Right About Now - Legendary Business Advice - $100 Million E-Commerce Brand Builder with Josh Snow

Episode Date: June 13, 2023

Welcome to another episode of the Radcast, where we are giving you the best business and investing advice, from the best. In today’s rad episode, Ryan interviews Josh Snow - serial entrepreneur, investor, and founder of Snow Teeth Whitening.Join us for an incredible episode where Josh Snow shares his motivational success story! You won't want to miss out on this insightful conversation, so tune in now and learn how to apply these strategies to your own business.Key Notes From The Show: Josh Snow discusses why he decided to join one of the most intense and competitive markets, oral care. (00:40) Ryan and Josh discuss what makes Snow Teeth Whitening products different from its competitors. From better ingredients, packaging and overall whitening, Snow products are increasingly innovative in a saturated market. (5:43) Josh recalls the early days of building Snow including developing the product through intensive analysis and real conversations with dental care professionals. The pair also discuss what actions got Snow to the #1 most known teeth whitening product in the market. (17:25) The duo talks through Josh’s involvement in retail media including working with name brands like Macy’s, Best Buy, and Neiman Marcus, and driving brand awareness through affiliate marketing. They also touch on how Josh’s decision to lean into expanding on Amazon was one of the biggest game changers for Snow.  (24:29) Josh talks about his time on Going Public, a television show that allows viewers to invest in real time on generating businesses, which can then “go public” with Nasdaq. (33:33) The pair discuss their own personal finance journeys, including investing in affordable housing access, commercial real estate, subscriptions, and e-commerce businesses. (39:06) Ryan and Josh share their thoughts on branding and operational excellence and how each can optimize business performance in their own way. Josh references how Snow has used this formula to shape his brand’s ethos and transparency. (48:49) This episode is packed with information, wisdom, and passion and we know you will get a ton of value from this.To keep up with Josh Snow, follow him on Instagram @joshsnow.You can also watch Going Public on ​​https://goingpublic.com.  Subscribe to our YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/c/RadicalHomeofTheRadcastIf you enjoyed this episode of The Radcast, Like, Share, and leave us a review! If you enjoyed this episode and want to learn more, join Ryan’s newsletter https://ryanalford.com/newsletter/ to get Ferrari level advice daily for FREE.  Learn how to build a 7 figure business from your personal brand by signing up for a FREE introduction to personal branding https://ryanalford.com/personalbranding.  Learn more by visiting our website at www.ryanisright.comSubscribe to our YouTube channel  www.youtube.com/@RightAboutNowwithRyanAlford. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

You're listening to the Radcast, a top 25 worldwide business podcast. If it's radical, we cover it. Here's your host, Ryan Alford. Hey guys, what's up? Welcome to the latest edition of the Radcast. I'm Ryan Alford, your host. We say if it's radical, we cover it. This is one of the most radical people I know.

And one of them I just met in the last year. And I was like, holy shit. This guy's got a lot going on. He is the founder, of Snow. He's a serial entrepreneur investor and a badass e-commerce. I just call it good all-around dude. What's up, Josh? Hey, what's going on, Ryan? Thanks for having me on, man. Hey, man. My pleasure. Josh Snow. You know you live in the brand when you take on the full name. That's right. That's just embracing it. 100 million. Can we 100 million CBG oral care?

Are you kidding me? Dude, people don't even know. Like, how few. That's in the point zero zero zero one It's been a journey, man. It's been a journey. We're going into our seventh year and probably ninth year of working on snow. It's definitely that kind of 10-year overnight success story that a lot of people joke about. It is without, but I owe so much to snow as well. That's why my last name. And it's even though I've taken zero dollars off the table financially from the business to date, it's given me so much in terms of being able to share that business. on an open playing field so that millions of people have access to watch me build this David and Goliath story together.

And I did that because I always wanted that. I wish that entrepreneurs that I followed and followed today or some that have passed, then I go, wow, what if Instagram and TikTok and YouTube vlogging was the thing 35 years ago, how much documentation will we have on entrepreneurs that are building brands when things are really tough. So they're jumping on and saying, hey, guys, this isn't a good week. Sales are really tanked and it's really affecting me. Imagine if there were those logs. You have the biographies and the autobiographies. So that's where I said, wow, there's really got to be more of that. And that's one of the reasons why, you know, I chose to join as an investor and be a part of the show

of going public at goingpublic.com. And we were going into our season two now with Wall Street Journal. And that was that same similarity and kind of same interest. But snow has been a life changer for me. And it completely gave me a whole new lease on life in my entrepreneurial journey because I needed something that all that where I felt that most of the odds were stacked against me in terms of us acquiring market share, that it would be extremely difficult. And that's really was the focus, really to invest, reinvest every single dollar until we have enough market share.

we are serving our customers in the best way possible, and as many millions of them as possible. And that's our impact meter. So until we are in at least 10 million homes or 20 million homes, that's our focus. But we've already changed the lives of millions of smiles and millions of whiting treatments. And we have tens of thousands of before and after photos and reviews. So it's been extraordinary. It's been a phenomenal journey, but certainly at one of those 10-year overnight success stories. Just 10.

Everybody thinks it happens truly overnight. They have no fucking clue. And I don't even mean that in a bad way. They just don't understand the whiplash and the journey and all that. I know we'll talk a little bit about that. But let me ask you this question. I want to go back further. But before we go back further, why oral care?

