Pod Insights How I Built This with Guy Raz Advice Line with Alexa Hirschfeld of Paperless Post About this episode Today’s callers: Jess from Washington seeks counsel on structuring a collaboration between her sympathy cards company and a pet products brand. Then, Caroline from Colorado wonders if she should build an in-house production team or outsource manufacturing for her decorative garland company. And Sayuri from California is looking to drive sales of her Japanese tatami mats through a unique approach to yoga practice.
Plus, Alexa shares how Paperless Post is responding to advancements in AI and the prevalence of post-pandemic loneliness.
Thank you to the founders of Five Dot Post, The Creative Garland Company, and Sumo Yoga 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 Paperless Post https://art19.com/shows/831bd173-0992-41b7-b1eb-112db904d947/episodes/37fecd5b-6c48-477f-9e3d-f5c83d1ed01d/embed as told by Alexa and her brother James on the show in 2024.
This episode was produced by Rommel Wood with music by Ramtin Arablouei. It was edited by John Isabella. Our audio engineers were Debbie Daughtry and 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/ and on Substack https://guyraz.substack.com/.
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5:19 Speaker 00 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 this 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. Leave us a one-minute message that tells us about your business and the issues or questions that you'd like help with. All right, let's get to it. Joining me this week is Alexa Hirschfeld. She's a co-founder, along with her brother, James, of Paperless Post. It's an online invitation company. Alexa, it's great to have you back on the show.
5:58 Speaker 01 It's great to be here. Thank you for having me.
6:00 Speaker 00 And I apologize for my voice of battling a cold, but I'm feeling great. So Alexa, you were first on How I Built This, you and your brother were on it in 2024. And you guys got this idea and it was that you wanted to kind of recreate the beauty of a physical invitation, but to do it online. And now, almost 20 years later, like hundreds of millions of invitations have been sent. It is a great story. And if you guys haven't heard it, we'll put a link to it in the show notes. I mean, I remember we talked about this when you were on the show because one of the things that makes Paperless Post unique, many things, but one of the things is you have no ads on the websites or in the invitations.
6:38 Speaker 00 People pay to use your designs and your service and it really feels like a high-end invitation, like something you'd get in the mail. We've used Paperless Post for so many important occasions in our lives. My wife's 50th birthday party last year, for example, and they're so beautifully designed. I'm sure you get this all the time where people are saying, well, AI is going to be coming for this, for design and for creativity. And I know that you also have some AI technology that you're working with to help people design cards, but I wonder how you think about sort of protecting the business so it's thriving in 10 or 20 years?
7:19 Speaker 01 Of course, yeah. I am a real believer. I think AI is pretty amazing and I think it can be an accelerator of human creativity rather than a replacement for human creativity. I think that having more AI-generated content on the internet and in the world is also going to create more of a demand for human-created content and for really, it's just going to raise the bar for quality. For us specifically, the way that we are really focused on using AI at the moment is in
8:00 Speaker 01 Taking work that users don't need to do out of the process of designing. We're working on ways of collapsing steps and taking time out of the process of customizing, but enabling people still to put their fingerprint on the design.
8:15 Speaker 00 Yeah, you put out a blog post late last year about loneliness. People are not spending time with other people for obvious reasons. People are on screens and communicating through screens. And you wrote a blog post about this and how you're trying to do your part, I guess, as a business in trying to get people to hang out more casually, just to have like, you know, spontaneous parties or get togethers or gatherings.
8:41 Speaker 01 Yeah, I think that for a lot of reasons, people haven't been prioritizing spending time with real friends and family in person because they have this idea that they are keeping in touch with friends and family by seeing kind of images and stories and holograms of their friends online and different types of social media. And I remember after COVID, seeing my friends at, you know, I was actually at a wedding and thinking, wow, you know, you're so much funnier and more nuanced and sensitive and interesting than I remember and than what I was getting from you in exclusively, you know, online form.
9:25 Speaker 01 I think real life makes people more dimensional and just better than they are when they're kind of like just represented in two dimensions. And so my advice is to really prioritize that type of interaction with the people in your life.
9:42 Speaker 00 Yeah, absolutely. And so you guys are, I guess, trying to introduce a product that's trying to sort of create a more informal invitation, right? Because when you get a paperless post, I think people think, oh, this is a formal party or, you know. But you guys introduced something called the Flyer, which is, I guess, designed to be texted, right? Not necessarily emailed?
