Advice Line: New Offerings, Bigger Markets

Today’s callers: Kristina in Florida wants to take her local pottery workshops nationwide. Then Jim from Colorado wonders if retail is right for his quick release camera straps. And Will in Ohio hopes his business will change what consumers expect from tool rental services. Thank you to the founders of Seagrass Pottery, Lemur Strap and Tool Club for being a part of our show. If you’d like to be featured on a future Advice Line episode—where Guy and former show guests take questions from early-stage founders—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] mailto:[email protected] or call 1-800-433-1298. And be sure to listen to our episodes with Chieh Huang of Boxed https://art19.com/shows/831bd173-0992-41b7-b1eb-112db904d947/episodes/c6e1ce0f-b867-4773-bf88-526fe1644d52/embed, Hernan Lopez of Wondery https://art19.com/shows/831bd173-0992-41b7-b1eb-112db904d947/episodes/f94e3576-70e8-425f-9f91-8018d66996c6/embed and David Neeleman of Jet Blue https://art19.com/shows/831bd173-0992-41b7-b1eb-112db904d947/episodes/5bbcd9c0-0554-439f-9c72-ac22e032702c/embed. This episode was produced by Kerry Thompson with music by Ramtin Arablouei. It was edited by John Isabella. 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/ or on Substack https://guyraz.substack.com/ See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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• 4:20Speaker 00

  Hello and welcome to The Advice Line on How I Built This Lab. I'm Guy Raz, and this is the place where we help try to solve your business challenges. And as you know, each week I'm joined by a legendary founder, a former guest from the show, who will attempt with me to help you. And this week, our episode is a bit of a mashup. Three callers and three different former guests, and they're all talking about a similar challenge: how to introduce a novel product or service to bigger markets. By the way, if you're building something and you need advice or just want advice, give us a call. You just might be the next guest on this show. Our number is 1-800-433-1298.

• 5:01Speaker 00

  Leave us a one-minute message that tells us about your business and the issues or questions that you'd like some help with. Okay, let's get to it. So my first guest today is Che Wong. Che was first on the show in 2021, and he told the story of starting Boxed, an online retailer that delivered bulk-sized groceries and household essentials right to your home. If you want to hear the whole story, we'll put a link to that episode in the podcast description. Anyway, here on The Advice Line, Che and I talked a caller through different approaches to turning her local pottery studios into a national brand.

• 5:36Speaker 01

  Hi, Che. Hi, Guy. I'm Christina Latraverse. I'm calling from Indi-Atlantic, Florida. I'm the founder of Seagrass Pottery. We're a professional pottery studio on Florida's Space Coast. We design and create the most beautiful handmade pottery, and we also host experiences that bring people together through clay.

• 5:53Speaker 00

  Awesome. Well, thanks for calling, Christina. So you've got a pottery studio, and you sell pottery, and then you also have classes?

• 6:01Speaker 01

  That's correct. We also, we do workshops, classes. We have a community studio, and we also host domestic and international retreats.

• 6:07Speaker 00

  Wow. That's great. So tell me a little about the business. How did it start?

• 6:13Speaker 01

  So I was working as an art educator, and then I worked as a visual art content specialist for our school district, where I oversaw 84 visual art programs. I really saw firsthand the power of the arts and how they can transform classrooms and communities. I always did pottery on the side, and I just found a time and space and took a bold move and signed a lease. And we opened the studio in 2019, just three months before the pandemic. And in 2022, we opened our second location and here we are.

• 6:42Speaker 00

  Wow, so you've got two locations also in the area along the Space Coast.

• 6:47Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 6:48Speaker 00

  Tell me about your role. Are you making pottery? Are you teaching classes? Or are you overseeing the business?

• 6:54Speaker 01

  I'm kind of overseeing the business. I do a lot of the design work and a lot of I still keep my hand in creating because that's really what I'm passionate about. And then I also developed the curriculum for the classes and I really think that's what differentiates us from other studios. I think that there's a lot of great artists out there, but they aren't always great teachers.

• 7:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 7:11Speaker 01

  And we really take that teaching aspect really seriously because if you come into the studio and you have a bad experience, that could technically turn you off clay forever. So that's just something we're really intentional about in our design.

• 7:21Speaker 00

  And the business is sustainable, profitable?

• 7:24Speaker 01

  Yes. Yep. Yep. So we're on track to do about 400,000 this year. Total lifetime revenue at 1.2 million.

• 7:31Speaker 00

  And where is your, where do most of your sales come from? The wholesale side?

• 7:35Speaker 01

  So that's the interesting part and that's part of the reason for my call.

• 7:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 7:40Speaker 01

  We mostly are a B to B wholesale, but we do have a small percentage of retail.