Like, that's so hard to get into, as you mentioned, CPG is terribly difficult, competitive. But why oral care? A lot of people have teeth. So it starts there, right? So there's 7.8 billion people on Earth today. So it's a market that grows with population growth. Colgate was started about 150 years ago.

The electric toothbrush was invented or introduced in 1987. The manual toothbrush was invented and introduced in 1949. So when we think about something that man, woman, and child do two times a day brushing their teeth, if you're mouthwashing, flossing, if you're using aligners, all sorts of stuff. It's super important. And when you have a toothache or you have tooth problems, nothing else matters. Your back pain almost doesn't matter anymore compared to your tooth pain. Everyone becomes a big baby at the dentist.

There's this whole dynamic around oral care. It's the number one most sold retail product on shelf in North America. Number two is deodorant. Number six is soap. And so it's a volume business because everybody uses toothpaste. But it's not necessarily. something where like toothpaste is overpriced. There's always been an option for a dollar or two dollar toothpaste that people could access. It was really about the ingredients, the packaging, the education,

the actual usage of the product, which were known for whitening and we're famous for our whitening solutions and formulas. So can we sell them what they want, give them what they need, which in the beginning of toothpaste started as anti-cavity. I want to clean my teeth. I don't want to get cavities. then it moved to, then it moved to whitening, and then it moved to sensitivity from the overuse. A lot of times of whitening, the diet or the modern diets, a lot of things. Staining habits are more accessible than ever before. Everything's got a color in it or dye in it, wine, coffee, et cetera. And then ultimately, I was getting my jaw surgery.

So I was voluntary. I had a misaligned jaw that was causing a lot of jaw pain. So I was going through jaw surgery and could I help myself? I'm an entrepreneur, so I'm researching nine years ago, the oral care market, the size of the market, where is it going? And at a deeper level, I started at 13 years old. So I had become jaded around this pursuit of happiness that I had sold a couple companies and didn't find this utopian or euphoric feeling of just floating that I have no worries in the world. I wanted more. And that made me very frustrated because it wasn't about.

the money. And I thought that maybe it was. Like I think it would have been more simple if it was just about the money. So once I realized that it was more than that, I needed something that would keep me focused and drive the most competitive version of myself out of me. And to be able to prove to my imposter syndrome inside of myself that I could create something from the ground up from scratch, we formulate all our own products, we design all of our own products, we sell all of our own products or being able to do that end to end, which is probably the hardest job or one of the hardest jobs in entrepreneurship is to do end to end creation and fulfillment and distribution and all of that.

I needed that level of complexity in order for me. There's some people that play Super Mario and if you beat all the levels, sometimes it's fun. People go back and play on extreme level or they'll play blindfolded or they'll try to get all the big coins or try to do it without losing one single life. There's an intensity. I don't like to skydive. I don't like to do crazy things anymore in terms of physical.

Like I'm not going to sky dive or jump nose dive off a cliff into a pole or something. So for me, I seek that intensity in my own sport, which is business. And I liken that in a very admirable way to some of the grades in athletics in terms of the mindset, at least, of what's required there. And so it's a race, but it's more importantly a marathon. thought. And so the older I've become and more experienced I've become, because you don't know what you don't know, I've realized that it's important for me to have a brand or something I'm doing that I can speak from the mountaintops about. And because I've taken zero dollars off the table, I can truly speak authentically to the mission and purpose of how wide we want to reach and

of our impact to be with snow. Yeah. So you just, a lot to unpack right there. But let me start by saying, I think always, I think a lot of people listen to our show and a lot of people in general always want to mimic success or build the playbook for success.

But I'm hearing that, and I'm hearing you like a world-class athlete. You're that for business. You're proving that in business. You've proved that with snow. You've proved that with other ventures. But nature or nurture, like for Josh Snow,

Was it that bread in you? Was that born in you? Or did you unpack that yourself from learning and observing? I'm always curious. I think people are fascinated by that. I think that my changes like every year I feel like adapts a little bit. My response adapts a little bit. I think that there are certain exceptional both nature and nurture.

I do think that it requires both. And I do think that it heavily skews, especially the older you get, actually across the board on nurturing, I would say it's 80-20. But in order to be the LeBron, Michael Jordan, Kobe, J.Z, whatever, like to be that level in your industry, I do believe Elon, I do believe that it requires an inordinate amount of either EQ or or IQ or both. And I think that a lot of that is genetic. It could even work. It could even be through an autistic scale derivative that causes that hyperintelligence that takes it that step.

