Trading Secrets - 336. The UPS Store Small Biz Challenge: The Trading Secrets Behind Two Breakout Entrepreneurs

Episode Date: October 1, 2026

What does it take to turn a simple idea into a real business? On this special episode of Trading Secrets, Jason Tartick sits down with two entrepreneurs who competed in The UPS Store’s 2026 Small Biz Challenge after nearly 6,000 businesses applied—and both made it to the final three. The Laundry Basket, shares how it turned a $20 first customer into a growing, multi-city laundry and linen management business by focusing on convenience, recurring revenue, partnerships, B2B opportunities, and knowing her numbers. High Strung Raquets, explains how it identified a gap in the tennis and pickleball market, built a premium product around style and performance, and learned how to sell through wholesale, storytelling, and strategic partnerships. Jason and the founders break down the importance of differentiation, discipline, storytelling, social media, customer feedback, cash flow, scaling without becoming the bottleneck, and knowing when to work smarter instead of harder. Plus, both entrepreneurs reveal the trading secrets they learned from building their businesses—and why sometimes the best time to start is before you're ready. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Welcome back to another episode of Trading Secrets, 30 Minute Thursday edition, but like no other. Before I even tell you more, please remember to give us five stars. Let us know what your biggest feedback and insight is from trading secrets. But this 30 minute Thursday, there is no, David. It is just me and two entrepreneurs. Two entrepreneurs that started a business from an idea, entered into an entrepreneurial contest where thousands of others entered. and they came up on top. You're going to hear these two unbelievable ideas. Really, really cool. How they did it and all the trading secrets along the way. We had an entrepreneur and a listener

of the podcast come on just a couple weeks ago. The feedback was amazing. So repeating it. And this episode almost gives a little shark tank vibes. Trust me when I tell you, you're really, really going to enjoy these two. It's brilliant what they've done. They just got their businesses up and off the ground running. And these are businesses that, you know, if you're back at home listening, these are things you could do tomorrow. And some of the suggestions they give are just fantastic. So this is a different 30 minute Thursday. Next week, we'll be back on the ones and twos with David and I. But please, please enjoy this 30 minute Thursday. Let's ring it in. Welcome back to another episode of Trading Secrets. Today episode, it's really a special one. We are partnering with the UPS store

for the 26th Small Biz Challenge, and I am joined by some of the most interesting and dynamic small business founders in the country. Nearly 6,000 businesses applied. Nine made it to the semi-final round, where they were paired with mentors and they had to pair in social media and different challenges. Three made it to the final, live here in Nashville. And I have two of them with me today. Hyacin Tucker is the winner of this year's challenge and the founder of the laundry basket, a tech-powered laundry pickup and delivery service. She started with just one car and one client that has now expanded into cities all across North America. And we have Laura Nolan on.

She is the founder of high-strung rackets, premium racket accessories for tennis and pickleball players who don't want to leave their sense of style at the court entrance. Two very different businesses. one laundry basket. I could probably still use that business. And Laura, I will tell you, my dad plays pickleball every single day. I'm going to let him know about your business because I'm sure he'll be glued. But welcome to Trading Secrets. And thank you guys for being here. Hey, everyone. Such a pleasure for being here. Let's go. All right. Well, a huge congratulations to you all. And when I saw everything and I read

everything and the success you had, I think I try to ask questions that can relate to small business owners, but anyone, anyone that's going through anything. And differentiation in a world like today, which is so competitive, is huge. And what is so impressive about this is just even in my intro, I said it, you guys were two of the last three standing with 6,000 applicants. That's very, very impressive. So, Laura, why don't we start with you? Specifically in your process and your presentation, what do you think specifically differentiated you to become, you know, three of 6,000. Yeah, so I think Highstrung stood out because the story is simple and you can tell what problem we're solving right away. An overgrip is traditionally a utility item. We bring attention to,

hey, that's looking dirty, that's looking worn, and why don't we convert that to an extension of personal style? So I think what served me well in the competition was the simplicity and clarity of the problem that we were trying to solve. I love it. So cool. Awesome story tell you. And to the winner, I said, I mean, you nailed it. Number one, the number one of 6,000, what do you think differentiated you amongst those 5,999 plus other applicants? Yeah, so similar to what law has already said.

So it's laundry, right? And something that affects everyone in some way, shape, or form, you know, whether you hate it or love it. But, you know, there's some story around it. but I think I really pulled into more the emotional side. So I wanted people to not think of it as just laundry, but thinking about how it really riles people of time, the stress that it causes, and then other people who need this stuff.

So when you think about our seniors who are aging in place, and they're not able to actually go up and down the stairs or carry laundry, when you think about people coming out of, you know, prison, let's just say, and they're going for their first job interviews, kids who need cream clothes for school. So I think when I really thought, think about it, the whole thing is so much bigger than just laundry. And I think that was helpful.

