Advice Line: Growing Beyond Your Niche

This week, Guy is joined by Fawn Weaver of Uncle Nearest Premium Whiskey, Andrew Abraham of Orgain, and Brett Schulman of CAVA to give advice to three early-stage founders in this special “mashup” episode of the How I Built This Lab Advice Line. First, Oni from Fort Worth has developed a two-in-one game designed to strengthen relationships through deeper conversations. Then, Ken from Minneapolis whose vision for better eye health starts with dry-eye relief, without the drops. And finally, Adam in Tampa is looking to scale his ‘pet project’ into a nationwide photography business. Thank you to the founders of The WAMO Game, Tear Restore, and A Gold Photo for being a 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] mailto:[email protected] or call 1-800-433-1298. To hear our guests’ previous episodes: Uncle Nearest Premium Whiskey: Fawn Weaver https://art19.com/shows/831bd173-0992-41b7-b1eb-112db904d947/episodes/13d9fc11-b0d3-422a-98eb-84cda6a120dd/embed | Advice Line with Fawn Weaver https://art19.com/shows/831bd173-0992-41b7-b1eb-112db904d947/episodes/06c0752a-9099-49c2-b0c7-8319ebd36a4b/embed Orgain: Andrew Abraham https://art19.com/shows/831bd173-0992-41b7-b1eb-112db904d947/episodes/f540618e-09e9-47dc-9219-cd803621a729/embed | Advice Line with Andrew Abraham https://art19.com/shows/831bd173-0992-41b7-b1eb-112db904d947/episodes/fa67509f-3820-4950-9995-8316d5d319cd/embed CAVA: Ted Xenohristos and Brett Schulman https://art19.com/shows/831bd173-0992-41b7-b1eb-112db904d947/episodes/40c7b2b2-a8b4-4ed6-b5f9-df5aa2318755/embed | Advice Line with Brett Schulman https://art19.com/shows/831bd173-0992-41b7-b1eb-112db904d947/episodes/8b2fd9c0-0284-47de-b678-834b5804f83f/embed This episode was produced by J. C. Howard with music by Ramtin Arablouei. It was edited by John Isabella. Our audio engineer was Cena Loffredo. You can follow HIBT on Twitter https://twitter.com/HowIBuiltThis &Instagram https://www.instagram.com/howibuiltthis and sign up for Guy's free newsletter atguyraz.com http://guyraz.com/. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Guy Raz?

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• 0:46Guy Raz?

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• 1:32Guy Raz?

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• 2:16Guy Raz?

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• 3:00Guy Raz?

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• 3:45Guy Raz?

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• 4:27Guy Raz?

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• 5:13Speaker 01

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• 5:25Guy Raz?

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• 5:58Guy Raz?

  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. Last week, we released a mashup of never-before-heard conversations with callers from previous episodes of the show. And this week, we have three more of those conversations because some of the advice was so good, we just thought you had to hear it. And of course, if you are building something and you need advice, give us a call. You just might be the next guest on the show. Our number is 1-800-433-1298. Send us a one-minute

• 6:39Guy Raz?

  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]. 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. The first conversation is actually the very first Advice Line call we ever took. My guest that day was Fawn Weaver, the founder of Uncle Nearest Premium Whiskey. And Fawn told me all about how she used a story to build her brand when she first came on the show

• 7:23Guy Raz?

  back in 2021. And when she joined me on The Advice Line, she used a lot of her own experience to guide our callers in their storytelling. First caller, are you there?

• 7:34Speaker 02

  Hi, Guy. Hi, Fawn. Hello.

• 7:37Guy Raz?

  Hi. Tell us your name and where you're from and what your business is.

• 7:41Speaker 02

  So my name is Oni Colston. I am the founder and CEO of Keep Your Random Entertainment. Our premier product is Wemo, which stands for What Are My Options? It is a two-in-one game. Think Social Truth or Dare meets Dear Diary. So it's a conversation starter. We start the conversation and inspire new conversations. Our first edition is the Friends Edition, and it's for ages 17 and up.

• 8:09Guy Raz?

  Got it. And where are you based, Oney?

• 8:11Speaker 02

  I'm in Fort Worth, Texas.

• 8:13Guy Raz?

  In Fort Worth. Okay. Thank you for calling. So all right. So it's called What Are My Options? It's a board game and basically designed to, I guess, kind of like an icebreaker game or like to get to know people better, right?

• 8:23Speaker 02

  Yes. It's actually a board and card game. That's what makes it a two-in-one game. So you can play with the board or with cards only. And the idea is getting with your friends, really whoever you want to play with and have engaging conversation, but also compete and just learn something about each other, sharing your experiences, your perspectives and your beliefs.

• 8:43Guy Raz?

  So what are some of the prompts on the cards, for example?

• 8:46Speaker 02

  So they range in intensity. Play it safe, up a notch, all in and test my luck. We'll play it safe first.

• 8:54Guy Raz?

  Okay.

