Pod Insights How I Built This with Guy Raz Advice Line with Marcia Kilgore of Beauty Pie About this episode Serial entrepreneur Marcia Kilgore — founder of brands like Beauty Pie and Soap & Glory — joins Guy on the Advice Line, where they answer questions from three early-stage founders managing uncertainty and risk.
Today, we meet Victor in Fort Worth, the co-founder of a Mexican-style sweets and treats venture who wonders if he should focus on expanding brick-and-mortar operations, retail presence, or both. Then Lydia in Seattle, a former disease researcher who is ready to grow her small batch botanical skincare line, but needs help overcoming her fear of failure to get to the next step. And Jack in San Francisco, the founder of a custom bike bag and accessories brand who’s trying to figure out how to maintain customer excitement throughout the entire purchasing process so as not to lose momentum.
Thank you to the founders of Sol Dias, Clērstory, and Wompy Bikes for being part of our show.
If you’d like to be featured on a future Advice Line episode, leave us a one-minute message that tells us about your business and a specific question you’d like answered. Send a voice memo to [email protected] or call 1-800-433-1298.
And be sure to listen to Marcia Kilgore’s original How I Built This episode https://art19.com/shows/831bd173-0992-41b7-b1eb-112db904d947/episodes/f0b516a7-53d1-4591-8eb0-135636e76ce0/embed as told by Marcia on the show in 2018.
This episode was produced by Carla Esteves with music by Ramtin Arablouei. It was edited by Andrea Bruce. Our audio engineer was Cena Loffredo.
You can follow HIBT on X https://x.com/HowIBuiltThis & Instagram https://www.instagram.com/howibuiltthis/ and sign up for Guy's free newsletter at guyraz.com http://guyraz.com.
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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5:07 Guy Raz? Visit mobilefuels.com for details. Hello and welcome to The Advice Line on How I Built This Lab. I'm Guy Raz. This is the place where we help try to solve your business challenges. Each week, I'm joined by a legendary founder, a former guest on the show, who will help me try to help you. And if you're building something and you need advice, give us a call and you just might be the next guest on the show. Our number is 1-800-433-1298. Send us a one-minute message that tells us about your business and the issues or questions that you'd like help with. You can also send us a voice memo at [email protected] .
5:52 Guy Raz? And make sure to tell us how to reach you. And also, don't forget to sign up for my newsletter. It's full of insights and ideas from the world's greatest entrepreneurs. You can sign up for free at guyraz.com. And we'll put all this info in the podcast description. All right, let's get to it. Joining me this week is serial entrepreneur Marcia Kilgore, founder of Beauty Pie. Marcia, welcome back to the show.
6:16 Speaker 01 Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited.
6:19 Guy Raz? We're excited to have you. So you were first on the show back in 2018. You told us about the origin story of Bliss, which was the spa brand that really kind of changed the beauty landscape. And then, of course, you went on to build all of these different brands afterwards, like Soap & Glory and FitFlop, and then Beauty Pie. It's just so awesome to have you back. And we will put a link to your original interview in the episode description. And also, anybody listening can easily find that by searching How I Built This and Marcia Kilgore. Lots of great stories and insights. Marcia, I know that today you are continuing to grow Beauty Pie and pushing to kind of,
6:58 Guy Raz? you know, give consumers access to luxury beauty products at a more transparent pricing. And I know recently you've been focused on educating consumers about something called warehouse pricing. So can you tell us a little bit more about what that is?
7:13 Speaker 01 Well, there are different definitions for it in the US versus the UK. The mainstream beauty industry has always had a really multi-layered distribution system where it would go from the mind of a founder to a manufacturer. The manufacturer would then ship it to a warehouse. The warehouse would ship it to a distributor. The distributor would then ship it to a retailer. And in all of these different layers of distribution, you would end up with a markup of 1,200% at minimum on that product. So something that is manufactured for $5 would retail for 60 at minimum because the retailer themselves are taking at least half of that. And especially if you're a new brand in the cosmetics business, it can be really tough because they will demand higher
7:57 Speaker 01 Percentages of that pie because they have the shelf space and you don't really have much negotiating leverage. And I'd been in the beauty industry for quite a long time and realized that for me, it was a little depressing that customers would have to spend so much to get something that actually didn't have the value that they thought it had. And so I decided to start Beauty Pie just for that reason, so that people could get the good stuff when it landed in the warehouse with enough of a markup to cover that, which we call our warehouse pricing, or lab to warehouse pricing, and not any of the markup that happens after it leaves that warehouse and ends up in the hands of a distributor or a retailer. So that's our definition of warehouse pricing.
8:37 Guy Raz? Right, because most of the, or most of the sort of the high-end luxury beauty brands are made in Switzerland or in Japan, some in France, and you are offering the same quality essentially, but at much lower prices.