Why? Because I've competed with some of those people. And when I compete with those people, I'm like, they're built different. And it's just like when I played football and people started hitting me harder. And I was like, I got to get out of this. They're going to literally, I'm going to die. Because there are certain people that have the nature built in. that if well nurtured and ego doesn't get the way, addiction, all the things that usually

harm the modern man and woman, if that doesn't get them, then they have the chance to be the ultimate athlete in whatever business they choose, whatever skill they choose, entrepreneurship. So what I would say is that naturally, I perhaps had a level intellectual curiosity. I was from a baby or from a young age wanting to mix my mom's and sisters' hair products together to make my own products to give them to them and try it out. So about four years old, I was doing that. So there's some nature of curiosity there. But then the nurturing of growing up in an environment where resources weren't particularly in abundance,

that means that you have to become resourceful. So when there's not a lot of resources, you have to become resourceful. So I think the nurturing of becoming a resourceful, intellectually curious person allows me to ideate, but then become resourceful to convince others to join me on a journey to bring that to life or have the grits, which is another nature nurture scenario. And why I say there's requires both is that there's environmental changes. You could be born in a billionaire's family and you're a billionaire, but let's say that's your dad's money, that's your family's money. And you get nothing. And your trust fund doesn't happen until 45 if you do everything right. So the same type of environment and challenges and the adversities that someone might face in that scenario might actually mirror someone that makes, has zero dollars in their family and is challenged with that same survival threat inside of them to create their own identity, create their own purpose, create their own path, financial dependence, etc.

whatever we lack or have insecurity of is generally what we project the most of or we seek the most of. So I think that there's a nature of nurture. I think it's more important to nurture. We have a nonprofit that I've been fortunate to be a part of and be a trustee of now for years at multiple universities, but here in Arizona State University, we take dozens of underserved high school juniors a week-long program. They get to go to the university, stay in a dorm for the first time, learn. about college, learn about financial aid, learn about entrepreneurship, business. They get to come up with a pitch. And so a lot of those kids weren't necessarily born entrepreneurs,

but you can see the grit that they've attained and the ability to withstand pain. The pain tolerance is higher in kids that perhaps face adversity. And some of that's already wired nature-wise. Not for me. So for me, I think nature-wise, my environment is what drives the nature side. So every 10 years, five years, your environment could change. You go through a bloody divorce and you lose everything, your business partner screws you over for five years. That environment could bring out naturally highlight something to overcompensate. So you might become a extraordinary natural entrepreneur as a result of that environment. But if you don't nurture it the right way, then you have a lot of people with, for example, some of the smartest people in the world,

highest IQs in the world, they don't make more than a million dollars a year. And you go, why would the smartest person in the world, like, shouldn't they make billion a year? And you go, what's missing? And so that's where I would say the nurture is, if not more important, at least equally important, to nature. So anyone listening, everyone's got the ability to create inside of them. Everybody's got the ability to inspire.

Everybody's got the ability to teach. Everybody's got the ability to generate enough income for themselves. and their family. Everyone's got that ability naturally. Some you may be born in a country like America that is more forward on entrepreneurship and capitalism. So add that as a big bonus star. So there's some natural stuff there, but nurture is where it's at. And the great news about that is that nature gone unnurtured is wasted talent. You take a little bit of nature and you nurture, the grass is greener where you water it. So you fertilize that patch and it becomes a whole feel. and you can grow whatever you want.

And so I think it's more important to nurture what you have than to wish you had something you don't because that's something I spent a couple of years and two. I wish I wasn't this. I wish I was older. I wish I could do this. And so you got to take what you got nature-wise, sharpen that puppy up and go out into the fields and carve your own way. And then you will find more nature throughout that nurturing and go, I didn't know I was so

good at sales. It's because and you find those nature. is as you nurture. I can tell you this, Josh. I've asked that question. We've had 375 episodes. That's one of my favorite questions because people are so curious about it.

Whether it's EQ or IQ, that is easily the best response I've ever gotten in the thoughtfulness with which it was answered. So I appreciate that. And I think our audience will as well a lot there. Josh, let's talk about how we built snow. And a lot of grit. I love the word grit.

I knew I liked you before, but now I know I like you because you used two of my favorite words, resourcefulness and grit. And those are in. Yeah, buddy. Those are grits everything, man. That's a, it is, it's a hard act for you to find these days. I don't know why. I think a lot of our conveniences reduce grit that we take advantage of.

And we take for granted a lot of things. And it reduces that grit in you. but I love it because it's like one of the most biggest determinators of success, I think, today. But let's talk about snow. We're going against the big bad boys, crest white strips, I'm sure, you know, the big daddies. But here comes snow, $100 million plus. Like, how do we get there, brother? The first $100 million in sales that we generated were entirely bootstrapped.

So the first trance of our lifetime sales came from. came from a big chunk of it was Facebook advertising. So 20, 2017, 2018, even 2019. When it was working. When it worked. Yeah. And even before then, right? If Snowy started even earlier, there were Moise Ali from Native.

He talks about generating a $1.50 subscription signups for $12 a month the order and just like infinite demand. And he sold that business for $100, like cash and two years from started. and very successful. It's still around everywhere. In the beginning, it was I need to create a product that is different enough that would capture the attention to create a Shopify, show Shopify and you Shopify was going to be the platform we're going to build on. I started developing the product by talking to my dentist, my epidonist, my oral surgeon. What do you sell in office? What products? I went and bought as many products as I could. I analyzed all of the Amazon reviews, negative reviews, focusing on that area

so that you can find some pockets. Then I saw that sensitivity is important. The whitening formula had some opportunity to be improved upon. The delivery method of being able to plug it into their phone, which we invented that ability to power it by the phone because the very first version of Snow was $95, and it was a battery-powered light. It did not like it very much,

but we needed some delivery system for the serum to be able to test it out on the customers. So I started running ads, and it was pretty quickly a success. I set up the first version of the website, and I had an agency come in and publish it. So we got it up on Shopify very quickly. And then that was after about six to nine months of talking to my dentist, reaching out to suppliers, searching who makes toothpaste, who makes this, who makes gel, and then getting samples, and then tweaking those formulas.