• 8:54Speaker 02

  So one of the questions is, do you believe that billionaires are stingy if they decide to keep their money?

• 9:04Guy Raz?

  Fawn, what would you say?

• 9:06Speaker 03

  I wouldn't call it stingy. I think it's just a matter of what your moral compass is. And so for me, everything that I build is for other people. That is just me. It's what drew me to this story is it was so much about other people. But for those who choose not to, that's on them too.

• 9:25Guy Raz?

  I'm gonna say, I'm gonna reserve judgment and say, you know, everybody's got to make their own decisions.

• 9:32Speaker 02

  Yes. And so the answers, they vary. And I think when you're playing with other people, you get the opportunity to learn from other people, you know, together versus just being like on your phone or talking about it on social media.

• 9:47Guy Raz?

  Oney, tell us a little bit about how this came about. What were you doing when you decided to create this game?

• 9:53Speaker 02

  So in 2019, I had my daughter. And so I was spending so much time with her to where all of my attention went to her. Which meant that I was neglecting my husband, who I'd known since we were in college at like nineteen or twenty, right? So I started thinking of just a creative way for us to connect. I didn't have a lot of money for us to go out on this fancy dinner, so I just started creating cards on Microsoft Word. And we started asking each other questions and from there, I was like, you know what? I could do this with my friends. And so that's when I decided to turn it into a conversation starter.

• 10:32Guy Raz?

  So cool. And, and, and how did you, like, what was the next step to actually going from a Microsoft Word, you know, pages to going and finding somebody who could make this board game and manufacture it for you?

• 10:44Speaker 02

  Oh, my gosh. When I tell you, it was a challenge, I will say. I tested the game out with my family and friends and also strangers. And that told me, you do actually have something. It's not just you thinking that this is a good idea. And so then I, I literally just started drawing it out. I went to Walmart, I got a board, and I hand drew it out and I tested that out with my family and my friends. And from there, I literally just started calling around, Googling, and I just started taking the steps.

• 11:18Speaker 03

  So I have, I have a question for you. I'm, since, since you've been talking, I've been busy Googling over here and just looking at WAMO. And one of the things I noticed is when I go to Google search and I put in WAMO, is that I get twenty different options of WAMO, Urban Dictionary, radio stations, YouTube things, the Washington Monument, actually, apparently is referred to as WAMO. So I get all of these different things. What I don't get is you and your company and your board game. So have you found that you're able to break through the noise using that particular acronym?

• 12:02Speaker 02

  So originally, I had like twenty different names on my list for the game. And I just started saying, what are my options? Because in the game, you have options. But what are my options was just too long. And I thought about all the games that I played growing up. Everything's one word. And that's why I came up with WAMO. So I thought it was catchy, but it is, it has been a challenge to break the noise, honestly.

• 12:29Guy Raz?

  Yeah, there's, there are a bunch of WAMOs. To find it, you type, you gotta type in WAMO board game. And I see it and it's awesome. And I mean, the, the site looks good and it's simple. And look, ultimately, a name is, it may or may not really matter, right? We've had tons of companies on the show with, I mean, think about one of the most successful brands in recent years with maybe one of the weirdest names. Liquid Death for water, right? We told that story. So names, it all depends, right? And, and it's also given where you are in the business. You could, you could change it if you wanted to. Let, let me, let's, let's dive into your question because you, you have a very specific question for Fawn around how to take this to the next level.

• 13:12Guy Raz?

  So, Oney, what, what's your question?

• 13:15Speaker 02

  So my question to you, Fawn, is how have you been able to stand tall and be confident in an area in which you didn't have any background?

• 13:24Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 13:24Speaker 03

  I was confident in, I was confident in myself. And so the, the confidence has to resonate from inside of you. If, if the confidence is coming from a product, that's a flawed strategy because you might have a product that fails and you might start another product. That product may fail. It may not be until you're on your fourth product, but you have to believe in yourself. You'll hear investors say this a lot, is that they always bet on the jockey. And every now and again, luck would have it that the jockey has a good horse, but they never bet on the horse. And so that confidence has to come from inside of you, especially as you are, I imagine this is a costly endeavor.

• 14:06Speaker 03

  And I imagine you are, if you're not already raising money, you'll have to raise money. That confidence, if you don't exude that in every space that you walk into when you're raising money, they will shut it down while you're still talking because they are looking for that level of confidence. But it has to come from you.

• 14:25Guy Raz?

  I think that's such great advice, and I love the horse analogy, especially given that you are in the Kentucky-Tennessee area. It makes a lot of sense. But I wanted to add to that and build on what Fawn said, which is that part of developing confidence is going through a period of time where you're working to get there, especially when you're coming into an arena and an area where you don't know, you don't have a whole lot of experience. It comes with just developing experience, exposing yourself to other people in the area, and being transparent about what you don't know. Because what you'll often find, Oney, is that a lot of people will want to help you. They will want to give you advice. Fawn, I remember when you started with the distillery,

• 15:10Guy Raz?

  you went and talked to a lot of people. And sure, some people might have dismissed you, but there were people who really did want to help out, right?