10:06 Speaker 01 So Flyer, yeah, Flyer can be, all of our invitations can be texted, but you're absolutely right that Flyer is a more casual, lighter weight version of a paperless post that is less expensive than our classic product. There's a lot of free options. It's for people who want to express the aesthetic of their party. But not express that it's going to be a wedding necessarily. It just, maybe it's just a potluck at your house for a Friendsgiving. And what we want to do is enable people to have more parties that don't need to be a big deal because then you'll do it more.
10:42 Speaker 00 Yeah. Alexa, what do you say? Should we take a call?
10:45 Speaker 01 Let's do it.
10:46 Speaker 00 All right. Let's bring in our first caller. Welcome to the Advice Line. You're on with Alexa Hirschfeld, co-founder of Favorless Post. Please tell us your name, where you're calling from, and just a little bit about your business.
10:55 Speaker 02 Hey, guy. Hi, Alexa. I'm Jess Walker in Washington State, and I'm the founder of Five Dot Post, a greeting card brand that specializes in cancer support, grief, and empathy-driven cards.
11:07 Speaker 00 Awesome. Thanks for calling in, Jess. So tell us more about the cards. What do they, when you get one, what do they look like?
11:14 Speaker 02 So I came up with this idea in 2018, shortly after my late husband was diagnosed with cancer in our mid-20s. The support cards we were seeing in the cancer space really felt like they resonated with a different demographic. And we were young, and we were fighting this in a way where you use like humor, and it was just different. So the cards that I created, specifically in the cancer space, really lean into that, using humor as medicine. Like, if you can't laugh about it, it can be too heavy, that kind of energy. And it really resonated with the cancer community in general.
11:49 Speaker 00 Wow.
11:50 Speaker 02 And it's grown beyond the scope of just cancer cards. We have full year-round, seasonal, everyday cards. It's a much wider scope at this point. But receiving a card that really resonates because it's written by someone who's really been there, and that's been the heart of all of our cards.
12:06 Speaker 00 Hmm. I, you know, I know that a lot of people have experienced this, where cancer comes into your life somehow, a friend, or somebody in your family, or somebody you love, and it's really hard. You don't know what to say. You don't know how to react or respond. You don't... It's and you don't want to say the wrong thing. I've talked to people who are survivors and they'll say the worst thing I heard was when people are like, we're gonna beat this together, you know, some people, but some people do want to hear that. And I'm looking at your cards and they're so great. They're so creative. Chemo is tough, but I know someone tougher. Cancer can suck it. Cancer has no idea what it's coming for. This is so shitty, I'm here for anything you need on a card. What a great idea. I love this.
12:50 Speaker 02 Right. It's it's just what you actually want to hear when you're going through it. Sometimes you don't want to see a sad flower that just says, get better. You want to hear what you're thinking. You want to have that reflected to you. And to to what you said, the main goal of Five Dot Post was to lower the barrier to entry to support someone because you get nervous to say the wrong thing. And I want to make it to where we provide the words for you so you can just go ahead and and be the supporter. You don't have to be scared to say the wrong thing. And to be honest, you're never going to say the wrong thing. Like, it might resonate more or less, but it's it's they just want you to show up and we just want to make showing up easier.
13:25 Speaker 00 Yeah. And so you expanded this to birthdays and graduations and Father's Day and Mother's Day. And do you do you write all the cards?
13:33 Speaker 02 I do. I am the designer for everything. I come up with all the words. We've recently expanded in the last few years to I don't have to do everything now. I have a fulfillment center. We're in about 700 small retailers around the country as well as national retailers. But I am still the designer for everything and they're all my words.
13:54 Speaker 00 How's the business doing? Give us a sense of what you guys are doing in sales.
13:57 Speaker 02 Yeah. The last two years, we've been about 350,000, both 2024 and 2025. And it's in a bit of a transition year where this year I have entered a partnership with a pet brand called Sweet Paws, Marissa Gertie, and she's actually been on the advice line previously.
14:15 Speaker 00 She was on the advice line, the chew, she makes the chew rings for dogs.
14:19 Speaker 02 Exactly. The teathers, yes.
14:21 Speaker 00 The teathers, yeah.
14:21 Speaker 02 We ran into each other at a trade show last year and decided to do pet sympathy cards, taking what I do really well, what she does really well.
14:29 Speaker 00 That's awesome.