• 7:47Speaker 00

  So you make stuff for like restaurants?

• 7:49Speaker 01

  Yes, we do restaurants, mostly interior designers, businesses.

• 7:53Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 7:54Speaker 01

  We're about 30% B to B for wholesaling. And then we have 38%, which is classes and workshops. And then 30% is our community studio because we offer like a membership program where you can kind of use the studio space as your own when our classes aren't in session.

• 8:10Speaker 00

  Okay, so let's get to your question.

• 8:12Speaker 01

  Okay, so we built Seagrass Pottery as a scalable ecosystem, not a single location studio. How would you approach positioning a brand like ours? So it scales beyond location and starts to define an entirely new category.

• 8:28Speaker 00

  Okay, a lot to think about there. Che, I want to bring you in here. Thoughts or questions for Christina before we tackle her question?

• 8:35Speaker 02

  My initial thought is Christina, love the fact that you're an educator and I love the fact that you became an entrepreneur. And I love the aspect, if you can get fellow educators there in the summer. You talk about user acquisition and scalability. I'm sure they have students that love them. And if they knew Christina was teaching in the summer, they would come and sign up. I just, I just love it. And when you think about what the zeitgeist is, especially in physical locations like malls that have been pretty beaten down in recent years, is that malls, at least successful ones, are transitioning to not just selling things, but selling experiences. And shopping can be experience.

• 9:18Speaker 02

  When you go into some stores and they make you kind of do the racetrack walk and there's little things everywhere. I'm seeing more and more successful malls have those type of experiences. And so I think you might be on target or on trend. And so bringing you in to their locations might actually have some benefits for them. And you might get preferential rates and treatment if you talk to some of the larger mall operators. That was my initial reaction.

• 9:47Speaker 01

  That's interesting.

• 9:48Speaker 00

  Yeah, I'm curious, Christina. I mean, when you talk about scaling, what does that means more physical locations like in your sort of dream house world? What would that look like?

• 10:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, in my dream house world, Seagrass Pottery is the name that people think of when they want to create and maybe have an experience maybe with their family or on a date. And they're just kind of doing something more meaningful than just, I don't know, going to the movies. And I do think there's this big draw. We even see it in our retreats where people want to come visit us. We put them up in a bed and breakfast in town and they come in and they spend the week with us just immersed in clay. I think it recharges people in a way that a lot of other activities don't, especially when they're constantly on like devices or on screens. Just do the opposite and get totally away from that. There's something that is just super appealing and recharging.

• 10:39Speaker 00

  Yeah, it sounds like that part of the business is really what energizes you more than anything else, which makes sense. The only, what's interesting to me is that you have 30% and it sounds like it's growing, 30% of your business is wholesale. And I'm looking at your website. You have beautiful pottery that you make. What's interesting to me about the scalability question is you have something that can scale already, which is This wholesale business that you've created where you are actually selling to interior designers and restaurants and beyond, you know, North Florida, let's say or Central Florida, you're all over the state and then all over the southeast and beyond.

• 11:24Speaker 00

  And the classes and the classroom is sort of a touch point that could remain in a few distinct locations where it becomes this destination. People know about Seagrass because they bought a piece in a gift shop in Seattle and they want to come to one of your five locations in Florida because they know this beautiful pottery. I don't know, it's just a thought and it may not be what you want to do, but from a scalability standpoint, that to me feels like your sort of clearest path.

• 12:01Speaker 01

  I think you're like right on track because we do get a lot of people who like my work. And then that's like the segue into the experience part of it. I feel like it's almost a necessity because I think one builds trust with the customers and that to me is so valuable. So I don't, I don't know that if I see a world one without the other, but I also see your point. So just something to think about.

• 12:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, Christina, I, you know, kind of echoing a little bit of what Guy just said. I don't like in terms of scaling physical locations, sorry if I'm a wet blanket on this a little bit.

• 12:35Speaker 01

  That's okay.

• 12:36Speaker 02

  I don't think, I cannot imagine a world where, and I'm not saying this is your end result that you want, but I can't imagine Seagrass Pottery being a billion dollar business if you don't scale the physical locations via franchising. I just, I just don't see it like, meaning that I think Christina yourself, you are such a kind of force behind this brand that I don't see you flying around the country to 70 locations trying to make sure everything's going well because we all work with 24 hours in a day.

• 13:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:10Speaker 02

  Now with that said, I think there's a lot of folks that would find your idea compelling. And if you're able to create standard operating procedures around all of this, which is not like a weird art form or a esoteric art form, there's a lot of professionals that help you do that. That might be a way to scale. Now, the other thing was that I went to the website. Amazing, I think you're gonna have to decide who you are. Are you that physical location with wholesale as kind of like a secondary business? Or are you a wholesaler where you can come in touch and kind of design your own things? And right now, when I go to the website, there's so much at the top that I'm like, Christina, it's time to pick. We're in the adolescence phase. You're doing a few hundred thousand in revenue.

