at that point we were just so busy and trying to scale this company or like painting the plane after we took off we didn't really have time to think about an investor pitch or really what that would look like so

luckily we were self-funding pretty well at that point. We really didn't need the outside capital. It's amazing. I mean, did any investors kind of not maybe say this directly, but sort of suggest that like, hey, look, if you don't take our money and you don't scale up even faster, you're going to get crushed because some other big brands are just going to make a similar bottle and crush you? I mean, I definitely heard that from a few people, but I honestly was so focused on what I was trying to do. that I wasn't really that concerned about what others were doing. And I had a lot of confidence in swell and in myself and what I was doing. And, you know, I have met some really nice investors.

I just didn't meet anyone that I thought was really going to be that helpful to what I was trying to do. I'm curious about this idea of confidence, right? Because some people just have it. They're born with it. But I think most of us aren't. Most of us, we grow into our confidence. And confidence can come and go, right? Depending on your circumstances in life and where you are.

But as you built this business and as you saw more and more people buying it, I'm assuming that your confidence grew more and more as well. I would say yes, although I think with every phase of the business, there was always something that sort of put me on the back foot. And so I didn't have time to have too much swagger or overconfidence. confidence because there's always something that I could have done better, I should have known, or, you know, a person or a process or a system that needed to be upgraded. And so, you know, I think where I really have come full circle on the confidence piece is being able to admit that

sometimes things aren't working perfectly and to be able to be honest about that imperfection and ask other entrepreneurs or even just, you know, other employees for advice or help. Because I think that if I had been overconfident at any step of the journey, that it might have blindsided me or the company for sort of that next big step forward on the growth perspective. So as you got to a point where your sales are huge, I mean, and you are, you know, you got to grow the company and you got to build it out and you got to get a space and how did you hire and what did you do? How did you manage all that chaos happening?

while still, you know, with all that growth. It was chaos for sure. You know, it was drinking out of the fire hose or, you know, any one of those analogies. But it was, it was a really interesting fun time. You know, it was trying to figure out, you know, how do you get six months ahead of yourself instead of always being three months behind. But it was a lot of fun. I mean, I had a really energized, you know, team.

There was something that was a bit magical to our scrappiness that we seem to be able to get through a lot of that chaos and make, I don't know, thrive on it really. Yeah. It's amazing that even in the last sense, Swell jumped onto the scene. I mean, over the past 10 years, pretty much every airport has a water filling station. It's a common thing. Parks, public parks have water filling stations, not water fountains, but stations where you put your bottle under and there's a, you know, there's a sensor.

And I have to imagine that Swell is part of that, right? Don't you think? Yeah. I like to think that we really did create part of this movement of people carrying a reusable water bottle. Part of why I started as well was I was trying to get people to stop drinking so much single-use plastic. And so it makes me very happy to see so many water-filling stations pop up and so many people carrying a reusable bottle. You mentioned earlier your ex-boyfriend because he's your husband, Jeff, who joined the company, I guess, in 2016. as the C-O, how's that been to work with your partner?

It's been great, honestly. The poor guy, you know, he never applied for a job. He basically got kidnapped one day. Right. It was one of those situations where I would come home from work after, you know, something had happened, you know, the website being down, for example. And being my partner, I really just needed to vent about it. I would say, oh, this happened today.

And I just needed to get it off my chest. But he would spring into problem-solving mode. he would stay up until two in the morning fixing the thing, fixing the website, fixing the thing, coming up with the new system for it. And so he said, listen, Sarah, why don't I come in for a half day every Tuesday and help you get in front of these things instead of you coming home after the fact? And it was one of the classic cases of escalation of commitment. You know, that half day on Tuesday basically just escalated to, you know, him working full-time

for the company. And, you know, it's not what I would have expected having. met him, you know, after Swell was started, I never would have thought, oh, I'm going to make this guy come and work for me and fix all of my problems. But it's been so incredibly valuable for the company to have him there by my side. I really couldn't do it without him. There's no way that that Swell would be the company that we are today, you know, if he wasn't willing to sort of put his ego aside and say, listen, I'm going to drop what I'm doing to support you and your dream and your So all of this will work.

Yeah. Your business, I mean, I know you don't release financial information anymore, I think in part because of all the counterfeiters. Is that right? That's correct. I found that the more that I talked about are revenue numbers, the more that we seem to have a bit of a target on our back. Yeah. But, I mean, you still own 100% of the company? I do.