8:52 Speaker 01 Very often even a better quality, but at much lower prices. We can manufacture from scratch. We can kind of dream because we're not really worried about all that extra added cost that a product will engender once it leaves the warehouse and goes to a retailer. So we negotiate hard with our manufacturers, but it stops at about three times the manufactured cost and it doesn't go farther than that, whereas most beauty products go to 10 or 12 or sometimes 20.
9:20 Guy Raz? Wow.
9:20 Speaker 01 I mean, the kind of the more luxurious the brand, the crazier the prices. And you'll see creams out there selling for $3,000 for a 50 milliliter jar of cream, which is just insanity. There's nothing in them. But if it makes you feel better about yourself that you can buy something really expensive, I guess there's, you know, there's a little bit of that.
9:38 Guy Raz? Yeah. All right, Marcia, before we get to today's callers, I want to ask a little bit more about, about your story and kind of how it relates to building a company today. Because in your original episode, You know, you told us about how you started by giving facials in this tiny, you know, room in New York City and how that kind of led to and taught you what customers value and that that helped you build Bliss into this amazing brand. Do you do you think that's necessary today for founders to have that direct kind of customer service or hands-on experience to to succeed in beauty?
10:13 Speaker 01 It's a great question. I think Jim Collins would always say that you want to focus on what you're good at.
10:18 Guy Raz? Yeah.
10:18 Speaker 01 And then you want to look at those tangential things to try and do something different. So it is much easier to start a business in an area that you've got expertise because you can solve your problems very often yourself and you've got that deep and rich insight into whatever that problem is. However, if you just go and do what everybody else is doing, you're not going to have anything new and you're not going to have any kind of, you know, leg up in the market with all the other people who are doing exactly that. So it's really important, I think, one, to have expertise in the area that you are trying to build, but then also to look sideways and see what people are doing in other areas of business that might dovetail into yours and create something that's really fresh and new.
11:00 Guy Raz? What do you think? I mean, you've built so many brands and building a brand is really hard and arguably harder in some ways today than than ever, you know, than it's been in in recent years. What do you think are some of the biggest challenges of trying to build a brand in 2025?
11:17 Speaker 01 In 2025, there is more competition than ever. And I think that people also look at the internet and think it's super easy to put your product out there on the internet and spend money advertising it and people will flock to you. I think what they don't necessarily realize is, number one, how hard it is to get visibility and any kind of scale.
11:35 Guy Raz? Yeah.
11:35 Speaker 01 Number two, how many iterations you might have to go through before you get something that resonates with a customer. Number three, how expensive that can be depending on which market you're in and which niche you're in, because there are a lot of people thinking exactly like you're thinking. And I think that everything has moved towards digital in such a fast way. Covid did that for us, right? It was this
11:58 Guy Raz? Right.
11:58 Speaker 01 huge digital rush. So it used to be quite easy to throw a website up and it still is, but getting people to come to that website is the hardest thing. So I think there's always, always on the part of a founder, a little bit of ownership bias where because they think it's great that other people will naturally show up. And maybe they don't realize how hard it is to get attention in such a saturated world of, you know, trying to get eyeballs. You have to do a lot more, be constantly creative. And there's a lot of help out there now with AI, which can help you be more creative if you're not necessarily creative. But everybody's got a lot of the same tools. So you have
12:41 Speaker 01 to work smarter, you have to work faster, you have to work harder, but you have to really be original.
12:46 Guy Raz? Yeah. Marcia, let's go ahead and take some calls. Let's bring on our first caller. Hello, welcome to the advice line. You are on with Marcia Kilgore. Please tell us your name and where you're calling from and just a little bit about your business.
12:59 Speaker 02 Guy Marcia, what an honor it is to be here. Very excited. My name is Victor Garcia. I am calling from the very hot city of Fort Worth, Texas, co-founder of Sol Dias Ice Cream. We specialize in making ice cream and paletas with the flavors and preparation styles of my hometown, Mexica, Jalisco. And we are on a mission of making these treats as popular and accessible as tacos are in the US today.
13:28 Guy Raz? Awesome. So tell us a little bit about paletas or popsicles, basically, right?
13:32 Speaker 02 Yeah.
13:34 Guy Raz? And ice cream. So tell us a little bit about what, yeah, what about what you sell?
13:39 Speaker 02 So the two things that really helps us stand out. Number one, as I mentioned, the flavors, the ingredients. So we've got things like mango chamoy or like a rice cinnamon. We have a tequila ice cream, tequila paletas, mame, the flavors of Mexico, right? And our churn process is very slow. It takes 25, 35 minutes to make a batch. And really, that just helps the natural flavors of the product get injected into what the ice cream is or what the paleta is. A lot of American ice cream or a lot of ice cream in general, right? It gets injected with air and blasted frozen six, seven minutes. So one of the
14:23 Speaker 02 big things I tell people, just you can have a pint of regular ice cream and you can have a pint of Sol Dias and you will be able to feel the difference. The Sol Dias is going to be a lot heavier because it's got a lot less air. So that's kind of a little bit about us and what we do.