14:29 Speaker 02 And we created this collaboration. It has grown exponentially in the first 12 months and that partnership is, we're now on Chewy. We won three golden tickets at Walmart's Open Call and in a few weeks, we're going to be launched at every Petco nationwide.
14:46 Speaker 00 Wow.
14:48 Speaker 02 Yeah, so we're in a huge growth spurt right now. So just in POs for that partnership, it's already exceeded last year's revenue just in January of this year.
14:57 Speaker 00 So amazing.
14:58 Speaker 02 It's an interesting time to be running my business.
15:01 Speaker 00 Wow, I love this idea. I mean, pet sympathy cars and to do them well. So before we jump in a little bit further, what's your, tell us what your question is for us.
15:12 Speaker 02 My question is, when a collaboration like Sweet Paws by Five Dot Post, which is what we've been calling it with all these new retailers, when it grows beyond its original scope, how do you decide whether to keep that combined brand name or evolve it into a standalone identity? And are there benefits to maintaining a visible connection to the original brands versus creating something totally new?
15:35 Speaker 00 All right. So you've got Sweet Paws with your brand with Five Dot Post and Alexa, you've done a bunch of collabs. You've done collabs with Martha Stewart, Richard Scary, the Richard Scary books that are incredible, Cars and Trucks and Things That Go. It's an amazing collaboration. You guys are doing it paperless post. What, I mean, collaborations are an awesome way to scale a brand and idea. But there's, you know, questions and things that you've got to figure out as they come.
16:07 Speaker 01 Yeah, congratulations. It's really an amazing story and congratulations on the traction also that you're seeing recently. And I think my first question for you to understand how to better answer yours is, how much brand recognition do you believe that your original Five Dot Post brand has?
16:32 Speaker 02 I think that's a great point. When we first started, we didn't know it would take off. So we were like, people will find these cards and then that will create the opportunity to send customers to both of our respective businesses. We thought that was like a positive marketing tool. And we're now seeing just as we're launching this stuff that it's a little confusing for customers because they're like, who's, what, like, it's also quite wordy, Sweet Paws by Five Post. So we're just trying to decide, maybe this is a bigger thing than either of our respective brands, even though we've both had success in our own worlds. Perhaps it makes sense just to create it as this separate identity. Because to your
17:14 Speaker 02 point, it does seem like it is growing at a more exponential rate than either of our respective businesses at this point.
17:21 Speaker 00 How have you, how have you set up the collaboration? Is it under Five Post? Or is it a separate?
17:27 Speaker 02 Yeah, we have a separate LLC that is Sweet Paws by Five Post, and we're both 50% owners of that LLC.
17:33 Speaker 00 Got it. Okay. And so, I mean, I guess the question is, if this business is really sort of going to blow up and grow, I mean, I was looking at pet accessories. I mean, this is a $30 billion global business. It's a huge, accessories. That doesn't include food or, you know, dog, other dog care products. It's just accessories. So you're talking about a huge market. And I wonder whether it's, it would just be worth kind of creating a new brand around this and really focusing on that this is a separate business.
18:13 Speaker 02 I think that makes a lot of sense. And again, to your point, we also, we started with cards, and then we also have giftable lifestyle products as well, like accessories and things. So it's like, there are going to be a lot of products under this new entity. So I do think maybe what you're saying to have it be its own standalone would make a lot more sense to consumer.
18:34 Speaker 01 I guess the other question I have is how important the brand is for the sales of Five Post. And if it is important, And you want to have a brand that makes sense for your product line in this collaboration. The other thing you could do is keep Five Dot Post, create a a brand that makes sense for this new collaboration and have them both live under an umbrella company which doesn't need to have a consumer facing brand. But you could imagine spinning off other brands underneath that that are owned by that umbrella company that really speak to customers in different moments in their life with different, you know, different needs.
19:18 Speaker 01 That's a really cool idea. Yeah, I like that.
19:20 Speaker 00 Yeah. In other words, you've got your human brand, right? Which is your, which is Five Dot Post and then you've got your animal brand, which is, which is a, this new entity. And, and by the way, how are you thinking about protecting your designs and your, you know, and your IP for example? I mean, is, I don't know, Alexa, is it, I mean, in, in sort of the, with what you do and your designs and even the things that you guys write, can you, can you protect those things?
19:51 Speaker 01 So you can protect them. I don't, if we're talking about patents, it's not going to stop other people from trying to copy your product, especially from a design perspective. It's, it's really easy for a copycat to go right up to the edges of what's legally acceptable and offer a knockoff product. I don't think that any other provider of products is going to be as good a version of you as you are. I think that you probably shouldn't spend time worrying about patenting designs. You should focus on continuing to innovate and to offer this full, authentic experience, which you really have.