No, I love that. It's all about it's storytelling, right? It's the power of storytelling and doing it in such an intentional and authentic way. Even you hear it like, I instantly just in that response, right, I instantly went to my 91 year old grandmother. And I'm like, you know what? This is something she could probably benefit from. This is something she would be like walking around with her walker telling her neighbor,

hey, guess what I got? And I think that storytelling, and both of these examples, like, I'm instantly thinking of my dad, the pickup ball cord, I'm instantly thinking of my grandmother. I think that's cool. And I think part of your storytelling, which is, which is amazing, Hyacin, is that you're an army vet. And so one of the things I wanted to ask was, of everything that you learned and your time served, what do you think the number one pull through from your experience serving has applied in a massive asset to being an entrepreneur? Yeah, so I will first say, I think it would be discipline. I think it would be discipline. So we're used to, there's a mission and it's like we have to get it done. And I think that that has helped with like my resilience and the grit that I have, where it's kind of like I'm very laser focused on like solving a problem. So it's serving people for me and solving the problem. And I think that is really one of the traits that I, you know, took upon from being in the Army. Yeah. And I think all three of us can attest to the fact that being an entrepreneur from a discipline standpoint and grit. Those are two big words. You wake up every day. And in that day,

at least I don't know if you guys agree with this or not, but every day, I'm going to get my butt kicked. Every day, I'm going to celebrate. Every day I'm going to laugh. I'm going to smile every day. I'm going to get frustrated. It's just like, it's the circle of emotions and you got to be disciplined and have that grit to keep powering through. And it's wild. Like, even when you see the lightest bit at the end of the tunnel, you keep going towards it. It ends up coming to fruition. Laura, I think one thing that's cool is like tennis and pickleball. I mean, you're in Cincinnati now, right? Getting ready to watch the professional tennis pickleball. Oh, my gosh, there's literally TV shows or movies being built and produced now called Dink. It's everywhere. It's having a massive cultural moment. One of the things I think about in sporting goods is that the equipment purchase right now or anything aligned with sporting goods, it feels like historically it's really built on this credibility, right?

like you got Nike or Titleist for golf or Bauer for hockey and or it's based on like impact performance. And now you have to overcome the challenges of styling, kind of performance when you're doing some of the grips and stuff like that in selling in a space that also the value add is aesthetic in style. So how did you spot the gap in the market for the premium and where do you actually differentiate them against some of these massive, massive competitors? Yeah, good question. identifying the gap was really simple. I was seeing what was happening in the apparel market, in the accessories market, and this whole court sport aesthetic was having a moment, and the equipment

just hadn't caught up. So I felt like the national brands were frankly resting on their laurels a little bit. They knew that solid overgrips had worked overtime. They weren't really interested in diversifying. There were also some interesting supply chain issues that I learned about as I started to talk to the factories and say, oh, a few of the big national brands are standing in line behind one another and creating this capacity bottleneck. So I saw an opportunity, not just from a style perspective, but hey, there's a supply chain shortage. And that's where my product development experience came into play. I obviously really enjoy the styling and the fashion piece and having an eye for that, but I knew that I wasn't going to get by on aesthetics

alone. So I used that 20 years of kind of factory network experience to reach out to the grip factories that are making for those national brands. I went directly to them and said, what do you think about printing on top of this premium quality and really kind of disrupting the market. So it's going to be challenging, but I think my differentiator here is we're not just a pretty face or a pretty grip on the racket. We actually serve the same quality as the top national sporting grants. I love it. That is pretty cool. One quick follow up to that is I do think there's probably a lot of people listening that might have an eye for creativity and aesthetic design. Maybe it's apparel. Who knows? Maybe it's glassware. It could be anything. I think one of the big things

they worry about is they create it. And once it's created, how can it be protected? How can another company that has more resources, time and effort, not just replicate it? What are some things they can do? What are some things you've done to kind of protect that creative piece that you bring to the product that you hope others can't replicate? Trust me. I talk to many lawyers to explore this. But I think one thing that I do is I try to keep pace with trends and drop new collections frequently. So if I, I can't own a design or own an aesthetic. Let's try to drop new and interesting and fresh patterns frequently so that we keep pace with the market.

And ideally try to stay one step ahead of the market. Okay. I think it's a great idea. I think trends, especially the way things are changing right now, if you're ahead of the change and you're dropping new things, it creates new energy and new demand. So that's a great answer. Let's go back to the laundry basket. So the business idea starts in 2021.