14:39 Guy Raz? And how did you get into the ice cream business?
14:42 Speaker 02 The tiny town that I mentioned, Mexicali Jalisco, is nicknamed La Cuna de la Lado de la Paleta, which just briefly translates to the birthplace of ice cream and paletas. And so that's kind of where everything came from. We immigrated to the US, didn't quite find the same flavors of home, and that's kind of what encouraged the business to start.
15:04 Guy Raz? And so you've got a brick and mortar shop, or you've got more than one shop?
15:08 Speaker 02 We got three brick and mortar shops in Dallas-Fort Worth.
15:10 Guy Raz? Wow, amazing. Congrats. And how, tell me a little bit about how the business is doing.
15:15 Speaker 02 The business has been growing steadily, 35% to 40% a year. Everything's been going well so far.
15:23 Guy Raz? All right. So what's your question for us?
15:27 Speaker 02 Yes. So we have a brick and mortar side of the business, and then we have a retail side of the business. We've been trying to tackle both. The nagging question is, is that too much? At our stage, right now, three stores, 1.5 million in revenue, does it make sense to continue trying to go after both? Should we focus on one or the other?
15:51 Guy Raz? So do you focus on selling your products in retail, or do you focus on brick and mortar? Okay. Marciel, let me bring you in. He's got a growing business, a brick and mortar business, with ambitions, I think, right, to grow. But you've got these products that you could sell in stores, Sam's Clubs, maybe Costco's and other places. What should he do? What should he focus on?
16:13 Speaker 01 Victor, what a dream to be selling ice cream.
16:17 Speaker 02 Yes.
16:18 Speaker 01 I think many of us would want to have a business like yours. It sounds really exciting. It sounds like you have a really great market niche also. And so congratulations, building it so far. And it sounds like you really have a lot of success and more to come. I'm going to ask you a couple of questions. I'm just going to fire them away at you. Can you tell me right now how the revenue is split between your stores and your wholesale?
16:42 Speaker 02 Right now, it's 60% stores, 40% wholesale.
16:46 Speaker 01 And in terms of margin on stores versus margin on wholesale, once you take the stores and the operations into account?
16:54 Speaker 02 It's about 17% the net margins on the stores. Net margins on wholesale is slightly higher, hovering at around 20.
17:04 Speaker 01 Okay, so relatively the same, but easier to scale. Obviously, you're wholesale, isn't it? Um, retail is tough, as you may not know yet.
17:15 Speaker 02 I know. I know, trust me.
17:17 Speaker 01 You know, you've got weather, you know, a big football game comes on, like no one leaves their house. You know, you're sort of at the mercy of a lot of different elements. Um, however, retail is really great for marketing for your brand, so it's nice to be able to have those flagship retail locations where people can come and experience it and test product, et cetera, et cetera. How are you guys doing on social media? Are you getting a lot of information out to potential clients or doing a lot of promotion via organic social media? Or not yet?
17:49 Speaker 02 That's the only way that we advertise. It's really just social media, word of mouth. Um, like you mentioned earlier, is the product good enough to live without any advertising? And I immediately thought, well, we sometimes don't post for a month and things continue to go well. But, yeah.
18:05 Speaker 01 Yeah, okay, and can you tell me what percentage of your product is frozen or needs to be kept cold when shipped versus not? Because you have other things, right? You have other products that it's not just ice cream and paletas.
18:17 Speaker 02 Correct, correct. Uh, that's like, those are our hero products, but we also make a variety of other Mexican sweets and treats. Uh, churros, aves frescas, dulces enchiladas, like spicy gummies. Um, on the storefronts, it's probably about seventy percent is frozen, thirty percent is not frozen. Um, on the retail side, we just have two products in stores, which is going to be the paletas and the spicy gummies. Um, and right now, it's really about half is paletas, half is spicy gummies.
18:52 Speaker 01 I thought spicy gummies might be pop. As soon as you said it, I just thought, you know what? There's something about spicy gummies, like a jalapeno or some kind of like hot pepper gummies.
19:01 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
19:02 Speaker 01 I can see every teenage boy. If you had the one that's so crazy that it burns your mouth. Do you know, every teenage boy would be buying those. Yes. I know, because I have teenage boys.
19:13 Speaker 02 The extreme version, absolutely.