20:36 Speaker 01 And I think copycats, they might look like your product, but I think for the people that are, that are really looking to, to buy something that, that is going to send the right message to the, to the other person, they're actually, they're going to pay attention to the details. And I think in many cases, consumers aren't as easy to trick and pandering to them with copycat inauthentic messages is just, is not as effective as copycats might think.
21:07 Speaker 02 I really appreciate you saying that. And I think that's great advice because I have copycats. It feels like whack a mole. Like, I have a handful of trademarks, but there's really not a whole lot you can do other than spending hours of your very valuable time as a CEO trying to reach out to have them removed and have cease and desist. And I think what you're saying is really powerful because you're right. It is, it's not just the sentiment. It's not just the image. It really is the whole experience. And I think that's going to be a large part, too, with this new business is creating that experience for these pet parents and celebrating their identity as a pet owner, not just I got this that says like, I hurt my dog. It's, it really resonates with who they are as a person.
21:50 Speaker 01 And also, the brand that it's coming from and the story of the brand that it's coming from is something that, you know, copycats aren't going to as authentically tell a story around. I think that also is an argument for keeping 5 dot post what it is and having the story behind that brand. And with the new collaboration, having the right story behind that brand because that's something that's really hard for like an AI copycat to, you know, authentically communicate.
22:21 Speaker 00 Yeah, absolutely. Jess Walker, the brand is called 5 dot post. Congrats. What a great idea. I love, I love it. Love what you're doing. Keep us posted. Good luck.
22:30 Speaker 02 Thanks so much.
22:31 Speaker 01 Thank you.
22:34 Speaker 00 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. Does your team want a website that looks and feels handcrafted but is still fast to ship? Well, Framer is built exactly for that. With Framer, you design on a visual canvas with responsive layouts, hosting and a CMS built in. So the work is production ready from day one and you can get it done with help from Framer's AI agents.
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26:29 Speaker 00 Welcome back to the Advice Line on How I Built This Lab. I'm Guy Raz battling a cold, but I'm getting better. My guest today is Alexa Hirschfeld, co-founder of Paperless Post. And Alexa, you ready for our next call?
26:41 Speaker 01 Absolutely.
26:42 Speaker 00 All right, let's bring our next caller. Welcome to the Advice Line. You're on with Alexa Hirschfeld, the co-founder of Paperless Post. Tell us your name, where you're calling from, and a little bit about your business.
26:51 Speaker 03 Hi, my name is Carolyn Haresky. I live in Crested Butte, Colorado, and the name of my company is The Creative Garland Company. At The Creative Garland Company, we create decorative garlands that are known for their distinctive designs, sparking conversations and elevating otherwise ordinary decor. Think ski chariot of garlands with dogs and cats as riders, upside-down sleeping bat garlands, bicycle garlands, just to name a few.
27:16 Speaker 00 All right, Carolyn, welcome to the show. Thanks for calling in. The Creative Garland Company. Okay, I'm embarrassed to admit this. I was like, what's a garland again? And then I went on your website and I was like, oh, that's a garland. So can you just indulge me for a moment? For the five people listening who don't know what a garland is, can you describe what it is?
27:34 Speaker 03 Sure. Well, I think most people, when they hear garland, they think of the nice floral, beautiful garlands on a line so that you would decorate an area, a lot of times for weddings, parties, things like that.
27:48 Speaker 00 And they're made out of paper, like cut paper?
27:50 Speaker 03 Yeah, really thick cardstock paper. As well as I've just started getting into making some out of acrylic as well, but most of them right now are cardstock.
27:58 Speaker 00 Cool. All right. And tell me about the business. How did you come up with this idea? I didn't. I mean, it's cool. I'm looking at all the things that you make. And do you have a background in crafts?
28:09 Speaker 03 Well, it all started during the pandemic and my daughter wanted one of those little cricket machines that you could cut paper and make stickers. She wanted to make stickers. And, you know, of course, being a little kid, she got bored with it within two weeks. I took it over, started getting into paper art and design, selling at our local farmer's market. And then for one Christmas market, I came up with this chairlift garland idea and it sold out.
28:34 Speaker 00 Chairlift, like ski chairlifts?
28:36 Speaker 03 Yeah. And so I thought I was on to something and I just took that idea and kept growing it.