• 15:16Speaker 03

  Oh, absolutely. In the beginning, there were 20 different historians, archivists, archaeologists, genealogists, who all got together and none ever charged me. So you will find that there are people who genuinely want to simply help you. Guy and I are on here talking to you right now. We simply want to help you. So to Guy's point, if you are transparent about what you don't know, but you can do that and still have a level of confidence in who you are as a leader, that confidence of whatever my hands touches, I can make it succeed. I may have to learn it because I knew nothing about whiskey coming into this, and I mean nothing. But you can learn that piece.

• 15:58Guy Raz?

  Oney, tell me what your vision for the next phase is. Like now, OK, you've got a website. You've got this product. Now, how do you get it in the hands of people?

• 16:10Speaker 02

  So we've already begun selling. We've been going to markets. And I say "we," but it's me and, of course, the help of my husband and also my close friend. But we've been going to markets to sell, of course, using social media. But really, the hardest part is telling the story and getting the story out there. But definitely just pressing every single day to put a piece of content out there, going to all the markets and just sharing the story in the game.

• 16:40Guy Raz?

  Well, I think the story is going to be out there now. Congratulations on launching this. Good luck. It's such a cool idea. Oni, thanks so much for calling in.

• 16:49Speaker 03

  Thank you.

• 16:50Speaker 02

  Congratulations.

• 16:51Speaker 03

  Thank you, Fawn. Thank you, Guy. It was so nice to meet you all, and thank you so much.

• 16:54Guy Raz?

  All right. Bye. Well, Fawn, the story of Uncle Nearest is, it's like a movie. This guy, he was enslaved. He taught Jack Daniels how to make whiskey. Then Jack Daniels becomes Jack Daniels. And Uncle Nearest is basically forgotten until recent years. And you revive this. I mean, you build a brand around him. So you had a story. But what about brands that don't have a natural story or a clear story? Where do they start?

• 17:23Speaker 03

  Every brand has a story because every human has a story, and every brand is founded by a human.

• 17:28Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 17:29Speaker 03

  And so if your brand itself does not have a story, you're doing it for a reason. There's a story behind why you are doing it. So if you look at Uncle Nearest, on any given day, there might be between five and eight press hits around the world, major publications, and they're all telling different stories about the brand. And a lot of those stories are not the story of Nearest Green and Jack Daniel, because I've now told the story of my upbringing, the importance of this not only being black owned, but remaining black owned and passing to the next generation so that we can begin to decrease the wealth gap. I've talked about how our distillery, now the seventh most visited distillery in the world, thanks in part to you. Thank you so much.

• 18:14Guy Raz?

  Thank you. You're welcome.

• 18:16Speaker 03

  I've told the story of how that distillery, every single weekend, you will find people from every race, religion, background, political affiliation. And you don't expect to find that in America if you're actually watching the news. You know, you might have the guy with the cowboy hat and the belt and the boots on. And we had The Roots playing. The Roots were there. And you had all these people in cowboy boots. And they can scoot boogie at the same time somebody else is doing the wobble. But that is something that is unique to our company, our brand. And I tell that story on a daily basis. So you also have to figure out what are elements of your story that are interesting to people?

• 18:55Guy Raz?

  Yeah. We're going to take a quick break, but when we come back, we'll hear another Advice Line call, this time with Andrew Abraham, founder of Orgain. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to the Advice Line on How I Built This Lab.

• 19:22Guy Raz?

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• 20:45Guy Raz?

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• 21:25Guy Raz?

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• 22:07Guy Raz?

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• 22:49Guy Raz?

  at stripe.com. Welcome back to the Advice Line on How I Built This Lab. I'm Guy Raz. So Andrew Abraham first came on the show back in 2023 and told the incredible story of how a cancer diagnosis as a teenager eventually led him to starting the company or gain. And earlier this year, Andrew came back onto the Advice Line to offer some great advice to our callers. Welcome to the show. Tell us your name and the name of your business and what the business does briefly.

• 23:27Speaker 04

  Absolutely. So I'm Ken Daushmitz with Tear Restore, Inc. What we do is we develop over the counter treatments to treat the cause of dry eye syndrome.

• 23:36Guy Raz?

  Got it. And where are you based?

• 23:39Speaker 04

  We are based out of Minneapolis, Minnesota.

• 23:41Guy Raz?

  Awesome. Okay. And what's your question? What question did you bring for us today?

• 23:46Speaker 04

  So my question to Andrew is what strategies did you do to educate customers at scale? So when you were launching into a broad retailer like Costco, how did you express the benefits that working has?

• 23:59Guy Raz?

  All right. Great question. We're going to get to your question in just a moment, but let me, let me just ask you a couple of questions about the brand. So this is, so Tear Restore helps keep your eyes moist, like for dry eye. Tell me a little bit about dry eye syndrome because I'm, I guess I'm lucky. I don't, I don't get it. I don't have it.