19:15 Speaker 01 Yeah, you gotta have that. Obviously, in your distribution and your wholesale, you're gonna wanna try and get more of those non-frozen products in because it's just so much cheaper to not have to ship something in refrigerated trucks. And also really build a couple of hero products, like those spicy gummies. If that's like something you're really known for, that you can then kind of branch off of and develop more products like the spicy gummy, or it's the spicy chewy, or the spicy whatever, whatever. But you wanna have one big hero products. And of course, you'll have your ice cream, right? And you'll have your paletas. But something that's not frozen, it'll be a lot easier to not worry about that, especially in heatwaves, et cetera, et cetera. I'm sure it can get kind of crazy. When you talk about retail stores, I don't think you need, you know, twenty of them.
20:00 Speaker 01 I think you need like a couple of really good ones strategically located where there is a line out the door. Nothing is better for your business than a line out the door of people waiting for ice cream, right?
20:10 Speaker 02 Right.
20:10 Speaker 01 And then you, where I would spend money, instead of doing two stores or four stores, you now have three. So instead of doing six, hire some really great brand designer who knows how to bring that all together for you so that when you have a store, it is irresistible and people cannot not take a photograph and post it on social media. You're gonna have them with their ice creams, them with their paletas, them with their spicy gummies, whatever it is. And you're gonna run events in those stores like the spicy gummy eating contest. Right? And you're gonna invite people to come and, right? Or you're gonna invite people, you're trying out a new flavor.
20:52 Speaker 01 You put it out, everybody come down or giving out, you know, little cups of this new flavor. Come down and see what it's like. And they'll come in, they're going to take a picture of themselves in the store. They're going to come in to try the new flavor. They're going to post about it, talk about it on social media. Everything will be free for you for a very long time. If you can have events around the products that you're launching or your hero products and make that store look so cool.
21:15 Guy Raz? Yeah, okay.
21:16 Speaker 01 But you get a line down the street, then you take photos of the lines down the street from your shop. And then everybody's like, oh, my God, why is everybody lining up with that? It's really quite easy with what you've got.
21:26 Guy Raz? We can do it.
21:27 Speaker 01 If you do the branding right around it, and then you just keep coming up with ideas around how to get people to come in and be part of your brand.
21:36 Guy Raz? It's great advice. Victor Garcia, the brand is called Soldeas. Good luck. Thanks for calling in. Thank you so much, Guy Marcia. All right. Thank you.
21:44 Speaker 01 Take care. Guy, I talk too much. I'm sorry.
21:46 Guy Raz? No, it's great. You are carrying the day as I'm battling a cold and a pretty severe migraine.
21:52 Speaker 01 Oh, my God.
21:53 Guy Raz? You are helping to carry the advice line today, so I appreciate that.
21:58 Speaker 01 Anytime.
21:59 Guy Raz? We're going to take a quick break, but when we come back, another caller, another question, and another round of advice. I'm Guy Raz. Stick around. You're listening to the Advice Line on How I Built This Lab.
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25:57 Guy Raz? Welcome back to the advice line on How I Built This Lab. I'm Guy Raz and my guest today is Marcia Kilgore. She's the founder of many successful brands, including Bliss, Soap and Glory, FitFlop and Beauty Pie, and we are taking your calls and let's bring in our next caller.
26:12 Speaker 05 Hi Guy. Hi, Marcia. My name is Lydia Welsh. I'm calling from Seattle, Washington, and I'm the founder of Clear Story Skincare. We make small batch botanical skincare products using science-backed ingredients for a simple, effective daily routine.
26:27 Guy Raz? Awesome. Welcome to the show, Lydia. How did you get into skincare? Tell me a little bit about how you started the business.
26:33 Speaker 05 Yeah, I majored in biology, then I worked in disease research for a few years after college, and I've always been interested in skincare, but somehow it didn't hit me that skincare is actually all about chemistry and biology. Until 2020, had some free time and I started reading research papers about different ingredients and it all just sort of came together in my mind. So I started tinkering with different ingredients and making my own formulas, sharing them with family and friends, and then I launched my business in 2021.
27:04 Guy Raz? And tell us a little bit about what you're, yeah, I mean, how it's going so far?
27:09 Speaker 05 It's been an interesting and slow journey. I've been around for, you know, four years, but the first two years of that I was working full-time and then the following two years I had two kids. So I've had my hands full. I've basically, I started with a few simple products and just did a lot of like farmers' markets and things on the weekend and shipping orders in the evenings. And right now we have. A gentle cleanser, a hydrating mist and a couple of facial oils. And we have like a small customer base, but the people who have used our products really love them.
27:49 Guy Raz? Tell us a little bit about what you are, where you're selling, selling is all direct to consumer online on your website now?
27:57 Speaker 05 Yeah, that's right. So everything's direct to consumer.
28:00 Guy Raz? And tell us what, what your question is or what your challenge is.