• 13:55Speaker 02

  Let's pick what Seagrass Pottery really is when they grow up. It's gonna be hard, but you have to do it because there's almost too much at the banner.

• 14:05Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, I think that's a great question to ask. Like, what do we want to be? And you can be a version of all of those things, but you have to hit the gas on probably one of those. Let's say the three things are, you know, classes and then the community studio and then the products. And you split that into you guys retail and wholesale. The store, Seagrass Pottery, has to be a store, which I think it probably is. And the wholesale side of it, I think you have to ask yourself whether you want to and are prepared to scale that up, which means that you have to really build a team to start making those products. I mean, I'm looking at your vases and your espresso cup. They're beautiful, absolutely beautiful.

• 14:47Speaker 00

  I don't know how easy it is to teach people to make those products, you know, as well as they're made and probably you could do it. But that, to me, feels like where the opportunity is. You know, the challenge, I'll just push back on the franchise challenge, which is, you know, you've got a vibe going, right? Imagine there's a feeling that people have when they go into the space. To have somebody else take your brand and license it and replicate it, it's really hard. It's very hard to do if you're just selling chicken fingers, right? Now, try to do it when you're teaching people about how to make pottery in the way that you want people to be taught.

• 15:28Speaker 00

  So the franchise model is tricky because, you know, you're not gonna have the same kind of quality control. That being said, I think it's worth...

• 15:39Speaker 00

  Thinking about maybe just a few more locations. Maybe, maybe you've got four stores instead of two, maybe you've got five. And each of those stores does multiple things. It's a space, it's a studio, but it's also a place to showcase this beautiful work that you, you've created. And, and again, I don't want to pressure you or push you in any direction, but if, if you were asking me and you said, hey, I need you to write me a check to put into this, I would say, I'll, I'll do it, but here's where I want you to go.

• 16:09Speaker 02

  I, I also think Christina, I, I feel like being the, like the entrepreneur, the tech entrepreneur in me, there's two modes. It's either I'm not starting a business or I'm like going like a million miles a minute and we're driving this thing all the way to the moon. But there could be a really good business here without you actually franchising all across the entire country.

• 16:29Speaker 01

  You know, I look at businesses kind of like painting with a twist or, you know, those places where you go and paint your own pottery. And I know there's a lot less entail there because you just take the product and you leave, there's no like waiting for the kiln to fire.

• 16:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:41Speaker 01

  But they're just, and I also would love like a place where you could go, you know, anywhere in the country and have that kind of brand loyalty and know that you're going to have a good experience, you know, if you're interested in clay or wanted to create something for yourself, you know?

• 16:54Speaker 02

  So, you know, my immediate thought when I, when I went to the website and saw kind of the pottery classes, I'm, I'm, I'm dating myself, but if you ever get to that level and you do a TV commercial, you have to get Demi Moore to do it. You've got to recreate that scene. But, but outside of that, what might be interesting is kind of what Guy was saying before on the franchise model, perhaps a red flag and a counterpoint to what I even suggested, is that some of those locations that you just mentioned, where you just paint, they might have trimmed down the experience so much because that is the level in which they can have quality control. And if you're putting people on pottery wheels all across the country, it might get pretty gnarly pretty quickly on what the end result is when people go home.

• 17:39Speaker 02

  And so, so yeah, a counterpoint even to kind of my original point to, to think about.

• 17:45Speaker 01

  Thank you very much.

• 17:47Speaker 00

  Awesome. The company's called Seagrass Pottery. Christina, thanks so much for calling in. Good luck.

• 17:52Speaker 01

  Thanks for having me.

• 17:53Speaker 00

  All right. Yeah, I, you know, this East Fork Pottery was really blown up into a national brand, Heath here in the Bay Area. It's, and by the way, it's interesting because if you, if you buy pottery, like where you are in New Jersey, or New York City, or San Francisco, Los Angeles, it's very expensive, as it should be. These are beautiful handmade things. And I'm looking at her prices and they're about half.

• 18:20Speaker 02

  I was thinking the same thing because I've been, you know, when you kind of go into some of these stores, especially the fine furnishing stores, you'd look at the bottom of some of these things and you're like, did they switch the price tag? Because this has an extra zero on it.

• 18:34Speaker 00

  Right.

• 18:35Speaker 02

  So I can see why that part is compelling, especially if she's making them to order. No one's touching these prices currently available, I think. So I think she has room to go up and there's plenty of margin in this stuff.