28:41 Speaker 00 It's so cool. So you are, so you've got, I'm looking at you, you've got all kinds of garlands, wedding garlands, bride and groom. Do you sell, I'm assuming only through your website?
28:51 Speaker 03 I sell through my website. I also do wholesale and then I've still been doing in-person markets locally and statewide as well.
28:59 Speaker 00 And, and tell me a little bit about how the business did in 2025.
29:04 Speaker 03 It did well. We're growing. You know, I would say that I really started this business in the spring of 2024. That's when I got a new machine, started working on it. And so last year was my first full year in business, I would say. And it did about 43,000 in sales, which I was pretty happy with and it just keeps growing.
29:26 Speaker 00 And you are making all of this yourself in Crested Butte?
29:31 Speaker 03 Yes.
29:32 Speaker 00 So you get like all the paper stock sent to you and then you have like in your garage, you've got, or you've, you're just constantly cut, because it's, it's, these are hand cut and then you're putting them on the twine yourself?
29:46 Speaker 03 I used to put them on the twine. I am now packing the twine with the objects so that the end user can do it. That's the thing. It's fully adjustable too. So you can move the objects to fit your space.
29:56 Speaker 00 But you're still cutting every single one?
29:58 Speaker 03 Yes.
29:59 Speaker 00 Wow. That's a lot of work. Okay. Before we dive in a little further, what's your question for us?
30:04 Speaker 03 Okay. So my business has reached a point where I can no longer handle production on my own. How should I evaluate the decision between building an in-house production team and workspace versus outsourcing manufacturing, all while protecting product quality, brand identity, and the creative flexibility that got me here?
30:22 Speaker 00 Okay. Alexa, thoughts for Carolyn?
30:26 Speaker 01 My thoughts for you, first of all, are that I don't know that it's really this in-house versus outsourcing question that you need to answer. I think that, especially for creative brands, it's more sequenced and hybrid than that. So my advice is to think about what do you have to do? And what things that you currently do are repeatable and you personally don't need to do. So for example, you know, concept and design, ideas, new SKUs, limited runs. That's probably one type of thing you do.
31:08 Speaker 01 Then there's the production of the components, like cutting, printing raw materials. Probably there's assembling and finishing, like, you know, string sorting. And then there's fulfillment, packaging, et cetera. And I think the question is, you know, if something defines your brand, it needs your taste. If it changes often, that's the kind of thing you should keep close. But if it is consistent and repeatable, systematize it. You know, I think you are already scaling your business. And so you're just, you need to decide what tasks are artisanal and what can become a system.
31:45 Speaker 03 Okay.
31:46 Speaker 00 Yeah, yeah, I totally agree. I mean, you have a, what you're bringing to this, I'm assuming are the designs, right? You are designing everything.
31:54 Speaker 03 And that's the part I love. I love doing that and I love creating new ideas and they just come to me all the time. It's just the time, I don't have to do everything.
32:02 Speaker 00 So your thing, your question is, should I outsource this? Like, should I send the production elsewhere or not? And I, I guess if somebody else worked with you part-time and did them out of your garage, would that be a solution or not really?
32:17 Speaker 03 Yes, it would be. I need to get out of the garage. I do have a space down the road that I'm looking at that hopefully will come to fruition and I can rent that out.
32:25 Speaker 00 A space in town in Crested Butte.
32:27 Speaker 03 A little in Gunnison, about 30 miles down the road.
32:30 Speaker 00 So I think that you have an opportunity, right, to, as Alexa said, to find, I mean, maybe you're small, you're doing $45,000, but clearly you're growing and there's demand. And so you may be in a position to hire somebody hourly, part-time, to do those kinds of things, right? Because when you're talking about outsourcing, you're talking about a whole different world. It's like you've got long lead times and there's minimum orders that you, quantities that you've got to order, and they can't be as flexible. Like now, you can just turn on a dime. If someone's like, hey, you know, I'm throwing a party for my wife's 50th and she loves musicals. Can you make garlands?
33:13 Speaker 00 You can do that right away. You can make something like that. And so the minute you outsource it, it's trickier. I mean, and you can really only outsource once the variability of your product is low. You know, in other words, once you're, like what people are ordering, the demand is predictable. Like if the slays are accounting for 60 or 70% of your business, then that might be a time to think about doing it.