• 24:16Speaker 04

  Absolutely. So, so dry eye syndrome is a very common condition. New studies are showing that almost a third of people actually have symptoms of chronic dry eye syndrome. And the reason for that is because of the extended screen use. So we're staring at screens right now and the average person stares at a screen for nine hours a day.

• 24:35Guy Raz?

  And literally, it's literally just your eyes getting dry, feeling like rough.

• 24:39Speaker 04

  Exactly. So the, the primary cause of dry eye syndrome is the breakdown of the oil glands within the eyelids. And every time you blink, you're squeezing oil out onto that tear film. And if you're staring at a screen, you blink less.

• 24:53Guy Raz?

  Got it. Okay. And so this is not like Visine, right? Which is, I think it just makes your eyes not red, right? Eye drops. How is this different from what is of, because there are products out there, I'm pretty sure that, that help with this, right?

• 25:08Speaker 04

  Correct. So the most common treatment is going to be eye drops, but all that's doing is just temporarily relieving the symptoms of dry eyes for a short period of time. What we do is we focus on treating those oil glands within the eyelids by warming them up to the right temperature so that they can express more, or we clean them off to allow them to express more oil onto that tear film.

• 25:31Guy Raz?

  Wow. So, so it warms the oil glands in the eyelids and that then helps to like lubricate the surface of the eyeball?

• 25:40Speaker 04

  Exactly. So the outer surface of your tear film on the front of your eye is an oil layer. And so when you don't have enough oil, then your tears evaporate too quickly. And so what we do is we increase the amount of oil that's in the tears.

• 25:53Guy Raz?

  Got it. Okay, Andrew, medical technology here. First of all, I'm sure you've got some questions for Ken.

• 25:59Speaker 05

  I do. I mean, first, I'd say, Ken, congrats on what you're doing. I'm a huge proponent of eye health. You know, I wear blue light glasses religiously and really feel like we neglect our eye health as a society with how much screen time we have. So I really appreciate kind of what you're doing here. Just curious, like, what has been your biggest challenge to date so far with the business?

• 26:21Speaker 04

  So our biggest challenge is educating people on a wide scale. We launched going through physician offices and selling our products through there. But now we're on a scale where we've entered some of the large retailers and we need to be able to educate people on a wide scale about dry eye and how they should be treating it.

• 26:41Guy Raz?

  Yeah, it just reminds me a little bit of like brands like Tempur-Pedic, which really began as pillows. And they started out at chiropractors' offices, you know, hoping that that's how they would sell their brand. Viori, the athletic wear brand, they started out at yoga studios. And it was challenging. Your challenge is getting people to understand what this product is and why they need it, essentially.

• 27:04Speaker 04

  Exactly. Yep.

• 27:06Speaker 05

  And that gets to kind of the core of your question, right, Ken, that you asked a little bit earlier?

• 27:10Speaker 04

  Yep, absolutely. So I'm wondering how, when you launched into a broad market like Costco, how did they know to choose Organe and that it was going to benefit them in some way?

• 27:21Speaker 05

  Yeah, it was certainly a challenge we had. And I think, first, while this is a very medically focused product, in my eyes, I think you have a real opportunity to shift the marketing and narrative into more lifestyle rather than medical. I mean, Guy was on earlier and he was telling us earlier that he doesn't think he has dry eyes. He feels fine. But I'll tell you, after using products like this, my eyes, even though I didn't think I had an issue, felt significantly better. So same thing with Organe. If I pitched Organe as a medical nutrition product to 100 people, I'd maybe get five to 10 people to use it. As a lifestyle product, for those wanting like more protein, better nutrition, it's closer to 100 out of 100. And I think the same thing applies here.

• 28:05Speaker 05

  We're all on our screens way too long, but we all take care of, say, our oral health by brushing our teeth and flossing daily to maintain our health. So what you have, I think, in Tear Restore, it should be something as more of a lifestyle. We need this to maintain our eye health, to lubricate our eyes and to reduce fatigue from screen time.

• 28:23Guy Raz?

  I think that's a really good point, Andrew, because I'm looking at your website, Ken, and of course, the website isn't necessarily the first place that people will come into contact with your product, but the website sets the tone for how you talk about the product. And the website feels very medical, it feels like a, you know, F U C FDA right away. It feels very sort of clinical. And I think that's, there's, I understand there are smart reasons behind that. We see a doctor, but if in fact, this is a lifestyle product, if in fact, I were to use this and say, oh, my God, I did have dry eye, like, this is actually amazing, which it sounds like the product could do, then I think, to Andrew's point, you want to really focus on, on how this is something that everybody needs. And

• 29:04Guy Raz?

  maybe you show tennis players and somebody jogging and, you know, somebody working out, just people doing things that they do day to day, driving that this could enhance.

• 29:15Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 29:15Speaker 04

  I think that makes perfect sense. I really appreciate the, the input there. Any, any other advice for how to, how to frame our company and our products in a way that would push towards that lifestyle?