• 18:50Speaker 00

  Yes. We're going to take a quick break, but when we come back, Hernán López, the founder of Wondery, joins me on the Advice Line. Stay with us. You're listening to a special mashup episode of the Advice Line, right here on How I Built This Lab.

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• 22:44Speaker 00

  Hey, welcome back to the advice line on How I Built This Lab. I'm Guy Raz and my next return guest is Hernan Lopez, founder of the podcasting network Wondery. Hernan first came on the show back in 2023 and we will put a link to that episode in the show notes. It's an amazing story of how he left his job as a TV executive, inspired by this new thing called podcasting and built it into a hugely successful network that was acquired by Amazon. Anyway, when Hernan joined me on the advice line, we helped a caller who generally sells his stuff through the internet figure out whether it makes sense to sell in retail. All right, let's bring our next caller. Welcome to the advice line. You're on with Hernan Lopez, founder of Wondery. Tell us your name, where you're calling from, and a little bit about your business.

• 23:27Speaker 03

  Hi, everyone. I'm Jim Curzly from Boulder, Colorado. I developed and patented a camera carrying system for professional and aspiring amateurs alike. It's called the Lemur Strap.

• 23:38Speaker 00

  Awesome, Jim. Thanks for calling in. Welcome to the show. How does it work? It's a, okay, it's a strap around your neck, I'm assuming, but what makes it different or special?

• 23:48Speaker 03

  Yeah, so I've always been an avid photographer. It's not my business. It's more of a hobby. I got my first camera when I was 12 years old from my dad, who was an actual movie producer. But I took it very seriously and I loved carrying my camera around until one day I didn't really love carrying my camera around because it was so big and awkward and heavy.

• 24:07Speaker 00

  It's a pain, yeah.

• 24:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, and you guys have probably carried around large SLR style cameras at one point in your life. So I tried every camera strap out there on the market and I thought, you know, there's got to be a better way. So I just started tooling around with some aluminum parts and pieces. And I realized if I hung the camera from the bottom, The lens would point down and the screen on the back of the camera would point up where it was like safe from, you know, getting scratched and knocking off your belt buckle and the rivets on your jeans. And all of a sudden I'm like, I've got something here because this camera is way more comfortable to carry. It's no longer the unruly camera that's like rotating around your body and bouncing up and down. And

• 24:53Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 24:53Speaker 03

  So that was the first thing that I took care of was like the hanging position.

• 24:59Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 25:00Speaker 03

  And then the second thing that I tackled was the ability to remove the camera from the strap in a nanosecond, like literally like less than a second.

• 25:10Speaker 00

  Like if you see like a cheetah and you want to capture the cheetah, you can grab your camera. So it, so, cause when you wear a camera, right? It usually it's the lens is pointing outwards, right? Basically. And, and, but this way it slides into this, uh, this like, what, what do you call it?

• 25:28Speaker 03

  Well, yeah, so it's a base plate, but it has a little receiver that mounts to your camera via a tripod adapter. So

• 25:37Speaker 00

  You can just slide it in and quick release it?

• 25:39Speaker 03

  Yep. I just use the quick release feature when I want to, you know, go up high. You've all seen the perp walks, right? Where the, you know, the, the accused person is, you know, some celebrity is surrounded by all these people carrying their cameras. And they're all holding their cameras above their heads and their straps are hanging in their faces. And so now you can just press this little button. It releases in a less, less than a second.

• 26:03Speaker 00

  That's cool.

• 26:04Speaker 03

  And then when you want your hands free, you just click it right back in. You swing the camera around behind your back where it likes to stay. That's why we named it Lemer because Lemer moms carry their little babies around on their backs. Uh, so they have their, their paws free so they can swing from tree branches like I do.

• 26:22Speaker 00

  Um, tell me a little bit. So you, you launched this, I think, did you say in 2025?

• 26:28Speaker 03

  We launched it via Kickstarter in August of 2024. And then after the Kickstarter campaign ended, we went to direct to consumer sales in November of 24. And then we've had one full year, 2025, where we've done direct to consumer sales exclusively. And now we're entering into, you know, our second full year, 2026.

• 26:53Speaker 00

  And so you're not in stores at all?

• 26:56Speaker 03

  So that is kind of a great segue to my question.

• 27:00Speaker 00

  Oh, great. Let's hear it. Okay, great.

• 27:02Speaker 03

  So we have been pretty much direct to consumer. We were contacted by B&H Photography, an electronics giant out of New York City. I'm sure you guys have heard of B&H.

• 27:13Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 27:14Speaker 03

  We were pretty honored to have them reach out to us.

• 27:17Speaker 00

  Famous camera store, yeah.