and then getting some testing. So that took six to nine months, at least, going back and forth, maybe $50,000 to $100,000 to buy the first order of the system that I had created for Snow 1.0, I guess. That was $95. So we started running ads on there, gave free shipping, and the focus was professional level whitening at home without the sensitivity of other systems, really designing around the sensitive tooth customer, but also the one who wants to have. maxed out whitening. So it's like, you want to eat it to. You want to preserve your enamel,

but you also have a wedding next week. And it's like, boom, boom. So we just kept tweaking that formula percentages, whitening agents, what can we do to help us sensitivity? And so continue to tweak that. Then it became a device business as well with our LID technology, which we now have multiple versions of. We have a wireless version, colors, lilac, special edition. We have a black one. at Best Buy, just all kinds of colors and types. And so at the very beginning, it was one product, which was really a couple products in one. And that's what we now have sold nearly two million times of that system, which is evolved now to wireless, our current wired system today, which is the number one made in America teeth whitening system in the world.

And so that's still our most known product was that original teeth whitening kit all in one at home. home, we invented the verbiage, teeth whiting wands, the teeth fighting system, just a lot of these verbiages that were a little more seen in professional, but that people could buy free shipping, two days, three days, it's in your hands. So that was the very start. And the goal was if that works out, then if you walk down the oral care aisle, couldn't snow have a version of everything in there, flossers, toothpaste, mouthwash, a toothbrush, a water flosser, a liner, all kinds of these products, mints, gums, breath sprays, all those products couldn't still have a version of that if this is successful. And now today our product portfolio represents an oral care and personal care portfolio of 30 plus individual skews, multiple award winnings, award winners, with multiple of them winning multiple awards across the board.

We have the best, best whitening strips, best toothbrush, all of these awards that are decorated on the site. And so now that has expanded, but that's about seven years later. In the very beginning, it was Facebook ads, $95 system that we put together or that I put together with help. And then push that out once that's sold, upgraded every single time that we reordered. The goal was how do we upgrade the formula, take the feedback. I was calling customers myself. And now I had built and sold many companies beforehand. I was independently wealthy.

I could have poured a lot more money into the business, but I was still ruminating on, is this something that has legs? Is this something that I think it is? Am I crazy? And once I started to see that, then it became hiring more products, different versions of the products,

more channels to acquire customers. Now we're in CVS, Walgreens, Best Buy, Neiman Marcus, Sacks, Macy's. So now we're in about a dozen premier top retail partners today. But in the very beginning, it's Facebook ads, Shopify, one system, one person or two to help on customer support and shipping it out. And I shipped it from my spare bedroom of the house because the inventory, I didn't want to get an office yet. I wasn't sure. I was investing at the time. I had just sold a couple of companies. So I said, I want to see if this could be my next thing.

And sure enough, it certainly did. As you expanded past Facebook and started to get the broader, Facebook has people I don't think realize how many billion people are on Facebook and how broad awareness is. But what was the percentage of like U.S. first non-U.S.? And was we talking pretty much 95, not majorly U.S.-based? And what were the channels that kind of, what were the awareness channels that they kind of flowed after Facebook other than just distribution itself? Yeah. So it was Google, YouTube, sold the whole Google suite, the whole meta suite, Amazon. advertising that whole suite.

Actually, retail media networks, also Spotify, audio, right? So retail media is, if we're in Best Buy, we want to buy Web banner ads, and we want to be the sponsored on Best Buy for anything teeth related. And so we're spending inside of the trade marketing to push those things, but they drive awareness, top of funnels while on those platforms. And then we're doing everything from YouTube. We're doing a relaunch of TikTok. We've been hiring.

We're still are hiring like crazy. for TikTok on the snow side. So TikTok is top of funnel. We're really excited about relaunching that. Instagram, Facebook are still very heavy on the front end. We do a lot of affiliate marketing as well. I actually acquired the affiliate marketing.com domain name about a year ago to build more reach in that space because it's a big portion across all of our brand,

all the brands in my portfolio and all the brands that I've invested in affiliate marketing is a very profitable channel across the board. So affiliate marketing is another area because a lot of these bloggers, bloggers, Amazon editorial affiliates, they're putting us in front of an audience for the very first time, listicles, things like that. About maybe 15% of our sales online come from our online affiliates, and that's 100% non-Facebook and Instagram because we don't allow it in the program since we run that internally. So it diversifies. It forces the diversification of that traffic. So that's the stack from the top level. And that, of course, as you mentioned through distribution,

funnels to marketplace first right marketplace then to retail actual locations then we also sell to professional dermatology dentists local clinic kind of style stuff so that whittles all the way down then it repeats from the top what's the but let's say before you went into retail what was your mix like because everybody hears amazon they get scared like margins and all that stuff how did you tackle You obviously started D to C, which is the smartest place, best margins, all that. What was your balance with taking on Amazon and what's your perspective there with just overall mix and things? A lot of people get scared of that. But it's such a behemoth.

It's hard to ignore. I was the same way, man. I, like 10 years ago, told two of my best friends on Tufton Needle, the mattress company, they have the number one most loved and most popular on Amazon mattress. And they had a very successful exit and huge success. They bootstrapped it. But they leaned into Amazon. And back then, I was anti-Amazon.