• 29:28Speaker 05

  I have a thought there on that, Ken, and I think it's rather than asking your consumer base if they have dry eyes, because some do and, and most actually don't know if they do. My marketing or my approach would be, do you use a phone or laptop for more than five hours a day? And based on what you just told me, a vast majority will say yes. And then you explain how Tear Restorers, whether it's the Hylowipe that I saw, uses hyaluronic acid and calming plant extracts to restore and soothe your eyes to keep them healthy. It's a different narrative, right? And there's nothing more precious than our vision. What are you doing to take care of it? What's your daily routine? So I think I would change the messaging into more lifestyle rather than medical and, and really focus on what we're all doing wrong, and that's screen time.

• 30:11Guy Raz?

  Yeah. I see that you're in Walmart. Are you in Walmart nationally or just in certain regions?

• 30:16Speaker 04

  3,000 stores, so most of the Walmarts.

• 30:19Guy Raz?

  Okay, and I'm sure you may have done a version of this already, but if not, you need to be giving out those wipes, giving them out at every opportunity you have, whether it's sporting events, if you can set up a booth or a tent, if you can sample them at Walmart. I don't know how easy it is with this product, but every person that passes by gets one of those packets of the Tear Restore. You know, like when you go on an airplane and they give you a wet wipe. Literally passing these out, because it seems like once people use it, they'll realize that this could be really restorative and maybe even transformational.

• 30:54Speaker 04

  Absolutely. I really like the idea of airplanes as well, because a lot of people, after a long flight, with that air kind of blowing around and increasing the evaporation of the tears throughout their flight, could really see a benefit from it.

• 31:07Guy Raz?

  I mean, imagine if that's in the first-class kit of JetBlue of Delta. You know, imagine if somebody goes to a TED conference and that's in their gift bag, or another one of these conferences with, you know, people tend to be first adopters.

• 31:21Speaker 05

  Yeah, I agree with that guy. And I'd also add that I think a couple other things maybe that might help a lot, Ken, is online, there's huge influencers in the eye health world, top optometrists, ophthalmologists, some of them have a huge following with a large engaged audience, which is gold for you. So people already trust these influencers with their eye health. And now Tear Restore could be a part of their regimen they use and recommend for daily use. One other thought, because I really like the airplane idea, is partnerships with companies that are in the same industry but are non-competitive. In other words, you know, find a blue light glasses company that has 500,000 followers. Both of you are looking to protect and restore visual health. You're non-competitive and you have a captive audience.

• 32:04Speaker 05

  You could do joint giveaways, you could get those wipes out there, like Guy said. And I think you have to think outside of the box to gain every advantage you can to succeed.

• 32:13Speaker 04

  I love that idea. I mean, we're limited on marketing budgets and all those types of things, like most startups are. So I think setting up a collaborative marketing effort like that would be a great idea.

• 32:24Speaker 05

  Sure.

• 32:25Guy Raz?

  Ken Dow Schmitt of Tear Restore. Congrats. Thanks so much for calling in and good luck.

• 32:32Speaker 04

  Thank you for the opportunity.

• 32:34Speaker 05

  Congrats, Ken.

• 32:35Guy Raz?

  Thank you.

• 32:37Guy Raz?

  By the way, I think you'll appreciate this, Andrew, but my mom, who's 77 and is like an amazing shape yogi, and she teaches fitness classes in Southern California. Every day, as part of her routine, she does eye exercise. She moves her eyes left, right, up, down. Does this multiple times.

• 32:53Speaker 05

  It's great. No, I mean, I think anything that you're able to do consistently is really important. So I'm actually really impressed that she does that. That's awesome.

• 33:01Guy Raz?

  Yeah. You can take her yoga class online. I'll send you the link.

• 33:03Speaker 05

  I don't know if I could hang, but I'll try it.

• 33:05Guy Raz?

  She'd be very happy to have you. It's a free class she offers every, every three times a week.

• 33:09Speaker 05

  Is that right?

• 33:10Guy Raz?

  Yeah, that's right. True story. If my mom's listening, she'd be happy to have you in the class.

• 33:14Speaker 05

  I'd love to join.

• 33:15Guy Raz?

  It's awesome. So, all right. I love this idea. It's really cool because it's an innovative product. And I, I don't think there's a whole lot of competition around what he's doing.

• 33:24Speaker 05

  Doesn't seem like it.

• 33:26Guy Raz?

  We're going to take another quick break, but stick around because when we come back, we're headed for a photo finish. Brett Schulman of Kava joins me to give advice to the founder of a studio for head photography. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to a special mashup episode of The Advice Line right here on How I Built This Lab.

• 33:53Speaker 06

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• 34:58Guy Raz?

  Hey, welcome back to the Advice Line on How I Built This Lab. I'm Guy Raz. So in the fall of last year, Brett Schulman joined me to tell the story about how he and his partners built Kaba into one of the fastest-growing restaurant chains in the country. And one of the ways they did that was knowing when and who to hire. And when Brett came back to join me on the Advice Line, we got a call from an entrepreneur who is in almost the exact same position and trying to figure out how to grow. Hello, welcome to the show. Tell us your first and last name, where you're calling from, and just a little bit about your business.