Friends, I love the story. Friends buying new clothes and tells you that to avoid laundry, they're just going to go buy more clothes. I feel like that's a wild take. That's something that'll ring someone's bell, right? But I think the thing is, is like that generates ideation. And again, kind of to what I just proposed to Laura is that I do think we're starting to live in a very, very high, high entrepreneurial space where people are seeing problems and they're coming up with ideas. But not everyone is executing them. You have. executed on this. Walk us through what that execution looks like and tips you have for people that have the ideation. They're thinking about it. They just haven't done it. Yeah. So the first thing,

of course, is identifying the problem. And so we started in 2022. So we are four years old. And so, of course, it was finding the problem, but it was how to do it the most efficient way and they kind of see where the trends were going. So the first thing that I know this is that people love convenience. And I think, you know, coming out of COVID, we kind of got used to, like, you know, now that's when all, like, the meal, delivery services, the Instacart. We got used to going into cars with strangers and to, like, Uber. And so that's where the trend was. It was kind of like, I could do it, but why should I? Because there's other places that would do this. So that was one of the trends that we saw that we definitely, you know, really caught a lot of people's eyes. And then it was

a subscription model. So that was like another thing. In my business, we know. know that you're not just going to be busy today. You're going to be busy next week, the week after. And so really creating a model around recurring revenue because for us and for everyone, cash flow is king. So how do you build a business with processing systems so that you're continuously getting money in every month? And so that was one of the things that we wanted to build around. What is it that we can offer someone to make them want to give us money every single month. And so we added on different tiers and different things. And that's honestly how we got into dry cleaning. So we noticed that for us, it was pocket share. We would do laundry, but then people would be like,

oh, yeah, then I got to go into my dry cleaning. And then we were like, oh, wait a minute, that's an avenue for us to get into and kind of see we're just handling everything. So we handle everything and as we say it's in your closet, right? So we're total closet care. And so that allowed us to expand into different services as well. So it has been a concept of like just building. as we're flying. And then we also looked at our numbers. And we saw like, okay, staffing was a really big thing for us. And so we were like, okay, how can we kind of reduce some of the numbers? And so we decided to go more with doing partnerships. So we don't handle the fulfillment. So we partnered with local, trusted, bedded professional laundromats and drag cleaners.

They handled the fulfillment. And we became more of just like the platform. So we handled the pickup. We handled the routing. We handled the delivery, the payments, and the customer experience. But we allow that side to be handled by partners, which allowed us to expand now to different areas. So that is how we've been able to expand into different cities and states. We're very asset light. So it makes it really easy for us to go into a city and, like, kind of set up shop. So these are all the things that we kind of learned, lessons that we've learned over the past four years that has kind of made us successful as a business. Yeah, and I think that's a brilliant, brilliant tip for entrepreneurs out there.

It's just the idea that you don't have to go out there and raise millions and millions dollars. and all this capital and buy all this equipment, right? And I think that's really what you've done. That's amazing is my understanding is you guys, you don't own the equipment, right? You partner, like you said, and you deal with customer care logistics and efficiency, which is a great, great place to start a business. On the customer side, I know there are people listening to this that are thinking the laundry basket, okay, I'm in. This sounds perfect for me, right? Like, I mean, I'm thinking that, you know? But then I think the other thing they think is obviously services come at a price. And in the past, I remember early in my 20s when I really was to get my MBA and I'm doing work.

And I just, I was like, I can't afford it. It's just too expensive. How have you dealt with that concern that some of those customers deal with when thinking about outsourcing laundry and things of that nature? Yeah, because sometimes people tend to believe that it is a luxury. But it actually is a luxury item. Honestly, we're really not. That's just we're looking at $30. You know, it's like, you know, where we start off.

But even besides the price, we look at really your time. We look at like your stress level. And I think that we're just not used to outsourcing, especially as entrepreneurs will say, you know, it's always like, I got to do it, I got to do it, I got to do it. And so when we change that mindset and it's like now living a life of ease. And so I tell the story of we have a client, single mom, works two jobs, you know, children. She has to decide every night, does she get a good night's sleep of six, eight hours? Or does she stay up every night and wash clothes for her?

for her child, right? So when you're making those types of decisions, it's like price is not even a thing. It's like, how do we live a life of ease and about stress and that type of thing? Doing laundry, we know is one of the top two most reddish household chores. So this is not even something that most people love. Like, I mean like maybe one person in every audience who, like, oh, I'm not, and I love it. But for most people, this is something that is causing them frustration and overwhelm and like my friend. And we don't want you to do like her, right, and start buying more clothes instead of doing it. So all in all, and then when you really think about it, you're running your machine, you're paying your water bill, you're paying for supplies, you're paying for your time, you're paying for your electricity. When you put all that in a package and you can get someone else to do it and it comes to you consistently done, because we know that you're not really doing it right too.