You don't own the data. You got to pay them 15, 20%. Everyone gets refunds. You've got to lean into Amazon over 50% of retail searches online start on Amazon. And they end there because people go straight there to search for shoes, white sneakers. Like, they're going directly to search. They're buying there. The conversion rates all.

always going to be higher than your website. It is what it is. They've invested tens of billions of dollars into infrastructure because Jeff's a genius. And they know that if they can outsmart logistics and get the customers hooked on two-hour delivery, that that's going to put a lot of pressure on merchants. But I know that Amazon's a public company. And because they're a public company in the U.S., there are antitrust laws, which means that Amazon cannot get more than 51% of its revenue or 50% of its revenue from its own products. So all the private label they do, all the kind of things that they're doing, they cannot. I think it's like 47%, 46.

You can Google it. It's like somewhere on 47. They can't scale up much higher. They just keep it going. They got to keep that 51% marketplace revenue, which allows people like us to take advantage of what Amazon built. If it weren't for antitrust, they kick us all off. So that'd be my guess, right?

If you on Amazon, why would you know. They just make all the products. They copy everybody and they'd be in a lot of patent trademark lawsuits, but they'd manage those with all the lawyers, but they'd get it done. And I think it's for look at it. It goes last year was our biggest year on Amazon. Every year is everybody's here on Amazon. But last year was a significantly good year for Amazon.

So we go, wow, we need to really hire in that direction. We need to really double down our partnerships that direction. We need to really tweak our affiliate marketing efforts, net direction. So we went through it and said we want to double down on Amazon and utilize our strengths, utilize our thousands of reviews, utilize our millions on our email and SMS list, utilize our assets and our retail placements that are very unique to us in our industry to be able to show off on Amazon and build that business. So we have a goal for Amazon on its own to be a nine-figure business for us in the next three years from an Amazon, very focused

scale plan, hiring plan, partnership plan that allows us to take advantage of the Amazon platform and marketplaces, Walmart.com, et cetera, because what happens in a recession, and this is fact-proof, and I read this, they said during COVID, people went back to what they felt most comfortable and safe and secure with. So they went back to Walmart. Walmart. They went back to Target. They stopped venturing out so much onto all these D-D-C websites and all these unknown things, all these unknown subscriptions. Recession hits or money gets tight inflation. People are more likely to just, I'm just going to go to Target and get everything. I'm going to go to Walmart and get everything. I'm going to go to this website. Amazon, let me just, it's convenient. It's cheaper. I'm just going to do

Amazon. So you got to now play in that direction. Five, ten years ago, you could, get away without having to lead into it, although I wish I could go back five and 10 years. And I would have built an army of team members and partners on our Amazon channel. And we would have been totally dominating that channel. So I love it. You do get access to email your customers now. They've got some new things. There's all kinds of stuff, but it's the only platform that's driven by sales.

So you can become the number one in your category, even above the big companies by sales volume. So you can try, if you direct your sales, if Snow directed all of our sales to Amazon today, which is maybe 15 to 20% of our U.S. digital revenues. Let's say we put all of our U.S. digital revenue into Amazon, we would be the number one in every single category above all of the incumbent brands just because of velocity. But we would give up 15% at least margin based off versus our own. You give up some data. But I got to tell you, there are days where I go, That's not the worst idea. There's a better way to go about it.

Build up the Amazon presence and build up the traffic and build up the list. So, in a long story short, anyone listening, I would like triple down and look up a company called Hero Cosmetics. Look up a company called Zesty Paws by one of my good friends. And they're a half a billion dollar pet supplement brand, 100% of their sales pretty much for from Amazon. Look up Hero Cosmetics. They have a miracle patch for acne.

And 20 bucks, they sold for $630 million, I think, the beginning of this year in January, 40 million in profit just through Amazon. It was an Amazon driven business. So these Amazon businesses are getting very strong multiples. They're raising money. They're TikTok friendly. So I would say lean into Amazon harder than you ever have and really figure out how to dominate that platform in your category because it's the only place you can see sales as well.

You can literally see an estimate of what everyone's selling. You can go look at snow stuff and make, oh, they're selling an estimate of this. much from this skew. It's a great platform to build on. There you have it. Everyone talks about the devil. But sometimes you got to dance with the devil because it's just necessary. I do want to talk with Josh Snow, CEO of Snow, whiteners, toothbrush, the best in the business, tackling CPG. I do want to talk about going public. It's found it fascinating. I know you're always on the cutting edge of these things related to entrepreneurship and investing and all that.

Talk to me in the audience a bit about going public, what it isn't and where it's going. Going public, the founders, Darren and Todd, are two of my closest friends. And I'm very grateful for them to invite me first to be a, I was going to be a participant on season one through snow. The timing wasn't right for snow. And I didn't want to take that spot from somebody else. And so I said, hey, guys, I can't do it. And I just can't, my conscience, do it.

I did that with Shark Tank two times a wrong. Probably a mistake long term, because PR and their stuff's amazing. But I just, I'm such a Shark Tank fan. And I was like, hey, Snow's already profitable. I don't want to go on there and ask for millions of dollars for one percent of the company or something. I don't want to do that. Same thing happened with going public. And these guys, Darren and Todd, we met up.