• 35:35Speaker 08

  Yeah, I'm Adam Goldberg. I'm in Tampa, Florida, and I'm a pet photographer. I run a pet photography studio with my wife, and we help families celebrate what they love about their pets. But we also spend a lot of time taking photos of shelter animals and rescue pets, trying to get them adopted as well.

• 35:51Guy Raz?

  What's the company called?

• 35:52Speaker 08

  A Gold Photo Pet Photography.

• 35:54Guy Raz?

  A Gold, Adam Goldberg, A Gold Photo Pet Photography. And Adam, what question do you have for us today?

• 36:01Speaker 08

  Yeah, so I want to grow the business, but I'm a jack-of-all-trades. I do mostly everything. My wife handles a lot of client communication and photo editing, but I do 80% of it, and it's hard to grow. I can't clone myself easily. There was a dog cloned recently. Anyway, but yeah, I just, I want to figure out the best way to grow that's going to work for me and would love some advice on that.

• 36:24Guy Raz?

  All right, awesome. I got a bunch of questions for you, and then Brett, I'm sure you'll have some too. So let me just start with, okay, so it's a pet photo studio. You're based in Tampa, Florida. How are you reaching customers? I mean, I'm looking at your website right now, and there's awesome photos of people with their pets. And so how do people find out about you? Mainly word of mouth?

• 36:45Speaker 08

  Yeah, people find out about us through Facebook advertising. We do a lot of that. But also word of mouth. We've been in business for about eight years now. But a lot of people see our work that we do with our local humane society, and they see that we help their pets get adopted, and they're like, oh, I didn't know I could do that too. So we get a lot of social interaction on social media, truly.

• 37:03Guy Raz?

  So you take photos for the local humane society? Of pets that need to be adopted.

• 37:08Speaker 08

  Yeah, and that's how I got started in all this. It was just a hobby that turned into a business. But that's really where my passion lies.

• 37:13Guy Raz?

  I love that. Not to be self righteous, but both of our cats and our dog are from humane societies.

• 37:18Speaker 08

  Oh, awesome.

• 37:18Guy Raz?

  Yeah. All right. How did you get into it? Or did you train as a photographer? Is that how you got into this, this line of work?

• 37:25Speaker 08

  No, so my background was in marketing. This was in 2013.

• 37:29Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 37:29Speaker 08

  I worked at an animal shelter. They hired me to manage the website. Didn't know anything about photography at all, but the website was done and they said, the website looks great, but the photos look terrible. It doesn't add up. You know, we need to up the game of the photo. So I taught myself pet photography. A lot of up and coming pet photographers would practice on their dog. And then that's it. When you work at a shelter, there's unlimited amounts of pets to practice on. So I got really good at it because there's more than just my dog to practice on. So working at a shelter, I had unlimited amount of practice.

• 37:59Guy Raz?

  So how did that turn into you starting this studio?

• 38:03Speaker 08

  Yeah, so, so I took a corporate marketing job and realized it was not for me. And just wanted to feel some fulfillment and started working at the, the Humane Society as a volunteer. And then people said, oh, I saw your photo of that dog. Can you take photos of my dog too? I'll pay you. So just snowballed. And then my wife and I started taking photos of pets all over the country. We did it for three years, raised $250,000 for 50 different animal shelters and charities across the country. And then March of 2020 came and you know what happened there, right? Pandemic. So we had to cancel everything and instead of being a, you know, a nomad photographer, we decided to open a studio in August of 2020 instead. So we've been here about four years now.

• 38:46Guy Raz?

  So you stopped traveling around and doing travel shoots and now you do, you just have, got the studio in Tampa. People come to you.

• 38:53Speaker 08

  Right, exactly.

• 38:55Guy Raz?

  All right, Brett, before we get to, to Adam's question, any questions that you have for him?

• 39:00Speaker 09

  Yeah, Adam, you just mentioned that you used to do these pet fundraisers around the country and travel. And obviously, post pandemic or for lifestyle reasons, you have a studio now. How do you think about that previous model versus your current model? And how do you want to go forward?

• 39:16Speaker 08

  Yeah, so we love that previous model. But my wife and I had a son who's now two. And it was just didn't seem realistic to travel. But we were also burning ourselves out, truly. We were charging not a lot. And we would have 300 clients in a month. And then that sounds awesome from a financial standpoint. But then you have 300 clients to interface with and 300 clients to edit photos for. And it's just too much. So now we take maybe eight to 12 clients, but our, you know, costs are a lot higher because we're selling physical artwork. So I love that. I always thought about like, maybe franchising, or like, could I open another location in DC or San Francisco or Austin? We used to go to those cities. We have wait lists there. So it's just time and, you know, trusting

• 40:01Speaker 08

  someone to do it, I guess.

• 40:03Guy Raz?