33:39 Speaker 01 I agree with that. I think also that the part-time suggestion is really smart. What's nice about part-time hires is that it's sort of an extended interview where you can see, is it working or is it not? And if it's working, then that is just the best way of vetting the quality of your working relationship with somebody is actually working with them. So that's a nice thing. Also, you know, less commitment. Another thing I might consider is, are there certain parts of your process that...
34:13 Speaker 01 Those skills are required for manufacturing something else that may be local. Like the cutting, for example, are there other products that need to be cut in a similar way where you could find someone who you aren't just training from the ground up, but actually they have skills in that part of the production process that you could leverage? I think that putting your creativity towards figuring out what parts of what you're currently doing in-house, you can start to hire somebody else to do would be a good use of time.
34:43 Speaker 03 Okay.
34:44 Speaker 00 Yeah, you know, I'm looking at your designs. These are so cool. And by the way, I think your, your prices are pretty low. I mean, are you, is that standard? I mean, it's, you know, 25, 30 bucks for one of these handmade garlands?
35:00 Speaker 03 Well, I love that you say that because some of the feedback I get is the opposite, that some people think it's a little too expensive. But I always have to reiterate to them that, hey, it's, you know, it's handmade, it's made in the USA, um, kind of drive those points through, so.
35:15 Speaker 00 So, so it sounds like right now you are, you know, you are in a, in a great position to kind of grow incrementally and, and find somebody part-time. I mean, that could be helpful to get somebody to start doing it and to enable you to go to the trade shows and to, to do more business development and design.
35:33 Speaker 03 Yes, I love that idea and I love that idea of having the part-time person, kind of vetting them as we go and, and seeing how they could work out if, if it ended up being a good fit.
35:44 Speaker 00 Awesome. Uh, Alexa, any last thoughts, words of wisdom for Carolyn?
35:49 Speaker 01 I think that, you know, you should just think about how you can make your job into the part that you love and that you're really excellent at and use some of your creativity to figure out how you can solve for the other steps of the process that you know well, you can do well, but you don't have to be the one to do well.
36:10 Speaker 03 Okay.
36:11 Speaker 00 Yeah, awesome, awesome. Congrats, Carolyn, on, on this idea. It's really, really cool stuff. The Creative Garland Company, thanks for calling in.
36:19 Speaker 03 Thank you so much.
36:20 Speaker 01 Congratulations.
36:21 Speaker 03 Thank you. Bye.
36:24 Speaker 00 Stay with us because after the break, we'll talk to another founder working to take their business to the next level. That's after the break. I'm Guy Raz and you're listening to the Advice Line right here on How I Built This Lab.
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37:52 Speaker 00 Welcome back to the Advice Line on How I Built This Lab. I'm Guy Raz and today I'm taking your calls with Alexa Hirschfeld, co-founder of Paperless Post. All right, let's bring on our next caller. Hello, welcome to the Advice Line. You're on with Alexa Hirschfeld, co-founder of Paperless Post. Tell us your name, where you're calling from, and a little bit about your business.
38:11 Speaker 06 Hi Alexa and hi Guy. My name is Sayuri Tsutsutani. I am calling from Los Angeles, California. Sumo yoga is a unique yoga concept that redefine body positivity by empowering individuals to feel strong, grounded, and fully accept their own bodies.
38:28 Speaker 00 Cool. All right, welcome to the show. So it's a sumo yoga, so tell me what is your product that you're selling?
38:35 Speaker 06 I am selling tatami yoga mat.
38:39 Speaker 00 Tatami yoga, like tatami, those straw floors like that you find in traditional Japanese homes?
38:45 Speaker 06 Yes, yes, yes.
38:47 Speaker 00 Got it, okay. And so tell me a little bit about about this business. How did it start? I'm assuming you are you are yoga practitioner?
38:56 Speaker 06 Yes, I love yoga and I go to studio religiously. But there's always be one thing that bothers me, the smell of yoga mat. And when I went back to Japan to visit my mom, I realized she hasn't changed the tatami cloth since she first moved to the house. And there is still fresh, clean and comforting after all those years. And I decided to create the tatami yoga mat with my experience with my growing up in Japan.
39:32 Speaker 00 So you are importing these yoga mats from Japan?
39:35 Speaker 06 Yes, I am making in Fukushima, Japan and importing to United States, yes.
39:42 Speaker 00 And and I I just spent two and a half weeks in Japan and stayed in a in a ryokan with tatami floors. And it was incredible and I wish I lived there all the time. So I know how amazing this material is. It's like a grass, right? And it's woven and it's cured like. And tell me a little bit about your business so far. Where are you? You're selling these online. Are you selling them anywhere else?