Like, we know that you're just really just throwing stuff into a wash machine. So it's like now you have a professionally done clothing on top of that. So when you put all of that together, it's like, come on now. Why not? That's right. And if I think about how many of nice shirts I've had that I shrunk or got ruined because I did it wrong, the cost of those are significant. This is one thing I got an agency and we have people in business development and we'll talk about what their goal is to make that year. And I'll be like, all right, it's kind of exactly what you said.

I'll be right. So if you want to make that amount, let's divide it by 52. Let's divide it by 40 hours. That's what your hourly rate is. That is the time of your hour. And what we're thinking about your day to day and that's how much you're going to make an hour. Is it being spent in a place that makes sense? And a lot of people, when you break it down, like, what is your value per hour?

Is it spent? Is it right to spend all that time doing that, doing laundry? Think about it. Opportunity cost of time is real. I love that perspective. Let's go back to the challenge for a second. Laura will start with you. So the challenge had three phases, right?

It had this digital presence, the brand identity, and then reimagining your business goals. Easiest to hardest of those three, which was the easiest. which was the hardest. Brand identity, I think, was the easiest. Digital presence comes in a close second to the hardest because I felt very uncomfortable being vulnerable and kind of telling stories on the timelines of the challenges with the parameters we had.

But I think the absolute most difficult part was reimagining the business goals and kind of goes back to what we were talking about on the discipline and focus note, which is I see so much possibility for this brand that I, in some cases, lose focus. So when I really had to distill the business goals, that was the hardest part, but a really good exercise for me as well. Yeah.

And why was it? What do you think the why is? Like when you look in two, three, three years, five years, ten years, what's the why of why it's so challenging to look that far down the road? I think it's challenging when you have such a large market size and so many different opportunities you could pursue. I think what's most important as an entrepreneur and like you were just talking about, if my time is worth this much, where can I get the highest ROI? And you have to have the discipline to focus on that every day.

And we'll get into that probably more for me. But for me, it's in my ability to customize logo. over grips at low MOQs and quick turnaround times. And I think sometimes I had fun getting distracted by launching new fashion collections when I really needed to chase the promotional and kind of customization piece. That makes sense. We'll get into the cost of your products and what that looks like in just a second here. But it's the same question to you, right? So you had those three phases, which was the hardest, which was the easiest rank for me? A little bit different. So the easiest for me was thinking, I am like that big dreamer. I am like, how can we revolutionize the laundry industry? How can we add tech to it?

How can we do this? How can we do that? So that is actually what turned me on every morning. And it's just like, how can we do something different? You know? So that was the easy part. The second would have been the branding. So, you know, once again, we're used to talking about what we do, how we do it, the people that we serve, that type of thing. The hardest, the hardest was the social media. I was definitely. the underdog when it came to the social media. What do you find the hardest about it? Listen, I'm a behind the scenes type of person. So to put myself out there, I was like, oh, so I have to be in the video?

And it was like, you guys. I was like, and I have to speak. And I have to, like, I am like this one on one. But it's like putting myself out there. I'm like, oh, my gosh, what is my here? Where's this? You know? And I, that was the worst for me.

That was the worst for me. Now, of course, throughout the challenges, it got better. But that first one, it has so many different tastes just to sit there and talk about laundry. So that was, that was it. I just never really was a social media person at that time. If you could go back to yourself on day one to where you are now with social media, what advice would you give yourself on day one? Oh. Knowing what you know now.

Just do it. People really want to see your authentic self. So it's kind of like all the things that we think about, like, what are they this and that? People are not really thinking about that. They really just want to hear your story. They want to get to know you. It really is like that no like and trust factor. And I think that's what was missing for us is that people just didn't really feel like they knew me.

They knew like the brand, the story behind the brand, but they wanted to know more about me. My why? Why did I do this? You know? And so definitely just just do it. It doesn't have to be perfect because I think I was going for perfection as well. Like, no, I said this were cut, start on over again. People didn't care.

In fact, the wild part about it is like usually it's those imperfections that they like. It's those imperfections that make you even more relatable. So, no, that's that's really, really good advice. I think it's something that's relatable. I think people really struggle. There's so many great entrepreneurs out there. But these days, you got to be in front of the camera. You got to be promoting your product.