  And so you you actually print up the artwork, like you take the photos, you turn them into canvases, and you deliver that to the client, not just like digital photos?

• 40:12Speaker 08

  Yeah, so we used to do digital only. But now our clients come to us because they have a blank space in their home. And they're unfortunately, maybe their dog's a little bit older, and they want to remember them for a long time to come. So we're helping them. We say we're a third interior designer, a third photographer, and a third therapist because we talk to people about their pets.

• 40:31Guy Raz?

  Yeah, so you are photographing them, then you're editing them, then you are actually transferring that to a canvas, and then help delivering it to their home with a suggestion for how to hang it.

• 40:42Speaker 08

  Exactly. Yeah, it's very consultative versus what we used to do, which was like, they would sign up online, we would never talk to them ever.

• 40:49Speaker 09

  Talk about full service.

• 40:50Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 40:51Speaker 08

  It is very full service. I don't let me forget to shout out my wife. She handles all the editing. I don't want to take that away from her. But yeah.

• 40:57Speaker 09

  And so your question was about, you know, how do you how do you start taking these hats off, all these multiple hats you're wearing and hiring folks? Where do you want to go with it? Do you want to open more studios? Do you see yourself expanding to other markets ultimately? Because I think that's going to have a big impact on Who you hire and when you hire them?

• 41:17Speaker 08

  Yeah, so we've actually hired people in the past and just failed at it. I am a creative person. I am bad at managing people, or maybe I am just bad at hiring. And it just took me away from the photography. I don't want to be a manager of people. But is there, so in my head, I'm like, can I hire a GM or a studio manager and they handle all those people? I listened to the Mark Rober episode. That's what he does.

• 41:39Speaker 09

  Yeah.

• 41:39Speaker 08

  And I was like, okay, I could probably do that. I think I just haven't found the right person and I am a control freak. I equate it to lighting. I love studio lighting because I can control the lighting. It's always the same. If you do photography outside, it could be raining, it could be cloudy, it could be hot out. You can't control that. In a studio, I can control all of it and I love that. So I just, I just equate it to my personality. I just like being in control. So I have to figure out how to, you know, relinquish some of that control, but also hiring the right person that I can trust to manage all these other people that, really, I need a salesperson, I need a retoucher in-house, I need an accounting person, I need a social media person, I need, you know, there's a lot of people I could divide my time with.

• 42:21Speaker 09

  It's interesting listening to you. I hear a lot of parallels to the restaurant industry. Where you often see, and even with my partners, or you see with great, successful chefs, they're the creative side and they have a great business partner who's on the operations side or the financial side, kind of the yin to their yang. And it really works well together because with my partners, we have a lot of complementary skillsets. We're not tripping over one another or kind of overlapping into different areas. And ultimately, you can still be that control freak if you have someone that you trust deeply, that you have the confidence in on the operations side or the financial side, that has that area that you're not as comfortable with or as interested in, that you can count on to do it the way you would hope it would be done.

• 43:07Guy Raz?

  I have some thoughts on that, and I would start by saying, being a control freak is very common for creative entrepreneurs. And what I think a lesson to take from the Kava story is, those guys found Brett, and they saw in Brett somebody who has a skillset that they didn't have, who could help them really take their concept, their ideas, and scale it. And so, a couple of things. I mean, the first is, maybe your wife is better suited to be the operations and manage, you know, do the managerial stuff. But I think that there's a world where you can start really slowly by thinking about bringing in an apprentice. And by the way, it's not that you're bad at hiring. It's, some of it's the luck of

• 43:50Guy Raz?

  the draw. Like, you may just need to take time working with different people. But I would really strongly encourage you to find, to look for people who are willing to be apprenticed. And like, can you build a system where you train somebody on how exactly you do what you do? And they're not going to be as good as you, but maybe that is a lower price point for the customer. Maybe if the customer wants Adam taking the photos, it's like a hair salon. It's going to be more expensive if your name's on the door than if you want another hairdresser in the salon to work on your hair. And I think you may want to think about putting a lot of your energy in building a system in which you can create a template for somebody who works with you to learn how to do what you do,

• 44:35Guy Raz?

  because you can't scale yourself. You just can't do this, all of this, on your own. Brett, what do you think?

• 44:41Speaker 09

  Yeah, that's absolutely right. I mean, you know, it's okay to want to have control and care about the details, and be so focused on having everything come out as beautiful and as perfect as possible. But you do have to understand how you start to delegate and allow others to be an amplifier of you. I joke, I don't have very wide shoulders, so if I'm carrying the entire business on my shoulders, we wouldn't go very far, right? And you need to be able to lean on others and be able to trust others that can help deliver on what your vision is. And you have To understand how to get comfortable with that. And again, I think we all have misses on hires,

• 45:22Speaker 09

  right? No one is perfect at hiring people. So it is trying to understand what's the right person for the role you're trying to hire for the right personality. And so I wouldn't get discouraged by that, that it's not this unattainable hire to find. But it's bringing someone in ultimately that you feel the confidence and trust that you can start to delegate to because otherwise you you just simply wouldn't be able to scale the business.