28:04 Speaker 05 So I've spent this time refining my product line and I feel like I'm finally ready to grow my business. But I find myself holding back from pitching and marketing because I'm afraid to fail. And so my question is, how do I overcome my fear of rejection and gain the confidence to put myself out there?
28:22 Guy Raz? All right, Marcy, I want to bring you in with some answers, hopefully.
28:27 Speaker 01 Oh, Lydia, okay. I'm going to tell you something that might really shock you. Everybody has fear of failure, everybody. So, welcome to the club. Never goes away. Like anything else, you just kind of get used to it after you fail a couple of times. So you kind of have to let that go. It's almost like people who tell me, oh, I can't do this because I'm a perfectionist, so I just can't decide. And it's just a cop out, no offense. But it's a cop out to say you have fear of failure or you're a perfectionist because it just gives you an excuse to not go, do what you have to do to get this done. And also not to face the things that aren't working openly, honestly, and immediately, and move on them, right? It's like so easy to just go, oh, I'm too scared to fail, so I'm just not going to do anything.
29:12 Speaker 01 You know what's going to happen? You're going to fail. So anything, if you want to just say you have a fear of failure and let it give you paralysis because it's a sure thing.
29:23 Speaker 01 Can I ask you a couple of questions?
29:24 Speaker 05 Go ahead.
29:25 Speaker 01 Number one, how did you get the trademark for Clear Story? Do you have it trademarked?
29:29 Speaker 05 I do, yeah.
29:30 Speaker 01 Okay, and how do you spell it?
29:33 Speaker 05 C L E R, Story.
29:36 Speaker 01 Huh. If you say your brand is called Clear Story, you're now reaching a subset of people who don't know how to spell the word clear.
29:42 Speaker 05 That's true, yeah.
29:44 Speaker 01 You might want to reconsider what you call it.
29:46 Speaker 05 Okay.
29:46 Speaker 01 Unless you have 50,000 units of products sitting in your warehouse.
29:51 Guy Raz? Yeah, interesting idea.
29:53 Speaker 01 Okay, and there's an infinite number of brand names that you can have. But I would never have a name myself that if people spell the word properly, it doesn't come up.
30:04 Speaker 05 Got it.
30:04 Speaker 01 So you're going to say, Oh, my brand is called Clear Story. Mm hmm. And then you have to say, but not with an A. Yeah. Right? That's already a handicap right there. So you want to just try and fix that. Mm hmm. Um, do you run any ads? I actually don't. Okay, so I want you to spend a week when your children are not right there with you, learning AI and learning how the meta ad library works. You can even go on chat GPT and say, give me a seven day training program so that I understand how meta works for advertising. Um, and you can do that. This is the best way to figure out if your proposition is going to resonate with a large number of people, although you're not going to pay for a large number of people. So, um, in the second best business book of all time,
30:49 Speaker 01 second only to How I Built This by Guy Raz. Um, Jim Collins would say you fire a bullet before you fire a cannonball, which means you're going to test small before you do anything big. So you're going to make sure that people actually click on your ads with your picture of your product with its description and its brand and its packaging. And they actually click on it before you go manufacture a whole bunch of them. I'm going to assume you're doing small batches at the moment. Yes. Correct? Yeah. Okay, so you're not sitting on like tens of thousands of anything? Mm hmm, I'm not. That's really good. So, number one, I would go revisit the brand name. Number two, I would mock up using artificial intelligence, a whole bunch of different versions of the packaging of the name,
31:35 Speaker 01 the description of what the products do. Mm hmm. And then learn how to do meta advertising and test. Because you will see when you get something that people are interested in, they're going to click on it. And you can count those clicks for very little money before you do anything really big and make any really big decisions.
31:56 Speaker 01 And that will be a really nice way to iterate your way to a product that will resonate with people and that they're going to come looking for before you then go and manufacture a lot of that product. And then you're going to take all of that knowledge and you're going to start just testing a little bit with very inexpensive ads, not putting them in front of millions of people. You put it in front of a thousand. If nobody clicks on it, you don't have something yet, right? And iterate a few times, spending as little money as possible. Don't listen to your friends or family because they will always be nice and they're going to say it's great or they're going to be like, nah, that'll never work. You're going to get the two, the very supportive ones, and then the ones who are just like
32:40 Speaker 01 naysayers because they're really risk averse. And that's them, not you, right? So it's better just to see what happens in the wild when you put something in front of an average human who's in the skincare market and whether or not they click on your thing and come through to your website. Okay. And then you iterate and you iterate and you iterate and you iterate until you have something and you'll build a landing page perhaps for this new version of what you're testing. And so they land on you'll still see if they click and add it into their basket, but then you'll say, I'm sorry, this thing is sold out. But that's okay because it's a lot better to make 10 people really upset than to be sitting on hundreds of thousands of units of something that's not going to sell, right?