I do. Wow. It's pretty insane. I mean, it's pretty crazy, right? I mean, there are very, very few businesses that have been on the show where the entrepreneur who founded it still. Sarah Blakely is a good example of this, where they still own the entire company unless they were independently wealthy at the beginning and just had, you know, unless supplies of cash. Sarah, I think just in the recent weeks from the time that we're recording this conversation, you step down a CEO. You're still the executive chairwoman and you hired a CEO to take over.

As of this recording, we're not sitting in the same room. You are at your home. I'm in my home studio. And we're living in a really crazy moment where all businesses are just, they don't know what's happening, right? There's a lot of uncertainty. So first, tell me about that. I mean, are you, I know you're not running the company day to day, but what's going on right now with the business in this situation? I'm incredibly happy that I did bring in a CEO who was absolutely the right decision for Swell before this global pandemic, but especially now.

And I'm following the leadership of the CEO who started, you know, just six weeks ago. So it's it's not the transition I was hoping for for him. But, you know, in trying times, that's when leaders step up and he's doing an incredible job. Well, this really is a moment that's going to test every single business in America. small and large and there's so much unknown about what's ahead. But how are you thinking about your business and about kind of staying resilient as best as possible? I think it's probably fair to assume you are like every other business. You're going to take a hit. People are probably going to be buying your products for a while. It's possible. It's very likely. So what are some

early kind of creative ideas that you guys are coming up with to build some resiliency? into your business? Well, I have to say these are really uncertain times. You know, no one knows where this is going to end up, myself included. You know, I do think that there's going to be, you know, more pain and more disruptions before we get out on the other side of this, unfortunately. But, you know, what I hope that we find on the other side of this is, is sort of a, you know, a changed business environment, sort of a new sense of community and relationships that businesses have with their customers. You know, one of the things that I'm working on and I'm optimistic about is just really leaning into the mission of Swell. And I think one of the things that will be left with on the other

side of this is really how, you know, COVID-19 or otherwise, you know, we're all intertwined and we're interconnected and that my actions and your actions matter for our communities. Our key messaging is really like, how can Swell be your companion at home right now? You know, we're trying to have a sense of humor about, you know, video conferencing and trying to do your at-home workout while you're homeschooling your kids and, you know, trying to be the cook. And, you know, we're trying to say, we've got products to help you. But at the same time, like, can we be this place to kind of keep you healthy and happy while you're staying home and staying positive? But we know that all of our retailers aren't going to make it through this time. We're just trying to be supportive.

And, you know, if there's ways for us to weather the storm and get out on the other side, what I'm really hopeful for is that we have sort of a renewed sense of community and why companies that have a mission really matter. When you think about success that you've had with this brand, do you attribute that to skill, to hard work or more to luck or a combination? What do you think? You know, I think it has to be both. You know, I would say that it absolutely has been hard work. It's been a lot of hustle. You know, no one's ever going to outwork me. And I live for swell. And this is really been my life's work these last 10 years. But I have to say luck has played, you know, such an incredible role in our success. I was lucky to be born to parents who are entrepreneurs, you know, who taught me the power of hard work and positive thinking and doing the right thing. I was born in a country and a society that, values education for girls. And I went to great schools and I have a network of friends who

supported me on this journey. And the power of timing was so lucky. You know, I started swell because I had a personal mission to eliminate single-use plastic bottles. But at the same time that I started the company, there were so many people around the world waking up to the issue of climate change and global warming and how they potentially had the need to take personal action. And so yes, it's been a lot of work, but all of the stars aligned in a really lucky way for that work to have turned into something. That's Sarah Kaus, founder of Swell. Swell recently became an official B-Corp, which means the company is now legally required to consider the impact of all its decisions on its customers, workers, the community, and the environment. And by the way, remember the original name Sarah had for Swell?

Can't Live Without it? Well, the domain name, can't live without it.com, is still presumably owned by Sarah, but should you be interested, you can still register, can't live without it.shop, can't live without it.biz, can't live without it, dot life, and many other variations. Hey, thanks so much for listening to the show this week. You can subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. You can also write to us at hibt at npr.org. And if you want to send a tweet, it's at how I built this, or at Guy, guy. Roz. Our show is produced this week by Jacey Howard with music composed by Ramtinah Rale. Thanks also to Juliet Carney, Candice Lim, Neva Grant, and Jeff Rogers. Our intern is Rainy Toll. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This. This is NPR.

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