When I was at Cannes Festival, they were talking about how CEOs of Fortune 500 companies now in the interview process. You can't even make the cut if you don't understand social media and know how to use it for you. So now CEOs are going to be tasked to be content creators. Wild world we live in, but it impacts all of us. Laura, let's go back to high strung racket. So you already talked about it a little. This question also stems from something I'm seeing right now. School supplies up about 8% year over year.

most economists are connecting the school supply hike to tariffs. But in your space, you have to produce all kinds of products. Talk to me about the cost of the products. And can you walk us through behind the scenes of production and what it looks like for high strong rackets? Sure. I think without devolding too much, I think our direct-to-consumer retail cost per grip is $12 an overgrip. This was kind of a shock to the industry, right? I think your traditional overgrips at retail are three to four dollars. What I did is I kind of went in there with two angles. One is I'm bringing this multi-dimensional product to market. So it's got both design and quality and that's worth a premium. The other thing I did is I added on some unique elements that

drove up the value. One thing is I matched the tape that goes on to the overgrip to the designs. If you look at Wilson, Yonix, whatever the other brands are, they make one kind of tape. It could be stark black or have red in it and it goes around every overgrip. So I actually paid a premium to match the tape to every design. And then I added what's called a grip guard with every grip that also matched the overgrip. The idea behind this is that you cover up the tape. It's almost like putting your belt on and saying, okay, this is a polished kind of a high-stripped. look. So I justified the value by adding some of these additional touches. Now, I probably do need to do a better job of selling those. When it comes to kind of how I land the goods,

you know, the manufacturing costs right now are inclusive of the grips at one factory, the grip guards at another factory. As we add packaging, I'm going to need to, that's going to eat away at our margin. But what I'll say is it's a high margin business to be in. I'm also selling these wholesale. And when you think of the wholesale market, if I am selling these at two to three X, the cost of a regular overgrip, the story I tell the shops is you can make two to three X the margin by selling one overgrip at your point of sale. And by the way, it takes up a very small footprint at your cash wrap. So that's kind of, that's been the costing strategy. I did a ton of research on who's in the space. I have a retail background already. And so $12 to me felt like the

premium kind of price point I wanted to set and frankly disrupt the market and say we're offering something new. Premium overgrips is almost a new subcategory here. Sure. It's really cool to hear about how you're differentiating from even the biggest players and selling that premium is cool. And even the wholesale piece, one question on the wholesale piece for someone that's starting their business today. How did you make it happen? Was it, was it emails? Was it knocking on doors? Was it going to some of these retailers? What was actually done to be able to create that process? And what advice would you have someone that's trying to take their product to wholesale? Yeah. Frankly, I had the most impact by in-person visits and phone calls.

And the third piece, very important, is sending them my product. So this is something you have to touch and feel first. So I led with an email or a phone call. A lot of these wholesalers are actually tennis clubs. The tennis pros are not sitting behind a computer all day. That's a very phone-based culture where members will call up and say, you know, can I get a lesson in 30 minutes? So calling the pro shops, getting someone on the line saying, would you be open to me sending you some samples? And then following up either with an

in-person meeting or an email was best for me. But I absolutely learned the hard way, at least in the tennis industry, if we're talking clubs directly. These people want to meet you in person. They want to talk to you. And something I learned in the wholesale market. but also very much in the small biz challenges, they love the founder story. So the more you get in there and you tell them your background and how I took up tennis to release the tension from my corporate retail jobs,

the more into it they were. One quick follow up to that is I remember in high school, or not maybe it was middle school even. It is a tennis brand LaCoste, right? LeCost, there was like a year or two where LaCost was like the cool thing to wear at school. and the price points of these collared shirts were like 120 bucks in 2003. And it was just a basic, basic collared shirt, but they put that little alligator on there.

And all of a sudden, it goes from a $10 collar shirt to $120 bucks. What do you do? Like, what is the business side behind selling premium as far as strategy? Like, obviously they have their alligator. They have their little cost. What's that in a small business to you? Like, how are you, how are people that are just learning about a number, new business instantly associating premium?

Yeah, well, I think it's about reinforcing an aspirational lifestyle across everything you do. So being tight on your social media as and being consistent about what message you're sending, what are the environments your product is showing up on who are the players that are utilizing that? I think it takes a lot of reinforcement to say, this is an aspirational product and this is a status symbol. And I think you have to be really disciplined about how your brand comes across so that you are consistently sending that message. But at the same time, being approachable too, right? So you have to have some relatability in there as well and make sure, whether it's

me or the players that use it, that show up authentically as well. That's great. I love it. All right. Let's go back to the laundry basket. So I said you have built multiple businesses before, what do you think the biggest lesson is that you've learned from other businesses, not as your time serving, but the business side of things that you've applied to the laundry basket? So I would say the first thing is know your numbers. No your numbers, right? Because we can have great ideas. And so people sometimes look at like the more revenue you have and that would be great. But, you know, I would rather have a half a million dollar business that has some great margins in a million dollar business that is like you know always cash strapped

so i think definitely understanding you know what is profitable in a business and so we look at that like all the time so and that's how we make pivots which is why some we went into like the b-to-b side because we saw higher margins in that we have higher margins when it comes to dry paying so we have like a really nice mix of products and services that we offer so that we can actually make sure that you know we have the cash, you know, because getting capital is, it's hard. It is. It's not easy. And so you definitely want to make sure that you have a business that is able to generate the income that it needs.