33:22 Guy Raz? It's great advice. Lydia Welsh, the brand is called Clear Story. Thanks so much for calling in.
33:26 Speaker 01 Yeah, thank you both.
33:27 Guy Raz? Thank you.
33:28 Speaker 01 Bye.
33:29 Guy Raz? Yeah, I mean, it is right. I mean, this is the, you're right. I mean, everybody is afraid of this, right? It doesn't matter who the founder is and everyone is afraid of failure and rejection. This is a, this is just a common part of the process.
33:45 Speaker 01 Yeah, you know, boxers probably get in the ring and are they afraid of like a really hard punch? Yes, but the other punches that just are part of the job. I mean, get used to it because you're going to fail. We've all failed, right? We've had disasters and you kind of forget about them. I think the human brain is wired to, it's like childbirth. You just don't remember it. Otherwise, we would never propagate as a species.
34:07 Guy Raz? Yeah. Okay, next up after the break, another caller with another business challenge. I'm Guy Raz and we're answering your business questions right here on the Advice Line on How I Built This Lab.
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35:07 Guy Raz? Welcome back to the Advice Line on How I Built This Lab. I'm Guy Raz, and today I'm taking calls with serial entrepreneur and beauty pie founder Marcia Kilgore. So Marcia, ready for our next caller?
35:19 Speaker 01 I'm ready.
35:20 Guy Raz? Let's bring in our final caller. Welcome to the Advice Line you are on with Marcia Kilgore. Hello, welcome. Tell us your name, where you're calling from, and a little bit about your business.
35:30 Speaker 07 Hello, thank you for having me on. My name is Jack Boland. Hey, Jack. I'm out in San Francisco at the moment, and I'm the founder of Wampy Bags. So we make custom bike bags and accessories that perfectly match your bike and your style. We focus on a style of bag called a frame bag, which basically sits inside the triangle on your bike, using that negative space there. And our ultimate goal is to get people to opt for their bike over their car when they can.
36:01 Guy Raz? So it's a, it's a storage bag that fits in the frame of your bike, basically?
36:06 Speaker 07 Exactly, yeah, that's, that's the core product. And then we have a handful of other ones that mount on your handlebars for water bottles or on the front, allow you to put snacks in there.
36:16 Guy Raz? What, what fits inside the bag?
36:18 Speaker 07 So it's a little dependent on your frame, but it's anything from a water bottle, spare layer, snacks. We'll use it for bike packing trips. So they'll throw a tent in there and a sleeping bag, or just a couple of beers and a blanket to go head down to the park.
36:34 Guy Raz? Yeah. How did you come up with this idea?
36:36 Speaker 07 I got into using this just for commuting around town, just going to the breweries in town and a more casual thing. So I'm trying to design a bag that is really intended to be more fun and playful and a little bit more accessible than kind of those hardcore bags.
36:52 Guy Raz? That's awesome. Okay. And how much do the bags sell for, by the way? What's the price?
36:57 Speaker 07 It depends on the size of them. So we've got a small one that's good for maybe tools or a snack and that's about 125 and then a full frame starts at 149.
37:07 Guy Raz? And these are custom made?
37:09 Speaker 07 Exactly. Yeah. So basically customers can take a picture of their bike. They have this little special postcard that we'll send them and they include that in the photo. And then they upload this to the website and they can design the shape of the bag they want. They select all the features they're interested in and then we fabricate it. We print the fabric and create this kind of one of a kind bag for them.
37:31 Guy Raz? Got it. Okay. So what's, what are you trying to solve here? What's, what's your challenge?
37:35 Speaker 07 So my question is around sales channels ultimately. So I mentioned that postcard that's used for sizing and fitting the bag. There's a million different varieties of bikes and sizes and shapes. And so they need that postcard to get it to fit just right. So we'll, we mail that to them for free and in that time they kind of, you know, lose a little momentum on their excitement for purchasing this bag. And so I'm curious for what are the channels that we can be exploring or focusing on that allow us to get this postcard in your hands when you start your, your journey? And then you're good to go. You can kind of design and purchase that bag.
38:14 Guy Raz? Got it. Okay. So the, the problem now is that people start the process, but then they drop off, basically.
38:20 Speaker 07 Exactly.
38:21 Guy Raz? Gotcha. Okay. All right. Marcia, people are coming in, they're starting the process of designing their bags, but it's too clunky and they just drop off. So he's got to solve this.
38:32 Speaker 01 Okay. Jack? I'm gonna ask some really basic questions even before they even come in to start the process. But first, I'd like to say there's nobody I like better than a product designer. Just the way product designers think is always so incredibly original. So I'm sure, I'm sure, is this your 20th idea, you're like?