40:09 Speaker 06 I'm selling this at a little Tokyo farmer's market every Saturday.
40:15 Speaker 00 Got it. And how are they doing so far? What's been the the response?
40:19 Speaker 06 So far, I sold my net gross is two hundred five twenty five hundred dollars at the moment. So it's a slow start. But I mean, also in the US sumo community. And they are liking my product.
40:37 Speaker 00 And and tell me a little bit about this idea of sumo yoga. Like, obviously, I know what a sumo wrestler is, and I'm looking at your website. And there are the first thing you see is a sumo wrestler. What is that? What's the idea around sumo and yoga?
40:51 Speaker 06 Yeah, so I grew up um watching sumo on TV with my great grandmother. And then years later, um I started doing all sumo and yoga combined and I created this sumo yoga concept, which is the squat base, which is called shiko.
41:10 Speaker 00 Squat based yoga?
41:12 Speaker 06 Yeah, sumo squat, basically.
41:13 Speaker 00 Mm hmm.
41:14 Speaker 06 To the west, yeah. Mm hmm.
41:15 Speaker 00 Nice. Uh, I love sumo squats. Very, very good for you. Um, so, so, so it sounds like you're, you've got this concept of like, uh, this sort of a, a brand concept, but you're starting with these tatami mats. And so do you have this idea of other products that you want to create or like a yoga studio or a a like a kind of a, a type of yoga that you wanna promote or create?
41:43 Speaker 06 I would like to create a little bit more um product base and um I am working on making a furushiki yoga carrier, which is the piece of cloth wrapping with a Japanese furushiki way. And also I'm looking for um creating a um tatami box so that you can use with while you're doing a yoga sequences.
42:07 Speaker 00 And, and how much are the mats? How much do they cost?
42:10 Speaker 06 Uh, one ninety nine.
42:12 Speaker 00 One ninety nine per mat, okay. And, and before I bring Alexa in, uh, tell us your question for us.
42:17 Speaker 06 Yes, uh, my question is, um, sumo yoga is um familiar to many people, making education essential to its growth. I want to explore the most effective tactic to educate a nationwide audience about sumo yoga while promoting body positivity and self acceptance and simultaneously drive e-commerce sales of tatami yoga.
42:39 Speaker 00 All right, so a lot, a lot that you wanna do. You wanna, you wanna educate people about sumo yoga, you wanna promote body positivity, and you wanna sell your, your yoga mats. Um, I wanna bring you in, Alexa. Any thoughts, uh, or questions or ideas for Sayuri?
42:55 Speaker 01 Yeah, so I think that education is essential here. And it's important that it's very crisp. When something is unfamiliar, people need a quick mental hook before they really, you know, ask more questions and lean in. And I'd encourage you to define sumo yoga early and consistently. So, for example,
43:20 Speaker 01 It's a yoga practice inspired by traditional sumo movement, whatever the right words are. It's not wrestling. It's designed to be accessible across body types and focused on strength, flexibility, balance and confidence, whatever the right words are, you'll know better than me. But I think that that definition upfront helps people understand who it's for and how it's different from other yoga practices or other wellness practices. And I think one of the questions people will definitely ask is, can I use this for all yoga?
43:51 Speaker 00 Right.
43:51 Speaker 01 And if the answer is yes, I think it's really important to say that clearly because it reduces friction and it will expand the audience pretty meaningfully. And I think that the goal isn't to explain everything. It's to explain just enough so that people's curiosity is piqued and they want to understand more.
44:12 Speaker 00 Yeah, so I agree. I mean, I, I, I think about the yoga market and we've done many athleisure wear brands on this show, Lululemon and, and, and Viori and many others. We're talking about, if you, if you think about yoga alone as a global market, it's a hundred and 20 billion dollar global industry. It is a massive industry, right? And if you want to capture some of those consumers, I really think you want to lean into the mat. Sumo yoga can be the brand and it can be inspired by sumo wrestlers, but I, I think you want to be careful not to confuse people because you, you want to make sure that people
44:53 Speaker 00 see these mats and think, oh, this is better than a, you know, a rubber mat or, or whatever other material, you know, mats are made out of. This doesn't smell, it's natural, it's from Japan, it's handmade. And I think that, that you want to kind of reverse what you're emphasizing here because I, when I go to your website, I see a sumo wrestler. And then I see mats that are $200. And unless you know what tatami is, many people might think, well, a straw mat for 200 bucks? I think you want to explain why these are so special. The artisanship that goes into them, the curing, this particular kind of reeds that are
45:31 Speaker 00 used to make these mats, the trained artisans who make them in a specific part of Japan, and how you are making them specifically for yoga, and why it's a better experience. I think you really want to kind of reverse what you're emphasizing now and focus on the mats and maybe back into the sumo stuff later on. Does that make sense?