We had lunch. And right away, we hit it off. like just long-loss brothers, man. And they told me about the concept of the show. And I had done a TV show prior with the same production company, actually, that they were working with. And so they told me the concept, which is we want to take essentially like American Idol where you can text in to vote. We want to bring that to a Shark Tank-esque style approach where we're documenting multiple businesses that are already in business, generating revenues. and they're raising capital.

And the goal is that as many as all of them can go public with the partnership we have with NASDAQ on the show on the last episode. And what's revolutionary about it and what I applaud both Darren and Todd extremely highly on is their work directly with the SEC on compliance to bring this type of modernism to investing, which allows anyone watching, which anyone can watch from anywhere. in the country, you can stream it through a VPN, I'm sure, outside the country on entrepreneur.com and season two on WSJ Wall Street Journal.com or going public.com. And so you can watch it. You can swipe up or whatever. You can scan a QR code and you can

invest, 500 bucks, thousand bucks, a few thousand bucks. And now episode two, you're already a shareholder in that business. So you get to watch and the families, hey, we want to teach that business and let's see if they go public and let's see what they're up to. And now it's reality meets investing and it's engaging and it's telling the story of these American businesses and what's going on. And then it opens it up for people. Like how many Shark Tank episodes have I listened to where I'm like, gosh, I'll buy the product because I want to support it and I want the freaking product. But I would love to invest. I would throw in five grand to that business or something. They were politicized that. And then I came on as an investor and now we're working on season two.

So that's a TV show. It's free. It's accessible. We're looking to expand the accessibility and the viewership of that with our partnership with Wall Street Journal. And the idea is to continue to challenge the status quo on a democratizing access to higher-grade investment opportunities for the everyday American versus just a savings account where you make no money on it or just being able to open that up. And my favorite is the education piece. And there's got to be someone out there listening. There's some other, there's some kids out there listening. And that's what really gets me going about the show is we get to educate about this, these high-level concepts, but they're now simple.

And you can swipe up and play with us along the way. And that's what we're looking to bring across the board. And so it's been a revolutionary concept. It's been a very successful season one. And now we're renewed for season two with an incredible partner with Wall Street Journal. So excited for all that. Stay tuned. but we're also always accepting and looking for entries into the show.

And so anyone listening that's got a growing, fast-growing, great business, great industry, you're proud of it. Go to the Going Public Instagram page or go to goingpublic.com and you can actually apply. And that's actually what I did. I applied myself as Snow. They highlighted me. We then ended up chatting. And now I'm an investor and I'm on the show and all that stuff.

So this season two will be taking several companies through that same process. And we'll continue to do that for as long as we can continue to grow the reach and access because there's just not enough business television available. Where can people watch the show? Public.com is the best. Yeah, it has season one on there. It's ad free. It's just super easy. But it's also streamed on entrepreneur.com, YouTube, as well as the upcoming season on Wall Street Journal.

Perfect. Go to goingpublic.com. So as we wind down here, Josh, talk to me about, you know, what you're looking for in investments. And I know you're doing investing and, you know, you always got your eyes and ears open. What's catching your attention? Is there big plays going on? What are you seeing the CPG? I know you got your hands in a lot of things, but what's getting you excited these days? It's a great question. I have been so focused on my own personal finance journey. since I was 17 and I've hired so many financial advisors and money managers and I've met some great ones. I've met some not so great ones. And it's just been a freaking journey. And what I've found the last few years, I've been fortunate to exit some businesses and take that cash to invest in kind of some long-term stuff, short-term stuff, mid-term stuff. And what I've been really focused on is democratizing my own access with our affordable housing investments where we're rehabilitating the communities to housing and opening access for what is a very big issue in

America with access to affordable housing, raising funds from investors and strangers, honestly, accredited investors that are strangers up front that are interested in investing in affordable living. So from an investment side of things, I've been looking at real estate, obviously is always interesting commercial real estate over the next year or so. They said about 40% of those loans are on variable so that there's going to be a huge opportunity there. So I'm looking at raising a fund potentially in that direction on the commercial real estate side for distressed opportunities and perhaps for some repurposing a building. So you've got an office building, a skyrise, whereas all zones for office, you turn that

into a condo building or apartment building or some condo residences or something that's a lot more useful for that area. Or if it's in the right area, you take an office park or office building and you expand that out to perhaps even affordable housing units in that area to open accessibility. So there's a lot of opportunity there. That's outside of brands and e-commerce. Inside of brands and e-commerce, I've been fortunate to invest in a handful of subscription-focused e-commerce businesses, personal care is always something I'm interested in.

Everybody's got a toilet paper, toothpaste, things like that, are all. always interesting. We've been actually interested in investing, and we have been acquiring. We acquired two companies last year through snow in the oral care and similar space, so at home, beauty, oral care. So been investing in that space through the business. And then also on the working capital side of things. So businesses need access to cash. Banks have tied up. I've used working capital millions of dollars of working capital loans to fund my businesses throughout the last 15 plus years to move to that next trunch. I need 250 grand for the next six months.

It's getting harder and harder for business owners, even great businesses to get access to this, even more so for taboo niches like cannabis and CBD and all those areas. I've been really focused on the lending side as an investor. And so we have an upcoming financial product for credit investors where you can simply Apple pay your investment in. and now you can start producing the returns that we're producing through the working capital funding. So we're funding those loans.