• 27:18Speaker 03

  And so, so we're like, okay, that would be ridiculous not to take them up on this offer and start selling through a retail outlet. But it became abundantly obvious that this cuts way down on our margins, you know, our per strap margin. But we have been experiencing a higher volume of sales and we definitely have more exposure, people going on B&H to look for their photography equipment.

• 27:45Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 27:45Speaker 03

  So in order to attract more investment capital, would you recommend expanding further into retail to increase volume? Or should we focus more on our direct to consumer sales, where we definitely get a higher margin per strap, but we're going to grow at a much slower rate, I would say?

• 28:09Speaker 00

  All right, and I want to bring you in here. First of all, thoughts for Jim?

• 28:14Speaker 04

  Thank you. And it sounds like an amazing product that I wish I could visualize. Because my first question would be... Do you have a distinctive look that people would recognize immediately when they're seeing your from the description, it sounds like it is, but I'm asking from the point of view of color or branding or logo. I'm thinking about the early Beats headphones. Remember that when people started for the first time to see that B that essentially got Apple to notice them and buy the company. Is that part of your branding in a way? If not, could it be?

• 28:52Speaker 03

  Yeah, so we did put a lot of effort and thought into that. Our logo is, looks like a little lemur paw.

• 28:58Speaker 04

  Great.

• 28:59Speaker 03

  We have two different base colors. One is black anodized because photographers are a very kind of conservative crowd that they don't like change very much. They like things to be black. They like things, you know, look, think about how cameras look the same almost as they did, you know, fifty, sixty, seventy years ago. But then we also made a bronze colored one. And then that one jumps out much more like off the base because I thought, yeah, we need a signature color, you know, we, we need people to recognize that this is something different attached to your camera. But for, we sell probably fifty percent bronze and fifty percent black because the black thing just will not die.

• 29:39Speaker 04

  Right. That's great. So my bias always typically goes towards direct to consumer. Build your direct to consumer relationship and outlet as fast as you can because those are the relationships that you're going to own over time. The only difference for your case is that looks like your product is something that they will buy only once. Or is there a use case for them buying more or any add-ons or any more products down the line?

• 30:10Speaker 03

  Yeah, there's not a whole lot of potential for that. A lot of people have two cameras. And we are developing a accessory that allows you to use two cameras at one time. This is like the holy grail of camera equipment. So, but yes, you know, people are going to be at one, two, and that's about the lifetime, you know, commitment. Right.

• 30:30Speaker 00

  Yeah, and that's a problem. I mean, it's a good, good and bad problem because you make a quality product and, right, you want to have high quality product. This is the problem that like Tempur-Pedic mattresses have, right? You buy it once. But, um, so it seems like accessories here, right? Different kinds of accessories is, it would be an interesting play in the long term. I mean, the strap, right? Interesting. I'm sure photographers love it. But Hernan is right. You know, you're going to buy the strap and the base plate and, and now you want to think about, okay, what other things can we offer? How can we make other accessories or come up with other solutions for photographers?

• 31:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, because, you know, one, everybody always says, you know, one product is not a business to make. And we understand that. And Hernan's answer, you know, try to build this direct to consumer kind of relationship, confidence, whatever. That is really what we've been trying to do over the last year. You know, grow the company organically, make sure that we are offering really good customer service, we're getting the orders out on time. You know, we're kind of scaling really, really slowly so that we can get those all important five star reviews. And so I kind of, what I expected to hear was, oh, you got to sell as many straps as possible. Go retail everywhere, you know, increase volume,

• 31:57Speaker 03

  increase it, increase it, increase it. But you do that at your own peril because you, you could end up with, you know, a lot of unhappy customers.

• 32:06Speaker 00

  Yes. And, and also you start to get, like, if you go through Amazon as well, um, you know, eventually you're going to get knockoffs. But it doesn't mean that you shouldn't do that. I mean, I think that what's interesting about this product is it's something that photographer, I think photographers are, are going to love, right? If they see it. And it makes sense that you're going to go after B and H or. Specialty stores where photographers already trust the store.

• 32:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly, yeah.

• 32:36Speaker 00

  To me, I think the retail play is important, but I agree with Hernan is the direct to consumer here is what's what's interesting, but you gotta expand the product line.

• 32:45Speaker 04

  Right, and what I was going to, the reason why I asked you the question of if they look distinctive is I was going towards a marketing idea, which is how do you get the product in the hands of photographers who have a strong Instagram or YouTube audience, who occasionally put themselves as the subject. Because B&H is the ideal retailer for you, but there are not many B&Hs, uh, B&Hs around the, um, around the world. I mean, Best Buy perhaps, but there, there isn't a brand where people could go and discover your product and without seeing it in action, understanding what it does.