45:55 Speaker 06 Yes, it does make sense. Yes, definitely. I was also struggling, how can I deliver my message to the audiences? That was the main question as well, not just selling the tatami yoga mat. So it was very clear now.
46:10 Speaker 01 I completely agree with that. I think that it's very compelling and relatable, the story that you said about loving yoga, but not loving the smell of the mats. And then describing your grandmother's tatami yoga mat.
46:30 Speaker 00 Yeah.
46:30 Speaker 01 I think that is, alone, is just very compelling.
46:33 Speaker 00 It really is. It's a great story. I mean, a lot of yoga mats are made from natural materials like rubber, but, you know, people don't always like that. And here you have your life experience, growing up in a home with tatami floors. It has natural grip, it's very durable, it's antimicrobial or antibacterial, whatever it is, and it lasts forever, and it's entirely natural. There's no synthetic materials. And I think that would appeal to a lot of people, especially the kinds of people who are part of this $120, $130 billion global yoga industry.
47:13 Speaker 06 Yes, yes, I completely agree.
47:17 Speaker 00 So I think, Alexa, we have, I think we've given Sayuri her marching orders here. Really lean in on the mats and what the benefits of the mats.
47:28 Speaker 06 Yes.
47:29 Speaker 00 Are.
47:30 Speaker 06 Yeah, thank you so much. Thank you so much for your advice. Thank you.
47:34 Speaker 00 Thank you so much for calling in, Sarah. The brand is called Sumo Yoga. Good luck. Thanks for calling in.
47:38 Speaker 06 Thank you so much. Bye, guys. Bye, Alexa.
47:41 Speaker 01 Thank you.
47:42 Speaker 06 Thank you.
47:44 Speaker 00 Alexa, before I let you go, I want to ask you a question. I've been asking all the guests who come onto the advice line, which is if you could go back to, you know, 2009 when you and James started Paperless Post, and it's a great story. We're gonna, you know, everybody should check it out because you guys have had a lot of ups and downs and some crisis moments as well, especially around COVID. If you could go back to 2009 and give yourself advice on what you know now about how to run a business, what would have been helpful for you to know?
48:15 Speaker 01 Yeah, I think that focus and always keeping the main thing, the main thing is a really important piece of advice. I think there are a lot of interesting ideas. It can be distractions. Those can be experiments. I'm not saying don't experiment. There are a lot of scary things that happen, like competitors or funding that doesn't come through or press that you don't like. And I think instead of looking over your shoulder too much at those risks or those threats, think about why do you exist? What do you offer to your customers or to your users? The people who need you and who need your product and who you want to serve.
49:00 Speaker 01 And that's the main thing. And you have to just keep that in mind the whole time. You know, we, the world has changed so much since we started, but I think we know very well who we serve. To just stay focused on what, you know, what the main thing is, I think as things evolve, you're, it's a lot easier to roll with those changes and adapt.
49:24 Speaker 00 Yeah, for sure. Alexa, thank you so much for coming back on to the show. It's great having you.
49:30 Speaker 01 So great to see you again, Guy. Thank you so much.
49:33 Speaker 00 That's Paperless Post co-founder Alexa Hirschfeld. And by the way, if you haven't heard Alexa's original How I Built This episode, go back and check it out. We'll put a link to it in the show notes. Thanks so much for listening to the show this week. 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] or call us at 1-800-433-1298. Leave a message there and make sure to tell us how to reach
50:16 Speaker 00 you, and we'll put all of this information in the podcast description as well. This episode was produced by Rommel Wood, with music composed by Remtina Rabelui. It was edited by John Isabella. Our audio engineers were Debbie Dottry and Sina LaFredo. Our production staff also includes Casey Herman, Sam Paulson, Alex Chung, Chris Messini, Kerry Thompson, Catherine Seifer, Neva Grant, Nora Gill, and Elaine Coats. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to The Advice Line, right here on How I Built This Lab.
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