38:52 Speaker 07 The 50 to 100 range.
38:53 Speaker 01 Yeah, my kinda, my kinda guy. Love a bit of a product designer. I'm gonna ask, you said there are other bags on the market for these purposes. Are they also fitting between the same area of the bicycle or is that your thing?
39:07 Speaker 07 So there's kind of a spectrum of them. There is the off the shelf, made internationally, one size fits all, that doesn't really fit anything, but it's a slightly lower price point. And then there are a couple of companies doing this custom, but it's quite bespoke. It involves, you know, a couple of weeks of back and forth emails to like figure out exactly the size of your frame. And so we kind of land in that middle because of this software, it lets us work a little bit more efficiently, manufacture a little bit more efficiently and land somewhere in between the two of those.
39:39 Speaker 01 Okay, so a customer can go out and find at retail a bag similar to your bag, just not customized?
39:47 Speaker 07 Yeah, and then that also kind of typically limits them to your, your browns and your blacks. So one of our big offerings is this can be as colorful, it can be as fun, it can have a picture of your dog on the exterior as well.
40:00 Speaker 01 Got it, okay.
40:01 Speaker 07 Yes, so because this kind of unique process where I need to get a bunch of data from them on what their bike looks like and the sizing, it has this back and forth that doesn't allow people to just hop on the website, order something because they saw it and they're excited about it.
40:15 Speaker 01 Yes, and so it is almost about, do you have a series of emails that goes back to them once they've hit a certain stage in the process? Saying how excited they are. So normally when you're, you know, you go into a website and it tells you, I'm, you're, you're at step one of step six, right? Do you have email follow-ups for people who are sort of at step one, but they haven't continued? To say, hey, you're almost there. You only have a few steps left. Here's where you are.
40:43 Speaker 07 We only have one that's the like, you requested the card and then here's the, the getting started steps type of thing, but I like the idea of two weeks after that, just a check-in type of one or more integrated.
40:57 Speaker 01 Too long.
40:57 Speaker 07 Too long. Okay, perfect, perfect.
40:59 Speaker 01 Yeah. So three days later, you're going to send them another email and say, hey, did you get your card? I mean, maybe they haven't got their card yet, but you still need to be like in their inbox, right? If they don't want to hear from you, they're going to delete you and that's okay. But you gotta be there and you have to keep the momentum going yourself. Don't be too polite. People are getting constantly barraged with emails. And if you think, oh, I'm going to be polite, I'm not going to send this for another two weeks, they might've bought a bag by then, right? From somebody else. So you need to say how excited you are to be making this bag for them. And that you've sent out the card and as soon as they receive their card, please, you know, scan, do you have a QR code on that card?
41:33 Speaker 07 I do, yeah.
41:34 Speaker 01 Okay. So they scan the QR code and then they take the picture and then it lands them somewhere that makes the next step really easy?
41:40 Speaker 07 Yes. So it sends them a link and then they can design the bag over that photo.
41:44 Speaker 01 And how many choices for designing the bag are there?
41:47 Speaker 07 So they can do the shape and then there's a couple toggles for features, you know, various types of zippers, that type of thing. And then the like print for the fabric.
41:57 Speaker 01 And do you find that people drop there or just at the beginning?
42:01 Speaker 07 Anecdotally, I think that you get a lot of people in that decision paralysis where they want to, I gave them so many tools that they can optimize this thing perfectly. And because of that, they sit on it for a couple of weeks.
42:15 Speaker 01 They can't figure it out. Yes. Okay. So Dan Ariely, fabulous behavioral science guru, would say that if someone was ordering a pizza or you would start with giving them 10 toppings and let them remove them rather than asking them to add them. So you want to actually start with, here's the bag that most people buy. Take them to a page where you got a fully loaded bag and they just have to upload a picture or choose a color. And if they want to remove certain things, they can. But you make them do one thing, don't make them do 10, right? It shouldn't be that many clicks. Assume they want the very best one and tell them this is the one that everybody else buys. Everybody wants to do what other people are doing because they think it's right.
43:00 Speaker 01 And so they will very likely find it easier to just do what everybody else is doing. And you need to make it easier for them. And then if they need to upload a photo, right? Um, do you happen to know the average age of your customer?
43:12 Speaker 07 I don't. Um, I would, I would fathom it's in the twenties, early thirties.
43:18 Speaker 01 Okay, so they know how to upload photos, right? If you have an older customer, they don't know how to upload photos. So you also have to make it easy for those customers who may not be so tech savvy, um, but might have a little bit more money. But if they're in their twenties and thirties, you're good. Um, and
43:34 Speaker 07 Can I ask a question?
43:35 Speaker 01 Yeah, go ahead, go ahead.