• 33:26Speaker 03

  Right, yeah, and so we've, we've really worked the influencer angle. We have, uh, you know, National Geo influencers and so, but you know, there is that all important, you know, cost of acquisition and, um, you know, we do have to spend money on Instagram and, and with meta ads and, and we're ramping sales, you know, they're going up. They're not probably going up like the hockey stick curve that you wanna see. But it, it may be too early for that, you know, like, how do you deal with inventory shortages and things? You know, you can't just sell a hundred thousand straps when you don't have them landed in the United States.

• 34:06Speaker 03

  So, you know, for me, and just to go to Hernan's thing though about visibility and recognition, you know, the more that we get those, the strap into prominent photographers' hands that other people notice, it's like, oh, look at, there's one of those lemur straps, then obviously that can create like sort of a viral moment.

• 34:29Speaker 00

  I do think it's worth, and you may have heard this episode, we've done Viore. That brand, the story that they told early on was very clear, and it's similar here, which is, you know, Joe Kudla surfs and exercises and runs and also like wants to be around his kids and he wanted one pair of shorts and he created that. That was the idea. And he wanted yoga in the same pair of shorts, right? He would swim and whatever. And he did that. And you, your story as a photographer and as somebody who had this problem will resonate, obviously, with photographers because they all have this problem. And so I feel like you want to tell your story and the craft behind this product. I think that would

• 35:13Speaker 00

  be, would be worth kind of leaning into, especially on, on social media, literally you saying, tell that story in 15, 20 seconds, just like that.

• 35:25Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's an interesting addition to like what we have been doing. What we have been doing works and then all of a sudden it doesn't work and then it works again. And so, but this is a nice kind of like arrow to put in the quiver, just kind of this, the founder's story and make that a prominent part of our outreach. Yeah, I like that.

• 35:46Speaker 04

  I would, again, encourage the overarching advice is yes, lean into retail. Don't overdo it. Go very strategically into the places where you can find consumers that otherwise would not become aware of you. The minute that you overexpose your product, you invite copycats and you cheapen your brand.

• 36:10Speaker 03

  Okay. That's great advice.

• 36:12Speaker 00

  The brand is called Lee Merstrap. Jim Kersley, thanks for calling in. Good luck.

• 36:17Speaker 03

  Thanks, you guys.

• 36:19Speaker 04

  Thank you. Correlations.

• 36:20Speaker 00

  We're going to take another quick break, but when we come back, another caller with another question for a former guest. Stay with us. You're listening to a special mashup episode of The Advice Line, right here on How I Built This Lab.

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• 38:13Speaker 00

  Hey, welcome back to the Advice Line on How I Built This Lab. I'm Guy Raz. And my last return guest today is David Neeleman. He's the founder of not just one, but five different airlines, including JetBlue. David was first on the show back in 2019 to tell that story, and he's been on the show two more times. And we'll put a link to all of those episodes in the show notes. David joined me on the Advice Line to help a caller who was trying to create a new business model for tool rentals. All right, let's bring in our final caller. Welcome to the advice line. You're on with David Neeleman. Please introduce yourself. Tell us your name, where you're calling from, and a little bit about your business.

• 38:49Speaker 06

  Yes. Hi, Guy. Hi, David. Thank you for having me on the show today. My name is William Carroll, and I'm the co-founder of Tool Club in Cincinnati, Ohio. Tool Club is a modern, delivery-first, equipment rental service that gives DIYers and pros an easier way to access the equipment they need for their projects. We handle the delivery and pickup so our customers can focus on getting the job done without all the friction that typically comes with it.

• 39:14Speaker 00

  Cool. Welcome to the show, Will. Thanks for calling in. Okay, so Tool Club, it's a rental business. You're based in Cincinnati. People can rent pretty much any tool, that any power tool or heavy-duty tool that they need to do a DIY project?

• 39:28Speaker 06

  Yeah, anything from a power washer all the way up to a dump trailer or skid steer. We've got a catalog that spreads wide that hopefully will cover any homeowner or DIY projects.

• 39:39Speaker 00

  Awesome. And are you, this is your full-time business?

• 39:43Speaker 06

  It is, yes. We launched over the holidays last year, and this is my, my full-time operator job here.

• 39:51Speaker 00

  Awesome. Are you, I imagine you're a pretty handy guy. I mean, what were you doing before this? Were you a contractor? Or were you doing this kind of work for people?

• 40:01Speaker 06

  To be honest, this is kind of a 180 for me. Majority of my career was actually in the golf industry. I was a PGA professional for many years, and then joined in the equipment manufacturer on the sales side for about five years. And then, you know, reached, reached a certain level in that industry and decided to move on. And I'm a first-time homeowner like my, my brother and founder, and we just noticed that anytime a project comes up, there are some pain points involved, whether you're buying equipment, renting equipment, or hiring someone. We're hoping to create a solution that fixes all those pain points.