You take, I'd say, 100,000 of my dollars, you put 1,000 in 100 different loans. So now if one of them ends up not doing well, you still have insurance on the others. So that's another area that I'm particularly, should the debt markets, lending, working capital, affordable housing, always interested in multifamily housing as well. Self, I'm invested in aggregator fund, one that's acquiring agencies. It's called agency venture aggregator. They're buying profitable agencies, rolling them up, building shared services, building up their teams and their profits,

and then selling them to the larger guys and so I'm an investor there. So I've got probably 25 investments across the board, but I would say they skew it toward offline or they skewed toward online infrastructure or subscription. So it's SaaS tools. I'm an investor and a shareholder in try now.io, which is a try now buy later software for Shopify emergence. They raised, I think, $20 million plus at this point in venture capital.

And so there are software provided for e-commerce, which is, you know, what I have a lot of experience in. In terms of investing in the brands that are doing, let's say, sub a million a year in profit, those are a little bit more attuned to get access. to our powerhouse brands content on Instagram. 99% of it's for free on YouTube to our Powerhouse Brands YouTube channel. And then most of my podcast, I think 100% of them are completely free. So that's where we try to, and I try to educate for the million and under from that side of

things. Instead of investing cash into those businesses, I can no longer necessarily do those deals as much. Instead, I either refer those to our working capital partners so they can get access to working capital or to go and check out our mastermind, go check out the free content. Love it, man. Get your hands. Get your hands and everything. You did say one buzzword that call my interest because I'm a lead investor in

company of mutual contact, Chris Hansen and vacay. Yeah. So going down that whole CBD, cannabis route. That whole world's about that's already open, about to go explode. I like the infrastructure layer. So cannabis packaging, retesting. the testing side of things, right? So testing, labs, packaging, payment processing, lamp, the lights, LED, lamp providers, soil. These companies have trouble getting access to banks,

traditional bank loans, traditional working capital, factoring. A lot of people don't want to work with them because of the nature of the business. But the way we look at it is, one, it's opening it up to your point. It's going to continue to open up. And so we want to help the businesses that are doing it. We want to get them access to working capital, bank accounts, actual institutional investors, as it opens up more and becomes less taboo. But in the meantime, there are a lot of people that want to invest in this rise of CBD, weeds, psilocybin, even from a, even if you're not a consumer, the company that I've invested in the testing side, they are not consumers.

They will never use their, get high on their own supply. And that was a big onus of investing with them. But anyway, they're the cleanest people in the industry that I found. And so I gave them as much cash as I humanly could because I believe in that infrastructure layer. Same thing with CBD. There's farming. There's the dispensaries. There's a lot of layers to that supply chain.

And so we try to look at, I try to look at up front a market like CBD or market like cannabis that's traditionally or stereotypically taboo, which means they don't have access to the traditional financial products. So it's a lot harder to scale. It's a lot harder to hire. It's a lot harder to do those things. So we look at investing in recruiting. So cannabis and CBD recruiting. We look at the ancillary services that help that business actually grow payroll, things that traditionally are hard for them to get.

We invest in the companies giving them access to that. And then we invest in the lending for the actual cash to those companies. It's one of those things that it is, it makes things more difficult. You already can't advertise. So that makes it difficult. So then you can't really even advertise. Sorry, you can't even, you can't market anywhere. And then it's difficult to payment process.

It's difficult to get the bank account. It's difficult to get all these things. So we're investing in that infrastructure through that side of things. And that's more of a family office endeavor, kind of a mini family office endeavor of mine. I've got partners in that. But that takes five minutes a week of work because I'm not running the business. That's, I'm an investor. But I wanted to, I saw what was going on and I wanted to have a piece in the pie.

and I also wanted to bring help to the industry for the business owners that are actually creating some pretty cool stuff in that space that just don't have access to funding. They don't have access to typical resources. I love it, man. Let's talk more about that. I don't know that we need the funding, but the infrastructure and other things could be some fast-saying discussions we could have. I do. As we last question, Josh, we've talked about a lot of things. Your hands are a lot of things.

And it probably relates to the most to snow directly. it's in your damn name now. I'll go straight at it. How much do you owe to the brand versus operational excellence? We talked about all this functional stuff. We talked, we got really heavily because, you know, I'm an old school ad guy. Can you hear me now? Yeah, like all this and the branding, all that.

But obviously operational excellence is imported and where it runs and all those things. But where does the brand and the essence of it, how much do you owe to that versus? versus the operational side? I think, yeah, obviously you can't one without the other. Yeah. I would say that the brand is no, we've invested over $100 million in advertising the brand now and get in front of our customers who are number one investors. And we have an industry low return refund rate, which means our products work.

And that's what we drive off of. And so I would say that the brand has only become stronger over seven years. So year one, you have one customer support reps. So then if you're overloaded, people got to wait two days to get a response. And now they can get it instant with live chat. And so I would say the brand through operational efficiency, the brand was built in a lot of ways. So the fact that we have a 1-800 number that you can call where a lot of other DTC companies are pushing you to a forum or email them, we're saying, let's talk on the phone and we're calling our customers. That became a part of our brand ethos of being transparent with our customer.

customer because they are our number one investor and making sure that we're building products that they actually want to have in their household and use. So I think it worked together to sharpen what is now the brand of snow, which is a platform that I'm very grateful for. And I would say that the operational efficiency, that is without that, the brand would not be where it's at today by any means. The brand would be positioned in a great way. The timing was right when it was launched.