43:36 Speaker 07 A question on the, the pricing. So I do, it starts at the 149 and then you have price adders for various waterproofing or, um, various little features that you can put in there. Should I, I've been thinking about doing the like one click purchase type of thing, automatically sets it up. Which approach there do you think, you know, one builds the cost up in a way that people are like recognizing the value of the item they're adding maybe? Um, or should I just jump to the, this is five additional features on there?
44:08 Speaker 01 I would show three bags. I would show small, medium and large, right? Very often people feel more responsible if they just go for the medium. They feel cheap if they go for the small. They feel superior if they go for the large. It's really crazy, but these things are very true. So start with something that's one click. I think it is about reducing the complication in terms of what should they choose? Um, and you could even say like X people chose this one today. X people chose this one today, or this one's the best seller. Uh, and you see all of these, when you go to websites, you see all the times that people, sort of guiding people towards what the best selling one is because people will think that if a lot of other people did it, it must be the right thing to do. It's just how the human brain works.
44:53 Speaker 01 And then get your follow-up emails in order so that you are communicating with those customers regularly. They were excited about that bag. You know, it's a great thing and it's really practical for them. Don't, don't let them forget, right? And get, you know, just don't feel shy about following up and sending those emails because if you don't, somebody else is going to get them.
45:15 Guy Raz? Hmm, that's great advice. Yeah, great advice. Jack Boland, the brand is called Wompy Bikes. Thanks so much for calling in. Good luck. Thank you so much. This has been so helpful and wonderful meeting the two of you.
45:25 Speaker 01 So. Thanks, Jack.
45:27 Guy Raz? Thank you. Marcia, uh, great, great advice.
45:31 Speaker 01 My God, I just loved this. I loved it.
45:35 Guy Raz? Super helpful.
45:36 Speaker 01 Very practical. I'm, I'm practical.
45:39 Guy Raz? For sure. And also, thank you for helping me out while I'm getting through this, recovering from being sick all week. Marcia, before I let you go, um, you know, it's something I, I ask every guest who comes onto the advice line, which is what, what would you, you know, now that you have all of this experience, what would you, if you could go back to you and you started out, you know, in New York, giving facials and then Bliss, what advice do you have now that would have been helpful for you back then?
46:06 Speaker 01 Oh, so much. There's a mountain of advice and I'm giving it to people all the time. It's a very different time, of course, and we didn't have the internet to get feedback on. I think that's a real gift to new entrepreneurs today because you can put your thing out there and just get straight, immediate feedback from people and listen to it and use it as a tool. So I was very hands-on in my businesses and we had to take quite a few cannonball fires, you know, before bullets, where you had to take some big risks. I think taking small risks and learning without, you know, betting the farm is a, is a great piece of advice for anybody who's a young startup founder who is, you know, working on their own and working on a limited budget.
46:49 Guy Raz? That's great advice. That's Marcia Kilgore, serial entrepreneur and founder of Beauty Pie. Marcia, thanks so much.
46:55 Speaker 01 Stay alive, guy, no matter what cold occurs.
46:58 Guy Raz? And by the way, if you haven't heard Marcia's original How I Built This episode, you've got to go back and check it out. You will find a link to it in the podcast description. And here is one of my favorite moments from that interview.
47:09 Speaker 01 I treated myself to a facial after an economics exam and I had saved $40 or $50 to go to this place that was supposed to be the be all and end all of facials. And I remember walking into that place and the esthetician looked through the lamp at my skin and she actually went.
47:28 Speaker 01 What a pity. And I thought to myself, this is not a treat. And I left feeling so horrendous. And I remember just seeing my reflection and my face was kind of raw and blotchy and thinking, if I ever had a place like that, I would never make my customers feel bad about themselves.
47:47 Guy Raz? Thanks so much for listening to the show this week. Please make sure to check out my newsletter. You can sign up for it for free at guyraz.com. Each week it's packed with tons of insights from entrepreneurs and my own observations and experiences interviewing some of the greatest entrepreneurs ever. And if you're working on a business and you'd like to be on this show, send us a one-minute message that tells us about your business, the issues or questions you'd like help with, and hopefully we can help you with them. And make sure to tell us how to reach you. You can send us a voice memo at [email protected] or call us at 1-800-433-1298 and leave a message there.
48:32 Guy Raz? And we'll put all this in the podcast description as well. This episode was produced by Carla Esteves with music composed by Ramtin Arablouei. It was edited by Andrea Bruce. Our audio engineer was Sina LaFredo. Our production staff also includes Chris Messina, Alex Chung, J.C. Howard, Casey Herman, Sam Paulson, Kerry Thompson, Catherine Seifer, John Isabella, Neva Grant, and Elaine Coats. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to The Advice Line on How I Built This Lab.
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