• 40:37Speaker 00

  Right, because most people, they, something happens in their house and they're going to call somebody, right? Most of the time. Or if they're really handy, they might go and buy a piece of equipment that they might only use once every five years. So I guess your value proposition is, hey, you don't need to do that. You can rent this stuff for a fraction of the price. It's high quality, and you don't even have to store it at your house.

• 41:01Speaker 06

  Exactly. Yeah, that's one of the big pain points when it comes to ownership is high upfront costs and then you have to figure out where you're going to store it, maintain it, and most of the time it's a tool that you use once or twice and it sits there collecting dust most of the year.

• 41:15Speaker 00

  And you guys deliver the stuff to homes?

• 41:18Speaker 06

  We do. We are 100% delivery based. So that's our biggest differentiator between the standard rental systems in that we deliver and pick up the product. So eliminating any of those hassles that come into the kind of archaic rental industry that still exists today.

• 41:36Speaker 00

  Got it. All right. And your question for us?

• 41:39Speaker 06

  Yeah, so tool ownership and traditional rentals already exist, but Tool Club is really trying to introduce a new model centered around convenience and that delivery-based access to equipment. So the question is, how can we change consumer behavior so that when a project does come up, people instinctively think about accessing tools through Tool Club instead of buying them or hiring someone?

• 42:03Speaker 00

  All right. David Neeleman, I want to bring you in here. I think you're probably pretty handy. I have a feeling you're pretty handy.

• 42:11Speaker 07

  You have to be when you have, you know, nine kids and you have, you know, so many projects that come up at home for sure.

• 42:20Speaker 00

  Yeah. All right. So Will's got this, I think is a great, a great business idea, right? But how do you get people to change their behavior, right? When, when, because oftentimes you don't, there's a project you can plan for, like you want to re-tire your bathroom, or you want to redo your deck or something. But sometimes things happen and you're just like, oh, God, the wall is leaking. I gotta fix this. So how do you start to get people to think instinctively about like, I gotta call the Tool Club rather than like, oh, I gotta go to Home Depot, or I gotta go to call up the plumber?

• 42:53Speaker 07

  You know, I'm just sitting here thinking, you know, obviously, once somebody does it, they'll do it over and over again. I assume you have a lot of repeat business of people coming back.

• 43:03Speaker 06

  We are still very much in the early startup phase, you know, launching last year over the holidays and unfortunately, we had a pretty harsh winter here in Cincinnati. Luckily, that is starting to change. So we have a little bit of initial consumer base in our initial inventory, but because of that kind of harsh weather and just getting into the spring, our revenue is a little bit low at the moment.

• 43:27Speaker 07

  Yeah, so I think, I think, I don't know, one idea would be come up with some projects that would be perceived to be maybe difficult or that are, that the people charge a lot for. And maybe what you would do is create those projects and do them and show the tools that you would use to do it on social media. Have a, have an Instagram thing and you could become the Mr. DIY at home. And let me show you the tools that you need and you can be at tiling a floor or laying cement or whatever, things that somebody would charge a lot of

• 44:08Speaker 07

  money for. And you could talk about, I bid this out, it costs $15,000 and I was able to do it for $4,000. And look at this beautiful floor that we were able to do. And these are the tools that you would use.

• 44:19Speaker 00

  I think that's a great idea. I think you could do two, you could do two different paths. You can appeal to two different kinds of customers, right? You know, the people who are, who are capable of re-tiling their bathroom floor, who know how to do it and who, and who, you know, who want to save thousands of dollars by doing it themselves. But there's also the other kind of customer who's not necessarily super handy, but could probably power wash their deck, right? Who could probably, and, and so I had my deck power washed, I don't know, before winter, right? And I think it cost me, I don't know, 500 bucks. It was not cheap, right? And they did a great job. It's clean. It was clean. Now it's back to, you know, we're not back to it. But I'm looking at your website. I

• 45:02Speaker 00

  could have just gotten a power washer for a hundred bucks and done it myself. And I could do that. I mean, it's not really, yeah, if you're experienced, you might be a little bit better. But if I could save 500 bucks, I'd do it myself.

• 45:14Speaker 06

  Exactly.