• 45:44Speaker 08

  Yeah.

• 45:45Guy Raz?

  The other thing I wanted to point out is that you have an opportunity to go beyond art, too. I mean, I think that I would love to see on your website promoting this idea that people could use your services for their holiday cards, for their social media photos, not just wall art, and that you would actually provide that, too. You know, we did holiday cards this year, and we used a local, you know, we didn't go through one of the big companies. We used a local card maker here in the Bay Area. And they're great. They were like, really nice. They weren't more expensive. And I feel like that's something that you may want to think about, especially as we get closer to the fall and people start thinking about holiday cards.

• 46:22Speaker 09

  Another interesting thought that came to mind that we have I've seen really start to sprout up here locally in the DC area are these social dog bars. They seem to be a really growing trend that people with pets can especially dog, they're more dog centric, but can come and congregate and socialize. And it could be an interesting opportunity to be a vendor of choice, or almost like a pop up arm of that business. Because when people are in that environment, what better venue to take great action photos of their pets?

• 46:55Speaker 08

  Yeah, yeah. So when we were traveling, our favorite like spot to that's why we had to cancel because they were all in public spaces like dog friendly breweries. But the challenge that we face is there's too many distractions at those places because there's just dogs everywhere running around. To your point, an action photo shoot for sure, but that's people love coming to the studio because there are no distractions. We get a lot of people whose dogs are dog reactive. And they love that we're private and we're meant just for them. We got a lot of families that don't have children and their pets are their children. So when we opened a studio, people were like ecstatic.

• 47:26Speaker 09

  Interesting. More on the artistic side.

• 47:28Speaker 08

  Oh, yeah, for sure. And we're really selling an experience. We're selling like the sizzle, like the steak is the photos. Like as a restaurateur, you would know that, right? It's like, We're selling the experience of taking a day off from work and hanging out with your pets and capturing them to remember forever.

• 47:43Guy Raz?

  Adam, I would suggest you sit down and you start to imagine where you want to be in five years and 10 years, the wildest ideas, okay? I mean, we were talking to Brett earlier about Kava when he joined. None of them could imagine there were going to be hundreds and hundreds of locations at this restaurant around the country within a decade. And they did that. I would suggest you sit down, write your five-year plan, your 10-year plan. It doesn't have to be what you do, but just what you imagine you could do. And then start small. Hire one person. If it doesn't work out, that's okay. You have to be patient, train that person up, build a system that enables that person to take on more work. But you have, you have to do, it's really tedious work, but to me, for a business like

• 48:28Guy Raz?

  yours, it's critical.

• 48:30Speaker 08

  Yeah, I mean, I, I'm feeling that, the need to do that. And it's fun to dream sometimes, you know? Sometimes I'm like, working in the business every day and I don't get the time to like, dream a little bit. So I appreciate the homework.

• 48:43Guy Raz?

  A gold photo, pet photography. Adam Goldberg, thanks so much. Good luck.

• 48:47Speaker 08

  Yeah, thanks for having me. Really appreciate the opportunity.

• 48:50Guy Raz?

  All right.

• 48:51Speaker 09

  Thanks, Adam.

• 48:52Guy Raz?

  I'm now thinking, like, I wonder if my, the problem with my dog, my dog Kiki, is she's a, she's from a shelter, a rescue shelter. And so she was never socialized around people. So she's very sweet and kind, but when anybody comes in, a friend, a dinner, somebody comes over for dinner, a repair person, she can't, she just barks. She's really tiny. She's only 10 pounds. So she's not menacing or scary. She's just, people laugh, but she just barks and barks and barks and barks and barks. She gets really freaked out. So I don't know. What do I actually do in a photo studio? It's a cute dog.

• 49:24Speaker 09

  I don't know, Guy. They say dogs take after their owners.

• 49:27Guy Raz?

  I know, I know. I bark at everybody who comes in my house. Get out of my house.

• 49:34Guy Raz?

  Hey, thanks so much for listening to this special mashup edition of The Advice Line this week. And a special thanks to Fon Weaver of Uncle Nearest Premium Whiskey, Andrew Abraham of Organe, and of course Brett Schulman of Kava. And again, if you haven't heard their original episodes or their full episodes of Advice Line, you'll definitely want to check them out just a few scrolls back or do a quick search in your podcast feed. We'll also put the links in the episode description below. And by the way, 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

• 50:15Guy Raz?

  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. And we'll put all this in the podcast description as well. This episode was produced by J.C. Howard with music composed by Ramtin Arablouei. It was edited by John Isabella. Our audio engineer was Sina LaFredo. Our production team also

• 50:57Guy Raz?

  includes Alex Chung, Carla Estevez, Elaine Coats, Chris Messini, Catherine Seifer, Kerry Thompson, Sam Paulson, Devin Schwartz, and Niva Grant. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to The Advice Line on How I Built This Lab.