You know, especially with us like a team, we want to make sure that we, you know, payroll and we want to make sure that all the things that I want to do, you know, get done. So I definitely will say know your numbers and definitely surround yourself around other people. Because this journey is lonely, right? And so if you build this business in the silo, you're going to deal with all the feelings, right? And if you don't have anyone to kind of encourage you, to kind of be there for you, that listening air, you know, it can be a really bad situation for you. So definitely surround yourself with, you know, peers, you know, peers that you can either help and peers that can help you, then aspiring you to do bigger, as well as mentors, coaches, all the things. And so I'm so glad that we were able to get that mentoring throughout this program because that was so, so helpful, someone who can see it from the outside and kind of give us like feedback. And that was

so invaluable. What of that mentoring that you just brought up and you got the feedback, what was some of the hardest feedback that you received? You know when you get feedback and it kind of hits you in the gut? You're like, oh, because you know it's like, you know it's real. Yes. So it was actually in my presentation because that was one of the questions that they asked us. For me, it was from Tori. And it was like highest in, you have been. built an amazing business, but you built it around yourself. And so you are the bottleneck in this business. Everything goes through you.

And so how do you build systems and processes and teams so that your business can exist beyond you? And that was one of the things like, it's my baby. Of course I have to be involved in everything. Of course I have to be, make all the decisions. Of course I have to be where everything goes through. And so it hit me as in like, Hi, isn't, do you want to scale this business? Do you want this business to live on, you know, when you're

no longer here. And so I had to really change the way that we operate, change some of our structure so that I'm not the bottleneck. And it kind of came right in time because I promise you, as soon as the competition was over, I started traveling a lot for the business. And so the fact that I was able to leave the business for days on the time and the business still ran without me was amazing. But if it wasn't because I put in those systems, I wouldn't be able to do that. Because we don't want to build another job for ourselves as well. I relate to this so much. I think every entrepreneur does.

I think it's not the laundry basket hurdle. It's a hurdle for anyone that starts a company. It's being able to kind of like delegate and have trust in that and then scale and let people do what they do best. It's the hardest thing to do, especially when you're perfectionist, you know the vision, you know how it's done. And then you put it in the hands of others and they don't do it the right way. And then you're like, this is why I stay tight to it.

And it's funny thing for me is like it was a vacation. It was a vacation. I was in a country that the time zone. I couldn't even be aligned with them. I wasn't aligned. It still ran. It still works. It still happens. So sometimes those are the big wake-up calls. Laura from the Small Business Challenge at the UPS Store Small Biz Challenge, what was the biggest piece of feedback that you got? That kind of hit you. Not surprising. Probably something I've heard before, but Isaac gave me some good advice to work smarter, not farther. I am an operator. I'm an executor. I'm an executor by trade. If I see an opportunity, I tend to just roll up my sleeves and go get it. Maybe it's the millennial in me. I don't know. But the custom printed overgrips was a great example. I had all of

these ambitions. Like, I want to go after Rolex. I want to have custom printed Rolex overgips in every suite at the U.S. Open. I want to approach Chase. I want to approach all of these companies and add this as swag, or to activate their brands as tennis and racquet sports become a thing. But what Isaac told me is that there is an entire promotional products marketplace, right? And that a chase or a Rolex is probably not going to want to open up a new vendor to make one overgrip product for them. But to work smarter, go to where those companies are already buying.

And that's actual promotional product distribution companies. So he gave me this great advice. Don't go one by one, which the scrappy millennial wanted to do. It's go where they are buying from and become a part of that greater offering. I love it. I think it makes it that aligns. It makes sense. And it also connects to what you said highest it was about going B to B. Right. I think it's being able to see where you got to move and how you got to move and the place you got to move. And that's working smarter too. One quick question I have going back to the laundry basket on B2B, break that down a little bit. I think anyone that thinks laundry basket is going to be thinking of, like you said, the family or the person in the apartment,

but how are you going B2B with your business? Who are you working with? What does it look like? Yeah, so many different ways. So when we look at just when you go to a restaurant, you know, you look at those linen, those tablecloths have to be laundered. When you go into doctor's office, there's scrubs and there's jackets, there's linen. There's so many different things. And so we now work with gyms and spas, hotels, restaurants, retail, universities, airlines.