• 45:15Speaker 00

  So I would really lean into those use cases and see if both on your website, social media, you can basically do videos on it, you know, just fun little videos, maybe with some friends and be like, Hey, why, you know, I could get my, somebody calling up, it's 500 bucks to power wash. I gotta call the tool club. And then, and then you guys show up and you're like, yeah, for a hundred bucks, you could do this all yourself. You know, just something simple like that, that most people, or like yard cleanup, you know, you've got leaf blowers, something like that, you know, getting somebody to do all that leaf blowing for you, it costs a few hundred bucks. You're, how much is it to rent a leaf blower, 35 bucks?

• 45:56Speaker 06

  We have a couple of different options, but they start as low as $30.

• 45:59Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, great. Give me the $35 leaf blower and some trash bags, I'm good to go.

• 46:03Speaker 06

  Absolutely.

• 46:04Speaker 07

  That's a great idea, because there's, there's a lot of things that, that anyone could do and save a bunch of money and, and really make their place look a lot better. But being on YouTube and video and having people just click through your videos and see all the things they could do in their house using your tools. And then you create that repeat business and word of mouth where, you know, you may even have some neighbor kids want to start a power washing business using your equipment and making some money.

• 46:33Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think as you're starting your business too, you want to make sure to collect email addresses, right, Will? So, you know, I got, I got my grill cleaned, because that's a big pain in the butt. I should have done it myself, but it could take me hours and hours. So I called this company and, and they did it in like an hour and a half. And it's sparkling clean. It was really expensive. They're so smart, twice a year, I'm getting an email from them saying, hey, it's time to clean your grill. And it's usually just at the right time. You know, you could have, you know, a message that people get, hey, spring is coming, book your power washer now to get ready to spend time outdoors. And so you really want to focus on those first time users, get their information and you follow up.

• 47:17Speaker 00

  And you can offer credit, you know, credit for the next project to get people motivated, not to be like annoying, but to say, hey, we're, we're here for you, you know, anytime you need us, we're here for you.

• 47:29Speaker 06

  Yeah, absolutely. Those are great ideas. And we use currently a Shopify stack that does capture all of that data. And we've been doing some regular newsletters and, and anything we can to grow our awareness.

• 47:42Speaker 00

  Yeah. Yeah, I don't know about Cincinnati or in Provo, David, but there's a shortage of contractors in the Bay Area. It is really hard to find them because cost of living is high and contractors, they charge a lot here. So a lot more people are doing DIY stuff. And that's another area where, you know, some contractors, they're just, they don't have the capacity. So it's possible you may want to go to contractors and say, hey, when there's overflow or you don't have capacity, like you've got DIY clients, refer us and maybe we can work with you guys if you know, if you guys need equipment on a project.

• 48:21Speaker 06

  Absolutely.

• 48:22Speaker 07

  I think, you know, just thinking, you know, on the theme of these children that getting away from screens and video games and all that, maybe there could be a little business here where, where you could enlist kids in the neighborhood to do lawn mowing and leaf cleanup and power washing, where you could provide them the equipment to do that. And then they pay you for it. And you do, because maybe they want to do it, they just don't have the know how. But you could create little entrepreneur clubs where kids are actually out doing work using your equipment and you make money, they make money and the homeowner pays less.

• 49:00Speaker 06

  Absolutely. We've, we've talked about offering the services or being a people connector of some sort. Certainly recognize those areas of extra revenue and, and the thought that contractors, to your points, are very behind in their schedules and sometimes they can't accommodate people. So those are areas that we're looking into, absolutely.

• 49:23Speaker 00

  Awesome. Well, the brand is called, the company's called Tool Club. Will Carroll, thanks for calling in. Good luck, man.

• 49:28Speaker 06

  Thank you very much.

• 49:29Speaker 00

  Congrats. Hey, thanks so much for listening to this special mashup edition of The Advice Line. And special thanks to Che Wong, Hernan Lopez, and David Neeleman for joining me today. Again, if you haven't heard their original episodes or their full episodes of Advice Line, you'll definitely want to check them out. We'll have links to all those episodes in the show notes. And by the way, please make sure to check out my newsletter. You can sign up for it for free at guyraz.com. Or on Substack. And of course, if you are working on a business and you'd like to be on this show, send us a one minute message that tells us a little bit about your business and the questions or issues that you're currently facing, because we would love to try and help you solve them. You can send us a voice memo at [email protected]

• 50:13Speaker 00

  or call us at 1-800-433-1298. Leave a message there and make sure to tell us how to reach you and we'll put all of this information in the podcast description as well. This episode was produced by Kerry Thompson with music composed by Ramtin Arablouei. It was edited by John Isabella and our audio engineer was Sina LaFredo. Our production staff also includes Casey Herman, Carla Estevez, J.C. Howard, Sam Paulson, Catherine Seifer, Chris Messina, Alex Chung, Neva Grant, and Elaine Coats. I'm Guy Raz and you've been listening to the Advice Line right here on How I Built This Lab.