There's a lot of things that like luck and timing. So brand played a lot in that. But without the operational efficiency, even today, as we're in a dozen premier retailers, every single one of those accounts requires an operational efficiency and productivity in order for it to make sense to the business. And businesses die for two reasons. One, the number of reason, and all leads back to this, is liquidity. The biggest brands in the world, the most successful is profitable.

Once you run out of liquidity, you're gone. And then relevance. A lot of businesses lose liquidity, their liquidity basis, chasing relevance. That's usually what happens. So blockbuster chasing it, trying to buy Netflix too late or trying to figure it out. So you end up dying a little faster sometimes chasing relevance if you can't catch it. A lot of really good brands can catch it a few times. But most brands are dead within 100 years, maybe 150.

So on the stock market, most of those brands have not been around. more than 100 years, et cetera. So when you look at it that way, you go, it's operational efficiency. So it's brand, market, product, founder, fit. And there's that alignment that has to be chosen and hammered in for, in this case, seven plus years that you have to hammer in that loop with potentially zero dollars to account for that. That becomes an essence of that operational efficiency, which allows you to create a brand

of excellence. And that's really what we're looking to create as a powerhouse brand, the brand of excellence. And in order to do that, we must have operational efficiency. So I think that I'd rather take operational efficiency because I can build a brand around what we're most efficient with than take a brand and try to sell something that we can't fulfill operationally. You did make it pretty damn sexy, though, to start. Let's be honest. You made it snow. Everybody wanted their teeth whitening.

but the brand sizzled from the get-go. There's one I want snow, man. I say they laughed at us. It's not like a hair. I would have laughed at you. It was brilliant. I thought that myself even in the beginning to think, do people care enough about their oral care that they're going to spend?

They spend it in the dental chair. They spend it on their makeup. They spend it on their hair care like everything else. So I'm like, they spend a couple more bucks for something made in the USA with better ingredients or something that we can. How do we tackle that? That's really the hypothesis.

And it's a big space, man. It's like we're not going to convert everybody. I'm very fortunate for Kress. I'm very fortunate for Kogh. I love them being in the space. I love what they have paved without the white strips category and being able to teach, especially Americans that you could white in their teeth at home. It would have been much more difficult on the education side.

And that's just with everything, right? And everybody owes it to the person from before. It's like scientists. And so that's the way I see. see it. I think with snow, there's only one snow because I started snow for another reason. I didn't start snow to buy another Lambo or buy a house or buy a watch or just ego trip or no, it was very clear the intention of what I'm building this for. And as long as I'm alive, I'm going to continue to push for market share to deliver what I believe are better products for our customers

for alternatives, some better products in the sense that some of them are even new. Like there's They're just completely innovative. We have sprinkle powder on your toothpaste. We've got drops that you put your snow water flosser to whiten while you're blasting the water. And the innovation and the world first and those things are very important to the snow brand. And they give me a lot of energy. They give me a lot of life. So that's why it's going to be difficult for someone to buy even a big chunk of this business from us.

It would have to be the right partner for sure because we're open to. We're always open to discussions. but right now we're building. But one day if that partner emerges that sees what we see, then we can tackle that, that greater scale together. But just in the U.S., close to a billion tubes of toothpaste are sold every year. Snow today is a couple bucks more. So we can't assume that every customer is going to switch to us,

but we're here to provide another option for that growing and evolving customer base. I love it, man. But I'll just summarize by saying you got to start with the sizzle. but then you ultimately, you got to have the steak behind it. This will make sure we get together. Yep. Cool, man. Josh, we're going to make keep up with you.

All things you got going on. Reach out when they. On Instagram, man. At Josh Snow on Instagram is my personal. That's where you can keep up with most things. I post as much as I can, stories-wise, at least. And then at Snow, at going public. And all the brands are in my bio.

and I post about them. And then feel free to reach out to me on there as well. It's either me or someone on my team. It gets to me. And my goal is to go through every single DM that I receive because you never know when there's an opportunity in there that's not just for money's sake, an opportunity to say something cool. And then someone doesn't feel so bad about themselves throughout the day.

I found an opportunity for us to do our best to respond to every single one of those messages. So Josh, though, is probably the best place on Instagram. Great, brother. I really appreciate you coming on and I look forward to collaborating and talking more in the future. I appreciate it. Thank you for having me all right. I really appreciate it, bro. Hey guys, you don't find us, the radcast.com. Searching that search bar for Josh Snow, all the highlight clips, all the links and the full episode. Audio video, short version, YouTube, Instagram. You know where to find me. I'm at Ryan Offer, verified before you can buy it. We'll see you next time on the Radcast.

To listen or watch full episodes, visit us on the web at the radcast.com or follow us on social media at our Instagram account, the dot rad. Or at Ryan Alford. Stay radical. This is the story of the one. As a maintenance supervisor at a manufacturing facility, he knows keeping the line up and running is a top priority. That's why he chooses Granger. Because when a drive belt gets damaged, Granger makes it. easy to find the exact specs for the replacement product he needs.

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