So we, you know, just this year, we got contracts with Amazon, espresso, the NFL, the PGA tour. So when you think about it, like I said, laundry and linen management affects so many different sectors. So yes, that was the area that we were like, oh, well, we can do that. If we can watch this, then we can watch that. And then we go talk about specialty items as well. So now you're talking about your suede and your leather and your wedding gowns. So we have a lot of opportunity. And then we also do government as well.

So we have a lot of opportunity. We do a lot of contracting. It's amazing. Good for you. I think that it's just, it's brilliant. And I also think when you look at wage growth and the cost of internal hires right now, especially like an operational side for these businesses, it's expensive. So being able to outsource what someone from an operational standpoint would do,

knowing that it's in good hands. It makes perfect sense. It's quite brilliant. Laura, question for you. We talked a little bit about wholesale. We talked about retail. Obviously, social media. You have a product that can be bought by the masses, regardless of where you live. There's so many different forums in which you can connect your product to consumer. What does scaling look like from here? A couple of years, a year from now, what's the vision for growth? Yeah, so really two avenues here. On the direct-to-consumer front, it's about winning over the customer, but then establishing a strong replenishment model. What I love about this business is that you should be changing your overgrip every four to six matches. Your friend Jessica, I'm sure she regrips before every practice. So it's about winning the business, winning the customer over with the performance and aesthetic, and then getting that replenishment business. whether it's in bundling or subscription. So that's what's on the horizon on the D to C front. I use my UPS store winnings to convert my website to the Shopify platform so that I can enable TikTok

shop and all sorts of shopping, D2C shopping kind of functionality. So I'm really excited about that. And on the B2B side, I think we talked about it. Scaling looks like really going after the promotional products market and getting to be a part of the big distributors. One thing I didn't share kind of related to the costing and the margin conversation we've been having is one custom order enables me to add nine new fashion styles to my assortment and pays for that on top of getting me some profit as well. So I have to think about it too. If that's something I'm passionate about, the more custom orders I get, the more opportunity

I have to bundle that with a new fashion drop that I can produce at the factory at the same time. And even I got to where we've talked B2B here, but I got to imagine there's B2 in this space as far as like now I'm seeing colleges have pickleball teams. Like they got to put in orders for customizations of grips and things like that. So I'm sure that can change the game for you.

Teams, clubs, events. I mean, my MOQ is 100 units. If you're having a fundraiser or you're having a 40th birthday party, I mean, this is a really approachable and unique kind of gifting and favor opportunity. This is where I said the opportunity is so broad, like where to focus. Yeah. Yeah.

One quick question, just curiosity, have you done any type of affiliate marketing with influencers? Not yet. So I've had some really good organic stuff happening where people just love the product and have posted it for me. And that has done so much for my organic social media growth. affiliate is on their horizon. Like as soon as we get converted over to Shopify, we're going to turn that on and hopefully rev the DTC engine. I love it. On the laundry basket front, we love to talk numbers on trading secrets. You already said that managing your numbers is the most important.

At what point did the business start making money? What do revenue and profitability growth look like and did it look like? And what does it look like today? Yeah. So we, well, we first started with that first client, you know, $20 at this is how we started. She literally gave me $20. And so now we're over half a million dollars now. And so it has been a client as we continue to add more services. Of course, we saw more increased revenue when we started doing the subscription. We started seeing that.

So we're really able to keep like our margins around like 23%, which is like our net. And then our gross is like in like the 40s. But we have a lot of people who are, you know, we're doing things to kind of make it more efficient. So for us, it's about route density. So I tell people, it's really, my job really is more like logistics, right? Because it's kind of like we can get clients, but we need to make sure that we're not just driving all over the place because we service so many different areas. So we have to keep the money tight. There's a lot with maintenance, a lot with gas, especially like over the past couple of months, it seems like I see gas is high and we're a delivery company.

And so that is like our model. So we keep a really tight handle on it. But our unit of economics is really good. Our numbers are good as far as when people come to the website, how many people turn into first-time buyers, and how many first-time buyers then turn into subscription, you know, what our turn rate is. So I look at that, you know, what our retention rate is because we're a subscription model,

how many new clients we have to add each month to hit our numbers. And so we're really in a good path now. Now we're going into franchising. So that will definitely now speed up some of the projections. that we have. And what's been the number one most effective way to acquire a new customer? Ah, it has been, it has been opportunities like this. Honestly, speaking, events, networking, vending, because they actually get to see. Because for us, it's a trust thing, right? We're, you know, service-based for the most part. And so it's a trust thing. And so you don't want to just

handle your personal belongings and your prize possessions to just any company. So you kind of want a company that has credibility, that has authority, that type of thing. And so that's why making sure, like, our social media, we do a lot of articles, we do a lot of podcasts so that people can see there is a face behind the brand as well, and making sure that that customer experience. That is really what's important to us is that customer experience. No, send us an email and somebody get back to you in 48 hours. None of that. We make sure our delivery times are convenient for people. We do customer interviews, surveys. We've been a five-star rated, Google-rated company for four years consistently. So it's a lot of work, but it's making sure that our customers

are happy because I also see that's like our lifeline is our customers. That's your lifeline. Yeah. And I think just in general, the conversation has been so cool to hear what you guys are doing and how you're doing it and all the different things that are actually very common within two wildly different industry, but also some of the differentiations within the niches of the space. And I think, you know, just another shout out to the UPS store for the 2026 Small Biz Challenge. It's really fascinating the impact that they're making and in entrepreneurship and the communities that we all live and serve and work in. And to bring people together, entrepreneurs together, like both of you two, to learn from you too, to continue to help inspire and educate those who haven't got off the ground yet but dream to. It's truly special.

And this has been a really, really fun partnership. So thank you two for coming on and telling us more. congratulations on the wins that you had. But with every guest on trading secrets, we got to wrap with the trading secret. So it could be about your business endeavors, things that you've learned in life, finance. It could be anything, but it's one trading secret. We can only learn from you given your career pass and your entire journey. So who wants to give us their trading secret first? I think my trading secret is start before you're ready and learn from the market, right? If you wait for perfection, the opportunity will pass, put your idea out in the market, but then the most

important thing after that is to listen and react. I learned so many important lessons. I completely pivoted my business strategy by just actually socializing the idea, getting feedback, and then giving customers what they wanted. Amazing. Fantastic. All right. Great answer. It sits on mine. Sorry. That's why you had to go first. Okay. I learned in life that knowing your business and knowing how to communicate your business are two completely different skills, right? So you can have an incredible company, but if you can't explain the problem that you solve, the solution, who your customer is, the economics, and why you're different, in a way like that is going to be what really differentiates businesses. Because people have to understand quickly what it is that you do.

We don't normally have three or four minutes on the stage to tell you all about it. You're meeting someone and it's kind of like, okay, I need to know what it is that you do. What's in it for me? How can I help you? What is it that you need? All those things you have to kind of get into like that little 30 seconds. We put like our elevator speech. And so if people don't understand what you do, opportunities may pass you by.

So the challenge really made me sharpened that. We had 30 seconds to kind of do these little clips. So these were not like long clips. These were not like, oh, let me tell you about 1994. This was in 30 seconds. Tell us about your business. It's in 30 seconds do this and 45 seconds do that. And I was like, okay, so we have to really get it, right?

And so I've also learned that sometimes we're too close to our business, so we know every detail. So we think everyone else needs to know every detail. They don't. Just people need to understand why they should care. And I think that is the things that I've learned. I love it. A great trading secret.

It also, it's a perfect way to end the podcast because it's also where we started the podcast, right? Your 30-second discussion of what you do, I already said, right, from the top. I'm like, your storytelling connected me right to my 91-year-old grandmother. And then I also think of high-strung rackets and the customization that could be built at like some of these non-for-profits of like, you know, I'm thinking about Catherine, of course, who runs a dog rescue my fiance. It's like they run a pickleball tournament. You have your dog's paw that's on it. It's like an imprint of it. And now everyone's not, they're not talking about premium expensive grips. There's like showing, wow, my dog paws on this, no one has that, I want that. Or my baby, whatever it is, the baby's

handprint or something. I'm just making things up. But it's always the storytelling. It's what connects emotion to the actual service. And I think that's awesome. One quick shout out, Laura, we have a code here for anyone that's interested in high strung rackets. The code is HardCort 15 that was submitted for 15% off your order. So everyone go check out the website, HardCort 15 for 15% off your order. But before we wrap, where can everyone find everything you have going on? So Hyacin, maybe you want to start with the laundry basket. If people are interested, where do they go? And what can they, what can they do to get involved and start putting orders in? Sure. So first, you can go to Laundrybasketdelivery.com, which is our website. And also,

you can come hang out with me on social media. So we are at Facebook and Instagram and Laundry Basket Delivery. LinkedIn, of course, is just my name, Hyacin Tucker. So come hang out with us there. I love it. Now you're kicking butt on social media, so it's a whole new version of you. Laura, I already mentioned the code, but where could everyone find everything you have going on and the website and everything else?

Sure. You can shop our website, high strung rackets.com. Notably, rackets is spelled with a CQ. So high strum rackets. And then find us on Instagram at high strung rackets. and love to connect again with all of the corporate partnerships that could exist. I'm Laura McLean, Nolan on LinkedIn. Give me a shout out.

And you'll find us on TikTok and TikTok shop in the next 30 days. I love it. Very good stuff. Well, hi, I said Tucker and Laura Nolan. Thank you so much for being on this episode, Trane Secrets.